Sumner, Charles

Sumner, Charles (1811–74),Boston lawyer, was elected on the Free‐Soil ticket to the U.S. Senate (1851), where he became the spearhead of New England liberal opposition to the South. His vehement oratory in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law and the Kansas‐Nebraska bill reached its height in the speech The Crime Against Kansas (May 19–20, 1856), invidiously attacking Senator Butler of South Carolina and other Southerners. Two days later he was physically assaulted in the Senate by Representative Preston S. Brooks, a relative of Butler. This brutal beating made Sumner a martyr, and, though he was forced by ill‐health to be absent from the Senate for three and a half years, he continued to hold his position, and was reelected. Upon his return he was the leading representative of the Republican party, which he had helped to found, and was not only among the first to suggest emancipation, but also urged equal civil rights for blacks, although he opposed Lincoln by contending that the seceded states had no rights under the Constitution. Under Johnson this difference on Reconstruction policy grew to such an extent that he was a leader of the radical Republicans, and took a prominent part in the impeachment proceedings. He also opposed Grant, particularly on his desire to annex Santo Domingo. His courageous crusading and the lofty eloquence of his speeches are preserved in his Works (15 vols., 1870–83). Longfellow wrote a memorial tribute, Charles Sumner, in 1874, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson recalls him in Contemporaries (1884).