Charles Sumner

Political Figure

Charles Sumner was a U.S. senator from Massachusetts (1851-74) who played a prominent role in the U.S. Civil War era, an avid abolitionist who refused compromise on the issue of equal rights for blacks. In 1855 Sumner read an intemperate speech, "The Crime Against Kansas," in which he condemned his opponents, including South Carolina's Senator Andrew P. Butler. Two days later Preston Brooks, Butler's nephew and a congressman from South Carolina, entered the senate chamber and beat Sumner unconscious with a cane. Brooks was a hero to his constituency and was re-elected; Sumner, who took three years to recover from the beating, was a martyr to his constituency and was re-elected. Sumner was one of the most powerful members of the Radical Republicans, whose insistence on immediate equal rights for blacks (and punitive measures against slaveowners) caused him to clash with presidents Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson and Ulysses Grant.