C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874.

[177] the Divine utterance at the very dawn of creation,—and this commandment, travelling with the ages and the hours, still speaks with the voice of God; but the law of Slavery says, ‘Let there be darkness.’

But it is earnestly averred that slave-masters are humane, and that slaves are treated with kindness. These averments, however, I properly put aside, precisely as I have already put aside the multitudinous illustrations from the cruelty of Slavery. On the simple letter of the law I take my stand, and do not go beyond what is there nominated. The masses of men are not better than their laws, and, whatever may be the eminence of individual virtue, it is not reasonable to infer that the masses of slave-masters are better than the law of Slavery. And, since this law submits the slave to their irresponsible control, with power to bind and to scourge—to shut the soul from knowledge—to separate families—to unclasp the infant from a mother's breast, and the wife from a husband's arms,—it is natural to conclude that such enormities are sanctioned by them, while the brutal prohibition of instruction—by supplementary law—gives crowning evidence of their complete complicity. And this conclusion must exist unquestioned just so long as the law exists unrepealed. Cease, then, to blazon the humanity of slave-masters. Tell me not of the lenity with which this cruel law is tempered to its unhappy subjects. Tell me not of the sympathy which overflows from the mansion of the master to the cabin of the slave. In vain you assert these instances. In vain you show that there are individuals who do not exert the wickedness of the law. The law still endures. Slavery, which it defines and upholds, continues to outrage Public Opinion, and, within the limits of our Republic, upwards of three millions of human beings, guilty only of a skin not colored like your own, are left the victims of its unrighteous, irresponsible power.

Power divorced from right is devilish; power without the check of responsibility is tyrannical; and I need not go back to the authority of Plato, when I assert that the most complete injustice is that which is erected into the form of law. But all these things concur in Slavery. It is, then, on the testimony of slave-masters, solemnly, legislatively, judicially attested in the very law itself, that I now arraign this institution as an outrage upon man and his Creator. And here is the necessity of the Anti-Slavery Enterprise. A wrong so transcendent, so loathsome, so direful, must be encountered wherever it can be reached, and the battle must be continued without truce or compromise, until the field is entirely won. Freedom and Slavery can hold no divided empire; nor can there be any true repose until Freedom is everywhere established.