Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 05 (of 20)Sumner, Charles
History
Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 05 (of 20)
Sumner, Charles
Slavery -- United States; Speeches, addresses, etc., American
At every stage the similitude between the wrongs of Kansas and those
other wrongs against which our fathers rose becomes more apparent.
Read the Declaration of Independence, and there is hardly an
accusation against the British Monarch which may not now be hurled
with increased force against the American President. The parallel
has fearful particularity. Our fathers complained, that the King had
“sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out
their substance,”--that he had “combined with others to subject us
to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, _giving his assent
to their acts of pretended legislation_,”--that he had “abdicated
government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and _waging
war against us_,”--that he had “excited domestic insurrections amongst
us, and _endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the
merciless savages_,”--that “our repeated petitions have been answered
only by repeated injury.” And this arraignment was aptly followed by
the damning words, that “a Prince whose character is thus marked by
every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free
people.” And surely the President who does all these things cannot be
less unfit than a Prince. At every stage the responsibility is brought
directly to him. His offence is of commission and omission. He has done
that which he ought not to have done, and has left undone that which
he ought to have done. By his activity the Prohibition of Slavery was
overturned. By his failure to act the honest emigrants in Kansas are
left a prey to wrong of all kinds. His activity and inactivity are
alike fatal. And now he stands forth the most conspicuous enemy of that
unhappy Territory.
As the tyranny of the British King is all renewed in the President,
so are renewed on this floor the old indignities which embittered
and fomented the troubles of our fathers. The early petition of
the American Congress to Parliament, long before any suggestion of
Independence, was opposed--like the petitions of Kansas--because that
body “was assembled without any requisition on the part of the Supreme
Power.” Another petition from New York, presented by Edmund Burke, was
flatly rejected, as claiming rights derogatory to Parliament. And still
another petition from Massachusetts Bay was dismissed as “vexatious and
scandalous,” while the patriot philosopher who bore it was exposed to
peculiar contumely. Throughout the debates our fathers were made the
butt of sorry jest and supercilious assumption. And now these scenes,
with these precise objections, are renewed in the American Senate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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