There is an unhappy incident in our relations with Great Britain, which attests how in other days individual losses were only a minor element in reparation for a wrong received by the nation.
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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And now the day of reckoning has come,--but with little apparent sense of what is due on the part of England.
The dead spoke, also,--and the wounded still speak.
From the beginning they went forth with their cargoes of death;--for the supplies which they furnished contributed to the work of death.
All this stealthy fleet, charged with hostility to the United States, was a part of the great offence.
We supply the ships; we supply the arms, the munitions of war; we give aid and comfort to this foulest of all crimes.
I regret, more than I have words to express, this painful fact, that, of all the countries in Europe, this country is the only one which has men in it who are willing to take active steps in favor of this intended Slave Government.
Rebel Slaveholders, occupied in a hideous attempt, were taken by the hand, and thus, with the official protection and the God-speed of Antislavery England, commenced their accursed work.
The same spirit which dictated the swift concession of belligerency, with all its deadly incidents, ruled the hour, entering into and possessing every pirate ship.
Thus from beginning to end, from the fatal Proclamation to the rejoicing of the accidental ship and the rejoicing of the House of Commons, was this hostile expedition protected and encouraged by England.
They were British in every respect, except in their commanders, who were Rebel; and one of these, as his ship was sinking, owed his safety to a British yacht, symbolizing the omnipresent support of England.
It is plain that the ships which were built under the safeguard of this ill-omened Proclamation, which stole forth from the British shores and afterward enjoyed the immunities of British ports, were not only British in origin, but British…
Audacity reached its height when iron-clad rams were built, and the perversity of the British Government became still more conspicuous by its long refusal to arrest these destructive engines of war, destined to be employed against the…
Thus her depredations and burnings, making the ocean blaze, all proceeded from England, which by three different acts lighted the torch.
No British cruiser could allow her to proceed, no British port could give her shelter, without renewing the complicity of England.
She was no better than the Flying Dutchman, and so long as she sailed was liable for that original sin, which had impregnated every plank with an indelible dye.
It was in no just sense a commercial transaction, but an act of war.
The dedication of the ship to the Rebel service, from the very laying of the keel and the organization of her voyage, with England as her naval base, from which she drew munitions of war and men, made her departure as much a hostile…
The more the case is examined, the more clearly do we discern the character of the transaction.
If damages are ever awarded to a friendly power for injuries received, it is difficult to see where they could be more strenuously claimed than in a case which the First Minister of the offending power did not hesitate to characterize so…
Here, beyond all question, was negligence, or, according to the language of Lord Brougham on another occasion, “crass negligence,” making England justly responsible for all that ensued.
It was a proclamation of equality between the National Government on the one side and Rebels on the other, and no plausible word can obscure this distinctive character.
Most appalling is it to think that one little word, unconsciously used by a trusting President, could be caught up by a friendly power and made to play such a part.
It was this word which, with magical might, opened the gates to all those bountiful supplies by which hostile expeditions were equipped against the United States: it opened the gates of war.
Had he used any other word, the concession of belligerency would have been without justification, even such as is now imagined.
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