In those two great departments of labor, History and the Law of Nations, he is among our American pioneers.
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
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To all students of jurisprudence, nay, more, to all students of history, who ascend above wars and battles to the principles which are at once parent and offspring of events, this account of the Progress of the Law of Nations is an…
This work supplies a place never before filled in the literature of the English language, if in that of any language.
His Elements afford the best view yet presented of the Law of Nations, as practically illustrated in the adjudged cases of England and the United States, and in recent diplomacy.
His was a solitary example in our age, perhaps the only instance since Grotius, of an eminent minister who was also an expounder of the Law of Nations.
Justly eminent as a practical diplomatist, his works derived new value from the position of their author, while even his official rank was aided by his works.
All who have read his paper on this occasion will attest the force and sharpness of his unanswered argument.
Far above any flickering light or battle-lantern of party is the everlasting sun of Truth, in whose beams are the duties of men.
The first is a heavenly sentiment, from God: the other is a device of this world.
Loyalty to principle is higher than loyalty to party.
Our motto must be, "Principles, and those only who will maintain them.
To those now too ready for the part of Grand Compromiser, on a question which admits of no compromise, it will be a warning that they can expect no support for high office from us.
It will show that we are in earnest, and, so doing, we help to check that tyrannical spirit which has thus far intimidated the politicians--I will not say the people--of the Free States.
It is distinctly proclaimed by the Slave Power, that no person can receive its support who is known to be against the extension of Slavery.
The Whigs of Massachusetts, so far as in them lies, must pronounce a similar sentence of disqualification upon all not known to be against the extension of Slavery.
We must give to our opinions that edge and force which they can have only from the declared determination to abide by them at all times.
It will not be enough merely to put forth opinions in well-couched phrase, and add yet other resolutions to the hollow words which have passed into the limbo of things lost on earth.
Let us rally under our white pavilion, with its trophies of Justice, Freedom, and Humanity, as enthusiastically as they troop together beneath their black flag pictured over with whips, chains, and manacles.
Let us struggle for Freedom as they struggle for Slavery.
In this contest, we may borrow from the ancient Greek, who, when his hands were cut off, fought with his stumps, and even with his teeth.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
Let us, then, pledge ourselves, in solemn form, by united exertion, to restrain this destructive influence, at least within its original constitutional bounds.
The face of Nature may be blasted, the land may be struck with sterility, villages may be swept by floods of flame, and whole families entombed alive in its burning sepulchre; but all these evils are small, compared with the deep, abiding…
The Slave Power is the Imprisoned Giant of our Constitution.
To it the greater evils which have afflicted the country, the different perils to the Constitution, may all be traced.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
