Volume 14 — COMPLETE EQUALITY IN RIGHTS, AND NOT SEMI-EQUALITY.

Letter to a Committee on the Celebration of Emancipation in the District of Columbia, April 14, 1866.

Senate Chamber, April 14, 1866.

DEAR SIR,—It will not be in my power to celebrate with you Emancipation in the District, but I rejoice that the beautiful anniversary is to be commemorated.

Looking back upon the day when that Act became a law by the signature of Abraham Lincoln, I feel how grandly it has been vindicated by the result. The sinister forebodings of your enemies are all falsified. We were told that you could not bear freedom,—that you would be lawless, idle, and thriftless. I knew the contrary; and is it not as I foretold? Who so mad as to wish back the old system of wrong?

But the work is only half done. The freedman, despoiled of the elective franchise, is only half a man. He must be made a whole man; and this can be only by investing him with all the rights of an American citizen. Here, too, we encounter the same sinister forebodings that stood in the way of Emancipation. We are told that you cannot bear enfranchisement, and that you will not know how to vote. I know the contrary; and I am satisfied, further, that there can be no true repose in this country until all its people are admitted to that full equality before the law which is the essential principle of republican government. It were not enough to assure equality in what are called civil rights. This is only semi-equality. The equality must be complete. This I ask, not only for your sake, but also for the sake of my country, imperilled by such a denial of justice.

Accept my best wishes, and believe me, dear Sir, faithfully yours,

Charles Sumner.

Daniel G. Muse, Esq.