Charles Sumner

Does he not remember how in English history Liberty has been won by just such repetitions?

Therefore to require that Virginia shall not do these things is no infringement of anything that belongs to a State, for a State can have no such privilege.

I return to the point, that what it is proposed to prohibit by these fundamental conditions no State can of right do.

The people constitute the State in the just sense, and it has been always our duty to protect them, and this I now propose to do.

Therefore, Sir, in the name of Right, do I insist that it is binding upon the State.

The States have no power except to do justice.

A State can have no right or privilege to do wrong; nor can the denial of this pretension disparage the State, or in any way impair its complete equality with other States.

To my mind the State is the people, and its highest office is their just safeguard; and when it is declared that a State hereafter shall not take away the right of any of its people, here is no infringement of anything that belongs to a…

He knows well what is the technical State, which is found in form, in technicality, in privilege, if you please,--for he has made himself to-night the advocate of privilege.

It is all three,--condition, law, compact,--and, as all three, binding.

I have no other feeling but that of pity for the opposition party, who were deceived and led by adventurers having only their own personal aggrandizement and aims in view, with neither interest, character, nor self-respect at stake; for…

Virginia has freed herself from the tyranny of a horde of greedy cormorants and unprincipled carpet-baggers, who came to sap her very vitals.

A little talking sometimes does a great deal of good; and that expended in the late canvass I heard in a voice of thunder on the 6th of July, when the people of your noble old Commonwealth declared themselves against vandalism, fraud, and…

You will have a judiciary that will set its face like flint against those loyalists that find so little favor with the Senator from Illinois.

Instead of that, you will have a judiciary true only to those who have lately been in rebellion.

But if the policy is pursued which finds such strenuous support, especially from the Senator from Illinois, farewell then to such a judiciary!--that judiciary which is often called the Palladium of the Commonwealth, through which justice…

I am anxious that this judiciary should be pure and devoted to Human Rights.

This may be done in the interests of Freedom and Humanity, or in the ancient interests of the Rebellion.

I think no candid person can have listened to that memorial without seeing that it contains statements with regard to which the Senate ought to be instructed before it proceeds to a vote.

Such a limitation on the right of petition would go far to cut it down to its unhappy condition in those pro-slavery days which some of us remember.

Is it reduced to this, that no petition can be presented unless the Senator approves it, or that no petition can be read at the request of a Senator unless he approves it?

In the name of Justice, in the name of Liberty, for the sake of Human Rights, I entreat the Senate to wait.

When I can secure those rights, when I can see that they are firmly established beyond the reach of fraud, beyond the violence of opposition, then I am willing that that State shall again assume its independent position.

It is nothing less than this: to secure the rights of all, without distinction of color, in the State of Virginia.

Are you ready to part with this great control which yet remains to Congress, through which security may be maintained for the rights of all?