Story Lot , 313 Narcissus Path , Engraving by James Smilie , 1847 .
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The drama of the Roberts case and its protagonists is the subject of Kendrick & Kendrick , Sarah ’ s Long Walk .
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Lemuel Shaw ( 1781 – 1861 ) is buried at Mount Auburn , on Harebell Path , just a few yards from Sumner ’ s grave .
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This episode , its antecedents , and its results , are well fleshed out in William James Hoffer , The Caning of Charles Sumner : Honor , Idealism , and the Origins of the Civil War ( 2010 ).
If Sumner had done nothing else in his legal career , his appeal in the Roberts case would have been enough to secure his legacy . Deploying his deep erudition in American constitutional law , French humanistic philosophy , and moral suasion ( as well as a bit of melodrama ), he presented Sarah Roberts ’ s case before a four-judge panel over two hours . Those hearing his speech in court , including Sarah ’ s father , Benjamin Roberts , knew at once that it was an oration for the ages . Roberts rushed the text of Sumner ’ s appeal to his own printing press , where it was published under the title “ Argument of Charles Sumner , Esq ., against the Constitutionality of Separate Colored Schools , in the Case of Sarah C . Roberts vs . the City of Boston , Before the Supreme Court on Mass ., Dec . 4 , 1849 .” Hundreds of copies were snatched up by the public ; excerpts appeared not only in Boston newspapers but in papers across the country . Most famously , it contains the first published formulation of “ equality before the law ,” a phrase that Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall would resurrect a century later while writing his Brown v . Board of Education opinion , which finally outlawed segregation in public education in the United States . 5 That the appeal was denied , and that presiding judge Lemuel Shaw coined a quite different phrase —“ separate but equal ”— which has lived in infamy as Sumner ’ s has lived in fame , only somewhat dampens the luster of Sumner ’ s early achievement . 6