Cadmus brought letters to Greece; and what is the story of Prometheus, who stole fire from Heaven, but an illustration of this law?
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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Plainly, no differences can make one color superior to another.
The attempt to disparage the African as inferior to other men, except in present condition, shows that same ever-present sciolism.
And thus is the condition of Africa explained without an insult to her people or any new apology for Caste.
Where much is given much is required; and this is the law for a nation, as for an individual.
If you are above him in any respect, then by your superiority are you bound to be his helper.
He may be barbarous, perhaps savage; but so have others been, who are now in the full enjoyment of civilization.
Especially do I plead for the African, not only among us, but in his own vast, mysterious home, where for unknown centuries he has been the prey of the spoiler.
Therefore do I now plead for our Common Humanity in all lands.
Drive Caste from this Republic, and it will be, like Cain, “a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth.
The harmony at home will become the harmony of mankind.
The standard at home will become the standard everywhere.
Let each people obey the law at home; its extension abroad will follow.
Surrounded by opportunity and trained with care, he grows into the type of Civilized Man; but, on the other hand, shut out from opportunity and neglected by the world, he remains stationary, always a man, entitled from his manhood to Equal…
Who has not observed, that, independently of original endowment, the progress of the individual depends upon the influences about him?
But must not the same law under which these have been elevated exert its equal influence on the whole Family of Man?
Nobody doubts the progress of England; nobody doubts the progress of France; nobody doubts the progress of the European Family, wherever distributed, in all quarters of the globe.
Progress here prefigures progress everywhere; nay, progress here is the first stage in the world’s progress.
Here, within a limited sphere, obvious to all, is the operation of that law which governs Universal Man.
Beginning with small communities, it has proceeded stage by stage, extending to larger, until it embraced nations and distant places,--and now stamps itself ineffaceably upon increasing multitudes, making them, under God, pioneers in the…
That European civilization which has already pushed its conquests in every quarter of the globe is a lesson to mankind.
The skeptic is disturbed, because thus far in our brief chronology this common civilization has not been developed; but to my mind it is plain that much has been done, making the rest certain, through the same incessant influences, under…
Why this unity, if there be no common destiny?
I have already founded the Unity of the Human Family partly on the common destiny, and I now insist that this common destiny is attested by the unquestionable Unity of the Human Family.
Why this sublime law of Unity, holding the universe in its grasp, if Man alone is left beyond its reach?
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