Charles Sumner

This article is about the Massachusetts politician Charles Sumner. For the California politician, see Charles A. Sumner .

Charles Sumner

Charles Sumner (born January 6, 1811 in Boston , Massachusetts , † March 11, 1874 in Washington, DC ) was an American politician. He was a Senator from Massachusetts.

Life

Sumner attended Harvard University and taught since 1836 at the Harvard Law School , the law of the United States and the international law . From 1837 to 1840 Sumner toured England , Germany , France and Italy . After he returned to Boston, he resumed his legal practice and published an edition of Veseys Reports in 20 volumes with James Charles Perkins from 1844 to 1846 .

Memorial to Charles Sumner in Cambridge

Sumner joined the Whig Party in 1845 but switched to the Free Soil Party in 1848 and was elected to the US Senate in 1851 . Here he distinguished himself as an excellent speaker and consistent opponent of slavery . In his speech about the conditions of the slaves in Kansas in May 1856 he attacked the conditions in the southern USA so sharply that he was attacked and seriously injured by the representative of South Carolina , Preston Brooks , after the meeting. Sumner then went to Europe and did not rejoin the Senate until 1859. He was then Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and played during the American Civil War a prominent role in federal legislation. In 1865 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

In his treatise, The Case of the United States , Sumner took an extremely hostile attitude towards England on the Alabama question . Although he had initially supported Ulysses S. Grant's election in 1868, he soon became one of his fiercest opponents. He then stood up for Horace Greeley as a presidential candidate and still enforced civil equality for African Americans in the Senate .

Charles Sumner died of a heart attack in Washington on March 11, 1874 . He was laid out in the rotunda of the United States Capitol . He is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts .

Posthumous honors

After Sumner are named:

• Sumner Tunnel in Boston , Massachusetts
• Charles Sumner House , Sumner's home in Boston
• Charles Sumner Elementary School in Roslindale , Massachusetts
• Charles Sumner School and Charles Sumner Museum in Washington, DC
• Sumner Elementary School in Syracuse , New York, today Peace-Sumner Headstart Preschool
• Sumner Elementary School in Topeka , Kansas, this school is closed today. She played a key role in the historic Brown v. Board of Education . It is now on the National Register of Historic Places
• Sumner Academy of Arts & Science in Kansas City , Kansas
• Sumner County , Kansas
• Sumner, Iowa
• Sumner, Nebraska
• Sumner, Washington
• Sumner, Oregon
• Charles Sumner Av., Distrito Nacional, Dominican Republic , El Caribe
• SS Charles Sumner, a cargo ship in World War II was used

literature

• David Herbert Donald : Charles Sumner. Da Capo Press, Boston 1996, ISBN 978-0-306-80720-6 .
• William M. Cornell, editor: Charles Sumner: memoir and eulogies . A sketch of his life by the editor, an original article by Bishop Gilbert Haven, and the eulogies pronounced by eminent men. Publisher: James H. Earle, Boston 1874.
• Literature on Charles Sumner on the Internet Archive - online

Web links

Commons : Charles Sumner  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Charles Sumner  - Sources and full texts (English)

• Charles Sumner in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Violence Over Slavery on the Floor of the US Senate. A Southern Congressman Attacked a Northern Senator With a Cane
• The impeachment of Andrew Johnson

• Charles Sumner in the database of Find a Grave (English)