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Contents : Constitution Day Transcripts Excerpt of speech by Charles Sumner to the U.S. Senate April 8 1864 in favor of a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting slavery (13th Amendment) tion of the United States as the final guardian and conservator of this peculiar and manyheaded wickedness. And it is true the stranger would exclaim that in laying the foundation of this Republic dedicated to human rights all these wrongs have been positively established He would ask to see that Constitution and to know the fatal words by which the sacrifice was commanded. The trembling with which he began its perusal would be succeeded by joy as he finished it for he would find nothing in that golden text not a single sentence phrase or word even to serve as origin authority or apology for the outrage. And then his as astonishment already knowing no bounds would break forth anew as he exclaimed Shameful and irrational as is slavery it is not more shameful or irrational that that unsupported interpretation which undertakes to make your Constitution the final guardian and conservator of this terrible and unpardonable denial of human rights. Such a stranger as I have described coming from afar with eyes which no local bias had distorted and with understanding which no local custom had disturbed would naturally see the Constitution precisely as it is in its actual text and he would interpret it in its true sense without prepossession or prejudice. Of course he would know what all jurisprudence teaches and all reason confirms that human rights cannot be taken away by any indirection or any vain imagining of something that was intended but was not said and as a natural consequence that slavery can exist if exist it can at all only by virtue of a positive text and that what is true of slavery is true also of all its incidents that in all interpretation of the Constitution that cardinal principle must never for a moment be out of mind but Mr. President if an angel from the skies or a stranger from another planet were permitted to visit this earth and to examine its surface who can doubt that his eyes would rest with astonishment upon the outstretched extent and exhaustless resources of this Republic of the New World young in years but already rooted beyond any dynasty in history In proportion as he considered and understood all those things among us which enter into and constitute the national life his astonishment would increase for he would find a numerous people powerful beyond precedent without a king or a noble but with the schoolmaster instead. And yet the astonishment which he confessed as all these things appeared before him would swell into marvel as he learned that in the Republic which had arrested his admiration where there was neither a king nor noble but the schoolmaster instead there were four million human beings in abject bondage degraded to be chattels under the pretense of property in man driven by the lash like beasts despoiled of all rights even the right to knowledge and the sacred right of family so that the relation of husband and wife was impossible and no parent could claim his own child while all were condemned to ignorance. Startled by what he beheld the stranger would naturally inquire by what authority under what sanction and through what terms of law or Constitution this fearful inconsistency so shocking to human nature itself continued to be upheld. But his growing astonishment would know no bounds when he was pointed to the Constitu- must be kept ever forward as guide and master that slavery cannot stand on inference nor can any support of slavery stand on inference. Thus informed and in the light of a pervasive principle him he would naturally declare that there was nothing in the original text on which this hideous wrong could be founded anywhere within the sphere of it operation. With astonishment he would ask again by what strange delusion of hallucination the reason had so far overcome as to recognize slavery in the Constitution when plainly it is not there and cannot be there. How far that little candle throws his beams! He would peruse the Constitution from beginning to end from its opening preamble to its final amendment and then the joyful opinion would be given. Sumner Charles (1864) in Congressional Globe Senate 38th Congress 1st Session pp.1479 1480. There are three things which he would observe: First and foremost that the dismal words slave and slavery do not appear in the Constitution so that if the unnatural pretension of property in man lurk anywhere in the text it is under a feigned name or an alias which of itself is cause of suspicion while an imperative rule renders its recognition impossible. Next he would consider the preamble which is the key to open the whole succeeding instrument but here no single word can be found which does not open the Con

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