Charles Sumner

“ Let despots break promises, but not our Republic. A Republic is where every man has his due. Equality of rights is the standing promise of Nature to man, and the Republic has succeeded to this promise.
In harmony with the promise of Nature is the promise of our fathers, recorded in the Declaration of Independence, to which the Republic has succeeded also. It is the twofold promise, first, that all are equal in rights, and, secondly, that just government stands only on the consent of the governed,—being the two great political commandments on which hang all laws and constitutions. ”

“ In the face of this unanswerable evidence, who will say that it was not proposed to revive Slavery? To call such a condition Liberty is preposterous. If not a slave of the old type, the freedman was a slave of a new type, invented by his unrepentant master as the substitute for what he had surrendered to the power of the Nation. Beginning with a caste as offensive and irreligious as that of Hindostan, and adding to it the pretensions of an oligarchy in government, the representatives of the old system were preparing to trample upon an oppressed race. The soul sickens at the thought. ”

“ If among us in the earlier day there was no occasion for the word Nation, there is now. A Nation is born.
The word Nation is suggestive beyond any definition of the dictionary. It awakens an echo second only to that of Country. It is a word of unity and power. It brings to mind intelligent masses enjoying the advantage of organization, for whom there is a Law of Nations,—as there is a Law of Nature,—each nation being a unit. Sometimes uttered vaguely, it is simply an intensive, as in the familiar exaggeration, “only a nation louder”; but even here the word furnishes a measure of vastness. ”

“ The safety of the Republic requires action at once. Innocent men must be rescued from sacrifice.
I would not in this judgment depart from the moderation proper to the occasion; but God forbid, that, when called to deal with so great an offender, I should affect a coldness I cannot feel! Slavery has been our worst enemy, assailing all, murdering our children, filling our homes with mourning, darkening the land with tragedy; and now it rears its crest anew, with Andrew Johnson as its representative. Through him it assumes once more to rule and impose its cruel law. ”

“ Local jealousies and geographical distinctions will be lost in the attractions of a common country. Then, indeed, there will be no North, no South, no East, no West; but there will be One Nation. No single point of the compass, but the whole horizon, will receive our regard. Not the Southern Cross flaming with beauty, not even the North Star, long time guide of the mariner and refuge to the flying bondman, but the whole star-spread firmament, will be our worship and delight.
As the Nation stands confessed in undivided sovereignty, the States will not cease their appropriate functions. ”

“ It is true, that, by the Laws of Nations, all sovereign States, great or small, are equal; but this principle has been extended without authority to States created by the Nation and made a part of itself. There is but one active provision in the Constitution which treats the States as equal, and this provision shows how this very Equality may be waived. Every State, large or small, has two Senators, and the Constitution places this Equality of States under its safeguard by providing that “no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.” ”

“ If you are true to the great principles of Equal Rights, declared by our fathers as the foundation of just government,—if you stand by the freedman and maintain him in well-earned citizenship,—if you require full payment of the national debt in coin, principal and interest, at the pleasure of the holder, so that the Republic shall have the crown of perfect honesty, as also of perfect freedom,—I do not doubt that it will exercise a far-reaching sway. Nothing captivates more than the example of virtue,—not even the example of vice. ”

“ Every word, from “We, the people,” to the signature, “George Washington,” is instinct with national life, and there is not a single expression taking from the National Government any inherent power. From this “nothing” in the Constitution there can come nothing adverse. But there has always been a positive injunction on the nation to guaranty “a republican form of government” to all the States; and who can doubt, that, in the execution of this guaranty, the nation may exercise all these powers, and provide especially for the protection of the citizen in all the rights of citizenship? ”

“ Like war, whose greatest engine it was, it is the cause of incalculable evil. Like war, it troubles the entire Nation, deranges business, and demoralizes the people. As I hate war, so do I hate all its incidents, and long to see them disappear. Already in these remarks I have pictured the financial anarchy of our country, the natural reflection of the political; but the strongest illustration is in a disordered currency, which is present to everybody with a dollar in his pocket. ”

“ State Rights, when properly understood, are entirely consistent with the maintenance of Human Rights by the Nation. The State is not humbled, when it receives the mandate of the Nation to do no wrong; nor can the Nation err, when it asserts everywhere within its borders the imperialism of Human Rights. Against this righteous supremacy all pretensions of States must disappear, as darkness before the King of Day. ”

“ But all this will be changed, just in proportion as any State claims for itself a sovereignty which belongs to all, and reduces the Nation within its borders to be little more than a tenant-at-will,—just in proportion as the National Unity is assailed or called in question,—just in proportion as the Nation ceases to be a complete and harmonious body, in which each State performs its ancillary part, as hand or foot to the natural body. There is an irresistible protest against such a sacrifice, which comes from the very heart of our history. ”

“ Then comes the Apology of Prerogative, being nothing less than the intolerable pretension that the President can sit in judgment on Acts of Congress, and, in his discretion, refuse to execute them. This apology is in the nature of a claim of right. Let it be established, and, instead of a government of laws, which is the glory of a republic, we have only the government of a single man. Here is the one-man power with a vengeance. ”

“ Thus has Andrew Johnson testified to the power of the Nation over Reconstruction, while, with an absurdity of pretension which history will condemn even more than any contemporary judgment, he assumed that he was the Nation. His usurpation has been overthrown, but his testimony to the power of the Nation remains. When the Nation speaks, it is by Congress,—as the Roman Republic spoke by its Senate and people, Senatus Populusque Romanus, in whose name went forth those great decrees which ruled the world. ”

“ The victory of ideas is grander far than any victory of blood. What battle ever did so much for humanity as the Sermon on Mars Hill? What battle ever did so much as the Declaration of Independence? But Sermon and Declaration are one, and it is your glorious part to assure the National Unity on this adamantine base.
All hail to the Republic, redeemed and regenerated, One and Indivisible! Nullification and Secession are already, like the extinct monsters of a former geological period, to be seen only in the museum of History. ”

“ The tax-gatherer, taking so much from honest industry, was born of the Rebellion. Inconvertible paper, deranging the business of the country at home and abroad, had the same monstrous birth. Our enormous taxation is only a prolongation of the Rebellion. Every greenback is red with the blood of fellow-citizens.
To repair these calamities, political and financial, the first stage was the overthrow of the Rebellion in the field, thus enabling the Nation to reduce its armaments, to arrest its accumulating debt, and to cease anxiety on account of foreign intervention so constantly menaced. ”

“ Every loan at that time was a contract of bottomry on the Nation,—like money lent to a ship in a strange port, and conditioned on its arrival safe at home,—so that it failed entirely, if Slavery, by the aid of Foreign Powers, established its supremacy. God be praised, the enemy has been overcome! It remains now that we should overcome that other enemy, which, hardly less malignant than war itself, would despoil the Nation of its good name and take from it all the might of honesty. ”

“ Business must be emancipated. How often are we told by the lawyers, in a saying handed down from antiquity, that “a wretched servitude exists where the law is uncertain”! But this is not true of the law only. Nothing short of that servitude which denies God-given rights can be more wretched than the servitude of an uncertain currency. And now that, by the blessing of God, we are banishing that terrible wrong which was so long the curse and shame of our Nation, let us apply ourselves to this other servitude, whose yoke we are all condemned to bear in daily life. ”

“ There must be no false weights, and no exclusion of proper weights. Therefore I cannot allow the jargon of lawyers on mere questions of form to sway the judgment against justice. Nor can I consent to shut out from view the long list of transgressions explaining and coloring the final act of defiance. To do so is not to render impartial justice, but to depart from this prescribed rule. The oath we have taken is poorly kept, if we forget the Public Safety in devices for the criminal. Above all else, now and forever, is that justice which “holds the scales of right with even hand.” ”

“ It is political from beginning to end. It is nothing, if not political. Therefore, by unassailable precedents under the Constitution, are these Acts fixed and secured so that no court can touch them,—nothing but the war which Mr. Blair has menaced.
The Equal Rights conferred upon the freedman are all placed under this safeguard. Congress has done this great act of justice, and, thank God, it cannot be undone. It has already taken its place in the immortal covenants of history, and become a part of the harmonies of the universe. ”

“ Repudiation in all its forms, direct or indirect, whether of the freedman or the bond-holder, must be repudiated. The freedman and bond-holder are under the same safeguard, and there is the same certain disaster from any repudiation of either. Unless the Public Faith is preserved inviolate, you cannot fund your debt at a smaller interest, you cannot convert your greenbacks, you cannot comply with the essential terms of Reconstruction. Amid all surrounding abundance you are poor and powerless, for you are dishonored. Do not say, as an apology, that all should have the same currency. ”

“ Reason, humanity, religion, and common sense, all reject the wretched thing. Even if the whites are afraid that the blacks will become an oligarchy and rule their former masters, this is no reason for a continued denial of rights. But this inquietude on account of what is nicknamed “negro supremacy” is as amusing as it is incredible. It is one of the curiosities of history. Occupied as I am at this moment, I should be tempted to put aside all other things and journey to the Mississippi in order to look at a company of whites who will openly avow their fear of “negro supremacy.” ”