Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811 – March 11, 1874) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery.

With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, Sumner was elected to the U.S Senate on an anti-slavery platform and quickly gained a reputation as a fierce and uncompromising abolitionist champion. His stance became especially apparent in conversations surrounding the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

Sumner asserted that if Johnson had his way, “the plighted faith of the Republic will be broken . . . the Rebellion itself will flaunt its insulting power; the whole country . . . will be disturbed; and the rebel region will be handed over to misrule & anarchy.” Sumner declared that if, on the other hand, Congress's ...