Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 4

To Frank Ballard, Dec. 29, 1864:—

I am astonished at what you say of my favoring any proposition to disfranchise anybody. It is all an invention or misapprehension. I have said that I should not object to a recognition of God by formal words in the Constitution,—thus, for instance, saying, “We, the people of the United States, acknowledging God as the ruler of nations,” etc. This is all; I take it no Hebrew would differ with me on this point. The President had a clause in this sense prepared for his last message; but it was abandoned lest it might embarrass the other constitutional amendment. But you can quiet your Hebrew associates with regard to me.

Loyalty in the Civil War was tested by what was known as ‘the iron-clad oath,’ prescribed by Act of Congress, July 2, 1862, under which all persons in the civil and military service were required to take an oath which affirmed past loyalty, as well as pledged future allegiance to the government. At the special session in March, 1863, and at the regular session, which began in December of the same year, Sumner contended that this statute applied to senators.¹ He and other Republican senators took the oath voluntarily; but as the Democratic senators maintained that the Act did not apply to members of Congress, and declined to take it, Sumner moved and carried a rule of the Senate requiring senators to take this oath; he also introduced and carried a bill requiring it of attorneys appearing in the courts of the United States. As usual in such debates Sumner was reminded—this time by Hendricks and Garrett Davis²—that he had been disloyal in his course upon the rendition of fugitive slaves; and he met the familiar thrust by distinguishing between ‘refusing to play the part of a slave-hunter’ and ‘joining in rebellion against his country.’

This session was signalized by the absolute repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act, which more than any other event had brought Sumner into public life, and which he had made ineffectual efforts to have repealed ever since he entered the Senate. He moved, Jan. 13, 1864, a special committee on slavery and freedmen, and became its chairman. His Republican associates were Howard of Michigan, Pomeroy of Kansas, Gratz Brown of Missouri, and Conness of California. He introduced a bill to repeal all fugitive—slave acts, which was referred to the committee; and its first report was a bill for the repeal, accompanied by an