In a history published in 1876, Henry Wilson gave an account of the intensity of the controversy in Congress that began after Congress convened in December, 1851, over the Fugitive Slave Act:
The debate at once elicited and exhibited the party tactics that controlled the nation, showing not only the disposition of the slave-masters to dictate terms to the rival parties, but the anxiety of leaders to conciliate and control the political strength of the slave-masters. ...
On the 26th of May, [first-term Massachusetts Senator Charles] Sumner presented a petition from the Society of Friends in New England, asking that the Fugitive Slave Act should be repealed; but there were only ten votes for its consideration. On the 27th of July, he submitted a resolution requesting the Committee on the Judiciary to consider the expediency of reporting a bill for the immediate repeal of that Act. (1)
At the demand of pro-slavery Democrats, the Senate on that occasion refused to allow him to speak on the Senate floor in defense of that petition. But he later used a parliamentary maneuver to defend his position on the floor:
In the Senate, on the 26th of August, he moved to amend the civil and diplomatic bill, so as to provide that no allowance should be made for expenses incurred in the execution of the Fugitive Slave Act, and that such act be repealed. In his speech on their introduction he alluded to the immeasurable importance of the slavery issue, dwarfing all others, and constantly casting its shadow across those halls. Referring to the impotent and inconsistent attempts of the [pro-slavery] propagandists to enforce silence, while always provoking discussion, he denounced the attempt to repress the liberty of speech, protested against the wrong, and claimed the right to be heard on slavery, as on every other subject. "The convictions of the heart," he said, " cannot be repressed. The utterances of conscience must be heard. They break forth with irrepressible might. As well attempt to check the tides of the ocean, the currents of the Mississippi, or the rushing waters of Niagara. The discussion of slavery will proceed wherever two or three are gathered together, — by the fireside, on the public highway, at the public meeting, in the church. The movement against slavery is from the Everlasting Arm. Even now it is gathering its forces, soon to be confessed everywhere. It may not yet be felt in the high places of office and power, but all who can put their ears humbly to the ground will hear and comprehend its incessant and advancing tread."
He arraigned the enactment in the name of the Constitution it violated, of the country it dishonored, of the humanity it degraded, of the Christianity it offended, and affirmed that every attribute of God united against it. Referring to the requirements of the Act that every citizen, when summoned, should aid and assist in its prompt and efficient execution, he boldly affirmed that "by the supreme law which commands me to do no injustice, by the comprehensive Christian law of brotherhood, by the Constitution which I am sworn to support, I am bound to disobey this Act." He closed his speech with an earnest demand for the repeal of an act so incompatible with every dictate of truth and every requirement of justice. In the words of Oriental adjuration, he said: " Beware of the wounds of the wounded souls. Oppress not to the utmost a single heart, for a solitary sigh has power to overset a whole world." This speech — learned, logical, exhaustive, and eloquent, worthy of the cause it advocated — placed the new Senator at once among the foremost of the forensic debaters of America. [my emphasis]
Sumner’s biographer David Donald argues that Sumner actually understood his position on slavery as being in the tradition of conservative reform represented by John Quincy Adams, who also opposed slavery. But he also notes that Sumner took inspiration as well from English democratic history:
He liked to fancy himself the [political] descendant of the Separatists of the English revolution, who uncompromisingly contended ‘for religious, intellectual, and political emancipation.” As their heir, he boldly announced that slavery was wrong. (2)Sumner found in the Separatists his own “usable history.” And since the Puritans who founded the Colony of Massachusetts (and who were rescued from starving to death by the native inhabitants) were Separatists, invoking them as a precedent presumably had some political marketing value in his home state.
Charles Sumner became one of the most important anti-slavery leaders before the war and on the most committed advocates of democratic Reconstruction in the South after the Confederacy’s defeat.
Notes:
(1) Wilson, Henry (1876): History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 2, 353- Boston: J. R. Osgood. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015028747783>
(2) Donald, David (1960); Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, 226. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
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