SPEECH AT A MASS MEETING OF REPUBLICANS, IN THE OPEN AIR, AT MYRICK’S
STATION, MASSACHUSETTS, SEPTEMBER 18, 1860.
A large Republican meeting was held in the open air, at
Myrick’s Station, September 18, 1860, in Bristol County,
Massachusetts. The New Bedford and Taunton Branch Railroad, and
the Old Colony and Fall River Railroad, with their branches,
were tasked to the utmost in bringing a crowd estimated at
eight thousand. There were large delegations from New Bedford,
Fall River, and Taunton.
Harrison Tweed, of Taunton, was chosen President, with a long
list of Vice-Presidents and Secretaries. The speaking was from
a stand in a beautiful grove. After Hon. Henry L. Dawes and
Hon. Henry Wilson, Mr. Sumner spoke as follows.
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:--
“Myself a man, nought touching man alien to me I deem.”[1]
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,
“who had learned their only prayers
From curses,”
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:--
“The General Court, conceiving themselves bound by the first
opportunity to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin
of man-stealing, as also to prescribe such timely redress for
what is past _and such a law for the future as may sufficiently
deter all others belonging to us to have to do in such vile and
most odious courses, justly abhorred of all good and just men_,
do order that the negro interpreter, with others unlawfully
taken, be, by the first opportunity, at the charge of the
country for present, sent to his native country of Guinea, and
a letter with him of the indignation of the Court thereabouts,
and justice thereof.”[12]
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,--
‘the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.’”[16]
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.