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Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811 – March 11, 1874) was an American politician and senator from Massachusetts. As 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 working to destroy the Confederacy, free all the slaves, and keep on good terms with Europe. During Reconstruction, he fought to minimize the power of the ex-Confederates and guarantee equal rights to the freedmen. Sumner changed his political party several times as anti-slavery coalitions rose and fell in the 1830s and 1840s before coalescing in the 1850s as the Republican Party, the affiliation with which he became best known. He devoted his enormous energies to the destruction of what Republicans called the Slave Power, the influence of Southern slave owners over the federal government, thereby ensuring the survival and expansion of slavery. In 1856, a South Carolina Congressman, Democrat Preston Brooks, nearly killed Sumner on the Senate floor two days after Sumner delivered an intensely anti-slavery speech called "The Crime Against Kansas". In the speech, Sumner characterized the attacker's cousin, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, a Democrat, as a pimp for slavery. The episode played a major role in the coming of the Civil War. During the war Sumner was a leader of the Radical Republican faction that criticized President Abraham Lincoln for being too moderate on the South. One of the most learned statesmen of the era, he specialized in foreign affairs, and worked closely with Abraham Lincoln to keep the British and the French from intervening on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Sumner's expertise and energy made him a powerful chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. As the chief Radical leader in the Senate during Reconstruction, 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 gains made from the Union's victory in the Civil War. Sumner, teaming with House leader Thaddeus Stevens, battled Andrew Johnson's reconstruction plans and sought to impose a Radical program on the South. Although Sumner forcefully advocated the annexation of Alaska in the Senate, he was against the annexation of the Dominican Republic, then known by the name of its capital, Santo Domingo. After leading Senators to defeat President Ulysses S. Grant's Santo Domingo Treaty in 1870, Sumner broke with Grant, and denounced him in such terms that reconciliation was impossible. In 1871, President Grant and his Secretary of State Hamilton Fish retaliated; through Grant's supporters in the Senate, Sumner was deposed as head of the Foreign Relations Committee. Sumner had become convinced that Grant was a corrupt despot and that the success of Reconstruction policies called for new national leadership. Sumner bitterly opposed Grant's reelection by supporting the Liberal Republican candidate Horace Greeley in 1872 and lost his power inside the Republican Party. Less than two years later, he died in office. ==Early life, education, and law career== Sumner was born on Irving Street in Boston on January 6, 1811. He was the son of Charles Pinckney Sumner, a liberal Harvard-educated lawyer, abolitionist, and early proponent of racially integrated schools, who shocked 19th-century Boston by opposing anti-miscegenation laws.〔"Charles Sumner." Dictionary of American Biography Base Set. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2009. (available online )〕 His father had been born in poverty〔Donald, David Herbert. ''Charles Sumner and the Coming Civil War.'' New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960, pp. ??〕 and his mother shared a similar background and worked as a seamstress prior to her marriage.〔 Sumner's parents were described as exceedingly formal and undemonstrative.〔 His father practiced law and served as Clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1806 to 1807 and again 1810 to 1811, but his legal practice was only moderately successful, and throughout Sumner's childhood, his family teetered on the edge of the middle class.〔 In 1825 Charles P. Sumner became Sheriff of Suffolk County, a position he held until his death in 1839. The family attended Trinity Church, but after 1825, the family occupied a pew in King's Chapel.〔George Henry Haynes, ''Charles Sumner'' (G.W. Jacobs & Company, 1909), pg. 21〕 Sumner's father hated slavery and told Sumner that freeing the slaves would "do us no good" unless they were treated equally by society.〔Donald, (1970), p.130.〕 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.〔Donald, p.104.〕 By creating a society where "knowledge, virtue and religion" took precedence, "the most forlorn shall grow into forms of unimagined strength and beauty."〔Donald, 1:105〕 Moral law, he believed, was as important for governments as it was for individuals, and legal institutions that inhibited one's 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."〔Donald, p.106〕 The increased income Charles P. Sumner enjoyed after becoming Sheriff enabled him to afford higher education for his children. Charles 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.〔 He graduated in 1830 from Harvard College, where he lived in Hollis Hall, and in 1834 from Harvard Law School where he became a protégé 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Charles Sumner」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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