Charles Sumner; his complete works, volume 7 (of 20)

COPYRIGHT, 1872,
BY
CHARLES SUMNER.

COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY
LEE AND SHEPARD.

Statesman Edition.

Limited to One Thousand Copies.

Of which this is

Norwood Press:
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME VII.

THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY SHOWN FROM ITS BARBARISM.

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT MUST BE A DEAD LETTER.

EXAMPLE OF MASSACHUSETTS AGAINST SLAVERY.

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:—

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,

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:—

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.

Slavery flees before the schoolmaster. As early as 1701, its injustice was formally declared by the town of Boston, whose Records contain the following vote, proper for adoption at this day: “The Representatives are desired to promote the encouraging the bringing of white servants, and to put a period to negroes being slaves.”[13] By this official corporate act, first of the kind in history, Boston stands foremost in the warfare with Slavery. Let her be proud of this post. Her wealth may depart, her warehouses may crumble, her ships may cease to cleave the seas with their keels, and her writers, too, may lose their charm; but this early record of justice and humanity will endure in never-failing brightness.

Other official acts followed. In 1705 a heavy duty was imposed upon every negro imported into Massachusetts. In 1712 the importation of Indians as servants or slaves was strictly forbidden. But the small number of slaves, and the mildness with which their condition was tempered, or, perhaps, a still immature public opinion, postponed definitive action on this great question until our controversy with the mother country, when the rights of the blacks were blended by all true patriots with the rights of the whites. James Otis, in pleading for the Colonies, denounced Slavery of all kinds, while Samuel Adams, on learning from his wife that she had received the gift of a female slave, exclaimed at once, “A slave cannot live in my house; if she comes, she must be free”: she came, and was free.[14] Sparing all unnecessary details, suffice it to say, that, as early as 1769, the Superior Court of Massachusetts, anticipating the renowned judgment in Somerset’s case, established the principle of Emancipation, and under its touch of benign power changed a chattel into a man. In the same spirit voluntary manumissions took place,—as by Jonathan Jackson, of Newburyport, who, in a deed, which may be found in the Probate Records of the County of Suffolk, declared that it was “in consideration of the impropriety long felt in holding any person in constant bondage, more especially at a time when his country is so warmly contending for the liberty every man ought to enjoy.”[15] At last, in 1780, even before the triumph of Yorktown had assured that peace which set its seal upon National Independence, Massachusetts, enlightened by her common schools, filled with the sentiment of Freedom, and guided by Revolutionary patriots, placed in front of her Declaration of Rights the emphatic words, “All men are born free and equal,” and by this solemn testimony, enforced by her courts, made Slavery impossible within her borders. From that time it ceased to exist, so that the first census after the adoption of the National Constitution, in the enumeration of slaves, contains a blank against the name of Massachusetts; and this is the only State having this honor. Thus of old did Massachusetts lead the way.

If all this be good for Massachusetts, if she has wisely rejected Slavery, then is it her duty to do for others within the reach of her influence what she has done for herself. And here her sons have not always been remiss. Follow her history, and you find that on the national field they have stood forth for the good cause. In 1785, one of her Representatives in the Continental Congress, the eminent Rufus King, moved the prohibition of Slavery in the Territories of the United States; and in 1787, Nathan Dane, another of her Representatives, reported the Ordinance for the Government of the Northwest Territory, containing this same prohibition. At a later day, when the Missouri Compromise was under discussion, that same son of Massachusetts, Rufus King, whose home was transferred to New York, showed himself inflexible against compromise with Slavery, and in the Senate of the United States, with all his weight of years, character, and ability, led the effort to restrict it. John Quincy Adams, another son of Massachusetts, was at the time Secretary of State, and he enrolled himself on the same side. Afterwards, when the discussion of Slavery was renewed in Congress, this same champion, then a Representative from Massachusetts, entered the lists for Freedom, and in his old age, having been President, achieved a second fame. Slavery, now exalted by its partisans as beneficent and just, he exposed in its enormity; the knot of Slave-Masters who had domineered over the country he denounced with withering scorn; while he vindicated the right of petition, which Slave-Masters assailed, and upheld the primal truths of the Declaration of Independence, which Slave-Masters audaciously denied. Thus constantly spoke Massachusetts, and in her voice was the voice of the Mayflower against the Slave-Ship.

Plainly there is a common bond between the charities, so that one draws others in its train. And the grand charity for which we to-day bless our Commonwealth is only one of many by which she is already illustrious. Goodness grows by activity, and the moral and intellectual character which inspired Massachusetts to do what she has done for Freedom makes her active, wherever the suffering are to be relieved, wherever the ignorant are to be taught, or wherever the lowly are to be elevated, and enables her, though small in extent and churlish in soil, to exert a wide-spread power. This character has given her that name on earth which is a source of pride to her children. Strike out from her life all that is due to this influence, and how great the blank in her history! I do not say that her children would disown her; but they would hardly rise up to call her blessed, as they now do.

It is our duty to keep Massachusetts in her present commanding position,—true to herself in all respects,—true to that Spirit of Liberty in which she had her origin,—true to the “just and equal laws” promised in the Mayflower,—true to her early and long-continued efforts against Slavery,—true to the declaration in her own Bill of Rights by which Slavery was abolished within her borders,—true to the examples of her illustrious representatives, Rufus King, Nathan Dane, and John Quincy Adams,—and, lastly, true to that moral and intellectual character which has made her the home of generous charities, the nurse of true learning, and the land of churches. This is our duty. And permit me to say, that this can be done now only by earnest, steadfast effort to arrest the power of Slavery, overshadowing the whole country, and menacing boundless regions with its malign influence. And this is the very purpose of the Republican party.

Against the Republican party are arrayed three factions, differing in name, differing superficially in professions, but all concurring in hostility to the Prohibition of Slavery in the Territories, and therefore all three Proslavery. As the Republican party represents the Mayflower, so do these three factions, whether fused or apart, represent the original Slave-Ship,—and you, fellow-citizens, are here to choose between them.

In this contest we appeal to all good citizens. We appeal alike to the Conservative and to the Reformer; for our reasonable and most moderate purpose commends itself alike to both. To the Conservative it says, “Join us to preserve the work of our fathers, and to maintain the time-honored policy of Massachusetts.” To the Reformer it says, “Join us to improve the human family, to support free labor, and to save the Territories from that deplorable condition where ‘one man ruleth over another to his own hurt,’ and human character suffers as much from the arrogance of the master as from the abasement of the slave,—a condition which is founded on nothing else but force,—

Our course is commended also by our candidates. Of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Hamlin I have already elsewhere spoken, and know that in this presence it is needless to speak of Mr. Andrew. You all anticipate his praise before it can be uttered. Of unquestioned abilities, extensive attainments, and rare aptitude for affairs, his integrity has already passed into a proverb, and his broad sympathies cause us to forget the lawyer in the man. Nobody questions his intelligence, or the happy faculties which make him at home in all that he attempts. But it is sometimes complained that he has a “heart,” as if this were dangerous in a Massachusetts Governor; and fears are excited because he is “honest,” as if such a character could not be trusted. Thank God, he has a heart, and is an honest man. In these respects, and in his well-matured convictions, always expressed with honorable frankness, he embodies the historic idea of Massachusetts, and treads in the footsteps of the Fathers.

Fellow-citizens, if I have dwelt exclusively on our duties as citizens of Massachusetts, it is because I seek to impress these especially upon your minds. On other occasions I have treated other parts of the argument; but to-day my hope is to make you feel that you cannot turn from the Republican party without turning also from those principles by which Massachusetts has won her place in history, and without turning from the Mayflower, and its promise of “just and equal laws,” to embark on that dismal Slave-Ship which in the same year first let loose upon our country all the cruel wrongs and woes of Human Bondage.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF SCHOOLS FOR STATUE OF HORACE MANN.

REMINISCENCE OF THE LATE THEODORE PARKER.