Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 05 (of 20)Sumner, Charles
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Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 05 (of 20)
Sumner, Charles
Slavery -- United States; Speeches, addresses, etc., American
up, in perversion of the Constitution, and in denial of immortal truth,
to fasten a new shackle upon their fellow-man. If the Senator wishes
to see fanatics, let him look round among his own associates,--let him
look at himself.
But I have not done with the Senator. There is another matter regarded
by him of such consequence that he interpolated it into the speech
of the Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. HALE], and also announced
that he had prepared himself with it, to take in his pocket all the
way to Boston, when he expected to address the people there.[65]
On this account, and for the sake of truth, I stop for one moment
and tread it to the earth. The North, according to the Senator, was
engaged in the slave-trade, and helped to introduce slaves into the
Southern States; and this undeniable fact he proposed to establish
by statistics, in giving which his errors exceeded his sentences in
number. I let these pass for the present, that I may deal with his
argument. Pray, Sir, is acknowledged turpitude in a departed generation
to become the example for us? And yet the suggestion, if entitled
to any consideration in this discussion, must have this extent. I
join my friend from New Hampshire in thanking the Senator from South
Carolina for this instance, since it gives me opportunity to say that
the Northern merchants, with homes in Boston, Bristol, Newport, New
York, and Philadelphia, who catered for Slavery during the years of
the slave-trade, are lineal progenitors of the Northern men, with
homes in these places, who lend themselves to Slavery in our day,--and
especially that all, whether North or South, who take part, directly
or indirectly, in the conspiracy against Kansas, do but continue the
work of the slave-traders, which you condemn. It is true, too true,
alas! that our fathers were engaged in this traffic; but that is
no apology for it. And in repelling the authority of this example,
I repel also the trite argument founded on the earlier example of
England. It is true that our mother country, at the Peace of Utrecht,
extorted from Spain the shameful Asiento, securing the monopoly of
the slave-trade with the Spanish Colonies, as part pay for the blood
of great victories,--that she higgled at Aix-la-Chapelle for another
lease of this exclusive traffic,--and again at the Treaty of Madrid
bartered the wretched piracy for money. It is true that in this spirit
the power of the mother country was prostituted to the same base ends
in her American Colonies, against indignant protests from our fathers.
All these things now rise in judgment against her. Let us not follow
the Senator from South Carolina to do the very evil which in another
generation we condemn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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