Sumner, CHARLES, American statesman, was born in Boston, January 6, 1811. The founder of the family in America was William Sumner, a native of Oxfordshire in England, who settled in Massachusetts about 1635. Charles Pinckney Sumner, of whose nine children Charles and his twin-sister Matilda were the eldest born, held the post of sheriff of Suffolk county from 1825 till shortly before his death in 1839, and was highly respected for his probity and independent spirit, despite his stiff and formal manners and his outspoken anti-slavery sentiments at a time when such opinions were generally unpopular and were rarely expressed by persons in official station. Educated at the Boston Latin School and at Harvard College, where he graduated in 1830, Charles Sumner entered the law-school in the following year, and in 1834 was admitted to the bar. An enthusiastic student of the principles of law, he had little taste for the ordinary routine of office work, and hence, though occasionally engaged in important cases, he failed to secure a remunerative practice or to acquire reputation as a pleader. He found more congenial employment as a lecturer on legal topics and a contributor to law journals and compilations. In private life he was greatly esteemed for his sincerity and earnestness, his general cultivation, his stainless character, and his cheerful and kindly demeanor, though too devoid of humour, wit, and playful fancy to become a favourite in ordinary social circles. In December 1837 he went to Europe, where he remained till May 1840, pursuing with his habitual assiduity the study of jurisprudence at the Sorbonne and elsewhere, widening the general range of his knowledge, and cultivating the acquaintance, especially in England, of the most eminent men, of whom his letters at this period, published since his death, give many graphic sketches and lively anecdotes. On his return to Boston he resumed his professional practice, but with even less liking for the drudgery of its details than he had before evinced. Abstract discussion had stronger attractions for him, and he first came into prominence by a civic oration, on July 4, 1845, which, under the title of 'The True Grandeur
Copyright 1892 in U.S.
by J. B. Lippincott Company. of Nations,' was simply a vehement denunciation of war, as 'utterly and irreconcilably inconsistent with true greatness.'
It was because the current of events was then bringing to the front a subject involving the deepest moral considerations that Charles Sumner was drawn into the vortex of political life. A member of the Whig party by descent and associations, he took but a languid interest in politics until the threatened extensions of negro slavery over newly-acquired territory awakened a spirit of resistance in the free states. Despite the efforts to stifle agitation by party leaders and all who feared for the results, the growth and preponderance of the slave power, with the foundations on which it rested, became the absorbing question of the day, entering like a wedge into established political combinations and thrusting aside all other issues. Sumner was at one with the Abolitionists in asserting the inherent and total sinfulness of slavery; but unlike them he maintained that the constitution did not recognise property in man, and that slavery, a purely sectional institution, could be combated in the political arena, and so crippled by legislation that it would necessarily dwindle and become extinct. In 1848 he joined with others holding similar views in the formation of the Free Soil (q.v.) party, in which his abilities, learning, high character, and social standing gave him a prominence which he cannot be said to have sought by any purely ambitious efforts. Nominated for congress in the same year, he was easily defeated by the Whig candidate, R. C. Winthrop; but in April 1851, after a protracted contest, he was elected to the national senate as the successor of Daniel Webster, by the combined Free Soil and Democratic votes of the Massachusetts legislature. The post thus gained he continued to hold during the remainder of his life, being re-elected in 1857, 1863, and 1869. At the outset he stood alone in the senate as the uncompromising opponent of slavery, and his elaborately prepared speeches, characterised alike by their studied array of facts and arguments and their bold denunciatory tone, excited universal attention, and were perhaps equally effective in winning support in one section and inflaming hostility in the other. The latter spirit found vent in an act which produced a more startling and profound impression throughout the northern states than any speech could have made. On the 22d May 1856, while sitting at his desk in the senate chamber after an adjournment, Sumner was suddenly assaulted by Preston S. Brooks, a member of congress from South Carolina, and by repeated blows on the head with a heavy cane prostrated on the floor in a state of insensibility. His injuries were in fact so severe as to incapacitate him for public life during nearly four years, while his vacant chair was pointed to as the most eloquent reminder of the violent and lawless animosity against which the advocates of freedom must prepare to contend. He resumed his seat at the close of 1859, and in June 1860 delivered a speech on the question of the admission of Kansas as a free state, which he published under the title of The Barbarism of Slavery.
But the predestined course of events no longer needed any impulse from oratory, and the attempts to arrest it by conciliatory offers, in which Sumner naturally took no part, only pointed more plainly to the inevitable collision. The secession of the southern states left the Republican party in full control of both houses of congress, and in March 1861 Sumner was elected chairman of the senate committee on foreign affairs. His interest in domestic affairs was still centred on those in regard to which moral principles could be adduced as the proper basis of political action. He was urgent for the emancipation of the slaves, and not less strenuous, after this had been secured, in obtaining for the coloured race the fullest civil and political equality with the whites. He supported the impeachment of President Johnson, regarding it as a continuation of the struggle for the overthrow of slavery, and he was foremost in opposing President Grant's project for the acquisition of San Domingo, on the ground that the assent of Baez, the president of that republic, had been given in opposition to the wish of the inhabitants. His conduct on this occasion led to his exclusion in 1871 from the chairmanship of the committee on foreign relations, and his continuous and acrimonious censures on Grant's administration brought about a rupture with the leading politicians of the Republican party which was rendered complete by his support of Greeley as candidate for the presidency in 1872. But, although the result of the election left him in the ranks of a discontented minority, his course had been too evidently dictated by principle to allow of his sinking in esteem with the mass of the party, and the breach was gradually closing when his death, at Washington, on the 11th March 1874, obliterated all asperities, and left only the remembrance of his great services and distinguished career.
Sumner's position in the field of politics was in some respects unique. From first to last he was an independent rather than a partisan. Nature had given him neither the submissive temper of the follower nor the tact, the shrewdness, the persuasive eloquence, and the skill in the management of men and of affairs which are the requisites of leadership. Expediency had no place in his thoughts, flexibility in his disposition, or suavity in his methods or language. Had it been otherwise he might, on the death of Lincoln, have succeeded to the highest place in the national confidence and regard. For his position was a commanding one, owing to his unimpeachable integrity, his unflinching courage, his singleness of purpose and consistency of action, his freedom from every suspicion of intrigue or self-seeking, and his identification both as a victim and a victor with the cause to which he had devoted all his energy and talents. In person he was tall and well proportioned, and, though his features were rugged, the expression of his countenance was engaging. His speeches lacked the charm of spontaneous eloquence, but they were effective as essays or lectures, and furnished his supporters with an arsenal of arguments and illustrations. That his frequent virulence in public debate sprang from no bitterness of spirit is attested by his freedom from vindictiveness, his cordiality in private intercourse, and the warmth and fidelity of his friendships. His nature was too open to admit of misconstruction, and the poet Longfellow, with whom he lived in intimacy, described him as the whitest soul he had ever known.
See his Works (15 vols. 1870-79); his Memoirs and Letters by Pierce (4 vols. 1877-93); and shorter Lives by Lester (1874), Chaplin (1874), and Anna L. Dawes (1892).