We stand, and are ready to act, purely in the defence of our homes and lives.
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.
gutenberg.org
Five several times and more have these invaders entered Kansas in armed array, and thus five several times and more have they trampled upon the organic law of the Territory.
Nor shall I say too much, when I declare that security, guarded of course by its parent Freedom, is the true end and aim of government.
Of this indispensable boon the people of Kansas are despoiled,--absolutely, totally.
Scenes from which Civilization averts her countenance are part of their daily life.
Private griefs mingle their poignancy with public wrongs.
I do not dwell on the anxieties of families exposed to sudden assault, and lying down to rest with the alarms of war ringing in the ears, not knowing that another day may be spared to them.
Throughout this bitter winter, with the thermometer at thirty degrees below zero, the citizens of Lawrence were constrained to sleep under arms, with sentinels pacing constant watch against surprise.
Murder stalks, Assassination skulks in the tall grass of the prairie, and the vindictiveness of man assumes unwonted forms.
In these invasions, with the entire subversion of all security in this Territory, the plunder of the ballot-box, and the pollution of the electoral franchise, I show simply the process in unprecedented Crime.
If that be the best government where injury to a single citizen is resented as injury to the whole State, what must be the character of a government which leaves a whole community of citizens thus exposed?
In the outrage upon the ballot-box, even without the illicit fruits which I shall soon exhibit, there is a peculiar crime, of the deepest dye, though subordinate to the final Crime, which should be promptly avenged.
In this plain presentment, whether as regards security or as regards elections, there is enough, without proceeding further, to justify the intervention of Congress, promptly and completely, to throw over this oppressed people the…
As every point in a wide-spread horizon radiates from a common centre, so everything said or done in this vast circle of Crime radiates from the One Idea, that Kansas, at all hazards, must be made a Slave State.
In all the manifold wickednesses that occur, and in every successive invasion, this One Idea, is ever present, as Satanic tempter, motive power, causing cause.
To accomplish this result, three things are attempted: first, by outrage of all kinds, to drive the friends of Freedom out of the Territory; secondly, to deter others from coming; and, thirdly, to obtain complete control of the Government.
On the contrary, the friends of Freedom there have become more fixed in resolve to stay and fight the battle which they never sought, but from which they disdain to retreat,--while the friends of Freedom elsewhere are more aroused to the…
By the violence already portrayed at the election of the 30th of March, when the polls were occupied by armed hordes from Missouri, they imposed a Legislature upon the Territory, and thus, under the iron mask of law, established a…
If their purposes were peaceful, as has been suggested, why cannons, arms, flags, numbers, and all this violence?
Philosophy always seeks a sufficient cause, and only in the One Idea already presented can a cause be found in any degree commensurate with the Crime; and this becomes so only when we consider the mad fanaticism of Slavery.
In every place where Truth can freely travel it is asserted and understood that the Legislature was imposed upon Kansas by foreigners from Missouri; and this universal voice is now received as undeniable verity.
It is enough that the slaveholding interest wills it, from which there is no appeal.
Well, we beat them, and Governor Reeder gave certificates to a majority of all the members of both Houses, and then, after they were organized, as everybody will admit, they were the only competent persons to say who were and who were not…
They were resolved, if a tyrant attempted to trample upon the rights of the sovereign people, to hang him.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
