Brown won Sumners Senate seat

Published 6:40 pm Tuesday, February 2, 2010

To the Editor:

As we listen to the endless pundits on television discuss the stunning victory of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, we keep hearing the same words repeated. They continue to call that particular seat, Ted Kennedys seat. As the newly elected senator has said, Its not the Ted Kennedy seat. Its the peoples seat. But I submit that Mr. Brown has retaken the seat of Senator Charles Sumner.

Michael Zak, from the website grandoldpartisan.com, provided an extremely interesting history lesson regarding that all-important senate seat. Here is his historical account.

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Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA) was one of the founders of the Republican Party.

Angered by Sumners denunciations of slavery, a Democrat congressman beat him nearly to death on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Sumner responded with a classic denunciation of the Democratic Party for promoting the barbarism of slavery.

During the GOPs 1860 election campaign, Senator Sumner gave a speech that speaks to us today:

If ever there was a moment when every faculty should be bent to the service, and all invigorated by an inspiring zeal, it is now, while the battle between civilization and barbarism is till undecided.

Happily, a political party is at hand whose purpose is to combine and direct all generous energies for the salvation of the country. The work must be done, and there is no other organization by which it can be done. A party with such an origin and such a necessity cannot be for a day, or for the election only.

If bad men conspire for slavery, good men must combine for freedom. And when this triumph is won, securing the immediate object of our organization, the Republican Party will not die, but, purified by long contest with slavery, and filled with higher life, it will be listed to yet other efforts of the good of man.

Others may dwell on the past as secure; but to my mind, under the laws of a beneficent God, the future also is secure, on the single condition that we press forward in the work with heart and soul, forgetting self, turning from all temptations of the hour, and intent only on the cause.

The day he died, Charles Sumner urged Republicans to stay true to the principles of our Grand Old Party; My bill, the civil rights bill – dont let it fail. The Republicancontrolled 43rd Congress honored his memory by passing the 1875 Civil Rights Act.

Yes, Scott Brown has retaken Senator Sumners seat to help free us from the slavery of mountainous debt and the control of Washington, D.C. over our businesses and personal lives.

Cheryl Every