Massachusetts Senator and Abolitionist Charles Sumner Argues for and End to The Fugitive Slave Bill, A Full Decade Before It Was Repealed

[Abolition] [African Americana] SUMNER, Charles. Defence of Massachusetts. Speeches of Hon. Charles Sumner, on the Boston Memorial for the Repeal of the Fugitive Slave Bill, and in Reply To Messrs. Jones of Tennessee, Butler of South Carolina, And Mason of Virginia in the Senate of the United States, June 26 and 28, 1854. Washington, D.C.: Buell & Blanchard Printers, 1854. At the time that this description is being written, just three copies are recorded in American institutions. OCLC search results are at best an estimate and can vary over time. The Memorial referred to in the title was a request by 2900 undersigners, chiefly men of Boston, Mass., to repeal the Fugitive Slave Bill of 1850. What follows is a transcription of Massachusetts Senator and famous abolitionist Charles Sumner's speeches in the ensuing debate: "[Mr Jones.] asks, 'Can anyone suppose that, if the Fugitive Slave Act be repealed, this Union can exist?' To which I reply at once, that if the Union in any way be dependent on an Act-- I cannot call it a law-- so revolting in every regard as to that which he refers, then it ought not to exist..." Sumner goes on to argue, amongst other things, that the Fugitive Slave Act is parallel to the hated Stamp Act that sparked the Revolutionary War, as well as to make spirited rebukes against the pro-slavery Senators Butler, Mason, and Jones: "The veteran Senator from Virginia [Mr. Mason] complained that I had characterized one of his "constituents", a person who went all the way from Virginia to Boston in pursuit of a slave, as a Slave-Hunter. Sire, I choose to call things by their right names. White I call white, and black I call black. And where a person degrades himself to the work of chasing a fellow man, who, under the guidance of the north star, has saught a freeman's home far away from the cofle and the chain, that person, whomsoever he may be, I call a Slave-Hunter." Eight sheets folded to make one sixteen-page signature, which is stitched along the left edge. Foxing throguhout, pages chipped along margins. Dampstaining along two page edges. Delicate but in good condition.

Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811 - March 11, 1874) was an American statesman and United States Senator from Massachusetts. As an academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner was the leader of the anti-slavery forces in the state and a leader of the Radical Republicans in the U.S. Senate during the American Civil War. During Reconstruction, he fought to minimize the power of the ex-Confederates and guarantee equal rights to the freedmen. During the war, he was a leader of the Radical Republican faction that criticized President Lincoln for being too moderate on the South. Sumner specialized in foreign affairs and worked closely with Lincoln to ensure the British and the French refrained from intervening on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War. As the chief Radical leader in the Senate during Reconstruction, Sumner fought hard to provide equal civil and voting rights for the freedmen on the grounds that "consent of the governed" was a basic principle of American republicanism, and to block ex-Confederates from power so they would not reverse the gains made from the Union's victory in the Civil War.