“Resolved, That the paper purporting to be a petition from ‘citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, of African descent,’ presented to the Senate by Charles Sumner, a Senator of Massachusetts, on the 5th of June, instant, and on his motion referred to a Select Committee of the Senate, be returned by the Secretary to the Senator who presented it.”
This resolution was never called up for consideration, but it stands on the Journal of the Senate in perpetual testimony of the assumption of the Slave Power and its tyrannical hardihood. Anticipating its discussion, Mr. Sumner prepared the notes of a speech upon it, which are here preserved precisely as sketched at the time.
It is difficult to treat this proposition, proceeding from a Committee of the Senate, except as you would treat a direct proposition of Atheism. “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God”; but it was only in his heart; the fool in Scripture did not openly declare it. Had he openly declared it, he would have been in a position hardly more offensive than your Committee.
There is a saying of antiquity, which has the confirming voice of all intervening time, that “whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.” And now, Sir, while humbled for my country that such a proposition should be introduced into the Senate, I accept it as the omen of that madness which precedes the fall of its authors.
At this moment the number of free persons, African by descent, in the United States, is almost half a million,—being a population two thirds larger than the white population in South Carolina, more than one third larger than the white population in Mississippi, and six times larger than the white population in Florida. I mention these facts in order to show at the outset the number of persons whose rights are now assailed.
Already, in several States, free negroes are threatened with expulsion, under the terrible penalty of being sold into Slavery. The Supreme Court of the United States has stepped forward, and by cruel decree declared that they are not citizens, and therefore are not entitled to sue in the courts of the United States. And now, to complete their degradation and exclusion from all rights, it is proposed to declare that their petitions cannot be received by the Senate.
The right of petition is not political, but personal,—born with Humanity, and confirmed by Christianity,—belonging to all, but peculiar to the humble, the weak, and the oppressed. It belongs even to the criminal; for it is simply the right to pray.
There is no country, professing civilization, where this right is not sacred. In Mahometan countries it is revered. One of the most touching stories of the East is where a petitioner in affliction came before the Sultan, crying out,—