Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 06 (of 20)Sumner, Charles
History
Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 06 (of 20)
Sumner, Charles
Slavery -- United States; Speeches, addresses, etc., American
Next, we shall help save the Declaration of Independence, now
dishonored and disowned in its essential, life-giving truth,--_the
Equality of Men_. This transcendent principle, which appears twice
at the Creation, first, when God said, “Let us make man in our
image,” and, secondly, in the Unity of the Race, then divinely
established,--which appears again in the New Testament, when it was
said, “God, that made the world and all things therein, hath made of
one blood all nations of men,”--which appears again in the primal
reason of the world, anterior to all institutions and laws,--belongs
to those self-evident truths, sometimes called axioms, which no man
can question without exposing to question his own intelligence or
honesty. As well deny arithmetically that two and two make four, or
deny geometrically that a straight line is the shortest distance
between two points, as deny the axiomatic, self-evident, beaming
truth, that all men are equal. As of the sun in the heavens, blind
is he who cannot perceive it. Of course, this principle, uttered in
a Declaration of Rights, is applicable simply to rights; and it is
a childish sophism to allege against it the obvious inequalities of
form, character, and faculties. As axiom, it admits no exception; for
it is the essence of an axiom, whether in geometry or in morals, to be
universal. As abstract truth, it is also without exception, according
to the essence of such truth. And, finally, as self-evident truth,
so announced in the Declaration, it is without exception; for only
such truth can be self-evident. Thus, whether axiom, abstract truth,
or self-evident truth, it is always universal. In vindicating this
principle, the Republican party have a grateful duty, to which they are
moved by justice to a much-injured race, excluded from its protection,
and by justice also to the Fathers, whose well-chosen words, fit
foundation for empire, are turned into mockery. Nor can the madness
of the Propagandists be better illustrated than in this assault on
the Declaration of Independence, stultifying the Fathers for no other
purpose than to clear the way for their five-headed abomination of
_Compulsory Labor without Wages_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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