Sunday, May 5, 2024

Charles Sumner to Theodore Parker, April 19, 1851

Court Street, Boston, April 19, 1851.

May you live a thousand years, always preaching the truth of Fast Day!1 That sermon is a noble effort. It stirred me to the bottom of my heart, at times softening me almost to tears, and then again filling me with rage. I wish it could be read everywhere throughout the land.

You have placed the commissioner in an immortal pillory, to receive the hootings and rotten eggs of the advancing generations.

I have had no confidence from the beginning, as I believe you know, in our courts. I was persuaded that with solemn form they would sanction the great enormity, therefore I am not disappointed. My appeal is to the people, and my hope is to create in Massachusetts such a public opinion as will render the law a dead letter. It is in vain to expect its repeal by Congress till the slave-power is over thrown.

It is, however, with a rare dementia that this power has staked itself on a position which is so offensive, and which cannot for any length of time be tenable. In enacting that law, it has given to the Free States a sphere of discussion which they would otherwise have missed. No other form of the slavery question, not even the Wilmot Proviso, would have afforded equal advantages.

Very truly yours,
CHARLES SUMNER.
_______________

1 On the rendition of Sims, a fugitive slave.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 246; John Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, Vol. 2, p. 107

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