In the Senate.
Charles Sumner,37
Josiah G. Abbott,2
In the House.
Charles Sumner,216
Josiah G. Abbott,15
Nathaniel P. Banks,1

SPEECH.

FELLOW-CITIZENS,—If I have taken little part in the present canvass, you will do me the justice to believe that it is from no failure of interest in the cause for which I have so often pleaded; nor is it from any lukewarmness to the candidates. The cause is nothing less than our country redeemed from peril and dedicated to Human Rights, so as to become an example to mankind. The candidates are illustrious citizens, always loyal to this great cause, both of surpassing merit, and one of unequalled renown in the suppression of the Rebellion. In this simple statement I open the whole case. The cause would commend any candidates, and I might almost add that the candidates would commend any cause.

It is only in deference to my good physician that I have thus far forborne those customary efforts to which I was so strongly prompted; and now I speak in fear of offending against his rules. But I am unwilling that this contest shall close without my testimony, such as it is, and without mingling my voice with that general acclaim which is filling the land.

Indulge me still further while for a moment I allude to myself. The Republican State Convention has by formal resolution presented me for reëlection to the Senate, so that this question enters into the larger canvass. Meeting my fellow-citizens now, it would not be out of order, I believe, nor should I depart from any of the proprieties of my position, if I proceeded to give you an account of my stewardship during the term of service about to expire. But when I consider that this extends over six busy years, beginning while the Rebellion still raged and continuing through all the anxious period of Reconstruction,—that it embraces nothing less than the Abolition of Slavery, and all the steps by which this transcendent measure was promoted and consummated, also the various efforts for the establishment of Equal Rights, especially in the court-room and at the ballot-box, thus helping the fulfilment of the promises originally made in the Declaration of Independence,—that it embraces, besides, all the infinite questions of taxation, finance, railroads, business and foreign relations, including many important treaties, among which was that for the acquisition of the Russian possessions in North America,—and considering, further, how these transactions belong to the history of our country, where they are already read, I content myself with remarking that in all of them I have borne a part, I trust not unworthy of the honored Commonwealth whose representative I am; and here I invite your scrutiny and candid judgment.

Possibly some of the frequent criticism to which I have been exposed is already dulled by time or answered by events. A venerable statesman, eminent in the profession, once rebuked me for the term Equality before the Law, which I had taken from the French, as expressing more precisely than the Declaration of Independence that equality in rights which is all that constitutions or laws can secure. My learned critic had never met this term in the Common Law, or in the English language, and therefore he did not like the innovation. In the same spirit other efforts have been encountered, often with virulence, especially those two fundamentals of Reconstruction,—first, the power of Congress over the Rebel States, whether as territories, or provinces, or as States having no republican government, or, according to the language of President Lincoln, “out of their proper practical relation with the Union,”[265] and, secondly, the necessity of lifting the freedman into Equal Rights, civil and political, so as to make him a part of the body politic. Who can forget the clamor at these two propositions? All this has happily ceased, except as an echo from Rebels and their allies, whose leading part is a protest against the power of Congress and the equal rights of the freedman.