Charles Sumner, "The Crime Against Kansas", 1856

From Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 34th Congress, 1st Session (1856), May 19, 1856. 529-531.

The Crime against Kansas.

I UNDERTAKE, in the first place, to expose the CRIME AGAINST KANSAS, in origin and extent. Logically, this is the beginning of the argument. I say Crime, and deliberately adopt this strongest term, as better than any other denoting the consummate transgression. I would go further if language could further go. It is the Crime of Crimes,--surpassing far the old Crimen Majestatis, pursued with vengeance by the laws of Rome, and containing all other crimes, as the greater contains the less. I do not go too far when I call it the Crime against Nature, from which the soul recoils, and which language refuses to describe. To lay bare this enormity I now proceed. The whole subject has become a twice-told tale, and its renewed recital will be a renewal of sorrow and shame; but I shall not hesitate. . . .

Mr. President, I mean to keep absolutely within the limits of parliamentary propriety. I make no personal imputations, but only with frankness, such as belongs to the occasion and my own character, describe a great historical act, now enrolled in the Capitol. Sir, the Nebraska Bill was in every respect a swindle. It was a swindle of the North by the South. On the part of those who had already completely enjoyed their share of the Missouri Compromise, it was a swindle of those whose share was yet absolutely untouched; and the plea of unconstitutionality set up--like the plea of usury after the borrowed money has been enjoyed--did not make it less a swindle. Urged as a bill of peace, it was a swindle of the whole country. Urged as opening the doors to slave-masters with their slaves, it was a swindle of Popular Sovereignty in its asserted doctrine. Urged as sanctioning Popular Sovereignty, it was a swindle of slave-masters in their asserted rights. It was a swindle of a broad territory, thus cheated of protection against slavery. It was a swindle of a great cause, early espoused by Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson, surrounded by the best fathers of the Republic. Sir, it was a swindle of God-given, inalienable rights. Turn it over, look at it on all sides, and it is everywhere a swindle; and, if the word I now employ has not the authority of classical usage, it has, on this occasion, the indubitable authority of fitness. No other word will adequately express the mingled meanness and wickedness of the cheat. Its character is still further apparent in the general structure of the bill. Amidst overflowing professions of regard for the sovereignty of the people in the Territory, they are despoiled of every essential privilege of sovereignty. They are not allowed to choose governor, secretary, chief justice, associate justices, attorney, or marshall,--all of whom are sent from Washington; nor are they allowed to regulate the salaries of any of these functionaries, or the daily allowance of the legislative body, or even the pay of the clerks and door-keepers; but they are left free to adopt slavery. And this is nicknamed Popular Sovereignty! Time does not allow, not does the occasion require, that I should stop to dwell on this transparent device to cover a transcendent wrong. Suffice it to say that slavery is in itself an arrogant denial of human rights, and by no human reason can the power to establish such a wrong be placed among the attributes of any just sovereignty. In refusing it such a place, I do not deny popular rights, but uphold them; I do not restrain popular rights, but extend them. And, sir, to this conclusion you must yet come, unless deaf, not only to the admonitions of political justice, but also to the genius of our Constitution, under which, when properly interpreted, no valid claim for slavery can be set up anywhere in the national territory. The Senator from Michigan [Mr. CASS] may say, in response to the Senator from Mississippi [Mr. BROWN], that slavery cannot go into the Territory, under the Constitution, without legislative introduction; and permit me to add, in response to both, that slavery cannot go there at all. Nothing can come out of nothing; and there is absolutely nothing in the Constitution out of which slavery can be derived, while there are provisions which, when properly interpreted, make its existence anywhere within the exclusive national jurisdiction impossible. . . .

. . ."The Senator [Mr. Douglas] copies the British officer who, with boastful swagger, said that with the end of his sword he would cram the 'stamps' down the throats of the American people; and he will meet a similar failure. He may convulse this country with civil feud. Like the ancient madman, he may set fire to this temple of Constitutional Liberty, grander than Ephesian Dome; but he cannot enforce obedience to that tyrannical usurpation.

"The Senator dreams that he can subdue the North. He disclaims the open threat, but his conduct implies it. How little that Senator knows himself, or the cause which he persecutes. . . . Against him are stronger battalions than any marshaled by mortal arms, the inborn, ineradicable, invincible sentiments of the human heart; against him is nature with all her subtile forces; against him is God. Let him try to subdue these.". . .

"With regret I come again upon the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Butler), who, omnipresent in this debate, overflows with rage at the simple suggestion that Kansas has applied for admission as a free State, and with incoherent phrase, discharges the loose expectoration of his speech, now upon her representatives, and then upon her people. There was no extravagance of the ancient parliamentary debate which he did not repeat; nor was there any possible deviation from truth which he did not make, with so much of passion, I gladly add, as to save him from the suspicion of intentional aberration. But the Senator touches nothing which he does not disfigure with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes of fact. He shows an incapacity of accuracy, whether in stating the Constitution or in stating the law, whether in details of statistics or diversions of scholarship. He cannot open his mouth, but out there flies a blunder.". . .

And now, as I proceed to show the way in which this Territory was overrun and finally subjugated to slavery, I desire to remove, in advance, all question with regard to the authority on which I rely. . . .

I begin with an admission from the President himself, in whose sight the people of Kansas have little favor. After arraigning the innocent emigrants from the North, he is constrained to declare that their conduct is "far from justifying the illegal and reprehensible counter-movements which ensued." By the reluctant admission of the Chief Magistrate, then, there was a counter-movement at once "illegal and reprehensible." I thank thee, President, for teaching me these words; and I now put them in the front of this exposition, as in themselves a confession. Sir, this "illegal and reprehensible counter-movement" is none other than the dreadful Crime--under an apologetic alias--by which, through successive invasions, slavery is forcibly planted in this Territory.

Next to this Presidential admission must be placed details of invasions, which I now present as not only "illegal and reprehensible," but also unquestionable evidence of the resulting crime....

Thus was the Crime consummated. Slavery stands erect, clanking its chains on the Territory of Kansas, surrounded by a code of death, and trampling upon all cherished liberties, whether of speech, the press, the bar, the trial by jury, or the electoral franchise. And, sir, all this is done, not merely to introduce a wrong which in itself is a denial of all rights, and in dread of which mothers have taken the lives of their off-spring,--not merely, as is sometimes said, to protect Slavery in Missouri, since it is futile for this State to complain of Freedom on the side of Kansas when Freedom exists without complaint on the side of Iowa and also on the side of Illinois,--but it is done for the sake of political power, in order to bring two new slaveholding Senators upon this floor, and thus to fortify in the National Government the desperate chances of a waning Oligarchy. As the gallant ship voyaging on pleasant summer seas is assailed by a pirate crew and plundered of its doubloons and dollars, so is this beautiful Territory now assailed in peace and prosperity and robbed of its political power for the sake of Slavery. Even now the black flag of the land pirates from Missouri waves at the mast-head; in their laws you hear the pirate yell and see the flash of the pirate knife; while, incredible to relate, the President, gathering the Slave Power at his back, testifies a pirate sympathy.

Sir, all this was done in the name of Popular Sovereignty. And this is the close of the tragedy. Popular Sovereignty, which, when truly understood, is a fountain of just power, has ended in Popular Slavery,--not in the subjection of the unhappy African race merely, but of this proud Caucasian blood which you boast. The profession with which you began of All by the People is lost in the wretched reality of Nothing for the People. Popular Sovereignty, in whose deceitful name plighted faith was broken and an ancient Landmark of Freedom overturned, now lifts itself before us like Sin in the terrible picture of Milton, which

"secured woman to the waist, and fair,
But, ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed
With mortal sting; about her middle round
A cry of hell-hounds never ceasing barked
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,
And kenned there, yet there still barked and howled
Within, unseen."

The image is complete at all points; and with this exposure I take my leave of the Crime against Kansas.