No Compromise of Human Rights. No admission in the Constitution of Inequality of Rights, or Disfranchisement on Account of Color. Speech of Hon. Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, on the Proposed Amendment of the Constitution fixing the Basis of Representation; Delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 7, 1866.

No disenfranchisement on account of color


Second of two important 1866 speeches given by abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a leading advocate for civil rights for Black Americans. 

Sumner attacks weak language within the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution addressing citizenship rights and the guarantee of equal protection under the law. He decries the amendment’s failure to protect Black voting rights and “the wretched pretension of a white man’s Government.”

In ten points, Sumner argues that it would enshrine “Inequality of Rights” in the Constitution, sanction “the acknowledged tyranny of taxation without representation,” concede the controversial nature of State Rights, and be a “constitutional recognition of an Oligarchy, Aristocracy, Caste, and Monopoly, founded on color,” etc. etc. (p13)

Nebenzahl 14-548: “A further attack on the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment for not providing any representation at all for persons whose voting rights would easily be denied. Sumner’s prescient argument contended that it was a concession to states rights and to a white oligarchy, and that it “petrifies in the Constitution” the whole distinction of color.”


Description: No Compromise of Human Rights. No admission in the Constitution of Inequality of Rights, or Disfranchisement on Account of Color. Speech of Hon. Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, on the Proposed Amendment of the Constitution fixing the Basis of Representation; Delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 7, 1866.

Washington [D.C.]: Printed at The Congressional Globe Office, 1866. 22, [2 (blank)]pp. 8vo., folded sheets, unopened and untrimmed. Scattered foxing; Very Good.

[3730231]

LCP, Afro-Americana 10025. Not in Blockson Catalogue.


Price: $350.00

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