Charles Sumner

Who was Charles Sumner?

Charles Sumner was an American politician and senator 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 working to destroy the Confederacy, free all the slaves and keep on good terms with Europe. During Reconstruction, he fought to minimize the power of the ex-Confederates and guarantee equal rights to the Freedmen.

Sumner changed his political party several times, gaining fame as a Republican. He devoted his enormous energies to the destruction of what Republicans called the Slave Power, that is the efforts of slave owners to take control of the federal government and ensure the survival and expansion of slavery. In 1856, a South Carolina Congressman, Preston Brooks, nearly killed Sumner on the Senate floor two days after Sumner delivered an intensely anti-slavery speech called "The Crime against Kansas". In the speech, Sumner characterized the attacker's cousin, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, as a pimp for slavery. The episode played a major role in the coming of the Civil War. During the war Sumner was a leader of the Radical Republican faction that criticized President Abraham Lincoln for being too moderate on the South. One of the most learned statesmen of the era, he specialized in foreign affairs, and worked closely with Abraham Lincoln to keep the British and the French from intervening on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Sumner's expertise and energy made him a powerful chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.