Charles Sumner

For other people named Charles Sumner, see Charles Sumner (disambiguation).

Charles Sumner
Daguerreotype of Senator Charles Sumner in 1855
United States Senator from Massachusetts
In office April 24, 1851 – March 11, 1874
Preceded by	Robert Rantoul, Jr.
Succeeded by	William B. Washburn
Personal details
Political party	Republican (once Democrat)
Spouse	Alice Mason Hooper
Profession	Politician
Signature

Senator Charles Sumner, 1875, William Morris Hunt

Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811– March 11, 1874) was an American politician and statesman from Massachusetts. An academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner was the leader of the antislavery forces in Massachusetts and a leader of the Radical Republicans in the United States Senate during the American Civil War and Reconstruction, working to punish the ex-Confederates and guarantee equal rights to the Freedmen.

Sumner jumped from party to party, gaining fame as a Republican. One of the most learned statesmen of the era, he specialized in foreign affairs, working closely with Abraham Lincoln to keep the British and the French from intervening on the side of the Confederacy. He devoted his enormous energies to the destruction of what he considered the Slave Power, that is the scheme of slave owners to take control of the federal government and block the progress of liberty.

In 1856, South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks severely beat Sumner to the point of breaking a cane over his head, leaving him on the floor of the Senate and escalating antebellum tensions. After years of therapy Sumner returned to the Senate as the war began. Sumner was a leading proponent of abolishing slavery to weaken the Confederacy. Although he kept on good terms with Lincoln, he was a leader of the hard-line Radical Republicans. As the chief Radical leader in the Senate during Reconstruction, 1865–1871, Sumner fought hard to provide equal civil and voting rights for the freedmen (on the grounds that "consent of the governed" was a basic principle of American republicanism), and to block ex-Confederates from power so they would not reverse the victory in the Civil War. Sumner, teaming with House leader Thaddeus Stevens, defeated Andrew Johnson, and imposed Radical views on the South. In 1871, however, he broke with President Ulysses Grant; Grant's Senate supporters then took away Sumner's power base, his committee chairmanship. Sumner, concluding that Grant's corruption and the success of Reconstruction policies called for new national leadership, supported the Liberal Republicans candidate Horace Greeley in 1872 and lost his power inside the Republican party.

Early life, education, and law career

Charles Sumner's birthplace marked on Irving Street

Sumner was born in Boston on Irving Street on January 6, 1811. He was the son of Charles Pinckney Sumner, a progressive Harvard-educated lawyer, abolitionist, and early proponent of racially integrated schools, who shocked 19th century Boston by opposing anti-miscegenation laws. Though his father had managed to obtain a Harvard education, he had been born in poverty. Sumner's mother shared a similar background, having worked as a seamstress prior to her marriage. Sumner's parents were described as exceedingly formal and undemonstrative. His father's legal practice was a failure, and all throughout Sumner's childhood his family teetered on the edge of the middle class, avoiding poverty only as a result of his mother's Spartan budget. With his family, Charles Sumner "attended Trinity (Protestant Episcopal) Church, but after 1825 the family occupied a pew in King's Chapel."

Sumner attended the Boston Latin School, where he counted Robert Charles Winthrop, James Freeman Clarke, Samuel Francis Smith, and Wendell Phillips, among his closest friends. He graduated in 1830 from Harvard College (where he lived in Hollis Hall), and in 1834 from Harvard Law School where he studied jurisprudence and became a protege of Joseph Story. At Harvard, he was a member of the Porcellian Club.

In 1834, Sumner was admitted to the bar, entering private practice in Boston, in partnership with George Stillman Hillard. A visit to Washington filled him with loathing for politics as a career, and he returned to Boston resolved to devote himself to the practice of law. He contributed to the quarterly American Jurist and edited Story's court decisions as well as some law texts. From 1836 to 1837, Sumner lectured at Harvard Law School.

Travels in Europe

Charles Sumner, c. 1850

From 1837 to 1840, Sumner traveled extensively in Europe. There he became fluent in French, Spanish, German, and Italian, with a command of languages equaled by no American then in public life. He met with many of the leading statesmen in Europe, and secured a deep insight into their governments.

Sumner visited Britain in 1838 where his knowledge of literature, history, and law made him popular with leaders of thought. Lord Brougham declared that he "had never met with any man of Sumner's age of such extensive legal knowledge and natural legal intellect." Not until many years after Sumner's death was any other American received so intimately into British intellectual circles.

Beginning of political career

In 1840, at the age of 29, Sumner returned to Boston to practice law but devoted more time to lecturing at Harvard Law, editing court reports, and contributing to law journals, especially on historical and biographical themes.

A turning point in Sumner's life came in 1845, when he delivered an Independence Day oration on "The True Grandeur of Nations" in Boston. He spoke against war, and made an impassioned appeal for freedom and peace.

He became a sought-after orator for formal occasions. His lofty themes and stately eloquence made a profound impression; his platform presence was imposing (he stood six feet and four inches tall, with a massive frame). His voice was clear and of great power; his gestures unconventional and individual, but vigorous and impressive. His literary style was florid, with much detail, allusion, and quotation, often from the Bible as well as the Greeks and Romans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote that he delivered speeches "like a cannoneer ramming down cartridges," while Sumner himself said that "you might as well look for a joke in the Book of Revelation."

Sumner worked with Horace Mann to improve the system of public education in Massachusetts. He advocated prison reform and opposed the Mexican-American War. He viewed the war as a war of aggression but was primarily concerned that captured territories would expand slavery westward. In 1847, Sumner denounced a Boston Representative's vote for the declaration of war against Mexico with such vigor that he beacame a leader of the "Conscience Whigs" faction of the Massachusetts Whig Party. But he declined to accept their nomination for U.S Representative in 1848.

Instead, Sumner helped organize the Free Soil Party, which opposed both the Democrats and the Whigs, who had nominated Zachary Taylor (a slaveowning Southerner) for President. Sumner was a Free Soil candidate for U.S. Representative, but lost.

In 1851, Democrats gained control of the Massachusetts General Court (state legislature) in coalition with the Free Soilers. However, the Democrats initially refused to vote for Sumner (the Free Soilers' choice) for U.S. Senator, calling for a less radical candidate. The impasse was broken after three months and Sumner was elected by a one-vote majority on April 24.

Service in the Senate

Antebellum career and attack by Preston Brooks

Southern Chivalry—Argument Versus Clubs, a lithograph by artist John L. Magee that shows Northern outrage over Preston Brooks's attack on Sumner.

Senate's copy of 1860 steel engraving of Sumner

Sumner took his seat in late 1851, as a Democrat. For the first few sessions, Sumner did not push for any of his controversial causes, but observed the workings of the Senate. Then on August 26, 1852, Sumner delivered his first major speech (in spite of strenuous efforts to dissuade him). In "Freedom National; Slavery Sectional" (a popular abolitionist motto), Sumner attacked the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.

The conventions of both major parties had just affirmed the finality of every provision of the Compromise of 1850. Reckless of political expediency, Sumner moved that the Fugitive Slave Act be repealed. For more than three hours he denounced it as a violation of the Constitution, an affront to the public conscience, and an offense against divine law. The speech provoked a storm of anger in the South, but the North was heartened to find at last a leader whose courage matched his conscience.

In 1856, during the "Bleeding Kansas" crisis, Sumner denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In the "Crime against Kansas" on May 19 and May 20, Sumner attacked the authors of the Act, Senators Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina. He said that Butler had taken "a mistress who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean, the harlot, Slavery." Sumner's three-hour oration later became particularly personally insulting as he mocked the 59-year-old Butler's manner of speech and physical mannerisms, which were impaired by a stroke.

Douglas said to a colleague during the speech that "this damn fool Sumner is going to get himself shot by some other damn fool."

Representative Preston Brooks, Butler's nephew, was infuriated and intended to challenge Sumner to a duel. To this end, Brooks consulted with fellow South Carolina Representative Laurence M. Keitt on dueling etiquette. Keitt told him that dueling was for gentlemen of equal social standing, and that Sumner was no better than a drunkard, due to the supposedly coarse language he had used during his speech. Brooks concluded in turn that since Sumner was no gentlemen, it would be more appropriate to beat him with his cane.

Two days later, on the afternoon of May 22, Brooks confronted Sumner as he sat writing at his desk in the almost empty Senate chamber: "Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine." As Sumner began to stand up, Brooks beat Sumner severely on the head before he could reach his feet, using a thick gutta-percha cane with a gold head. Sumner was knocked down and trapped under the heavy desk (which was bolted to the floor), but Brooks continued to strike Sumner until Brooks ripped the desk from the floor. By this time, Sumner was blinded by his own blood, and he staggered up the aisle and collapsed, lapsing into unconsciousness. Brooks continued to beat the motionless Sumner until his cane broke at which point he left the chamber. Several other Senators attempted to help Sumner, but were blocked by Keitt who brandished a pistol and shouted, "Let them be!" Keitt was censured for his actions.

Sumner did not attend the Senate for the next three years while recovering from the attack. In addition to the head trauma, he suffered from nightmares, severe headaches, and (what is now understood to be) post-traumatic stress disorder. During that period, his enemies subjected him to ridicule and accused him of cowardice for not resuming his duties in the Senate. Nevertheless, the Massachusetts General Court reelected him in November 1856, believing that his vacant chair in the Senate chamber served as a powerful symbol of free speech and resistance to slavery.

The attack revealed the increasing polarization of the United States at that time, as Sumner became a martyr in the North and Brooks a hero in the South. Northerners were outraged. The editor of the New York Evening Post, William Cullen Bryant, wrote:

"The South cannot tolerate free speech anywhere, and would stifle it in Washington with the bludgeon and the bowie-knife, as they are now trying to stifle it in Kansas by massacre, rapine, and murder. Has it come to this, that we must speak with bated breath in the presence of our Southern masters? ... Are we to be chastised as they chastise their slaves? Are we too, slaves, slaves for life, a target for their brutal blows, when we do not comport ourselves to please them?"

The outrage heard across the North was loud and strong. Historian William Gienapp has suggested that Brooks' "assault was of critical importance in transforming the struggling Republican party into a major political force." Conversely, Brooks was praised by Southern newspapers; the Richmond Enquirer editorialized that Sumner should be caned "every morning", praising the attack as "good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequences" and denounced "these vulgar abolitionists in the Senate" who "have been suffered to run too long without collars. They must be lashed into submission." Many Southerners sent Brooks new canes, in endorsement of his assault.

Civil War

After three years Sumner returned to the Senate in 1859. He delivered a speech entitled "The Barbarism of Slavery" during the 1860 presidential election. In the critical months following the election of Abraham Lincoln, Sumner was an unyielding foe to every scheme of compromise with the Confederacy.

After the withdrawal of Southern Senators, Sumner became chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations in March 1861. This was a powerful position for which he was well-qualified, with his background in European affairs. As chairman of the committee, Sumner renewed his efforts to gain diplomatic recognition of Haiti by the United States, which Haiti had sought since winning its independence in 1804. With Southern Senators out of the way, Haiti was recognized in 1862.

Sumner about 1865 photographed by Mathew Brady

While the Civil War was in progress, Sumner received letters from prominent British political figures, including, Cobden, Bright, Gladstone, and the Duke of Argyll. At Lincoln's request, Sumner read these letters to the Cabinet, and they were a major source of knowledge on pro- and anti-Union sentiment in Britain.

In the war scare over the Trent affair, Sumner supported Lincoln's decision to return James M. Mason and John Slidell to British custody. Sumner repeatedly used his chairmanship to block action which might embroil the U.S. in war with Britain.

During the war Sumner boldly advocated immediate emancipation. Lincoln described Sumner as "my idea of a bishop", and consulted him as an embodiment of the conscience of the American people.

Civil rights

Sumner was unusually far-sighted in his advocacy of voting and civil rights for blacks. His father hated slavery and told Sumner that freeing the slaves would "do us no good" unless they were treated equally by society. Sumner was a close associate of William Ellery Channing, an influential Unitarian minister in Boston. Channing believed that human beings had an infinite potential to improve themselves. Expanding on this argument, Sumner concluded that environment had "an important, if not controlling influence" in shaping individuals. By creating a society where "knowledge, virtue and religion" took precedence, "the most forlorn shall grow into forms of unimagined strength and beauty." Moral law, then, was as important for governments as it was for individuals, and laws which inhibited a man's ability to grow—like slavery or segregation—were evil. While Sumner often had dark views of contemporary society, his faith in reform was unshakeable; when accused of utopianism, he replied "The Utopias of one age have been the realities of the next."

Senator Sumner and his good friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The annexation of Texas—a new slave-holding state—in 1845 pushed Sumner into taking an active role in the anti-slavery movement. That same year, Sumner represented the plaintiffs in Roberts v. Boston, a case which challenged the legality of segregation. Arguing before the Massachusetts Supreme Court, Sumner noted that schools for blacks were physically inferior and that segregation bred harmful psychological and sociological effects—arguments that would be made in Brown v. Board of Education over a century later. Sumner lost the case, but the Massachusetts legislature eventually abolished school segregation in 1855.

Sumner was a longtime enemy of United States Chief Justice Roger Taney, and attacked his decision in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case. In 1865, Sumner said:

I speak what cannot be denied when I declare that the opinion of the Chief Justice in the case of Dred Scott was more thoroughly abominable than anything of the kind in the history of courts. Judicial baseness reached its lowest point on that occasion. You have not forgotten that terrible decision where a most unrighteous judgment was sustained by a falsification of history. Of course, the Constitution of the United States and every principle of Liberty was falsified, but historical truth was falsified also ..."

A friend of Samuel Gridley Howe, Sumner was also a guiding force for the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission. He was one of the most prominent advocates for suffrage, along with free homesteads and free public schools for blacks. Sumner's outspoken opposition to slavery made him few friends in the Senate; after his first major speech in 1852, a Senator from Alabama urged that there be no reply: "The ravings of a maniac may sometimes be dangerous, but the barking of a puppy never did any harm." His uncompromising attitude did not endear him to moderates and sometimes inhibited his effectiveness as a legislator; he was largely excluded from work on the Thirteenth Amendment, in part because he did not get along with Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee and did much of the work on the law. Sumner did introduce an alternate amendment that would have abolished slavery and declare that "all people are equal before the law"—a combination of the Thirteenth Amendment with elements of the Fourteenth Amendment. During Reconstruction, he often attacked civil rights legislation as too weak and fought hard for legislation to give land to freed slaves; unlike many of his contemporaries, he viewed segregation and slavery as two sides of the same coin. He introduced a civil rights bill in 1872 that would have mandated equal accommodation in all public places and required suits brought under the bill to be argued in federal courts. The bill ultimately failed, but Sumner still spoke of it on his deathbed.

In April 1870, Sumner announced that he would work to remove the word "white" from naturalization laws. He had in 1868 and 1869 introduced bills to that effect, but neither came to a vote. On July 2, 1870, Sumner moved to amend a pending bill in a way that would strike the word "white" wherever in all Congressional acts pertaining to naturalization of immigrants. On July 4, 1870, he said: "Senators undertake to disturb us ... by reminding us of the possibility of large numbers swarming from China; but the answer to all this is very obvious and very simple. If the Chinese come here, they will come for citizenship or merely for labor. If they come for citizenship, then in this desire do they give a pledge of loyalty to our institutions; and where is the peril in such vows? They are peaceful and industrious; how can their citizenship be the occasion of solicitude?" He accused legislators promoting anti-Chinese legislation of betraying the principles of the Declaration of Independence: "Worse than any heathen or pagan abroad are those in our midst who are false to our institutions." But Sumner's bill failed, and from 1870 to 1943 (or in some cases, to 1952) Chinese and other Asians were ineligible for U.S. citizenship.

Reconstruction

Charles Sumner in his elder years

Sumner put forward a radical theory of Reconstruction that would enable the Congress to treat the 11 defeated states in any way Congress wished. He argued that the "Confederate" states had committed felo de se - "state suicide", by their own act of declaring secession. Therefore, they were now conquered territories that should be treated as if they had never been states. He objected to the more lenient Reconstruction policy of Lincoln, and later that of Andrew Johnson, as too generous and also an encroachment upon the powers of Congress.

Throughout the war, Sumner had been the special champion of blacks, being the most vigorous advocate of emancipation, of enlisting blacks in the Union army, and of the establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau. As the Radical Republican leader in the post-war Senate, Sumner fought hard to provide equal civil and voting rights for the freedmen, on the grounds that "consent of the governed" was a basic principle of American republicanism, and to keep ex-Confederates from gaining political offices and undoing the victory in the Civil War.

Sumner and his fellow Radicals overrode President Johnson's vetoes and imposed some of their views, though Sumner's most radical ideas were not implemented.

Foreign affairs

Charles Sumner puts his head in the British lion's mouth — Harper's Weekly, March 9, 1872

Sumner was well-regarded in Great Britain, which he valued. But after the war he sacrificed his reputation in Britain by his stand on U.S. claims for breaches of neutrality. The U.S. had claims against Britain for the havoc wreaked by Confederate raiding ships fitted out in British ports.

Sumner went further. Britain had accorded the rights of belligerents to the Confederacy. Sumner held that this had doubled the duration of the war, entailing inestimable loss. He therefore asserted that Britain should pay damages not merely for the raiders, but also for "that other damage, immense and infinite, caused by the prolongation of the war." He demanded the enormous amount of $2,000,000 for these "national claims" (in addition to $125,000,000 for damages from the raiders). Sumner did not expect that Britain ever would or could pay this immense sum, but he suggested that Britain should to turn over Canada as payment.

This proposition offended many Britons, and was not taken seriously by anyone. At the Geneva arbitration conference which settled U.S. claims against Britain, these "national claims" were abandoned.

Sumner did have some influence over J. Lothrop Motley, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, causing him to disregard the instructions of Secretary of State Hamilton Fish on the matter. This offended President Grant.

The final breach between Grant and Sumner came in 1870. Grant proposed that the U.S. annex "Santo Domingo" (the Dominican Republic). Grant mistakenly thought that Sumner supported him in this project. But instead, Sumner blocked the annexation treaty in the Foreign Relations Committee.

Grant, feeling betrayed, became Sumner's bitter enemy. He got his Senate allies to remove Sumner from his chairmanship in March 1871.

Final years

Sumner now turned against Grant. Like many other reformers, he decried the corruption in Grant's administration. Sumner believed that the civil rights program he championed could not be carried through by a corrupt government. In 1872, he joined the Liberal Republican Party which had been started by reformist Republicans such as Horace Greeley. The Liberal Republicans supported black suffrage and civil rights, but they also called for amnesty for ex-Confederates and an end to military occupation of the South, and became a de facto fusion with the Democrats.

Sumner himself began to adopt some conciliatory positions. In 1872, he introduced a Senate resolution providing that Civil War battle names should not appear as "battle honors" on the regimental flags of the U.S. Army. This offended vast numbers of Union army veterans. The Massachusetts legislature denounced this battle-flag resolution as "an insult to the loyal soldiery of the nation" and as "meeting the unqualified condemnation of the people of the Commonwealth." For more than a year efforts (headed by the poet John Greenleaf Whittier) to rescind that censure were without avail, but early in 1874 it was annulled.

Sumner remained a champion of civil rights for blacks. He was a co-author of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which was introduced in 1870, and finally enacted a year after his death. It was the last civil rights legislation for 82 years, and was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1883.

Death of Charles Sumner

Charles Sumner House in Boston

Personal life and marriage

Sumner was serious and somewhat prickly, but he developed friendships with several prominent Bostonians, particularly Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose house he visited regularly in the 1840s. Longfellow's daughters found his stateliness amusing; Sumner would ceremoniously open doors for the children while saying "In presequas" in a sonorous tone.

A bachelor for most of his life, Sumner began courting Alice Mason Hooper, the daughter of Massachusetts Representative Samuel Hooper, in 1866 and the two were married that October. It proved to be a poor match: Sumner could not respond to his wife's humor, and Hooper had a ferocious temper she could not always control. That winter, Hooper began going out to public events with Friedrich von Holstein, a Prussian diplomat. While the two were not having an affair, the relationship caused gossip in Washington, and Hooper refused to stop seeing him. When Holstein was recalled to Prussia in the spring of 1867, Hooper accused Sumner of engineering the action (Sumner always denied this) and the two separated the following September. News of the situation quickly leaked out, to the delight of Sumner's enemies, who referred to him as "The Great Impotency" and claimed (without proof) that Sumner could not perform his marital duties. The situation depressed and embarrassed Sumner; the two were finally divorced on May 10, 1873.

Charles Sumner died in Washington, March 11, 1874. He lay in state in the U.S. Capitol rotunda, and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Evaluation historical interpretations

Contemporaries and historians have explored Sumner's personality at length. Sumner's friend Senator Carl Schurz praised Sumner's integrity, his "moral courage," the "sincerity of his convictions," and the "disinterestedness of his motives." However, Sumner's Pulitzer-prize-winning biographer, David Donald, presents Sumner as an insufferably arrogant moralist; an egoist bloated with pride; pontifical and Olympian, and unable to distinguish between large issues and small ones. What's more, concludes Donald, Sumner was a coward who avoided confrontations with his many enemies, whom he routinely insulted in prepared speeches.

Biographers have varied in their appraisal of Sumner. The Pulitzer Prize went to biographer David Donald whose two-volume biography points up Sumner's troubles in dealing with his colleagues:

Distrusted by friends and allies, and reciprocating their distrust, a man of "ostentatious culture," "unvarnished egotism," and "'a specimen of prolonged and morbid juvenility,'" Sumner combined a passionate conviction in his own moral purity with a command of nineteenth-century "rhetorical flourishes" and a "remarkable talent for rationalization." Stumbling "into politics largely by accident," elevated to the United States Senate largely by chance, willing to indulge in "Jacksonian demagoguery" for the sake of political expediency, Sumner became a bitter and potent agitator of sectional conflict. Carving out a reputation as the South's most hated foe and the Negro's bravest friend, he inflamed sectional differences, advanced his personal fortunes, and helped bring about national tragedy."

Storey, seeing some of the same qualities, interprets them more kindly:

Charles Sumner was a great man in his absolute fidelity to principle, his clear perception of what his country needed, his unflinching courage, his perfect sincerity, his persistent devotion to duty, his indifference to selfish considerations, his high scorn of anything petty or mean. He was essentially simple to the end, brave, kind, and pure.... Originally modest and not self-confident, the result of his long contest was to make him egotistical and dogmatic. There are few successful men who escape these penalties of success, the common accompaniment of increasing years....Sumner's naively simple nature, his confidence in his fellows, and his lack of humor combined to prevent his concealing what many feel but are better able to hide. From the time he entered public life till he died he was a strong force constantly working for righteousness....To Sumner more than to any single man, except possibly Lincoln, the colored race owes its emancipation and such measure of equal rights as it now enjoys.

Sumner's reputation among historians in the first half of the 20th century was largely negative--he was blamed especially for the excesses or Radical Reconstruction. Both the Dunning School and the anti-Dunning revisionists were especially negative regarding his performance during Reconstruction. However in recent years scholars have emphasized his role as a foremost champions of black rights before, during and after the Civil War; one historian says he was "perhaps the least racist man in America in his day."

Memorials

The following are named after Charles Sumner:

• Charles Sumner Lofton (1912–2006), pioneering African-American high school principal
• Charles Sumner Tainter (1854–1940), American inventor
• Charles Sumner Greene (1868–1957), American Arts and Crafts architect
• Sumner High School in St. Louis, Missouri, opened in 1875, the first black high school west of the Mississippi.
• Sumner Elementary School in Topeka, Kansas, now closed. The school played a key role in the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
• Sumner Academy of Arts and Science, (Sumner High School prior to 1978) in Kansas City, Kansas.

The Charles Sumner School Museum in Washington, D.C., listed on the National Register of Historic Places

• Charles Sumner School in Washington, DC (now a museum).
• Charles Sumner Post No. 25, Grand Army of the Republic in Chestertown, MD.
• Charles Sumner Elementary School in Austin, MN
• Charles Sumner Elementary School in Boston, MA
• Charles Sumner High School(demolished)and Charles Sumner Field in Holbrook, MA
• Charles Sumner Elementary School in Camden, New Jersey
• Charles Sumner Elementary School in Scranton, Pennsylvania
• Charles Sumner Junior High School in Manhattan, New York (now renamed)
• Charles Sumner House, Sumner's home in Boston
• Sumner Library in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
• Sumner County, Kansas.
• Sumner, Iowa
• Sumner, Nebraska
• Sumner, Washington
• Sumner, Oregon
• Sumner St., Newton, MA
• Sumner St. North Attleborough, MA
• Sumner Avenue, Springfield, MA
• Avenue Charles Sumner, in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti
• SS Charles Sumner, a World War II Liberty cargo ship.
• Avenida Charles Sumner, in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic

• 
  Statue by Anne Whitney in Harvard Square.
• 
  Statue in the Boston Public Garden.
• 
  Late portrait by William Morris Hunt, c 1870

See also

• United States Congress members killed or wounded in office

References and further reading

• Cohen, Victor H. "Charles Sumner and the Trent Affair," The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 22, No. 2 (May, 1956), pp. 205–219 in JSTOR
• Donald, David Herbert, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (1960), Pulitzer-prize-winning scholarly biography to 1860; Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (1970), biography from 1861
  • Paul Goodman, "David Donald's Charles Sumner Reconsidered" in The New England Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 3. (September, 1964), pp. 373–387. online at JSTOR
  • Gilbert Osofsky. "Cardboard Yankee: How Not to Study the Mind of Charles Sumner," Reviews in American History, Vol. 1, No. 4 (December, 1973), pp. 595–606 in JSTOR
• Foner, Eric, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (1970), history of ideas
• Frasure, Carl M. "Charles Sumner and the Rights of the Negro", The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 13, No. 2 (April, 1928), pp. 126–149 in JSTOR
• Gienapp, William E. "The Crime against Sumner: The Caning of Charles Sumner and the Rise of the Republican Party." Civil War History 25 (September 1979): 218-45.
• Haynes, George Henry. Charles Sumner (1909) 469 pages; biography. online edition
• Hidalgo, Dennis, "Charles Sumner and the Annexation of the Dominican Republic," Itinerario Volume XXI, 2/1997: 51-66 (Published by the Centre for the History of European Expansion of Leiden University, The Netherlands).
• Hoffer, Williamjames Hull. The Caning of Charles Sumner: Honor, Idealism, and the Origins of the Civil War (Johns Hopkins University Press; 2010) 160 pages
• Jager, Ronald B. "Charles Sumner, the Constitution, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875," The New England Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 3 (September, 1969), pp. 350–372 in JSTOR
• Pfau, Michael William. "Time, Tropes, And Textuality: Reading Republicanism In Charles Sumner's 'Crime Against Kansas.'" Rhetoric & Public Affairs 2003 6(3): 385-413.
• Pierson, Michael D. "'All Southern Society Is Assailed by the Foulest Charges': Charles Sumner's 'The Crime against Kansas' and the Escalation of Republican Anti-Slavery Rhetoric," The New England Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 4 (December, 1995), pp. 531–557 in JSTOR
• Ruchames, Louis. "Charles Sumner and American Historiography," Journal of Negro History, Vol. 38, No. 2 (April, 1953), pp. 139–160 online at JSTOR
• Sinha, Manisha. "The Caning of Charles Sumner: Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War" Journal Of The Early Republic 2003 23(2): 233-262. in JSTOR
• Storey, Moorfield, Charles Sumner (1900) biography online edition
• Taylor, Anne-Marie. Young Charles Sumner and the Legacy of the American Enlightenment, 1811-1851. U. of Massachusetts Press, 2001. 422 pp. Argues that Sumner was deeply influenced by the republican principles of duty, education, and liberty balanced by order, as well as by Moral Philosophy, the dominant strain of American Enlightenment thinking, which embraced cosmopolitanism and the dignity of man's intellect and conscience. As a young lawyer, Sumner was greatly attracted by the related principles of Natural Law, which since ancient times had conjoined law and ethics. These influences are symbolized by Sumner's closeness to John Quincy Adams, William Ellery Channing, and Joseph Story. Sumner, with many early nineteenth-century American intellectuals, desired to build an American culture that would combine the principles of American liberty with European culture. He thus eschewed law for reform—including education, promotion of the arts, prison discipline, international peace, and anti-slavery—and eventually politics, not from rashness or ambition, but from the belief in each individual's duty to work for the public good and in the humanistic ideals of the Enlightenment. Sumner grew increasingly disillusioned as the controversy surrounding these reforms divided Boston and the nation over the significance of that Enlightenment legacy, but he devoted his entire public career to the realization of the Enlightenment's vision of a civilized nation, both cultivated and just.

Sumner's headstone at Mount Auburn Cemetery

Primary sources

• Palmer, Beverly Wilson, ed. The Selected Letters of Charles Sumner 2 vol (1990)
• Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner 4 vols., 1877-93. online edition
• Sumner, Charles. The works of Charles Sumner online edition

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

External links

• United States Congress. "Charles Sumner (id: S001068)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved on 2009-04-01
• Mr. Lincoln and Freedom: Charles Sumner
• Mr. Lincoln and Friends: Charles Sumner
• Mr. Lincoln's White House: Charles Sumner
• Sumner's "Crime Against Kansas" speech
• Works by Charles Sumner at Project Gutenberg
• "Charles Sumner". Find a Grave. Retrieved August 28, 2010.
• The Liberator Files, Items concerning Charles Sumner from Horace Seldon's collection and summary of research of William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator original copies at the Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts.

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Works related to Charles Sumner at Wikisource Media related to Charles Sumner at Wikimedia Commons