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8 unusual facts about Charles Sumner


Anne Whitney

Whitney was an accomplished portraitist, completing statues and busts of such well known individuals as John Keats, Samuel Adams, Toussaint l'Ouverture, William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, Frances Willard, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Samuel Sewall, Alice Freeman Palmer, Robert Gould Shaw, Eben Norton Horsford, Harriet Martineau, Jennie McGraw Fiske, Lucy Stone and others.

Apollo Club of Boston

In 1874, the Apollo Club sang at the funeral services of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner and received a note of appreciation from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Henry Ingersoll Bowditch

He gave lectures and kept company with abolitionist leaders such as Charles Sumner, Charles C. Emerson, and Fredrick Douglass.

Joshua Reed Giddings

Giddings called the caning of Senator Charles Sumner in the Senate by an opponent a crime "against the most vital principles of the Constitution, against the Government itself, against the sovereignty of Massachusetts, against the people of the United States, against Christianity and civilization."

Stone Building

Notable speakers at the hall included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, and Josiah Quincy, Jr. The building was offered to the trustees of the Cary Memorial Library for $2,000 in 1891, by Ellen Stone, granddaughter of Eli Robbins, who built it, and it was named for her.

Sumner County, Kansas

It was named in honor of Charles Sumner, a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts (1811–74), who was a strong advocate of Kansas becoming a free state.

Thom Nickels

He returned to Boston, where he lived in the house once owned by Civil War abolitionist Charles Sumner on Hancock Street in Beacon Hill.

Thomas Langlois Lefroy

In 1838, Thomas Langlois Lefroy received American politician Charles Sumner during Sumner's visit to Ireland.


Civil Rights Act of 1875

The bill was proposed by Senator Sumner and co-sponsored by Representative Benjamin F. Butler, both Republicans from Massachusetts, in the 43rd Congress of the United States in 1870.

John Denison Baldwin

Baldwin conducted correspondence with many notable thinkers of his time, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, James Russell Lowell, and particularly his friend Charles Sumner.

John Gage Marvin

and was there for four years, studying under Simon Greenleaf, Joseph Story and Charles Sumner.

New England Art Union

The board included Everett, Dexter, and Longfellow, and a mix of prominent Bostonian businessmen, artists, and other notables: Joseph Andrews; Thomas G. Appleton; Edward C. Cabot; Alvan Fisher; Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham; James B. Gregerson; Chester Harding; Joshua H. Hayward; George S. Hilliard; Albert G. Hoit; Jonathan Mason; Benjamin S. Rotch; G. G. Smith; Charles Sumner; C. G. Thompson; and Ammi B. Young.

Profiles in Courage

Lucius Lamar, from Mississippi, for eulogizing Charles Sumner on the Senate Floor and other efforts to mend ties between the North and South during Reconstruction, and for his principled opposition to the Bland–Allison Act to permit free coinage of silver.


see also

Charles Sumner Tainter

Charles Sumner Tainter (April 25, 1854 – April 20, 1940) was an American scientific instrument maker, engineer and inventor, best known for his collaborations with Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, Alexander's father-in-law Gardiner Hubbard, and for his significant improvements to Thomas Edison's phonograph, resulting in the Graphophone, one version of which was the first Dictaphone.