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Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts

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Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts Quotations from Charles Sumner (1811-1874) Four-term Free-Soil and Republican Senator from Massachusetts (1851-1874), and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (1861-1871) …whatever the final determination of this convention, there are many here today who will never yield support to any candidate for presidency or vice-presidency who is not known to be against the extension of slavery, even though he have received the sacramental unction of a “regular nomination.” We cannot say, with detestable morality, “our party, right or wrong.” The time has gone by when gentlemen can expect to introduce among us the discipline of a camp. Loyalty to principle is higher than loyalty to party. —Massachusetts Whig convention, 29 September 1847 In the coming contest, I wish it understood that I belong to the party of freedom — to that party which plants itself on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. I hear the old political saw, that “we must take the least of two evils.”…For myself, if two evils are presented to me I will take neither…. There are matters legitimately within the range of expediency and compromise…But the question before the country is of a different character. This will not admit of compromise. It is not within the domain of expediency. To be wrong on this is to be wholly wrong…. — convention of anti-slavery Whigs, Worcester, May 1848 The friends of freedom cannot lightly bestow their confidence. They can put trust only in men of tried character and inflexible will. Three things at least they must require: the first is backbone; the second is backbone; and the third is backbone. When I see a person of upright character and pure soul yielding to a temporizing policy, I cannot but say, “He wants backbone.” When I see a person talking loudly against slavery in private, but hesitating in public and failing in the time of trial, I say, “He wants backbone.” When I see a person leaning upon the action of a political party and never venturing to think for himself, I say, “He wants backbone.” When I see a man careful always to be on the side of the majority, and unwilling to appear in a minority, or, if need be, to stand alone, I say, “He wants backbone.” Wanting this they all want that courage, constancy, firmness, which are essential to the support of principle. Let no such man be trusted. —Faneuil Hall, 6 November 1850 On 24 April 1851, the Massachusetts legislature elected Charles Sumner to the U.S. Senate following a protracted contest (26 ballots spread over several months), even though Sumner steadfastly refused all offers to compromise on the issue of slavery. He took his seat on 1 December 1851. Since true politics are simply morals applied to public affairs, I shall find constant assistance from those everlasting rules of right and wrong which are a law alike to individuals and communities. —public letter accepting his office1 We do not know the man who has entered the Senate under auspices so favorable to personal independence as Mr. Sumner. He has not sought the office, has not made an 1 Sumner, The Works of Charles Sumner (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1870-83), II, 440. effort for its acquisition. No pledge has he given to any party or any person upon any question or measure. —New York Tribune2 On the Fugitive Slave Law, 1852: By the supreme law which commands me to do no injustice, by the comprehensive Christian law of brotherhood, by the Constitution which I have sworn to support, I am bound to disobey this Act. On the Kansas-Nebraska Act, repealing the Missouri Compromise: … the bill you are about to pass is at once the worst and best on which Congress has ever acted…It is the worst bill inasmuch as it is a present victory of slavery…it is the best bill on which Congress ever acted, for it annuls all past compromises with slavery and makes any future compromises impossible.3 The Kansas-Nebraska Act spawned the Republican Party (out of a fusion of Whigs and Democrats who opposed the act). Sumner was a founding member. Massachusetts will do well in following Vermont, which by special law places the fugitive slave under the safeguard of trial by jury and the writ of habeas corpus…A simple prohibition, declaring that no person holding the commission of Massachusetts as justice of the peace or other magistrate shall assume to act as a slave-hunting commissioner or as counsel of any slave hunter, under some proper penalty, would go far to render the existing slave act inoperative…No man who is not lost to self-respect…will voluntarily aid in enforcing a judgment which in conscience he believes wrong. He will not hesitate “to obey God rather than man”…— first Republican state convention, Worcester, 7 September 1854 The Massachusetts legislature did adopt a personal liberty law at its next session, in effect nullifying the Fugitive Slave Act. Speech in Faneuil Hall, the night before the election of 1860: That power which, according to the boast of slave masters, has governed the country for more than fifty years; …that power which has taught us by example how much of tyranny there may be in the name of democracy, is doomed. The great clock will soon strike, sounding its knell. Every four years a new president is chosen, but rarely a new government. Tomorrow we shall have not only a new president, but a new government. With the secession of the southern states in 1861, Sumner became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He used his position to secure recognition of the black republics of Haiti and Liberia. He secured legislation enabling blacks to carry the mails, and to give witness in the courts of the District of Columbia. In May 1862, he pressed for emancipation: The rebel in arms is an enemy, and something more….In appealing to war, he has voluntarily renounced all safeguards of the Constitution, and put himself beyond its 2 Moorfield Storey, Charles Sumner (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900), 84. 3 Ibid. 108. pale….And yet, sir, the Constitution is cited as a limitation upon these rights. As well cite the Constitution on the field of battle to check the bayonet charge of our armies…The Constitution is entirely inapplicable… If it be constitutional to make war, to set armies in the field, to launch navies, to occupy fields and houses, to bombard cities, to kill in battle—all without trial by jury, or any process of law, or judicial proceeding of any kind—it is equally constitutional, as a war measure, to confiscate the property of the enemy and to liberate his slaves…You may condemn confiscation and liberation as impolitic, but you cannot condemn them as unconstitutional unless, in the same breath, you condemn all other agencies of war, and resolve our present proceeding into the process of a criminal court, guarded at each step by the technicalities of the common law…I confess frankly that I look with more hope and confidence to liberation than to confiscation. To give freedom is nobler than to take property, and on this occasion it cannot fail to be more efficacious.4 On 30 April 1864, Sumner introduced the first bill to reform the civil service, providing against removals except for cause, and promotions by seniority, except that one-fifth of promotions could be made irrespective of seniority. The legislation did not pass until 1871, when the Civil Service Commission was formed. When the Committee on Military Affairs reported a resolution calling for retaliation against southern prisoners for the mistreatment of northern prisoners, in January 1865: …any attempted imitation of rebel barbarism in the treatment of prisoners…could have no other result than to degrade the national character and the national name, and to bring down upon our country the reprobation of history. Letter to John Bright, 1865: I insist that the rebel states shall not come back except on the footing of the Declaration of Independence, with all persons equal before the law and government founded on the consent of the governed. In other words, there shall be no discrimination on account of color. If all whites vote, then must all blacks…there is more harm in refusing than in conceding the franchise….Without their votes we cannot establish stable governments in the rebel States. Their votes are as necessary as their muskets; of this I am satisfied. Without them the old enemy will reappear, and under the form of law take possession of the governments, choose magistrates and officers, and, in alliance with the Northern Democracy [Democrats], put us all in peril again… Massachusetts Republican state convention, 14 September 1865: Neither the rebellion nor slavery is yet ended. The rebellion has been disarmed; but that is all. Slavery has been abolished in name, but that is all…The work of liberation is not yet completed. Nor can it be, until the equal rights of every person once claimed as a slave are placed under the safeguard of irreversible guarantees….Unless this is done, the condition of the freedman will be deplorable….Compelled to pay taxes, he will be excluded from all representation in the government. Without this security, emancipation is illusory….It is impartial suffrage that I claim, without distinction of color, so that there shall be one equal rule for all men. And this, too, must be placed under the safeguard of constitutional law. 4 Ibid. 226. President Andrew Johnson instead organized new state governments through the franchise of all who were eligible to vote prior to the war (excluding blacks) and willing to take an oath to support the Constitution—in effect betraying the loyalist minority and restoring the power of the former slave-owners.
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