Charles Sumner

“ But it can never be forgotten, that, where one side is obviously fighting for Barbarism, any intervention, whatever form it takes,—if only by captious criticism, calculated to encourage the wrong side, or to secure for it time or temporary toleration, if not final success,—is plainly immoral. If not contrary to the Law of Nations, it ought to be.
Intervention in the spirit of peace and for the sake of peace belongs to the refinements of modern civilization. Intervention in the spirit of war, if not for the sake of war, has filled a large space in history, ancient and modern. ”

“ And yet, with the phantasy that man can hold property in man shooting from his lips, with the shackle and lash in his hands, with barbarism on his forehead, with filibusterism in his recorded life, and with Slavery woven in his flag wherever it floats on land and sea, the candidate clamors for independent recognition. It is sad to think that there is delay in repelling the insufferable canvass. Can Christian nations longer hesitate? To detest and combat such an accursed pretension it is not necessary even to be a Christian,—it is sufficient to be a man. ”

“ Can it be imagined that a Senator, upon whom the Constitution has heaped the powers and trusts of legislator, judge, and executive magistrate, is the only person who is left exposed to the seductions of foreign influence? It can never be admitted that a situation which from its trust and importance most invites corruption is the only one which the Constitution has not guarded against. If, Sir, a Senator be not an officer under this clause, it might happen that the Senate of the United States might become a House of Lords. ”

“ If Ireland were in triumphant rebellion against the British Queen, complaining of rights denied, it would be our duty to recognize her as an independent power; but if Ireland rebelled with the declared object of establishing a new power which should be nothing less than a giant felony and a nuisance to the world, then it would be our duty to spurn the infamous pretension, and no triumph of rebellion could change this plain and irresistible obligation. ”

“ It is part of the triumphs of Civilization, that no nation can act for itself alone. Whatever it does for good or for evil affects all the rest. Therefore a nation cannot forget its obligations to others. Especially does International Law, when it declares the absolute equality of independent nations, cast upon all the duty of considering well how this privilege shall be bestowed so that the welfare of all may be best upheld. But the whole Family of Nations would be degraded by admitting this new pretension to any toleration, much more to equality. ”

“ The same principle must prevail against recognition of a new slave nation.
Nor, finally, can this recognition be urged on any reason of Peace. There can be no peace founded on injustice; and any recognition is injustice which will cry aloud, resounding through the earth. You may seem to have peace, but it will be only smothered war, sure to break forth in war more direful than before.
Thus is every argument for recognition repelled, whether under the sounding words, Practice of Nations, Comity of Nations, or Peace. ”

“ Though plausible in form, it is none the less injurious or unjustifiable. I refer to that inconsiderate Proclamation, in the name of the Queen, as early as 13th May, 1861, which, after raising Rebel Slavemongers to equality with the National Government, solemnly declares “neutrality” between the two coëqual parties: as if the recognition of equality was not an insult to the National Government, and the declaration of neutrality was not a moral absurdity, offensive to reason and all those precedents which make the glory of the British name. Neutrality is equality; neutrality is equity. ”

“ Armed intervention is war, and nothing less. Of course it can be vindicated only as war, and it must be resisted as war. Believing, as I do most profoundly, that war can never be a game, but must always be a crime when it ceases to be a duty,—a crime to be shunned, if not a duty to be performed swiftly and surely,—and that a nation, like an individual, is not [Pg 85] permitted to take the sword except in just self-defence,—I find the same limitation in armed intervention, which becomes unjust invasion in proportion as it departs from just self-defence. ”

“ Rumors of foreign intervention are constant, now in the form of mediation, and then in the form of recognition; and more than once the country has been summoned to confront the menace of England, and of France, too, in open combination with Rebel Slavemongers battling in the name of Slavery to build an infamous power on the destruction of this Republic.
It is well for us to turn aside from battle and siege at home, from the blazing lines of Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and Charleston, to glance for a moment at the perils from abroad: of course I mean from England and France ”

“ We have probably had too good an opinion of human nature, in forming our Confederation. Experience has taught us that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good, without the intervention of a coercive power. I do not conceive we can exist long as a nation without having lodged somewhere a power which will pervade the whole Union in as energetic a manner as the authority of the State governments extends over the several States. ”

“ Something more is necessary than that the new power shall be de facto independent. De facto it must be fit for independence; and, from the nature of the case, every nation will judge of this fitness in fact. Undertaking to acknowledge a new power, you proclaim its fitness for welcome and association in the Family of Nations. Can England gazette such a proclamation, elevating the whippers of women and sellers of children? Can France permit Louis Napoleon to do the same? ”

“ Proceeding from the consciousness of brute power, such an attempt is an insult to mankind. If armed recognition at any time can find apology, it is only where sincerely made for the protection of Human Rights. It would be hard to condemn that intervention which saved Greece to Freedom.
Unarmed recognition is where a foreign power acknowledges in some pacific form the independence of a colony or province against the claim of its original government. ”

“ For what is life without Liberty? Stretching from ocean to ocean, teeming with population, bountiful in resources of all kinds, rejoicing in that righteousness which exalteth a nation, and thrice happy in universal enfranchisement, it will be more than conqueror. Nothing too vast for its power, nothing too minute for its care. Triumphant over the foulest wrong ever inflicted, after the bloodiest war ever waged, it will know the majesty of Right and the beauty of Peace, prepared always to uphold the one and to cultivate the other. ”

“ Can any nation calling itself civilized associate, with any sense of self-respect, with a nation avowing and practising such principles? Will not every civilized nation, when the nature of this Confederacy is understood, come to the side of the United States, and refuse all association with them, as, in truth, they are, hostes humani generis? For the African is as much entitled to be protected in the rights of humanity as any other portion of the human race. As to Great Britain, her course is, in the nature of things, already fixed and immutable. ”

“ Clearly, on our side it is a contest for national life, involving the liberty of a race. Clearly, on the other side it is a contest for Slavery, in order to secure for this hateful crime new recognition and power; and it began in rebellion against the solemn judgment of the American people, declaring, in the election of Abraham Lincoln, that Slavery shall not be extended. Our empire is simply to crush Rebel Slavery. Their independence is but the unrestrained power to whip and sell women and children. ”

“ Not merely as the Senator for Massachusetts, the honored chieftain of the political Abolitionists, but as Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, he sees everywhere the presence of the Slave Power. Against it he invokes, in periods of classic beauty and of fervid strength, all the moral forces of the mother country. To England he makes a passionate and pathetic appeal—more for her own sake than that of the slave, more for the sake of the future than of present effects—that she withdraw all favor and succor from Rebel slave-owners. ”

“ Ladies and Gentlemen,—At no former period in the history of the country has the condition of its foreign relations been so important and so critical as it is at this moment. In what agony of mortal struggle this nation has passed the last two years we all know. A rebellion of unparalleled extent, of indescribable enormity, without any justifiable cause, without even a decent pretext, stimulated by the bad passions which a barbarous institution had originated, and encouraged by expected and promised aid from false men among ourselves, has filled the land with desolation and mourning. ”

“ Without the fact of independence, positive and fixed, there is nothing but a claim. Now nothing is clearer than, that, while the terrible litigation is still pending, and the trial by battle, to which appeal is made, remains undecided, the fact of independence cannot exist. There is only a paper independence, which, though reddened with blood, is no better than a paper empire or a paper blockade; and any pretended recognition of it is a wrongful intervention, inconsistent with just neutrality, since the obvious effect must be to encourage the insurgent party. ”

“ While denouncing an outrageous statute, and refusing to play the part of slave-hunter, I never joined in rebellion against my country, or uttered one word except in loyalty. But here are persons with bloody hands, in battle array, striking at all we hold dear,—or others who have acted with them. Such persons will be justly brought to the test of an oath, and they can claim no immunity from the example of those patriot citizens who, recognizing the crime of Slavery, refused to become in any way its tools. ”

“ It is true beyond question that the Acts of Secession are all inoperative and void against the Constitution of the United States. Though matured in successive conventions, sanctioned in various forms, and maintained ever since by bloody war, these Acts, no matter by what name they may be called, are all equally impotent to withdraw an acre of territory or a single inhabitant from the rightful jurisdiction of the nation. But while thus impotent against the United States, it does not follow that they were equally impotent in the work of self-destruction. ”

“ Such, unquestionably, was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which is still allowed to remain on the statute-book, a blot upon our country and age.
Where a measure is so plainly repugnant to reason and authority, and on its face has so little foundation in the Constitution, any elaborate argument seems superfluous, especially at this moment, when Slavery everywhere is yielding to Freedom. The general conscience condemns the inhuman statute, and this is enough. ”

“ Assuming, for the moment, what I glory to believe can never happen, that the new Slave Power has become independent in fact, while the national flag has sunk away exhausted in the contest, there is one objection which, in an age of Christian light, thank God, cannot be overcome, unless, after solemn covenants branding Slavery, the great powers shall forget their vows, while England, the declared protectress of the African race, and France, the declared champion of “ideas,” both break away from the irresistible logic of their history, and turn their backs upon the past. ”

“ Such a ship, with the law of Slavery on its deck and the flag of Slavery at its mast-head, sailing for Slavery, fighting for Slavery, burning for Slavery, and knowing no other sovereignty than the pretended government of Rebel Slavery, can be nothing less in spirit and character than a slave pirate and the enemy of the human race. ”

“ State Rights are fully triumphant, if, first, in their name Rebel governments can be organized, and then again in their name Congressional governments to replace the Rebel governments can be resisted. If they can be employed, first to sever the States from the Union, and then to prevent the Union from extending its power over them, State Rights are at once sword and buckler to the Rebellion. ”

“ They know well that the action of Congress may be with the coöperation of the Slave-Masters, or even without their coöperation, under the overruling law of military necessity, or the commanding precept of the Constitution to guaranty a republican form of government. Above all, they know well that to save the country from peril, especially to save the national life, there is no power in the ample arsenal of self-defence which Congress may not grasp; for to Congress, under the Constitution, belongs the prerogative of the Roman Dictator, to see that the Republic receives no detriment. ”

“ In other days the immense eloquence of Burke was stirred against a regicide peace. But a peace founded on the killing of a king is not so bad as a peace founded on the killing of Liberty; nor can the saddest scenes of such a peace be so sad as the daily life legalized by Slavery. A queen on the scaffold is not so pitiful a sight as a woman on the auction-block. ”

“ Say what you will, try to avoid it, if you can, you are compelled to admit that the candidate power is nothing else than organized Slavery, now, in its madness, surrounded by its criminal clan, and led by its felon chieftains, braving the civilization of the age. Any recognition of Slavery is bad enough; but this will be recognition with welcome and benediction, imparting new consideration and respectability, and, worse still, securing new opportunity and foothold for the supremacy it openly proclaims. ”

“ I blame men who are eager to admit into the Family of Nations a state which offers itself to us, based upon a principle, I will undertake to say, more odious and more blasphemous than was ever heretofore dreamed of in Christian or Pagan, in civilized or in savage times. The leaders of this revolt propose this monstrous thing: that over a territory forty times as large as England the blight and curse of Slavery shall be forever perpetuated.—John Bright, Speech at Birmingham, December 18, 1862. ”