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

[18] of opposing slavery on earth, to His presence, whose service is perfect freedom. But the same question which aroused their energies, presents itself to us. Shall we be less faithful than they? Will Massachusetts oppose a less unbroken front now than then? In the lapse of these few years has the love of freedom diminished? Has the sensibility to human suffering lost any of the keenness of its edge?

Let us regard the question closely. Congress is called upon to sanction the Constitution of Texas, which not only supports slavery, but which contains a clause prohibiting the Legislature of the State from abolishing slavery. In doing this, it will give a fresh stamp of legislative approbation to an unrighteous system; it will assume a new and active responsibility for the system; it will again become a dealer, on a gigantic scale, in human flesh. Yes, at this moment, when the conscience of mankind is at last aroused to the enormity of holding a fellow-man in bondage; when, throughout the civilized world, a slavedealer is a bye-word and a reproach, we, as a nation, are about to become proprietors of a large population of slaves. Such an act, at this time, is removed from the reach of the palliation often extended to slavery. Slavery, we are speciously told by those who seek to defend it, is not our original sin. It was entailed upon us, so we are instructed, by our ancestors; and the responsibility is often, with exultation, thrown upon the mother country. Now, without stopping to inquire into the truth of this suggestion, it is sufficient for the present purpose, to know that by welcoming Texas as a slave State we do make slavery our own original sin. Here is a new case of actual transgression which we cannot cast upon the shoulders of any progenitors, nor upon any mother country, distant in time or place. The Congress of the United States, the people of the United States, at this day, in this vaunted period of light, will be responsible for it; so that it shall be said hereafter, so long as the dismal history of slavery is read, that in the year of Christ, 1846, a new and deliberate act was passed to confirm and extend it.

By the present movement we propose no measure of change. We do not offer to interfere with any institutions of the Southern States, nor to modify any law on the subject of slavery anywhere under the Constitution of the United States. Our movement is conservative in its character. It is to preserve the existing supports of freedom; it is to prevent a violation of the vital principles of free institutions.

By the proposed measure, we not only become parties to the acquisition of a large population of slaves, with all the crime of slavery; but we open a new market for the slaves of Virginia and the Carolinas,