It only remains, come what may, that we should at all hazards preserve this Public Faith,--never forgetting that honesty is not only the best policy, but the Golden Rule.
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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But faith in this Republic must be fixed as the sun, which illumines all.
Faith is nothing less than a part of that sublime harmony by which the planets wheel surely in their appointed orbits, and nations are summoned to justice.
Helping here, you help not only your own country, but help Humanity also,--help liberal institutions in all lands,--help the down-trodden everywhere, and all who struggle against the wrong and tyranny of earth.
Such an example will elevate Republican Government, and make the idea of a Republic more than ever great and splendid.
It remains for us to show how a Republic can conquer in a field more glorious than battle, where all these millions of citizens and all this untold treasure uphold the Public Faith.
Mankind is now looking to us, and just in proportion to the eminence we have reached is the eminence of our example.
Beyond the ignominy, which all of us must bear, will be the influence of such a transgression in discrediting Republican Government and the very idea of a Republic.
Breaking promise with either, you are dishonored, and Liar must be stamped upon the forehead of the nation.
But falsehood to the national freedman and the national creditor is a national lie.
We cannot tell a lie to the national freedman or the national creditor; we cannot tell a lie to anybody.
The child is told not to tell a lie; but this injunction is the same for the full-grown man, and for the nation also.
Thus, fellow-citizens, at every turn are we brought back to one single point, the Public Faith, which cannot be dishonored without infinite calamity.
The fountains of the great deep would be broken up, and the deluge would be upon us.
Employment would cease, capital would waste, mills would stop, the rich would become poor,--the poor, I fear, would starve.
Destroy exchange, and even these untold resources would be an infinite chaos, without form and void.
As well undertake to move Mount Washington from its everlasting base, or to shut out the ever-present ocean from our coasts.
How little do these Repudiators know the mighty resisting power which they encounter! how little, the mighty crash which they invite!
It will be paid, dollar for dollar, in coin, with interest to the end.
You may cause incalculable distress, and postpone the great day of peace, but you cannot do this thing.
A rate of taxation, per capita, equal to only one half that of 1866, will pay even our present interest, all present expenses, and the entire principal, in less than twenty years.
Nowhere will it be felt more than at the South, which is awakening to a consciousness of resources unknown while Slavery ruled.
The case is aggravated, when we consider the boundless resources of the country, through which in a short time even this great debt will be lightened, if the praters of Repudiation are silenced.
And now this same disloyal party, once against the greenback, insist upon continuing in peace what was justified only in war,--insist upon a forced loan, when the overruling exigencies of self-defence have ceased, and the nation is saved.
The disloyal party resisted the passage of the original Act, prophesying danger and difficulty; but the safety of the nation required the risk, and the Republican Party assumed it.
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