They who seek to do the mission of the Saviour are scourged and crucified, while the murderer, Barabbas, with the sympathy of the chief priests, goes at large.
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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Especially at this moment, there is no interest, public or private, high or low, of charity or trade, of luxury or convenience, which does not seek its aid.
To complain that this prevailing principle has been applied to living emigration is to complain of Providence and the irresistible tendencies implanted in man.
It was under the auspices of Emigrant Aid Companies that our country was originally settled by the Pilgrim Fathers of Plymouth, by the Adventurers of Virginia, and by the philanthropic Oglethorpe, whose “benevolent soul,” commemorated by…
For a long time, emigration to the West, from the Northern and Middle States, but particularly from New England, has been of marked significance.
In quest of better homes, annually it presses to the unsettled lands, in numbers counted by tens of thousands; but this has been done heretofore with little knowledge, and without guide or counsel.
At any other moment an association for these purposes would take its place, by general consent, among philanthropic experiments; but Crime is always suspicious, and shakes, like a sick man, merely at the pointing of a finger.
These allegations are of small importance, and I mention them only because they show the character of the report, and also something of the quicksand on which the Senator from Illinois chooses to plant himself.
Of course, Sir, it is not true, as is complained by the Senator from South Carolina, with that proclivity to error which marks all his utterances, that men have been sent by the Company “with one uniform gun, Sharp’s rifle”; for it has…
It is not true that the Company has encouraged any fanatical aggression upon the people of Missouri; for it counsels order, peace, forbearance.
I take this occasion to say that all the plans and proceedings of the Society have met my approbation; and I assert that it has never done a single act with which any political party or the people of any section of the country can justly…
I would not claim too much for this Company; but I doubt if at this moment there is any society so completely philanthropic; and since its leading idea, like the light of a candle from which other candles are lighted without number, may be…
Listening to him, I was saddened by the spectacle of the extent to which Slavery will sway a candid mind to do injustice.
His instincts, as lawyer, as man of honor, and as Senator, would forbid; but the Slave Power, in enforcing its behests, allows no hesitation, and the Senator surrenders.
Not on the example of Missouri or the example of South Carolina, but on inherent rights, which no man, whether Senator or President, can justly assail, do I plant this impregnable justification.
It will not do, in specious phrase, to allege the right of every State to be free in domestic policy from foreign interference, and then to assume such wrongful interference by this Company.
By the law and Constitution we stand or fall; and that law and Constitution we have in no respect offended.
To cloak the overthrow of all law in Kansas, an assumption is now set up which utterly denies one of the plainest rights of the people everywhere.
If this be not so, then by what title are so many foreigners annually naturalized, under Democratic auspices, in order to secure votes for misnamed Democratic principles?
The Senator inveighs against the Native American party; but his own principle is narrower than any attributed to them.
They object to the influence of emigrants from abroad: he objects to the influence of American citizens at home, when exerted in States or Territories where they were not born.
The whole assumption is too audacious for respectful argument.
But since a great right is denied, the children of the Free States, over whose cradles has shone the North Star, owe it to themselves, to their ancestors, and to Freedom itself, that this right shall now be asserted to the fullest extent.
God be praised, Massachusetts, honored Commonwealth, that gives me the privilege to plead for Kansas on this floor, knows her rights, and will maintain them firmly to the end.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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