Sumner had turned the abolitionist argument on its head. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution should not be rejected because they explicitly did not prohibit slavery, they should be embraced because their indisputable messages of freedom obliterated the very notion of slavery. Sumner’s framing had moved the radical abolitionist movement nearer to the mainstream (with still a long way to go) and caused those who were ambivalent or agnostic about slavery to take a fresh look at the issue.
