Charles Sumner Book

Charles Sumner (1811-1874) was a true product of a Brahmin style education and upbringing in Boston
which styles itself the Hub of the universe. From the time of his graduation from Harvard Law he
was an uncompromising foe of slavery. He was also an orator, one of the best that ever served in the
US. Senate.

Which he got to in 1851 succeeding none other than Daniel Webster who was now Secretary of State
in the Fillmore administration. Webster had lost considerable support in Massachusetts because of
his support of the Compromise of 1850. Sumner would brook no compromise with the southern
slave interests.

The man that was chosen by the Massachusetts legislature was one well rounded person. He had
traveled extensively in Europe and made the acquaintance of just about everybody worth knowing
in British and French politics. That stood him in good stead in the future. That and the fact he
knew all worth knowing in Boston society. His best friend was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

A well publicized speech denouncing the Kansas-Nebraska Act which opened western territories to
slavery which was rife with sexual imagery earned Sumner a caning right on the Senate floor from
Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina. The beating that he got did permanent neurological damage and what we now might call post traumatic stress. Sumner rarely saw the
Senate floor until the Civil War started.

During the war Sumner was a critic of Lincoln war policies from his seat which now included chair
of the Foreign Relations Committee. He practiced back channel diplomacy like no other before or
since given his knowledge of the main movers and shakers in Europe. Three presidents had to
accept that fact, Lincoln, Johnson, and Grant.

Johnson had enough problems just staying in office. He broke with most of the Republican party
over southern reconstruction. Sumner was a bitter foe of his. But Secretary of State William H.
Seward managed a working relationship with Sumner the result of which was the occupation of
Midway Island and the purchase of Alaska from Russia.

Seward and Sumner were old Senate colleagues and that certainly helped things. So was Hamilton
Fish, Secretary of State for the Grant administration. Sumner and Fish negotiated over everything
but Sumner spoiled a big prize in that we almost purchased the Dominican Republic from it's own
government. That and the fact that a lot of newer Republican post Civil War Senators didn't
quite view Sumner with any awe.

And he was a colossally arrogant man. A brief marriage in the 1860s led to a messy divorce and
rumors of impotence.

It was a bitter pill to swallow when he was stripped of his committee chairmanship. Just short of
his term ending in any event Sumner died in 1874. His party and the people of Massachusetts
left him behind some years earlier.

Yet his was a career of some considerable achievement. This is a combined version of David Herbert Donald's two volume separate biographies on Sumner. Your interest is maintained
throughout the book.