It becomes us to deliberate wisely, to resolve in view of the future as well as the past, and prepare ourselves to carry our resolutions out to all their legitimate conclusions, and, in doing this, to pledge to each other our lives, our…
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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I say that the cowardliness of this attack stands out even more conspicuous, to my eye, than its brutality or its inhumanity.
Have sympathy for the great martyrs of the past, for those who wear the civic crown, if you will,--but I tell you that that gentleman in Washington who now lies upon a bed of pain, whose life it may be is hanging in the balance, needs no…
It is a blow not merely at Massachusetts, a How not merely at the name and fame of our common country; it is a blow at constitutional liberty all the world over; it is a stab at the cause of Universal Freedom.
The blood of this Northern man, who had dared to stand up in the Senate of the United States under circumstances that would have discouraged a man of less ardor, less enthusiasm, and less courage,--that blood now stains the Senate floor…
They may cry, with the great tragic queen, ‘Out, damned spot!’ but no water of this world can ever efface it.
Still under the age of thirty, he became in Europe the honored friend of men whose names have honored the world.
Turning his back upon the attractions of dissipation and fashion, he devoted himself to the society of the learned, the wise, the philanthropic, and to all great and good objects.
Howe and others, he devoted much of his time to the great philanthropic and social problems of the day,--Slavery, Pauperism, Crime, and Prison Discipline,--and gradually the overshadowing social, political, and national importance of the…
When his sentiments on the Slave question were to be sustained at the risk of his ease, his interests, his friendships, and his popularity, he put them all to the hazard.
I know--I have right to say this--I know that in this course he resisted temptations and advice and persuasions which few men would not have yielded to.
Few men in America have ever had, perhaps no one man now has, so many readers as he.
His opponents, too, burn the midnight lamp; but, as you remember, Sir, the great Athenian said, there is a difference between the objects on which their lamp throws its glare and his.
Resolved, That we have heard with feelings of the deepest indignation of the cowardly and brutal assault upon a Senator of Massachusetts, in the Senate Chamber of the United States, for words spoken in debate, in his place, upon the floor…
Sumner with our whole hearts for his heroic defence of the Kansas settlers, and his solemn arraignment before the country of the perpetrators of the great Crime against that unhappy and conquered province.
Resolved, That we have a right to look to the House of Representatives to vindicate the honor of the country in the eyes of the civilized world, by expelling from their body a member with whom none but bullies and savages can hereafter…
The outrage is the more shocking from the singularly pure character of its victim.
His friends, I remember, were told that they would find Sumner a man of the world, like the rest: ‘’Tis quite impossible to be at Washington and not bend; he will bend, as the rest have done.’ Well, he did not bend.
He has never faltered in his maintenance of justice and freedom.
But more to his honor are the faults which his enemies lay to his charge.
They have fastened their eyes like microscopes, now for five years, on every act, word, manner, and movement, to find a flaw,--and with what result?
His opponents accuse him neither of drunkenness, nor debauchery, nor job, nor peculation, nor rapacity, nor personal aims of any kind.
Then, that he is an Abolitionist: as if every sane human being were not an Abolitionist, or a believer that all men should be free.
And the third crime he stands charged with is, that his speeches were written before they were spoken: which of course must be true in Sumner’s case,--as it was true of Webster, of Adams, of Calhoun, of Burke, of Chatham, of Demosthenes…
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
