Who is Charles Sumner?

      Charles Sumner, in short, was a Massachusetts senator who strongly advocated for anti-slavery. Originally, he was not a senator. Rather, he worked his way up to being a senator by first starting as a reporter for the United States Circuit Court after graduating from Harvard in 1830. While he was there, he published a couple of volumes: three of them being "Sumner's Reports", and a 20 volume edition of "Vesey's Reports" (1841-1856). He published the latter after he returned to Boston from a year of England in 1840. Before coming back to Boston, he was previously travelling in Europe, and he was visiting Paris. Especially in Paris, Sumner noticed that the French people had no problem dealing with African Americans and treated them like equal people. With this, and also a favorable moment in his childhood where his father said, "Freeing the slaves would 'do us no good' unless they were treated equally by society", Sumner was determined that when he went back to Boston, he wanted to be an abolitionist.

      During 1845, Sumner started to engage into politics at the same time American-Mexican hostilities were expected in the future. In his Independence Day speech in Boston, he talked negatively about the use of war for dealing with international disputes and wanted judgement on the idea. As a result from his speech, he gained a lot of publicity that made him into a pompous and eloquent speaker on public affairs. Specifically, he disproved of the annexation of Texas and hated the idea of slavery, and he also engaged in disarment efforts, prision, and school reforms. In 1848, he abandoned the Whig Party to help bolster Martin Van Buren's Free-Soil Party (it failed in the same year!). The reason for switching was quite evident: The Free-Soil Party, during that time, opposed the extension of slavery in coming to new territories. 3 years later, he earned his known title when Daniel Webster vacated his own U.S. Senator seat to become Secretary of State.

      With this new power of being senator of Massachusetts, he was now able to campaign against what he thought of the South's hostility of the slavery topic. With this, he became a huge advocate of the anti-slavery forces in the Senate. (And yet, slavery was not the only thing Charles Sumner fought for. Sumner fought for integrated public schools. More precisely, he fought for equal rights for everyone, regardless of what color or who they were.) Now even though Sumner's drive and determination were admired by everyone, his stubborn, righteous personality created tons of conflicts between the Senate, the presidents, and even his own friends and family. (His wife and him separated after spending 8 months of marriage due to the fact that both of them could not understand the other's intentions.) Sumner was often successful in his line of work with his words, and although he believed in what he said, he eventually became one sided to the topic, meaning he had no intention to ever see the point of the opposing side.

The "Crime Against Kansas"

      During this time, a couple of things had changed. Charles Sumner now worked for the Republican Party, and he supported them for the sole purpose of preventing slavery from spreading and equal rights for all. Fortunately for Sumner, the Republican Party has been organized primarily to oppose slavery likings. At the current time, The "Crime Against Kansas" Speech was a speech given by Charles Sumner during the time where Kansas was given whether to allow slavery in their state. This was almost the same time where North-South tensions were strengthened, and from that, the idea of Kansas having slavery or not was a huge deal for the U.S.. When Sumner spoke his speech, he included many direct insults to other Southern senators. Two in interest, Stephen Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina, were insulted as the main doers in this "crime". To Stephen Douglas, Sumner called him as a "improper model for an American senator" in short. However, it was Andrew Butler who was insulted more. He mocked Butler's stance as a man of chivalry. Even though there was more insults targeted at Butler, it angered Ander Butler's cousin: Preston Brooks. For revenge, Brooks came back later and used his cane to beat Sumner until he was unconscious. When the rest of the United States heard of Preston Brooks's attack, the North side supported Sumner for being "an abolitionist martyr", but sadly, he had plenty of injuries that took three and a half years to recover from the caning.

Stonger Than Before

      Three and a half years later, Sumner returned to the Senate in 1859, the rift between the North and the South has escalated. And yet, the Republican party was unaware that their ascendence could start a civil war due to the conflict of ideas in contact with the Senate. When the war started, Sumner defiantly right at the start that the party should be only brought to abolish slavery, and not to strengthen the Union. Behind his thinking, Sumner had no intention to kill the Southern Senators. He only cared for the issue of slavery, not for the death of others. (What not many people would know is that it was Sumner who constantly pushed President Abraham Lincoln to sponsor the enactment to make the slaves free, grant them civil rights, and put them in the Union army. Another one of Sumner's successes...). Soon after, he argued for rigid conditions for Confederate states to come back to the Union.

      During Reconstruction , Sumner now wanted Congress to play a big role in the process. In his mind, he believed that the Reconstruction era at the time was to establish civil and equal rights for all African Americans (definitely in the South, and gradually to the North). At this point in time, he was a chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1861-1871), Sumner now wanted to take control over U.S. foreign policy, and he used this title to strictly back American financial claims against Britain for making the war unnecessarily longer by "providing the Confederacy with ships". In addition, he was also passing a bill that he was confident was going to change during the time of the Reconstruction. Charles Sumner supported the policies of the Republicans and in fact, he also introduced the 13th Amendment to the Senate in 1864 too. That bill which Sumner was confident about was posthumously enacted and called it the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

All Downhill Now

      At the current time, Sumner was still in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee . Right now, Sumner is still considered a hero. However, as previously mentioned, Sumner was too righteous and unyielding to other ideas. That being said, this comes into play in another case. His strong stand on the Alabama claims issue created a fight with Ulysses S. Grant's adminstation. Sumner was against this, and a result, he did not understand as to why S. Grant wanted to annex the Dominican Republic (1870). He refused to the sign the treaty, and eventually, it came to a point where in 1871, Charles Sumner was removed from his chairmanship by Senate leaders. Shortly after, he separated himself with the Republican party. In 1872, he was nominated to be the governer of Massachusetts by the Liberal Republican-Democratic coalition. Sadly, he was in Britain due to health reasons, but he declined the offer. Two years later, Charles Sumner died from a heart attack in Washington D.C.. And "not since the death of Abraham Lincoln in 1865 had the nation grieved so deeply at the loss of one of its statemens".

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     Oh, you knew that Civil Rights Act of 1875 that was posthumously enacted by the government? Well, that law was taken down by the Supreme Court in 1883. It took around 80 years later for Sumner's ideas to gain recognition by everyone--> with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.