Charles Sumner | United States statesman
Charles Sumner, (born Jan. 6, 1811, Boston—died March 11, 1874, Washington, D.C.), U.S. statesman of the American Civil War period dedicated to human equality and to the abolition of slavery. A graduate of Harvard Law School (1833), Sumner crusaded for many causes, including prison reform, world peace, and Horace Mann’s educational reforms. It was in his long service as a U.S. senator from Massachusetts (1852–74), however, that he exercised his major influence on history. He bitterly attacked the Compromise of 1850, which attempted to balance the demands of North against South. On May...