Sumner

SUMNER, CHARLES (1811-1874), American statesman, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 6th of January 1811. He graduated in 1830 at Harvard College, and in 1834 graduated at the Harvard Law School. Here, in closest intimacy with Joseph Story, he became an enthusiast in the study of jurisprudence: at the age of twenty-three he was admitted to the bar, and was contributing to the American Jurist, and editing law texts and Story's court decisions. What he saw of Congress during a month's visit to Washington in 1834 filled him with loathing for politics as a career, and he returned to Boston resolved to devote himself to the practice of law. The three years (1837-1840) spent in Europe were years of fruitful study and experience. He secured a ready command of French, German and Italian, equalled by no American then in public life. He formed the acquaintance of many of the leading statesmen and publicists, and secured a deep insight into continental systems of government and of jurisprudence. In England (1838) his omnivorous reading in literature, history and jurisprudence made him persona grata to leaders of thought.

Lord Brougham declared that he " had never met with any man of Sumner's age of such extensive legal knowledge and natural legal intellect." Not till many years after Sumner's death was any other American received so intimately into the best English circles, social, political and intellectual. In his thirtieth year, a broadly cultured cosmopolitan, Sumner returned to Boston, resolved to settle down to the practice of his profession. But gradually he devoted less of his time to practice and more to lecturing in the Harvard Law School, to editing court reports and to contributions to law journals, especially on historical and biographical lines, in which his erudition was unsurpassed. In his law practice he had disappointed himself and his friends, and he became despondent as to his future. It was in a 4th of July oration on " The True Grandeur of Nations," delivered in Boston in 1845, tnat ne first found himself. His oration was a tremendous arraignment of war, and an impassioned appeal for freedom and for peace, and proved him an orator of the first rank. He immediately became one of the most eagerly sought orators for the lyceum and college platform.

His lofty themes and stately eloquence made a profound impression, especially upon young men; his platform presence was imposing, for he was six feet and four inches in height and of massive frame; his voice was clear and of great power; his gestures unconventional and individual, but vigorous and impressive. His literary style was somewhat florid. Many of his speeches were monuments of erudition, but the wealth of detail, of allusion, and of quotation, often from the Greek and Latin, sometimes detracted from their effect.