SUMNER, CHARLES (1811-1874), American statesman, was born in Boston, Mass., on Jan. 6, 1811. He graduated in 183o at Harvard college, and in 1834 at the Harvard law school. At the age of 23 he was admitted to the bar. The three years (5837-4o) spent in Europe were years of fruitful study and experience.
In his 3oth year Sumner returned to Boston, to settle down to the practice of law. But gradually he devoted less of his time to practice and more to lecturing in the Harvard law school.
Sumner co-operated effectively with Horace Mann for the im provement of the system of public education in Massachusetts.
Prison reform and peace were other causes to which he gave sup port. He took an active part in the organizing of the Free Soil Party, in revolt at the Whigs' nomination of a slave-holding South erner for the presidency ; and in 1848 was defeated as a candidate for the National House of Representatives. In 1851 control of the Massachusetts legislature was secured by the Democrats in coalition with the Free Soilers, but the Democrats refused to vote for Sumner, the Free Soilers' choice for U.S. senator, and urged the selection of some less radical candidate. A deadlock of more than three months ensued, finally resulting in the election (April 24) of Sumner by a majority of a single vote.
In the closing hours of his first session, in spite of strenuous efforts to prevent it, Sumner delivered (Aug. 26, 1852) a speech, "Freedom national ; Slavery sectional," which marked a new era in American history. The conventions of both the great parties had just affirmed the finality of every provision of the compromise of 185o. In 1856, at the very time when "border ruffians" were drawing their lines closer about the town of Lawrence, Kan., Sumner in the Senate (May 19-20) laid bare the "Crime against Kansas." He denounced the Kansas-Nebraska bill as in every respect a swindle, and held its authors, Stephen A. Douglas and Andrew P. Butler, up to the scorn of the world. Two days later Preston S. Brooks (1819-57), a Congressman from South Caro
lina, confronted Sumner in the Senate chamber, denounced his speech as a libel upon his State and upon Butler, his relative, and struck Sumner till he fell unconscious to the floor. This assault cost Sumner three years of heroic struggle to regain his health— years during which Massachusetts re-elected him, in the belief that in the Senate chamber his vacant chair was the most eloquent pleader for free speech and resistance to slavery.
After the withdrawal of the Southern senators, Sumner was made chairman of the committee on foreign relations (March 8, 1861), a position for which he was pre-eminently fitted by his years of intimate acquaintance with European politics and states men. While the war was in progress his letters from Cobden and Bright, from Gladstone and the duke of Argyll, at Lincoln's re quest were read by Sumner to the Cabinet, and formed a chief source of light as to political thought in England. In the turmoil over the "Trent Affair," it was Sumner's word that convinced Lincoln that Mason and Slidell must be given up, and that recon ciled the public to that inevitable step.
Throughout the war Sumner had constituted himself the special champion of the negro, being the most vigorous advocate of emancipation, of enlisting the blacks in the Union army and of the establishment of the Freedmen's bureau. The credit or the blame for imposing equal suffrage rights for negroes upon the Southern States as a condition of reconstruction must rest with him.
In the impeachment proceedings against Johnson, Sumner was one of the President's most implacable assailants. Sumner's oppo sition to Grant's pet scheme for the annexation of San Domingo (1870), brought upon him the President's bitter resentment. Sumner had always prized highly his popularity in England, but he unhesitatingly sacrificed it in taking his stand as to the adjust ment of claims against England for breaches of neutrality.