| Charles Sumner | |
|---|---|
| Daguerreotype of Senator Sumner, 1855 | |
| United States Senator from Massachusetts |
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| In office April 24, 1851 – March 11, 1874 |
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| Preceded by | Robert Rantoul, Jr. |
| Succeeded by | William B. Washburn |
| Personal details | |
| Born | January 6, 1811 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Died | March 11, 1874 (aged 63) Washington, D.C. |
| Political party | Republican (earlier Whig, Free Soil, Democrat) |
| Spouse(s) | Alice Mason Hooper |
| Profession | Politician |
| Religion | Episcopal, Unitarian |
| Signature | |
Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811-March 11, 1874) 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 and Reconstruction, working to punish the ex-Confederates and guarantee equal rights to the Freedmen.
Sumner changed his political party several times, gaining fame as a Republican. One of the most learned statesmen of the era, he specialized in foreign affairs, working closely with Abraham Lincoln to keep the British and the French from intervening on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War. He devoted his enormous energies to the destruction of what he considered 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, South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks nearly killed Sumner on the Senate floor for ridiculing slaveowners as pimps in his vitriolic denunciation of the "Crime against Kansas." After three years of medical treatment Sumner returned to the Senate as the war began. He became the chief Senate spokesman on foreign affairs, and a leader of the Radical Republicans who sought to destroy slavery and radically transform the South. As the chief Radical leader in the Senate during Reconstruction, 1865–1871, Sumner fought hard to provide equal civil and voting rights for the freedmen on the grounds that "consent of the governed" was a basic principle of American republicanism, and to block ex-Confederates from power so they would not reverse the North's victory in the Civil War. Sumner, teaming with House leader Thaddeus Stevens, defeated Andrew Johnson's reconstruction plans and imposed Radical views on the South. In 1871, however, he broke with President Ulysses Grant. Grant's Senate supporters then took away Sumner's power base, his committee chairmanship. Sumner concluded that Grant's corrupt despotism and the success of Reconstruction policies called for new national leadership. He opposed Grant's reelection by supporting the Liberal Republican candidate Horace Greeley in 1872 and lost his power inside the Republican party.
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Sumner was born on Irving Street in Boston on January 6, 1811. He was the son of Charles Pinckney Sumner, a progressive Harvard-educated lawyer, abolitionist, and early proponent of racially integrated schools, who shocked 19th century Boston by opposing anti-miscegenation laws.[1] His father had been born in poverty[2] and his mother shared a similar background and worked as a seamstress prior to her marriage.[2] Sumner's parents were described as exceedingly formal and undemonstrative.[2] His father's legal practice was a failure, and throughout Sumner's childhood his family teetered on the edge of the middle class.[2] The family attended Trinity Church, but after 1825 the family occupied a pew in King's Chapel.[3]
Sumner's father hated slavery and told Sumner that freeing the slaves would "do us no good" unless they were treated equally by society.[4] Sumner was a close associate of William Ellery Channing, an influential Unitarian minister in Boston. Channing believed that human beings had an infinite potential to improve themselves. Expanding on this argument, Sumner concluded that environment had "an important, if not controlling influence" in shaping individuals.[5] By creating a society where "knowledge, virtue and religion" took precedence, "the most forlorn shall grow into forms of unimagined strength and beauty."[6] Moral law, he believed, was as important for governments as it was for individuals, and legal institutions that inhibited ones ability to grow—like slavery or segregation—were evil. While Sumner often viewed contemporary society critically, his faith in reform was unshakable. When accused of utopianism, he replied "The Utopias of one age have been the realities of the next."[7]
Sumner attended the Boston Latin School, where he counted Robert Charles Winthrop, James Freeman Clarke, Samuel Francis Smith, and Wendell Phillips, among his closest friends.[1] He graduated in 1830 from Harvard College, where he lived in Hollis Hall, and in 1834 from Harvard Law School where he became a protege of Joseph Story. At Harvard, he was a member of the Porcellian Club.
In 1834, Sumner was admitted to the bar and entered private practice in Boston in partnership with George Stillman Hillard. A visit to Washington decided him against a political career, and he returned to Boston resolved to practice law. 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.
Sumner traveled to Europe in 1837. 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.[8] He reached Paris in December, began to study French, and visited the Louvre "with a throb," describing how his ignorance of art made him feel "cabined cribbed, confined" until repeat visits allowed works by Raphael and Leonardo to change his understanding: "They touched my mind, untutored as it is, like a rich strain of music."[9] He mastered French in six months and attended lectures at the Sorbonne on subjects ranging from geology to Greek history to criminal law.[10] In his journal for January 20, 1838, he 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:[11]
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.
He joined other Americans who were studying medicine on morning rounds at the city's great hospitals.[12] In the course of three more years he became fluent in Spanish, German, and Italian, and he met with many of the leading statesmen in Europe. In 1838, Sumner 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."[13] He returned to the U.S. in 1840.
In 1840, at the age of 29, Sumner returned to Boston to practice law but devoted more time to lecturing at Harvard Law, editing court reports, and contributing to law journals, especially on historical and biographical themes.
Sumner developed friendships with several prominent Bostonians, particularly Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose house he visited regularly in the 1840s. Longfellow's daughters found his stateliness amusing. Sumner would ceremoniously open doors for the children while saying "In presequas" in a sonorous tone.[14]
In 1845, he delivered an Independence Day oration on "The True Grandeur of Nations" in Boston. He spoke against the Mexican-American War and made an impassioned appeal for freedom and peace.
He became a sought-after orator for formal occasions. His lofty themes and stately eloquence made a profound impression. His platform presence was imposing. He stood six feet and four inches tall, with a massive frame. His voice was clear and of great power. 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. Henry Wadsworth 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."
Following the annexation of Texas as a new slave-holding state in 1845, Sumner took an active role in the anti-slavery movement. That same year, Sumner represented the plaintiffs in Roberts v. Boston, a case which challenged the legality of segregation. 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 that would be made in Brown v. Board of Education over a century later.[15] Sumner lost the case, but the Massachusetts legislature abolished school segregation in 1855.
Sumner worked with Horace Mann to improve the system of public education in Massachusetts. He advocated prison reform. In opposing the Mexican-American War, he considered it a war of aggression, but was primarily concerned that captured territories would expand slavery westward. In 1847, Sumner denounced a Boston Representative's vote for the declaration of war against Mexico with such vigor that he became a leader of the Conscience Whigs faction of the Massachusetts Whig Party. He declined to accept their nomination for U.S Representative in 1848.
Instead, Sumner helped organize the Free Soil Party, which opposed both the Democrats and the Whigs, who had nominated Zachary Taylor, a slave-owning Southerner, for President. Sumner ran for U.S. Representative as a Free Soil candidate and lost.
In 1851, Democrats gained control of the Massachusetts state legislature in coalition with the Free Soilers. The Free Soilers named Sumner their choice for U.S. Senator. The Democrats initially opposed him and called for a less radical candidate. The impasse was broken after three months and Sumner was elected by a one-vote majority on April 24, 1851. His election marked a sharp break in Massachusetts politics, as his abolitionist politics contrasted sharply those of the senator whose seat he occupied, Daniel Webster, one of the foremost supporters of the Compromise of 1850 and its Fugitive Slave Act.[16]
Sumner took his Senate seat in late 1851 as a Democrat. For the first few sessions, Sumner did not promote any of his controversial causes. On August 26, 1852, Sumner, despite strenuous efforts to dissuade him, delivered his first major speech, titled with a popular abolitionist motto: "Freedom National; Slavery Sectional". He attacked the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.[17] 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.[18]
Though the conventions of both major parties had just affirmed the finality of every provision of the Compromise of 1850, including the Fugitive Slave Act, Sumner called for the Act's repeal. For more than three hours he denounced it as a violation of the Constitution, an affront to the public conscience, and an offense against divine law. The speech provoked a storm of anger in the South, but it made Sumner's reputation in the North.
Though the "Crime against Kansas" speech is very long, “it really is very simply arranged. Sumner is arguing in it for the immediate admission of Kansas into the Union as a free state (his fears of Missouri slave-holders crossing into KS, wreaking havoc with the population, cowing them into submission and imposing a proslavery government there were amply justified). But he is not content in the speech merely to argue placidly for KS's immediate admission to the Union. Rather, he turns his speech into an expose of the designs of what he calls the "Slave Power"--the unified and relentless machinations of the South gradually to enslave the free-states as they had enbondaged their Black slaves. The three major points he discusses are these: (1) The true crime against Kansas, in its origin and extent; (2) The apologies (i.e., the defenses offered up) for the crime; and (3) The true remedy for the crime.” [19] In 1856, during the "Bleeding Kansas" crisis, Sumner denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In his speech on May 19 and May 20, Sumner attacked the Act. Its motivation, he said, was to rape a virgin:
Sumner then attacked authors of the Act, Senators Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina. He said that Butler had taken "a mistress 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." According to Hoffer (2010), "It is also important to note the sexual imagery that recurred throughout the oration, which was neither accidental nor without precedent. Abolitionists routinely accused slaveholders of maintaining slavery so that they could engage in forcible sexual relations with their slaves."[21] Sumner also attacked the honor of South Carolina having alluded in his speech that the history of the state be "blotted out of existence..."[22] Sumner's three-hour oration also mocked the 59-year-old Butler's manner of speech and physical mannerisms, which were impaired by a stroke. Douglas said to a colleague during the speech that "this damn fool Sumner is going to get himself shot by some other damn fool."[23]
Representative Preston Brooks, Butler's nephew, was infuriated, intended to challenge Sumner to a duel, and consulted with fellow South Carolina Representative Laurence M. Keitt on dueling etiquette. Keitt told him that dueling was for gentlemen of equal social standing, and that Sumner was no better than a drunkard, due to the supposedly coarse language he had used during his speech. Brooks concluded in turn that since Sumner was no gentlemen, it would be more appropriate to beat him with his cane.
Two days later, on the afternoon of May 22, Brooks confronted Sumner as he sat writing at his desk in the almost empty Senate chamber: "Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine." As Sumner began to stand up, Brooks beat Sumner severely on the head before he could reach his feet, 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), but Brooks continued to strike Sumner until Sumner ripped the desk from the floor. By this time, Sumner was blinded by his own blood, and he staggered up the aisle and collapsed, lapsing into unconsciousness. Brooks continued to beat the motionless Sumner until his cane broke at which point he left the chamber. Several other Senators attempted to help Sumner, but were blocked by Keitt who brandished a pistol and shouted, "Let them be!" Keitt was censured for his actions.
Brooks was later fined $300 for his actions.[24]
The attack revealed the increasing polarization of the United States at that time, as Sumner became a martyr in the North and Brooks a hero in the South. Northerners were outraged. The editor of the New York Evening Post, William Cullen Bryant, wrote:
The South cannot tolerate free speech anywhere, and would stifle it in Washington with the bludgeon and the bowie-knife, as they are now trying to stifle it in Kansas by massacre, rapine, and murder. Has it come to this, that we must speak with bated breath in the presence of our Southern masters? ... Are we to be chastised as they chastise their slaves? Are we too, slaves, slaves for life, a target for their brutal blows, when we do not comport ourselves to please them?
The outrage in the North was loud and strong. Thousands attended rallies in support of Sumner in Boston, Albany, Cleveland, Detroit, New Haven, New York, and Providence. More than a million copies of Sumner's speech were distributed. Two weeks after the caning, Ralph Waldo Emerson described the divide the incident represented: "I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute one state. I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom."[25] Conversely, Brooks was praised by Southern newspapers. The Richmond Enquirer editorialized that Sumner should be caned "every morning," praising the attack as "good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequences" and denounced "these vulgar abolitionists in the Senate" who "have been suffered to run too long without collars. They must be lashed into submission." Many Southerners sent Brooks new canes, in endorsement of his assault. Historian William Gienapp has concluded that Brooks' "assault was of critical importance in transforming the struggling Republican party into a major political force."[26]
Theological and legal scholar Dr. William R. Long praised 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 “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.”[19]
In addition to the head trauma, Sumner suffered from nightmares, severe headaches, and what is now understood to be post-traumatic stress disorder[27] or "psychic wounds."[28] When he spent months convalescing, his political enemies ridiculed him and accused him of cowardice for not resuming his duties. 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.[29]
When he returned to the Senate in 1857, he was unable to last a day. 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.[30] 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 several nights in a row. His contacts there included Alexis de Tocqueville, poet Alphonse de Lamartine, former French Prime Minister François Guizot, Ivan Turgenev, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.[31] Sumner then toured several countries, including Germany 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' attack.[32]
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 anesthesia, 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.[33] After spending weeks recovering from these treatments, Sumner resumed his touring, this time traveling as far east as Dresden and Prague and south to Italy twice. In France he visited Brittany and Normandy, as well as Montpellier. He wrote his brother: "If anyone cares to know how I am doing, you can say better and better."[34]
Sumner returned to the Senate in 1859. When fellow Republicans advised taking a less strident tone than he had years earlier, 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 speech following his return on June 4, 1860, during the 1860 presidential election. In "The Barbarism of Slavery", he attacked attempts to depict slavery as a benevolent institution, said it had 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."[35] He spent the summer rallying the anti-slavery forces and opposing talk of compromise.[36]
Sen. Sumner was a member of a faction of the Republican Party known as the Radicals.[37] In March 1861, after the withdrawal of Southern Senators, Sumner became chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. The Radicals primarily advocated the immediate abolition of slavery and the destruction of the Southern planter class. Senate Radicals included Sumner, Sen. Zachariah Chandler, and Sen. Benjamin Wade.[37] During the American Civil War, after the fall of Fort Sumter, in April 1861, Sumner, Chandler and Wade repeatedly visited President Abraham Lincoln at the White House speaking on slavery and the rebellion.[37] Although like-minded on slavery, the Radicals were loosely organized and disagreed with one another on other issues such as the tariff and currency issues.[38]
Although the Radical Senators desired the immediate emancipation of slaves, President Lincoln, in 1861, was initially resistant to freeing the slaves, since the Union slaves states Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri would be encouraged to join the Confederacy.[37] Sen. Sumner, however, knew that the pressure of the Civil War would eventually cause President Lincoln to free the slaves. As a compromise, the Radicals and President Lincoln passed two Confiscation Acts in 1861 and 1862 that allowed the Union military to free confiscated slaves who were carrying weapons, among other tasks, for the Confederate army. Sen. Sumner and other Radicals had persistently advocated that President Lincoln emancipate the slaves.[37] Lincoln, however, had adopted a moderated plan of gradual emancipation of slaves and compensation to the slave owners. Sen. Sumner believed that emancipating the slaves would keep Britain from entering the Civil War and the millions of slaves freed from bondage would give America higher moral standing. Lincoln described Sumner as "my idea of a bishop", and consulted him as an embodiment of the conscience of the American people.[39] On January 1, 1863 President Lincoln, out of military necessity, issued the Emancipation Proclamation.[37]
On December 9, 1861 the Senate Radicals established the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, whose purpose was to investigate battle defeats and determine the loyalty of generals fighting for the Union War effort.[40] The committee was formed at the instigation of Radical Sen. Chandler after the Union defeat at the Battle of Ball's Bluff, under the command of Union Brig. General Charles P. Stone.[40] At the Ball's Bluff battle on October 21, 1861, Union Senator and Colonel Edward D. Baker, who was a close friend of President Lincoln's, was killed and Brig. Gen. Stone was blamed for the defeat by the Union press. Sen. Sumner, upset at having learned Brig. Gen. Stone had ordered two runaway slaves to be denied asylum in the Union Army, castigated Brig. Gen. Stone in a Senate speech.[40] Brig. Gen. Stone wrote Sen. Sumner a terse letter and demanded satisfaction from Sen. Sumner. On January 31, 1862 Brig. Gen. Stone defended himself in front of the Senate Committee under Radical chairman Sen. Wade.[40] Indicted under suspicion of treason, without any trial, Brig. Gen. Stone was arrested on February 8, 1862 and federally imprisoned for 189 days.[40]
On the onset of the American Civil War in 1861, President Lincoln's administration made a great effort to ensure the war would not be a revolution waged against slavery.[41] Sen. Sumner had counseled President Lincoln in May to make the end of slavery the primary objective. Sen. Sumner believed President Lincoln's policy to save the Union, rather then abolish slavery, was a mistake.[41] In October 1861, at the Massachusetts state Republican Convention in Worcester, Sen. Sumner took an unprecedented step and spoke openly in a speech that the Civil War's sole cause was slavery and the primary objective of the Union government was to destroy slavery. Sen. Sumner stated that the Union government had the power to invoke martial law and emancipate the slaves.[41] The speech caused controversy among the conservative Boston press. Sen. Sumner's speech was denounced as incendiary and Sumner was viewed as mentally ill and a "candidate for the insane asylum".[41] The Free Soil faction of the Republican Party fully endorsed Sen. Sumner's speech. Sumner continued to make public speeches that the goal of the Civil War was to end slavery by emancipation.[41]
On November 8, 1861 the Union naval ship, USS San Jacinto, under the command of Capt. Charles Wilkes, intercepted the British steamer, RMS Trent, captured and put into U.S. port custody two Confederate diplomats James M. Mason and John Slidell.[42] The northern people and press were in favor of the capture, however, there was concern that the British would use this as grounds to go to war with the United States. The British government dispatched 8,000 British troops on the Canadian border and efforts were made to strengthen the British fleet.[42] Sec. Seward believed that Mason and Slidell were contraband of war. Sen. Sumner, however, believed that the men did not qualify as war contraband, since they were unarmed, and that their release with an apology by the U.S. Government was appropriate. In the Senate, Sen. Sumner suppressed open debate in order to save Lincoln’s administration from embarrassment. On December 25, 1861 at Lincoln's invitation, Sumner read letters he received from prominent British political figures, including Cobden, Bright, Gladstone, and the Duke of Argyll, to Lincoln's Cabinet. The letters provided critical information on political sentiment in Britain and supported the envoys' return to the British.[43] President Lincoln reluctantly ordered the release of the Confederate captives to British custody and apologized for their capture. After the Trent Affair, Sen. Sumner's reputation improved among conservative Northerners.[42]
As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sumner renewed his efforts to win U.S. diplomatic recognition of Haiti. Haiti had sought recognition since winning independence in 1804 but faced opposition from Southern Senators. In their absence, the U.S. recognized Haiti in 1862.[44]
Osofsky argues that Sumner (and like minded Yankees) saw the war as a "death struggle" between "two mutually contradictory civilizations." The solution for Sumner, "the way to 'civilize' and 'Americanize' the South was to make it over into an idealized version of New England. It was to be conquered and then forcibly molded into a society defined in northern terms.[45]
In February, 1865 there was considerable debate over authorizing the creation of a memorial to United States Chief Justice Roger Taney . Sumner was a longtime enemy of Chief Justice Taney and attacked his decision in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case. Speaking on the Senate Floor of the United States, in an argument with Sen. Lyman Trumbull, Sen. Sumner, who objected to the memorials creation, stated:[46]
I speak what cannot be denied when I declare that the opinion of the Chief Justice in the case of Dred Scott was more thoroughly abominable than anything of the kind in the history of courts. Judicial baseness reached its lowest point on that occasion. You have not forgotten that terrible decision where a most unrighteous judgment was sustained by a falsification of history. Of course, the Constitution of the United States and every principle of Liberty was falsified, but historical truth was falsified also ...
Throughout the war, Sumner had been the special champion of blacks, being the most vigorous advocate of emancipation, of enlisting blacks in the Union army, and of the establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau. As the Radical Republican leader in the post-war Senate, Sumner fought to provide equal civil and voting rights for the freedmen on the grounds that "consent of the governed" was a basic principle of American republicanism and in order to keep ex-Confederates from gaining political offices and undoing the North's victory in the Civil War.
The Reconstruction Era of the United States after the American Civil War has traditionally been viewed as one of Southern exploitation and corruption by Northern politicians and harsh federal policies by the Radical Republicans.[47] The plight of the freedmen during Reconstruction was largely ignored by conservative historians who followed the Dunning School. According to historian Eric Foner, during the 1960s, revisionist historians have reinterpreted Reconstruction "in the light of changed attitudes toward the place of blacks within American society."[47] Charles Sumner, a Radical Republican, has emerged as an idealist and a champion for African American civil rights through this turbulent and controversial period of United States History.[47]
Sumner and his fellow Radicals overrode President Johnson's vetoes and imposed some of their views, though Sumner's most radical ideas were not implemented.
Sumner's radical theory of Reconstruction proposed that nothing restricted the Congress in determining how to treat the 11 defeated states. He argued that by declaring secession they had committed felo de se (state suicide) and were now conquered territories that should be treated as if they had never been states. He objected to Lincoln's and later Andrew Johnson's more lenient Reconstruction policies as too generous to the South and an encroachment upon the powers of Congress.
Sumner was a friend of Samuel Gridley Howe and a guiding force for the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, started in 1863. He was one of the most prominent advocates for suffrage for blacks, along with free homesteads and free public schools. His uncompromising attitude did not endear him to moderates and sometimes inhibited his effectiveness as a legislator. He was largely excluded from work on the Thirteenth Amendment, in part because he did not get along with Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee and did much of the work on it. Sumner introduced an alternative amendment that combined the Thirteenth Amendment with elements of the Fourteenth Amendment. It would have abolished slavery and declared that "all people are equal before the law". During Reconstruction, he often attacked civil rights legislation as inadequate and fought for legislation to give land to freed slaves. He viewed segregation and slavery as two sides of the same coin.[48] He introduced a civil rights bill in 1872 to mandate equal accommodation in all public places and required suits brought under the bill to be argued in the federal courts.[49] The bill failed, but Sumner still spoke of it on his deathbed.[50]
Sumner repeatedly tried to remove the word "white" from naturalization laws. He introduced bills to that effect in 1868 and 1869, but neither came to a vote. On July 2, 1870, Sumner moved to amend a pending bill in a way that would strike the word "white" wherever in all Congressional acts pertaining to naturalization of immigrants. On July 4, 1870, he said: "Senators undertake to disturb us ...by reminding us of the possibility of large numbers swarming from China; but the answer to all this is very obvious and very simple. If the Chinese come here, they will come for citizenship or merely for labor. If they come for citizenship, then in this desire do they give a pledge of loyalty to our institutions; and where is the peril in such vows? They are peaceful and industrious; how can their citizenship be the occasion of solicitude?" He accused legislators promoting anti-Chinese legislation of betraying the principles of the Declaration of Independence: "Worse than any heathen or pagan abroad are those in our midst who are false to our institutions." Sumner's bill failed, and from 1870 to 1943, and in some cases as late as 1952, Chinese and other Asians were ineligible for U.S. citizenship.[51]
Throughout March 1867, Sec. William H. Seward and Russian representative Edouard de Stoeckl met in Washington D.C. and negotiated a treaty for the annexation and sale of the Russian American territory of Alaska to the United States for $7,200,000.[52] President Johnson submitted the treaty to Congress for ratification with Sumner’s approval and on April 9, his foreign relations committee approved and sent the treaty to the Senate. In a 3-hour speech Sumner spoke in favor of the treaty on the Senate floor describing in detail Alaska’s imperial history, natural resources, population, and climate. Sumner wanted to block British expansion (from Canada), arguing that Alaska be geographically and financially strategic, especially for the Pacific Coast States. He said Alaska would increase America’s borders; spread republican institutions; and represent an act of friendship with Russia. The treaty won its needed two-thirds majority by one vote.[52]
The treaty did not formally recognize nor categorize any native Alaskan Eskimos or Indians; only referring to them as “uncivilized tribes” under the control of Congress.[53] By federal law, Native Alaskan tribes, including the Inuit, the Aleut, and the Athabascan were only entitled to land that they inhabited.[53] According to treaty, native Alaskan tribes were excluded from United States citizenship. However, citizenship was available to Russian residents. Creoles, persons of Russian and Indian descent, were considered Russian.[54] Sumner stated the new territory be called by its Aleutian name Alaska meaning "great land".[55] Sumner advocated citizens of Alaska free public education and equal protection laws.[55]
Sumner was well regarded in Great Britain, but after the war he sacrificed his reputation in Britain by his stand on U.S. claims for British breaches of neutrality. The U.S. had claims against Britain for the damage inflicted by Confederate raiding ships fitted out in British ports. Sumner held that since Britain had accorded the rights of belligerents to the Confederacy, it was responsible for extending the duration of the war and consequent losses. In 1869, he asserted that Britain should pay damages not merely for the raiders, but also for "that other damage, immense and infinite, caused by the prolongation of the war." He demanded $2,000,000 for these "national claims" in addition to $125,000,000 for damages from the raiders. Sumner did not expect that Britain ever would or could pay this immense sum, but he suggested that Britain turn over Canada as payment.[56] This proposition offended many Britons, and was not taken seriously by anyone. At the Geneva arbitration conference which settled U.S. claims against Britain, these "national claims" were abandoned.
Sumner had some influence over J. Lothrop Motley, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, causing him to disregard the instructions of Secretary of State Hamilton Fish on the matter. This offended President Grant and was given as the official reason for Motley's removal.[56]
In 1869, President Grant, in an expansionist plan, looked into the annexation of the Caribbean island country, the Dominican Republic, then known as Santo Domingo.[57] In July and November 1869, under authority of the President Grant and permission by the State Department, Orville Babcock, private secretary to President Grant, secretly negotiated a treaty with President Buenaventura Báez, President of the Dominican Republic. The initial treaty by Babcock had not been authorized by the State Department. The island nation, however, was on the verge of a civil war between President Báez and ex-President Marcos A. Cabral.[58] President Grant sent in the U.S. Navy to keep the Dominican Republic free from invasion and civil war while the treaty negotiations took place. This military action was controversial since the naval protection was unauthorized by the U.S. Congress.[59] The official treaty, drafted by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish in October 1869, annexed the Dominican Republic into the United States, gave eventual statehood, the lease of Samaná Bay for $150,000 yearly, and a $1,500,000 payment of the Dominican national debt.[60] In January 1870, in order to gain support for the treaty, President Grant visited Sen. Sumner's Washington home and mistakenly believed that Sumner had given consent for the treaty. Sen. Sumner stated that he would give the treaty consideration. This meeting would later lead to bitter contention between Sumner and Grant.[61] The treaty was formally submitted to the United States Senate on January 10, 1870.[62]
Sen. Sumner, opposed to American imperialism in the Caribbean, was adamant to keep the island nation independent. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Sumner initially withheld his opinion on the treaty on January 18, 1870.[63] Sen. Sumner had been leaked information from Assistant Secretary of State, Bancroft Davis, that U.S. Naval ships were being used to protect President Báez. Sen. Sumner' s committee voted against annexation and at Sen. Sumner’s suggestion, the Senate did not allow open debate of the treaty. President Grant persisted and sent messages to Congress in favor of annexation on March 14, 1870 and May 31, 1870.[64] Grant believed that the mineral resources on the island would be valuable to the United States, and that African Americans repressed in the South, would have a safe haven to migrate. A labor shortage in the South would force Southerners to be tolerant towards African Americans.[65] In closed session, Sen. Sumner spoke out against the treaty; having believed there would be difficulty with the foreign nationals, the chronic rebellion that took place on the island, and the African independence of Haiti, recognized by the United States in 1862, would be taken away. Finally, on June 30, 1870 the treaty was voted on by the Senate and defeated having failed to gain the required 2/3 majority for treaty passage.[66]
The following day, President Grant, feeling betrayed by Sen. Sumner, immediately retaliated by recalling Sumner’s close friend, J. Lothrop Motley, Ambassador to Britain.[67] President Grant then initiated a campaign to dispose of Sen. Sumner from the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As the rift between Grant and Sumner increased, Sumner’s health began to decline. When the 42nd U.S. Congress convened on March 4, 1871 Senators affiliated with President Grant, known as ‘’New Radicals’’ voted to oust Sen. Sumner from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairmanship.[68][69]
Sumner now turned against Grant. Like many other reformers, he decried the corruption in Grant's administration. Sumner believed that the civil rights program he championed could not be carried through by a corrupt government. In 1872, he joined the Liberal Republican Party which had been started by reformist Republicans such as Horace Greeley. The Liberal Republicans supported black suffrage and civil rights, but they also called for amnesty for ex-Confederates and an end to military occupation of the South because they thought the main goals of Reconstruction had been completed and that further military interference in politics was un-American. Sumner joined them because he believed now was the time for reconciliation and an end to wartime hatreds.[70]
Sumner promoted conciliatory positions. In 1872, he introduced a Senate resolution providing that Civil War battle names should not appear as "battle honors" on the regimental flags of the U.S. Army. This offended Union army veterans. The Massachusetts legislature denounced this battle-flag resolution as "an insult to the loyal soldiery of the nation" and as "meeting the unqualified condemnation of the people of the Commonwealth." poet John Greenleaf Whittier led an effort to rescind that censure and succeeded early in 1874.[71]
Sumner remained a champion of civil rights for blacks. He was a co-author of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which was introduced in 1870, and enacted a year after his death. It was the last civil rights legislation for 82 years. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1883 when it decided a group of cases known as the Civil Rights Cases.[72]
Charles Sumner died of a heart attack at his home in Washington, D.C., on March 11, 1874. He lay in state in the U.S. Capitol rotunda, the first Senator to do so. At his March 16 burial in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the pallbearers included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Greenleaf Whittier.[73]
Contemporaries and historians have explored Sumner's personality at length. Sumner's friend Senator Carl Schurz praised Sumner's integrity, his "moral courage," the "sincerity of his convictions," and the "disinterestedness of his motives." However, Sumner's Pulitzer-prize-winning biographer, David Donald, presents Sumner as an insufferably arrogant moralist; an egoist bloated with pride; pontifical and Olympian, and unable to distinguish between large issues and small ones. What's more, concludes Donald, Sumner was a coward who avoided confrontations with his many enemies, whom he routinely insulted in prepared speeches.[74]
Biographers have varied in their appraisal of Sumner. The Pulitzer Prize went to biographer David Donald whose two-volume biography points up Sumner's troubles in dealing with his colleagues:[75]
Distrusted by friends and allies, and reciprocating their distrust, a man of "ostentatious culture," "unvarnished egotism," and "'a specimen of prolonged and morbid juvenility,'" Sumner combined a passionate conviction in his own moral purity with a command of nineteenth-century "rhetorical flourishes" and a "remarkable talent for rationalization." Stumbling "into politics largely by accident," elevated to the United States Senate largely by chance, willing to indulge in "Jacksonian demagoguery" for the sake of political expediency, Sumner became a bitter and potent agitator of sectional conflict. Carving out a reputation as the South's most hated foe and the Negro's bravest friend, he inflamed sectional differences, advanced his personal fortunes, and helped bring about national tragedy."
Moorfield Storey, Sumner's private secretary for two years and subsequent biographer, seeing some of the same qualities, interprets them more kindly:
Charles Sumner was a great man in his absolute fidelity to principle, his clear perception of what his country needed, his unflinching courage, his perfect sincerity, his persistent devotion to duty, his indifference to selfish considerations, his high scorn of anything petty or mean. He was essentially simple to the end, brave, kind, and pure.... Originally modest and not self-confident, the result of his long contest was to make him egotistical and dogmatic. There are few successful men who escape these penalties of success, the common accompaniment of increasing years....Sumner's naively simple nature, his confidence in his fellows, and his lack of humor combined to prevent his concealing what many feel but are better able to hide. From the time he entered public life till he died he was a strong force constantly working for righteousness....To Sumner more than to any single man, except possibly Lincoln, the colored race owes its emancipation and such measure of equal rights as it now enjoys.[76]
Sumner's reputation among historians in the first half of the 20th century was largely negative—he was blamed especially for the excesses or Radical Reconstruction.[77] Both the Dunning School and the anti-Dunning revisionists were especially negative regarding his performance during Reconstruction.[78] However in recent years scholars have emphasized his role as a foremost champions of black rights before, during and after the Civil War; one historian says he was "perhaps the least racist man in America in his day."[79]
Ralph Waldo Emerson, a man not prone to false flattery, wrote of Sumner:
Mr. Sumner's position is exceptional in its honor.... In Congress, he did not rush into party position. He sat long silent and studious. His friends, I remember, were told that they would find Sumner a man of the world like the rest; ‘'t is quite impossible to be at Washington and not bend; he will bend as the rest have done.’ Well, he did not bend. He took his position and kept it.... I think I may borrow the language which Bishop Burnet applied to Sir Isaac Newton, and say that Charles Sumner “has the whitest soul I ever knew.”... Let him hear that every man of worth in New England loves his virtues.[80]
A bachelor for most of his life, Sumner began courting Alice Mason Hooper, the daughter of Massachusetts Representative Samuel Hooper, in 1866 and the two were married that October. Their marriage was unhappy. Sumner could not respond to his wife's humor, and Hooper had a ferocious temper. That winter, Hooper began going out to public events with Friedrich von Holstein, a Prussian diplomat. The relationship caused gossip in Washington, and Hooper refused to stop seeing him. When Holstein was recalled to Prussia in the spring of 1867, Hooper accused Sumner of engineering the action, which Sumner always denied. They separated the following September.[81] Sumner's enemies used the affair to attack Sumner's manhood, calling Sumner "The Great Impotency". The situation depressed and embarrassed Sumner.[82] Sumner obtained an uncontested divorced on the grounds of desertion on May 10, 1873.[83]
The following are named after Charles Sumner:
Works related to Charles Sumner at Wikisource Media related to Charles Sumner at Wikimedia Commons
| United States Senate | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Robert Rantoul, Jr. |
United States Senator (Class 1) from Massachusetts March 4, 1851 – March 11, 1874 Served alongside: John Davis, Edward Everett, Julius Rockwell, Henry Wilson and George S. Boutwell |
Succeeded by William B. Washburn |
| Honorary titles | ||
| Preceded by Thaddeus Stevens |
Persons who have lain in state or honor in the United States Capitol rotunda March 13, 1874 |
Succeeded by Henry Wilson |
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