Sumner, Charles

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

Charles (1811-1874), an American statesman. He was born in Boston and educated at Harvard. He began the practice of law in 1834. A little later he spent two years traveling in Europe. In 1845, in anticipation of the admission of Texas, to which, as well as the Mexican War, he was opposed, he brought himself into prominence by an oration against war. It appeared in print afterward as The True Grandeur of Nations. Shortly afterward he became a recognized Free Soil leader. His position he defined as a determination never to "support any candidate for the presidency who is not known to be against the extension of slavery, even though he have received the sacramental unction of a regular nomination." In 1850 the Free-Soilers of Massachusetts combined with the Democrats against the Whigs. They elected George Boutwell governor and sent Sumner to the United States Senate. He was a cold, logical, not a lovable man, but a man of social position, sincerity, courage, and unswerving integrity. He was for nearly a quarter of a century the leading anti-slavery senator. He urged the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law as inhuman, and opposed the Know Nothing party as un-American. The compromise measures of Clay and Douglas were his particular aversion. His attitude and frequent use of personality gave deep offense in the South. May 22,1856, at the end of a bitter debate, Preston C. Brooks, a fiery representative from South Carolina , entered the Senate chamber after the hour of adjournment and attacked Sumner with a heavy cane as he sat writing at his desk, beating him until he fell unconscious. The brutality of the attack left its effects on Sumner to the end of his life, but it made him the hero of Boston and gave him a seat in the Senate for life. During the Civil War, he supported President Lincoln. He was foremost in the effort to sustain the impeachment of President Johnson. He was influential in requiring the seceding states to grant the negro the right to vote as a condition of restoration to the Union. He supported Grant's administration at the first, but objected to the proposed settlement of the Alabama Claims on the ground that England should be punished heavily for aiding and abetting the cause of slavery. He opposed and defeated a treaty for the annexation of Santo Domingo , and so far got out of sympathy with the Republican party that he supported Horace Greeley in the presidential campaign of 1872. There is no question as to his integrity and commanding ability, but he was too narrow-too much out of sympathy with the world-to rank with Lincoln in popular esteem.