The assurances of the Future are strengthened, when I look at Government and see how its character constantly improves as it comes within the sphere of knowledge.
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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The “all-hail Hereafter,” in which the poet pictures personal success, is a feeble expression for that transcendent Future where man shall be conqueror, not only over nations, but over himself, subduing pride of birth, prejudice of class…
Still it moves, and it will move until all rejoice in its beams.
Against this lofty truth the assaults of the adversary are no better than the arrows of barbarians vainly shot at the sun.
Wherever men are gathered into nations, wherever Civilization extends her beneficent sway, there will it be manifest.
Throughout a life of controversy and opposition, frequently in a small minority, sometimes almost alone, I have never for a moment doubted the final fulfilment of the great promises for Humanity without which this world would be a…
I begin by declaring an unalterable faith in the Future, which nothing can diminish or impair.
The great Declaration was axiomatic and self-evident because universal; confined to a class, it would have been neither.
Accustomed to this effrontery, people do not see its ineffable absurdity, which is made conspicuous, if they simply consider the figure our fathers would have cut, had they declared the equal rights of white men, and not the equal rights…
The cry, “A white man’s government,” which is such an insult to human nature, has influence in the work of degradation.
By this great title he is universal heir to all that Man can claim.
Because man is black, because man is yellow, he is none the less Man; because man is white, he is none the more Man.
Believing in this law, and profoundly convinced that by the blessing of God it will all be fulfilled on earth, it is easy to see how unreasonable is a claim of power founded on any unchangeable physical incident derived from birth.
In this law, which is both commandment and promise, I find duties and hopes,--perpetual duties never to be postponed, and perpetual hopes never to be abandoned, so long as Man is Man.
But my present purpose is rather to show how inconsistent it is with that sublime truth, being part of God’s law for the government of the world, which teaches the Unity of the Human Family, and its final harmony on earth.
Here is nothing less than the claim of hereditary power from color; and it assumes that human beings cast in the same mould with ourselves, and in all respects men, with the same title of manhood that we have, may be shut out from Equal…
Happily, Slavery no longer exists to disturb the peace of our Republic; but it is not yet dead in other lands, while among us the impious pretension of this great wrong still survives against the African because he is black and against the…
All men have the same rational nature and the same powers of conscience, and all are equally made for indefinite improvement of these divine faculties, and for the happiness to be found in their virtuous use.
I agree with you that Nature has decided that Canada and the United States must become one for all purposes of intercommunication.
But the invitation survives, not only in the archives of our history, but in all American hearts, constant and continuing as when first issued, believing, as we do, that such a union, in the fulness of time, with the good-will of the…
But the United States can never be indifferent to Canada, nor to the other British provinces, near neighbors and kindred.
Nothing will do now but a full inquiry, without limitation or technicality, and a candid acceptance of the result.
But there can be no good-will without justice, nor can any “snap judgment” establish any rule for the future.
Good men on both sides should desire its settlement, and in such way as most to promote good-will, and make the best precedent for civilization.
Fellow-citizens, it cannot be doubted that this great question, so long as it continues pending, will be a cloud always upon the relations of two friendly powers, when there should be sunshine.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
