Lot (2) Charles Sumner Barbarism Slavery Repeal Missouri Prohibition 1854 1860

  

Charles Sumner, on the Bill. Charles Sumner, on the Bill for the Admission of Kansas as a Free State.

In the United states Senate, June 4, 1860. Washington, DC: Thaddeus Hyatt, 1860. Wrappers separated but present, some light foxing Sumner delivered this strong attack on slavery, especially its extension in Kansas.

This was his first speech after returning to the Senate upon his recovery from his caning by Preston Brooks in 1856. Charles Sumner, against the Repeal of the Missouri Prohibition of Slavery North of 36° 30'.

In the Senate, February 21, 1854. (Signed by Alexander De Witt notable Massachusetts Aboltionists) Washington, D. Buell & Blanchard, Printers, 1854. Self-wrapper and untrimmed, as issued. Mild creasing in some margins; very good.

Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811 - March 11, 1874) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery. He chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1861 to 1871, until he lost the position following a dispute with President Ulysses S. Grant over the attempted annexation of Santo Domingo. After breaking with Grant, he joined the Liberal Republican Party, spending his final two years in the Senate alienated from his party.

Sumner had a controversial and divisive legacy for many years after his death, but in recent decades, his historical reputation has improved in recognition of his early support for racial equality. Sumner began his political activism as a member of various anti-slavery groups, leading to his election to the U. Senate in 1851 as a member of the Free Soil Party; he soon became a founding member of the Republican Party.

In the Senate, he devoted his efforts to opposing the "Slave Power, "[1] which in 1856 culminated in a vicious beating, almost to the point of death, by Representative Preston Brooks on the Senate floor. [2] Sumner's severe injuries and extended absence from the Senate made him a symbol of the anti-slavery cause. Though he did not return to the Senate until 1859, Massachusetts reelected him in 1857, leaving his empty desk as a reminder of the incident, which polarized the nation as the Civil War approached. During the war, Sumner led the Radical Republican faction, which was critical of President Abraham Lincoln for being too moderate toward the South.

As chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sumner ensured that the United Kingdom and France did not intervene on behalf of the Confederate States. After the Union won the war and Lincoln was assassinated, Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens led congressional efforts to grant equal civil and voting rights to freedmen and to block ex-Confederates from power so they would not reverse the gains derived from the Union's victory in the war. President Andrew Johnson's persistent opposition to these efforts played a role in his impeachment in 1868.

During the Grant administration, Sumner fell out of favor with his party. After leading senators to defeat the Santo Domingo Treaty in 1870, Sumner denounced him in such terms that reconciliation was impossible, and Senate Republicans stripped him of his power. Sumner opposed Grant's 1872 reelection and supported Liberal Republican Horace Greeley. He died in office less than two years later. Early life, education, and law career Sumner's birthplace on Irving Street, Beacon Hill, Boston Charles Sumner was born on Irving Street in Boston on January 6, 1811.

His father, Charles Pinckney Sumner, was a Harvard-educated lawyer, abolitionist, and early proponent of racial integration of schools, who shocked 19th-century Boston by opposing anti-miscegenation laws. [3] His mother, Relief Jacob, worked as a seamstress before marrying Charles.

[4] Both of Sumner's parents were born in poverty and were described as exceedingly formal and undemonstrative. [5] His father served as Clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1806 to 1807 and from 1810 to 1811, and had a moderately successful legal practice. Throughout Sumner's childhood, his family teetered on the edge of the middle class. Sumner hated slavery and further told his son that freeing the slaves would "do us no good" unless society treated them equally.

[7] He was a close associate of Unitarian leader William Ellery Channing. Expanding on Channing's argument that human beings had infinite potential to improve themselves, Sumner concluded that environment had "an important, if not controlling influence" in shaping people. [8] Thus, if society gave precedence to "knowledge, virtue and religion", then the most forlorn shall grow into forms of unimagined strength and beauty. [9] Moral law, he believed, was as important for governments as it was for individuals, and legal institutions that inhibited personal progress-like slavery or segregation-were evil.

[9] The family's fortunes improved in 1825, when Charles P. Sumner became Sheriff of Suffolk County; he held the position until his death in 1838.

[10] The family attended Trinity Church, but after 1825, they occupied a pew in King's Chapel. [11] Sumner's father was also able to provide higher education for his children; the young Charles attended Boston Latin School, where he befriended Robert Charles Winthrop, James Freeman Clarke, Samuel Francis Smith, and Wendell Phillips. [3] In 1830, he graduated from Harvard College, where he lived in Hollis Hall and was a member of the Porcellian Club.

He then attended Harvard Law School, where he became a protégé of Joseph Story and an enthusiastic student of jurisprudence. [12] After graduating in 1834, Sumner was admitted to the bar and entered private practice in Boston in partnership with George Stillman Hillard.

[12] He contributed to the quarterly American Jurist and edited Story's court decisions as well as some law texts. From 1836 to 1837, Sumner lectured at Harvard Law School. Travels in Europe In 1837, Sumner visited Europe with financial support from benefactors, including Story and Congressman Richard Fletcher. He landed at Le Havre and found the cathedral at Rouen striking: The great lion of the north of France.

Transcending all that my imagination had pictured. [13] He reached Paris in December, studied French, and visited the Louvre.

[14] He mastered French within six months and attended lectures at the Sorbonne on subjects ranging from geology to Greek history to criminal law. [15] In his journal for January 20, 1838, Sumner noted that one lecturer "had quite a large audience among whom I noticed two or three blacks, or rather mulattos-two-thirds black perhaps-dressed quite à la mode and having the easy, jaunty air of young men of fashion. " who were "well received" by the other students after the lecture. He continued:[16] They were standing in the midst of a knot of young men and their color seemed to be no objection to them. I was glad to see this, though with American impressions, it seemed very strange.

It must be then that the distance between free blacks and whites among us is derived from education, and does not exist in the nature of things. Sumner decided that Americans' predisposition to see blacks as inferior was a learned viewpoint, and he determined to become an abolitionist upon returning to America. [17] Over the next three years, Sumner became fluent in Spanish, German, and Italian, [18] and met with many leading European statesmen.

[19] In 1838, he visited Britain, where Lord Brougham declared that he "had never met with any man of Sumner's age of such extensive legal knowledge and natural legal intellect". [20] Though he often praised British society as more refined than American, Sumner published a fierce defense of the American position in the dispute over the Maine-Canada boundary, circulated by Minister to France Lewis Cass.

[12][21] Sumner developed friendships with several prominent Bostonians, particularly Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose house he visited regularly in the 1840s. [22] Longfellow's daughters found his stateliness amusing; he would ceremoniously open doors for the children while saying "In presequas" ("after you") in a sonorous tone. [22] Early political activism Sumner embarked on a public political career in 1845, when he emerged as one of the most prominent critics of slavery in the city of Boston and the state of Massachusetts, a hotbed of abolitionist sentiment. In July, Sumner delivered the Boston Independence Day oration, on the subject The True Grandeur of Nations. His speech was critical of the move toward war with Mexico and an impassioned appeal for freedom and peace.

[12] Sumner considered the conflict a war of aggression but was primarily concerned that captured territories would expand slavery westward. He soon became a sought-after orator for formal occasions throughout Boston. His lofty themes and stately eloquence made a profound impression. His platform presence was imposing.

He stood 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) tall, with a massive frame. His voice was clear and powerful. His gestures were unconventional and individual, but vigorous and impressive. His literary style was florid, with much detail, allusion, and quotation, often from the Bible as well as the Greeks and Romans.

[12] Longfellow wrote that he delivered speeches "like a cannoneer ramming down cartridges", while Sumner himself said that you might as well look for a joke in the Book of Revelation. [23] Following the annexation of Texas as a slave state in December, Sumner took an active role in the anti-slavery movement. In 1847, he denounced the declaration of war against Mexico with such vigor that he was recognized as a leader of the "Conscience" faction of the Massachusetts Whig Party. He declined the Whig nomination for the United States House of Representatives in 1848, [12] instead helping organize the Free Soil Party and becoming chairman of the state party's executive committee, a position he used to advocate for abolition and build a coalition that included anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats. [24] Sumner also took an active role in other social causes.

He worked with Horace Mann to improve Massachusetts's system of public education, advocated prison reform, and represented the plaintiffs in Roberts v. City of Boston, which challenged the legality of racial segregation in public schools. Arguing before the Massachusetts Supreme Court, Sumner noted that schools for blacks were physically inferior and that segregation bred harmful psychological and sociological effects-arguments made in Brown v. Board of Education over a century later.

[25] Sumner lost the case, but the Massachusetts General Court abolished school segregation in 1855. Despite the private agreement, conservative Democrats opposed his candidacy and called for a less radical candidate.

The impasse was broken after three months and Sumner was elected on a parliamentary technicality by a one-vote majority on April 24, 1851, in part thanks to the support of Senate President Henry Wilson. [26] His election marked a sharp break in Massachusetts politics, as his abolitionist politics contrasted sharply those of his best-known predecessor in the seat, Daniel Webster, one of the foremost supporters of the Compromise of 1850 and its Fugitive Slave Act. [27] For the first few sessions, Sumner did not promote any of his controversial causes. On August 26, 1852, he delivered his maiden speech, despite strenuous efforts to dissuade him. This oratorical effort incorporated a popular abolitionist motto, "Freedom National; Slavery Sectional, " as its title.

In it, Sumner attacked the Fugitive Slave Act. [28] Though both major party platforms affirmed every provision of the Compromise of 1850 as final, including the Fugitive Slave Act, Sumner called for its repeal. For more than three hours, he denounced it as a violation of the Constitution, an affront to the public conscience, and an offence against divine law.

[29] After his speech, a senator from Alabama urged that there be no reply: The ravings of a maniac may sometimes be dangerous, but the barking of a puppy never did any harm. Sumner's outspoken opposition to slavery made him few friends in the Senate. [30] The "Crime against Kansas" and beating by Preston Brooks Further information: Caning of Charles Sumner Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Crime against Kansas On May 19 and 20, 1856, during the civil unrest known as "Bleeding Kansas, " Sumner denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in his "Crime against Kansas" speech.

[31] The long speech argued for Kansas's immediate admission as a free state and denounced "Slave Power"-the political power of the slave owners. Their motivation, he alleged, was to spread slavery even to free territories:[32] Not in any common lust for power did this uncommon tragedy have its origin. It is the rape of a virgin Territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of slavery; and it may be clearly traced to a depraved desire for a new Slave State, hideous offspring of such a crime, in the hope of adding to the power of slavery in the National Government.

[33] Sumner verbally attacked authors of the Act, Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina: The senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight-I mean the harlot, slavery. For her his tongue is always profuse in words.

Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this senator. Lithograph of Preston Brooks' 1856 attack on Sumner Two days later, on the afternoon of May 22, Representative Preston Brooks, Butler's first cousin once removed, [34][35] confronted Sumner in the Senate chamber and beat him severely on the head, using a thick gutta-percha cane with a gold head. Sumner was knocked down and trapped under the heavy desk, which was bolted to the floor. Blinded by his own blood, he staggered up the aisle and collapsed into unconsciousness.

Brooks continued to beat the motionless Sumner until his cane broke, at which point he continued to strike Sumner with the remaining piece. [36] Several other senators attempted to help Sumner, but were blocked by Laurence Keitt, who brandished a pistol and shouted, Let them be!

[37] The episode became a symbol of polarization in the antebellum period; Sumner became a martyr in the North and Brooks a hero in the South. Thousands attended rallies in support of Sumner throughout the North. Louisa May Alcott described a rally in Boston on November 3 in a letter to Anna Alcott: Eight hundred gentlemen on horseback escorted him and formed a line up Beacon St. Through which he rode smiling and bowing, he looked pale but otherwise as usual.

The only time Sumner rose along the route was when he passed the Orphan Asylum and saw all the little blue aproned girls waving their hands to him. I thought it was very sweet in him to do that honor to the fatherless and motherless children.

A little child was carried out to give him a great bouquet, which he took and kissed the baby bearer. The streets were lined with wreaths, flags, and loving people to welcome the good man back....

And tho I was only a'love lorn' governess I waved my cotton handkerchief like a meek banner to my hero with honorable wounds on his head and love of little children in his heart. I could not hear the speeches at the State House so I tore down Hancock St. And got a place opposite his house.

I saw him go in, and soon after the cheers of the horsemen and crowd brought him smiling to the window, he only bowed, but when the leader of the cavelcade cried out'Three cheers for the mother of Charles Sumner! He stepped back and soon appeared leading an old lady who nodded, waved her hand, put down the curtain, and then with a few dozen more cheers the crowd dispersed. I was so excited I pitched about like a mad woman, shouted, waved, hung onto fences, rushed thro crowds, and swarmed about in a state of rapterous insanity till it was all over and then I went home hoarse and worn out. " More than a million copies of Sumner's "Crime against Kansas speech were distributed. Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked, I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilised community can constitute one state. I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom. [38] Conversely, Brooks was praised by Southern newspapers. The Richmond Enquirer editorialized that Sumner should be caned "every morning" and Southerners sent Brooks hundreds of new canes in endorsement of his assault. Southern lawmakers made rings out of the cane's remains, which they wore on neck chains to show solidarity with Brooks.

[39] Historian William Gienapp has concluded that Brooks's assault was of critical importance in transforming the struggling Republican party into a major political force. [40] Theological and legal scholar William R. Long characterized the speech as "a most rebarbative and vituperative speech on the Senate floor", which flows with Latin quotations and references to English and Roman history. " In his eyes, the speech was "a gauntlet thrown down, a challenge to the'Slave Power' to admit once and for all that it were encircling the free states with their tentacular grip and gradually siphoning off the breath of democracy-loving citizens. "[32] 1860 steel-engraved portrait of Sumner In addition to head trauma, Sumner suffered "psychic wounds, now understood to be post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Massachusetts General Court reelected him in November 1856, believing that his vacant chair in the Senate chamber served as a powerful symbol of free speech and resistance to slavery. His doctors advised a sea voyage and a complete separation from the cares and responsibilities that must beset him at home. He sailed for Europe and immediately found relief. [42] During two months in Paris in the spring of 1857, he renewed friendships, especially with Thomas Gold Appleton, dined out frequently, and attended the opera.

His contacts there included Alexis de Tocqueville, poet Alphonse de Lamartine, former French Prime Minister François Guizot, Ivan Turgenev, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. [42] Sumner toured several countries, including Prussia and Scotland, before returning to Washington, where he spent only a few days in the Senate in December. Both then and during several later attempts to return to work, he found himself exhausted just listening to Senate business. He sailed once more for Europe on May 22, 1858, the second anniversary of Brooks's attack.

[42] In Paris, prominent physician Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard diagnosed Sumner's condition as spinal cord damage that he could treat by burning the skin along the spinal cord. Sumner chose to refuse anaesthesia, which was thought to reduce the effectiveness of the procedure. Observers both at the time and since doubt Brown-Séquard's efforts were of value.

[42] After spending weeks recovering from these treatments, Sumner resumed his touring, this time as far east as Dresden and Prague and south to Italy twice. In France he visited Brittany and Normandy, as well as Montpellier. Though fellow Republicans advised a less strident tone, he answered: When crime and criminals are thrust before us, they are to be met by all the energies that God has given us by argument, scorn, sarcasm and denunciation.

" He delivered his first return speech, "The Barbarism of Slavery, on June 4, 1860. He attacked attempts to depict slavery as a benevolent institution, said it stifled economic development in the South, and that it left slaveholders reliant on "the bludgeon, the revolver, and the bowie-knife". He addressed an anticipated objection on the part of one of his colleagues: Say, sir, in your madness, that you own the sun, the stars, the moon; but do not say that you own a man, endowed with a soul that shall live immortal, when sun and moon and stars have passed away. " Even allies found his language too strong, one calling it "harsh, vindictive, and slightly brutal. [45] He spent the summer rallying the anti-slavery forces for the election of 1860 and opposing talk of compromise. Photograph your local culture, help Wikipedia and win! Hide Contents (Top) References External links Alexander De Witt Article Talk Read Edit View history Tools From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Alexander De Witt From the Clara Barton Papers in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 9th district In office March 4, 1853 - March 3, 1857 Preceded by Edward P. Born in New Braintree, Massachusetts, De Witt worked in textile manufacturing in Oxford, Massachusetts.

Active in politics as a Democrat, he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1830, serving until 1836. He served in the Massachusetts State Senate in 1842, 1844, 1850, and 1851. [citation needed] An anti-slavery activist, De Witt later joined the Free Soil Party. As a Free Soiler he was elected to the United States Congress in 1853.

In January 1854, he was one of six signatories of the "Appeal of the Independent Democrats", drafted to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act. After the demise of the Free Soil Party, De Witt joined the American Party, then the only major party with an anti-slavery platform. He won a second term in 1854, and served in the 34th Congress. De Witt later became a Republican, and supported the Union during the American Civil War by participating in efforts to recruit and equip soldiers for Massachusetts regiments.

De Witt died in Oxford on January 13, 1879. He is buried in Oxford's South Cemetery.