Part 1

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Statesman Edition VOL. VI

Charles Sumner

HIS COMPLETE WORKS

With Introduction BY HON. GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR

BOSTON LEE AND SHEPARD MCM

COPYRIGHT, 1872, BY CHARLES SUMNER.

COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY LEE AND SHEPARD.

Statesman Edition. LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND COPIES. OF WHICH THIS IS No. 565

Norwood Press: NORWOOD, MASS., U.S.A.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME VII.

PAGE

THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY SHOWN FROM ITS BARBARISM. Letter to a Political Antislavery Convention at Worcester, Massachusetts, September 9, 1860 1

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT MUST BE A DEAD LETTER. Letter to a Public Meeting at Syracuse, New York, September 9, 1860 3

EXAMPLE OF MASSACHUSETTS AGAINST SLAVERY. Speech at a Mass Meeting of Republicans, in the Open Air, at Myrick’s Station, Massachusetts, September 18, 1860 5

CONTRIBUTIONS OF SCHOOLS FOR STATUE OF HORACE MANN. Letter to the Agent for receiving Contributions, September 19, 1860 20

REMINISCENCE OF THE LATE THEODORE PARKER. Remarks at the Annual Opening of the Fraternity Lectures of Boston, October 1, 1860 22

THREAT OF DISUNION BY THE SLAVE STATES, AND ITS ABSURDITY. Speech at a Mass Meeting of Republicans, in the Open Air, at Framingham, Massachusetts, October 11, 1860 25

NO POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY IN TERRITORIES CAN ESTABLISH SLAVERY. Speech in the Mechanics’ Hall, Worcester, November 1, 1860 41

EVENING BEFORE THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. Speech at Faneuil Hall, Boston, November 5, 1860 70

EVENING AFTER THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. Speech to the Wide-Awakes of Concord, Massachusetts, November 7, 1860 76

JOY AND SORROW IN THE RECENT ELECTION. Letter to the Wide-Awakes of Boston, at their Festival, after Election, November 9, 1860 80

THE VICTORY AND PRESENT DUTIES. Speech to the Wide-Awakes, at Providence, Rhode Island, November 16, 1860 82

MODERATION IN VICTORY; STANDING BY OUR PRINCIPLES. Speech to the Wide-Awakes of Lowell, November 21, 1860 86

MEMORIAL STONES OF THE WASHINGTONS IN ENGLAND. Letter to Jared Sparks, Historian of Washington, November 22, 1860. From the Boston Daily Advertiser 89

LAFAYETTE, THE FAITHFUL ONE. Address at the Cooper Institute, New York, November 30, 1860 101

DISUNION AND A SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY: THE OBJECT. Remarks in the Senate, December 10, 1860 165

ATTEMPT AT COMPROMISE: THE CRITTENDEN PROPOSITIONS. Incidents and Notes, December 18, 1860, to March 4, 1861 169

ANXIETIES AND PROSPECTS DURING THE WINTER. Letters to John A. Andrew, Governor of Massachusetts, January 17 to February 20, 1861 186

NO SURRENDER OF THE NORTHERN FORTS. Speech in the Senate, on a Massachusetts Petition in Favor of the Crittenden Propositions, February 12, 1861 200

DUTY AND STRENGTH OF THE COMING ADMINISTRATION. From Notes of Undelivered Speech on the Various Propositions of Compromise, February, 1861 213

FOREIGN RELATIONS: ARBITRATION. Report from Committee on Foreign Relations, advising the President to submit the San Juan Boundary Question to Arbitration, in the Senate, March 19, 1861 216

BEGINNING OF THE CONFLICT. Speech before the Third Massachusetts Rifles, in the Armory at New York, April 21, 1861 224

PASSPORTS FOR COLORED CITIZENS. Note to the Secretary of State, June 27, 1861 229

OBJECT OF THE WAR. Proceedings in the Senate, on the Crittenden Resolution declaring the Object of the War, July 24 and 25, 1861 231

SYMPATHIES OF THE CIVILIZED WORLD NOT TO BE REPELLED. Speech in the Senate, against Increase of Ten Per Cent on all Foreign Duties, July 29, 1861 234

EMANCIPATION OUR BEST WEAPON. Speech before the Republican State Convention at Worcester, Massachusetts, October 1, 1861. With Appendix 241

THE REBELLION: ITS ORIGIN AND MAINSPRING. Oration, under the Auspices of the Young Men’s Republican Union of New York, at Cooper Institute, November 27, 1861. With Appendix 305

WELCOME TO FUGITIVE SLAVES. Remarks in the Senate, on a Military Order in Missouri, December 4, 1861 359

SLAVERY AND THE BLACK CODE IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. Remarks in the Senate, on a Resolution for the Discharge of Fugitive Slaves from the Washington Jail, December 4, 1861 361

THE LATE SENATOR BINGHAM, WITH PROTEST AGAINST SLAVERY. Speech in the Senate, on the Death of Hon. Kinsley S. Bingham, late Senator of Michigan, December 10, 1861 364

THE LATE SENATOR BAKER, WITH CALL FOR EMANCIPATION. Speech in the Senate, on the Death of Hon. Edward D. Baker, late Senator of Oregon, December 11, 1861. With Appendix 370

THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY SHOWN FROM ITS BARBARISM.

LETTER TO A POLITICAL ANTISLAVERY CONVENTION AT WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS, SEPTEMBER 9, 1860.

BOSTON, September 9, 1860.

DEAR SIR,--With you I hate, deplore, and denounce the Barbarism of Slavery,--believing that the _nonentity and impossibility_ of Slavery under the Constitution of the United States can be fully seen only when we fully see its Barbarism; so that in the Constitutional argument against Slavery the first link is its essential Barbarism, with the recognition of which no man will be so absurd as to infer or imagine that Slavery can have any basis in words which do not plainly and unequivocally declare it, even if, when thus declared, it were not at once forbidden by the Divine Law, which is above all Human Law. Therefore in much I agree with you, and wish you God-speed.

But I do not agree that the National Government has power under the Constitution to touch Slavery in the States, any more than it has power to touch the twin Barbarism of Polygamy in the States, while fully endowed to arrest and suppress both in all the Territories. Therefore I do not join in your special efforts.

But I rejoice in every honest endeavor to expose the Barbarism which degrades our Republic; and here my gratitude is so strong that criticism is disarmed, even where I find that my judgment hesitates.

Accept my thanks for the invitation with which you have honored me, and my best wishes for all Constitutional efforts against Slavery; and believe me, my dear Sir,

Very faithfully yours,

CHARLES SUMNER.

A. P. BROOKS, Esq.

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT MUST BE A DEAD LETTER.

LETTER TO A PUBLIC MEETING AT SYRACUSE, NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 9, 1860.

This meeting was one of a series, known as “Jerry Rescue Celebration,” being on the anniversary of the rescue of the fugitive slave Jerry from the hands of slave-hunters.

BOSTON, September 9, 1860.

MY DEAR SIR,--You know well how much I sympathize with you personally, and also how much I detest the Fugitive Slave Bill, as a flagrant violation of the Constitution, and of the most cherished human rights,--shocking to Christian sentiments, insulting to humanity, and impudent in all its pretensions. Of course I agree with you that such an enactment, utterly without support in Constitution, Christianity, or reason, should not be allowed to remain on the statute-book; and so long as it is there, I trust that the honorable, freedom-loving, peaceful, good, and law-abiding citizens, acting in the name of a violated Constitution, and for the sake of law, will see that this infamous counterfeit is made _a dead letter_. I am happy to believe that this can be accomplished by an aroused Public Opinion, which, without violence of any kind, shall surround every “person” who treads our soil with all safeguards of the citizen, teaching the Slave-Hunter, whenever he shows himself, that he can expect from Northern men no sympathy or support in his barbarous pursuit.

At your proposed meeting, which it will not be in my power to attend, I trust that just hatred of Slavery in all its pretensions will be subjected to that temperate judgment which knows how to keep a sacred animosity within the limits of Constitution and Law.

Accept my thanks for the invitation with which you have honored me, and believe me, with much personal regard and constant sympathy,

Sincerely yours,

CHARLES SUMNER.

Rev. S. J. MAY.

EXAMPLE OF MASSACHUSETTS AGAINST SLAVERY.

SPEECH AT A MASS MEETING OF REPUBLICANS, IN THE OPEN AIR, AT MYRICK’S STATION, MASSACHUSETTS, SEPTEMBER 18, 1860.

A large Republican meeting was held in the open air, at Myrick’s Station, September 18, 1860, in Bristol County, Massachusetts. The New Bedford and Taunton Branch Railroad, and the Old Colony and Fall River Railroad, with their branches, were tasked to the utmost in bringing a crowd estimated at eight thousand. There were large delegations from New Bedford, Fall River, and Taunton.

Harrison Tweed, of Taunton, was chosen President, with a long list of Vice-Presidents and Secretaries. The speaking was from a stand in a beautiful grove. After Hon. Henry L. Dawes and Hon. Henry Wilson, Mr. Sumner spoke as follows.

FELLOW-CITIZENS,--Knowing well the character of the good people in the region where we are assembled, I feel that our cause is safe in your hands; nor do you need my voice to quicken the generous zeal which throbs in all your hearts. Proceeding from intelligence and from conscience, your zeal, I am sure, is wise, steady, and determined, even if it do not show itself in much speaking,--like your own faithful Representative in Congress, Mr. Buffinton, who never misses a vote, and whose presence alone is often as good as a speech. He will pardon me, if I say that I am glad to see him here among his constituents, so many of whom I now meet for the first time face to face.

You would hardly bear with me, if, on this occasion, I undertook to occupy your time at length. There is a time for all things; and let me say frankly, that I have come here to mingle with my fellow-citizens, and to partake of their social joy, rather than to make a speech. And yet I cannot let the opportunity pass without undertaking for a brief moment to impress upon you our duties in one single aspect,--I mean _simply as citizens of Massachusetts_. Of course you have duties as men, belonging to the great human family; you have duties also as American citizens, belonging to this National Republic; and you have duties especially as citizens of Massachusetts, not inconsistent with those other duties, but merely cumulative and confirmatory. Happily, in all good governments duties do not clash, but harmonize; and we may well suspect any pretension, whatever name it assumes, which cannot bear this touchstone.

As _men_, our duties have been grandly denoted in that ancient verse which aroused the applause of the Roman theatre:--

“Myself a man, nought touching man alien to me I deem.”[1]

What can be broader or more Christian than this heathen utterance? Sympathy, kindness, succor are due from man to man. This is a debt which, though daily paid, can never be cancelled while life endures. And this debt has the sanction of Religion, so that wrong to man is impiety to God. Of course, in the constant discharge of this debt, we must be the enemies of injustice, wherever it shows itself. Nor can we hesitate because injustice is organized in the name of Law and assumes the front of Power. On this very account we must be the more resolute against it.

As citizens of the United States, our duties, fixed in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, are of the same character. I say, fixed in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence; for to these, as our guides, I look. Follow Nature, if you would be its interpreter. This is the Novum Organum of Lord Bacon. And so you must follow the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, if you would be their interpreter. This is the Novum Organum of the Republican party. Nothing can be clearer than that these two instruments, if followed to their natural meaning, are in harmony with all the suggestions of justice and humanity; so that our duties as men are all reaffirmed by our duties as American citizens.

And, lastly, as citizens of Massachusetts our duties are identical, but reinforced by circumstances in her history; so that, if, as men, or as citizens of the United States, we hesitate, yet as citizens of Massachusetts we are not allowed to hesitate. By the example of our fathers, who laid the foundations of this Commonwealth in knowledge and in justice, who built schools and set their faces against Slavery, we are urged to special effort. As their children, we must strive to develop and extend those principles which they had so much at heart, and which constitute their just fame.

In the recent conflicts of party it is common to heap insult upon Massachusetts. Hard words are often employed. Some of her own children turn against her. But it is in vain. From the past learn the future. See how from the beginning she has led the way. This has been her office. She led in the long battle of argument which ended in the War of Independence, so that European historians have called our Revolutionary Fathers simply “the insurgents of Boston,” and have announced the object of the war as simply “justice to Boston.” And she has also led in all enterprises of human improvement, especially in the establishment of public schools and the abolition of Slavery. We are told that a little leaven shall leaven the whole lump; it is the Massachusetts leaven which is now stirring the whole country. Wherever education is organized at the public expense, or human rights are respected, there is seen the influence of Massachusetts, who has been not only schoolmaster, but chain-breaker. Such are her titles. Men may rail, but they cannot rail these away. Look at them in her history.

* * * * *

In the winter of 1620 the Mayflower landed its precious cargo on Plymouth Rock. This small band, cheered by the valedictory prayers of its beloved pastor, John Robinson, braved sea and wilderness for the sake of Liberty. In this inspiration our Commonwealth began. That same year, another cargo, of another character, was landed at Jamestown in Virginia. It was twenty slaves,--the first that ever touched and desecrated our soil. Never in history was greater contrast. There was the Mayflower, filled with men, intelligent, conscientious, prayerful, all braced to hardy industry, who before landing united in a written compact by which they constituted themselves “a civil body politic,” bound “to frame just and equal laws.” And there was the Slave-Ship, with its fetters, its chains, its bludgeons, and its whips,--with its wretched victims, forerunners of the long agony of the Slave-Trade, and with its wretched tyrants, rude, ignorant, profane,

“who had learned their only prayers From curses,”

carrying in their hold that barbarous Slavery, _whose single object is to compel labor without wages_, which no “just and equal laws” can sanction. Thus in the same year began two mighty influences; and these two influences still prevail far and wide throughout the country. But they have met at last in final grapple, and we are partakers in the holy conflict. The question is simply between the Mayflower and the Slave-Ship,--which of the two to choose?

True to her origin, Massachusetts began at once that noble system of Common Schools which continues her “peculiar institution,” while a College was founded at Cambridge which has grown to be a light throughout the land. Thus together began Common Schools and the College, and together they have flourished always. Said one of her early teachers, in most affecting words,--“After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God’s worship, and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.”[2] In this spirit it was ordered by the General Court, as early as 1642, “That in every town the chosen men appointed for managing the prudential affairs of the same … shall have power to take account from time to time of all parents and masters, and of their children, concerning their calling and employment of their children, especially of their ability to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of this country.”[3] This was followed only a few years later, in 1647, by that famous law which ordered, “That every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read,” and “that, where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families or householders, they shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the University”; and this law, in its preamble, assigned as its object the counteraction of “one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures,” and also “that learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers in the Church and Commonwealth.”[4] To nothing in her history can Massachusetts look with more pride than to this commanding example, which, wherever followed, must open wide the gates of human improvement.

Again, mindful that printing is the indispensable minister of good learning, they established a printing-press without delay. This was at Cambridge, as early as 1639, and the first thing printed was “The Freeman’s Oath.”

Meanwhile the Slave-Ship continued its voyages and discharged its baleful cargoes. Virginia became a Slave State and the natural consequences of Slavery ensued. Of course the Common School was unknown; for, where Slavery rules, the schoolmaster is shut out. One of her Governors, Sir William Berkeley, said in 1671, “I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!”[5] These remarkable words, which embodied the political philosophy of Slavery, were in an official reply to interrogatories propounded from England.

Thus early was the contrast manifest, which has increased ever since. The evidence is unimpeachable, whether we consult the faithful historian who tells us that early in the last century Boston alone contained five printing-offices and many booksellers, while there was not a single bookseller in Virginia, Maryland, or Carolina,[6]--or consult the various statistics of the census in our day, where figures speak with most persuasive power for the Mayflower against the Slave-Ship.

While Massachusetts thus founded the School and the Printing-Press, what was her course on Slavery? Alas! not all that we could wish, but still enough to make her an example. Unhappily, Slavery, although in much mitigated form, came to be recognized here. But it never flourished, and it was from the beginning surrounded with impediments to increase. To our glory let it be known that no person could be born a slave on our soil. This odious yoke was not transmissible in the blood. It ended with life, and did not visit itself upon the children of the slave-mother.[7] It appears also that the slave could take and hold property,[8]--which no American slave can now do. He could also testify in courts of justice, like a white man,--which no American slave, nor colored person in a Slave State, can now do. A slave, called “Andrew, Mr. Oliver Wendell’s negro,” also “Newtown Prince, a free negro,” and “Cato, a negro man,” were witnesses in the proceedings against the British soldiers for what is known as the Boston Massacre.[9] And still further, there were times when the negro, whether bond or free, was enlisted in the militia, and “enjoined to attend trainings as well as the English.”[10] Indeed, as early as 1643, on the muster-roll of Plymouth is the name of “Abraham Pearse, the blackamore.”[11] Thus, though Slavery had a certain recognition, it did not give its unjust law to the body politic and to the social life of Massachusetts.

It was natural, therefore, that her General Court should bear witness against “man-stealing.” This it did as far back as 1646, in formal act worthy of perpetual memory. A Boston ship had brought home two negroes kidnapped on the coast of Guinea. Thus spoke the Massachusetts of that day:--

“The General Court, conceiving themselves bound by the first opportunity to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of man-stealing, as also to prescribe such timely redress for what is past _and such a law for the future as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to have to do in such vile and most odious courses, justly abhorred of all good and just men_, do order that the negro interpreter, with others unlawfully taken, be, by the first opportunity, at the charge of the country for present, sent to his native country of Guinea, and a letter with him of the indignation of the Court thereabouts, and justice thereof.”[12]

Mark the energy of this language. Here is an example, more than a century before Clarkson or Wilberforce, which blasts with just indignation the horrid crime still skulking beneath our national flag. The government that could issue this decree was inconsistent with itself, when it allowed a single person bearing the upright form of man to be held a slave, even for life, anywhere within its jurisdiction.