Charles Pinckney Sumner

Charles Pinckney Sumner (January 20, 1776—April 24, 1839) was an American attorney, abolitionist, and politician who served as Suffolk County Sheriff from 1825–38. He was an early proponent of racially integrated schools and shocked 19th-century Boston by opposing anti-miscegenation laws.[1] His son was famed abolitionist and U.S. Senator Charles Sumner.

Early life and education

Sumner was born on January 20, 1776, out of wedlock to Esther Holmes.[2][3] His father, Major Job Sumner, was a Harvard student who dropped out of classes to serve in the American Revolution.[4][5][6] After the Revolution, Job Sumner served as a commissioner for the new Confederation government to settle claims with Georgia.[4]

Sumner attended Harvard College, where he became a personal friend to Joseph Story.[4] At his graduation in 1796, he delivered a valedictory poem in the chapel.[7] Under Story's influence, he became an ardent Jeffersonian in politics, even though Massachusetts was a strongly Federalist state.[8]

Career

He then studied law under Josiah Quincy.[5] While there Sumner 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 his family teetered on the edge of the middle class.[9]

In 1819, he gave up his legal practice to serve as deputy Sheriff of Suffolk County. In 1826, Governor Levi Lincoln appointed Sumner as Sheriff of Suffolk County, a position he held until his death in 1838.[10] The position markedly increased his income.

Opposition to slavery

Sumner hated slavery and taught his son that freeing the slaves would "do us no good" unless they were treated equally by society.[11] 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.[12] By creating a society where "knowledge, virtue and religion" took precedence, "the most forlorn shall grow into forms of unimagined strength and beauty."[13] 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."[13]

Personal life

Sumner married Relief Jacob, a twenty-five year old seamstress[8] and the granddaughter of a wealthy landowner and politician from Hanover and descendant of provincial Puritan Governor William Bradford.[14] They were described as exceedingly formal and undemonstrative.[8]

They had at least nine children: twins Charles and Matilda (b. 1811), Albert, George, Henry, Horace, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia.[15] Matilda died young in 1832.[8] Charles attended Boston Latin School and Harvard College; after his father's death, he would be elected United States Senator in 1851 and lead the crusade against slavery in the Senate.

The family first lived on Botolph (now Irving) Street in Boston's wealthy Beacon Hill neighborhood, where Charles and Matilda were born. Later, they moved to Hancock Street, where they lived in a modest homes.[8] The family attended Trinity Church. After his 1826 promotion to sheriff, they moved to a much larger thirteen-room, three story home at 20 Hancock Street and now occupied a pew in King's Chapel.[16][17]

His "Eulogy on the illustrious George Washington. Pronounced at Milton, twenty-second February, 1800" was published by Horace Mann. He delivered various speeches, poems, and letters.[18]

He was a second cousin of Edwin Vose Sumner.

References
  1. "Charles Sumner." Dictionary of American Biography Base Set. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928–1936. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2009. available online
  2. Donald 2009, p. 2–3.
  3. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2001.05.0150
  4. Donald 2009, p. 3.
  5. "Sumner, Charles Pinckney". lawlit.net.
  6. Tate, Thomas K. (September 17, 2013). General Edwin Vose Sumner, USA: A Civil War Biography. McFarland. ISBN 9780786472581 – via Google Books.
  7. https://www.worldcat.org/title/valedictory-poem-delivered-in-the-chapel-of-harvard-university-on-the-21-june-1796/oclc/77061505 Valedictory poem delivered in the Chapel of Harvard University on the 21 June 1796
  8. Donald 2009, p. 4.
  9. Donald 2009, pp. 6–7.
  10. Donald 2009, p. 14.
  11. Donald 2009, p. 130.
  12. Donald 2009, p. 104.
  13. Donald 2009, p. 105.
  14. "MHS Collections Online: Charles Sumner". www.masshist.org.
  15. Donald 2009, p. 5.
  16. George Henry Haynes, Charles Sumner (G.W. Jacobs & Company, 1909), pg. 21
  17. Donald 2009, p. 7.
  18. "Sumner, Charles Pinckney 1776-1839 [WorldCat Identities]".

Bibliography
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.