Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation

by Zaakir Tameez

That summer, Robert Morris—the lawyer who had been organizing Black militiamen in Boston, to no avail—asked Sumner for a favor. He wanted his son, banned from most American colleges on account of his skin color, to pursue higher education in France. Sumner asked Seward if, as secretary of state, he might issue the younger Morris a passport. “This will never do,” Seward responded at first. “It won’t do to acknowledge colored men as citizens.” The once-firm Seward was caught in a political bind. On the one hand, he felt legally obliged to obey Dred Scott—the court ruling that said Blacks were not citizens—and worried about public reaction. On the other, he was personally sympathetic to Black rights. Eventually, Seward granted Morris the passport. But to Sumner’s consternation, he did so on the condition that Morris’s physical description be omitted from the paperwork.