CHARLES SUMNER.

(HARLES SUMNER was born in Boston, Massachusetts, January 6th, 1811.

CHA

His grandfather, Major Job Sumner, was an officer of the Revolutionary army; and his father, Charles Pinckney Sumner, a lawyer by profession, and an accomplished gentleman of the old school, held during the latter part of his life the responsible position of sheriff of Suffolk county, which comprises the city of Boston.

At ten years of age, Charles Sumner was placed in the public Latin school of Boston, the best preparatory institution for classical training in New England, and, during the five years that he remained there, gave abundant evidences of industry and ability. Of naturally studious habits, he devoted much of his leisure time to reading history, of which he was passionately fond, and often arose before daylight to peruse Hume, Gibbon, and other favorite authors. At the age of fifteen, he entered Harvard College, where he was graduated in 1830, holding a respectable rank in his class, though one by no means commensurate with his natural abilities. More interested in the general improvement of his mind than in the acquisition of academical honors, he deviated from the prescribed curriculum whenever it was opposed to his plans or tastes, and pursued an independent course of reading in classical and general literature. Having devoted another year to private reading in his favorite studies, he entered in 1831 the Law School at Cambridge, where, under the instruction of Professors Ashmun and Greenleaf, and Justice Story, he acquired a profound knowledge of judicial science. Not content with the information to be gained from the ordinary text-books, he explored the curious learning of the old year-books, made himself familiar with the voluminous reports of the English and American courts, and neglected no opportunity to trace the principles of law to their sources.

While still a student, he contributed articles to the American Jurist, a law quarterly published in Boston, which attracted attention by their marked ability and learning. Subsequently, he became the editor of this periodical, and it is a fact creditable to his early acquirements that several of his contributions have been cited as authorities by Justice Story. With each of the distinguished jurists above mentioned he was on terms of cordial intimacy; and Justice Story, down to the time of his death, in 1845, was his warm friend and admirer.

Leaving the Law School in 1834, Mr. Sumner passed a few months in the office of Benjamin Rand, in Boston, with a view of learning the forms of practice; and in the same year was admitted to the bar, at Worcester. He immediately commenced practice in Boston, where his reputation for learning and forensic ability secured him a warm welcome from the members of his profession, and offers to enter lucrative law partnerships, which he declined, preferring to make no engagements which should interfere with a long-cherished plan of making a European tour. In addition to his large practice, he assumed the duties of reporter of the United States circuit court, in which capacity he published three volumes of cases, known as "Sumner's Reports," and comprising chiefly the decisions of Justice Story; and during the absence of the latter at Washington, he filled his place for three winters at the Cambridge Law School, by appointment of the university authorities—a significant proof of the estimation in which his abilities were held. His lectures on constitutional law and the law of nations were prepared with much labor, and greatly enhanced his reputation. Amid these absorbing pursuits he found time to edit "Dunlap's Treatise on Admiralty Practice," left unfinished by the author, and to which he added a copious appendix, containing many practical forms and precedents of pleadings, since adopted in our admiralty courts, and an index, the whole making a larger amount of matter than the original treatise.

In 1837, having in the preceding year declined flattering offers of a professorship at Cambridge, Mr. Sumner turned aside from the temptations and emoluments of professional life, to make his contemplated visit to Europe, where he remained until 1840. Carrying to foreign lands his enthusiasm for his profession, he made a special study in Paris of the celebrated Code Napoleon, both in its essential principles and forms of procedure, with which his previous studies in civil law had made him tolerably familiar. In England, where he remained nearly a year, his opportunities for meeting society in all its forms were such as are rarely accorded to American travellers. Bench and bar vied with each other in paying attentions to him; and in private circles, as well as in Westminster Hall—where, on more than one occasion, at the invitation of the judges, he sat by their side at trials-his reception was most gratifying. As an evidence of the impression which his extensive learning and accomplishments produced upon an eminent English jurist, it is related that, several years after his return to America, during the hearing in an insurance question before the court of exchequer, one of the counsel having cited an American case, Baron Parke (since created Lord Wensleydale, the ablest perhaps of the English judges of the time) asked him what book he quoted. He replied, "Sumner's Reports." Baron Rolfe inquired, "Is that the Mr. Sumner who was once in England?" and, upon receiving a reply in the affirmative, Baron Parke observed, "We shall not con

sider it entitled to less attention, because reported by a gentleman whom we all knew and respected."

In Germany, Mr. Sumner made the acquaintance of Savigny, Mittermaier, and other eminent civilians, and of such distinguished characters as Humboldt, Carl Ritter the geographer, and Ranke the historian of popes; and here, as elsewhere in Europe, he was frequently consulted by writers on the law of nations. At the request of Mr. Cáss, then minister to France, he prepared a defence of the American claim in the North-eastern Boundary controversy, which was published in Galignani's Paris Messenger; and he also conceived the idea of writing a "History of the Law of Nations," a task which he finally relinquished to Mr. Wheaton, whom he had consulted on the subject.

After a brief residence in Italy, where he studied art and general literature, Mr. Sumner returned in 1840 to Boston, and resumed the practice of his profession, though to a more moderate extent than formerly, his attention being now much occupied with subjects connected with social and political ethics, and kindred topics. His love of law as a science, however, showed no diminution; and in 1844-46, he produced an edition of "Vesey's Reports," in twenty volumes, enriched with numerous notes, and with what was a novelty in a work of the kind, biographical illustrations of the text.

Though previously known as a graceful and impressive speaker, it was not until 1845 that the full effect of Mr. Sumner's oratory was appreciated by a public assembly; and not until then, it may be added, did the orator exhibit that lofty moral courage which he has since illustrated on innumerable occasions, as the advocate of principles which he believes to be right, in defiance of an adverse public opinion. On the 4th of July of that year, he delivered before the municipal authorities of Boston an oration on "The True Grandeur of Nations," in which he exhibited the war system as the old ordeal by battle, a relic of middle-age barbarism retained by international law as the arbiter of justice between nations; and portrayed, in contrast, the blessings of peace. The doctrine was not then, and is not now, popular; and, while the enunciation of it gained him warm friends and admirers, others received the speaker's sentiments with distrust or open ridicule. None, however, could deny the persuasive charm of his elocution, the finish and elegance of the diction, and the finely-conceived classical and historical illustrations with which many of his passages were enriched. Justice Story, though dissenting from some of his views, declared that certain parts of his discourse were "such as befit an exalted mind and an enlarged benevolence," and resembled, in their manly moral enthusiasm, the great efforts of Sir James Mackintosh. From Chancellor Kent and other distinguished men he received equally strong tokens of approbation. In England, the oration was republished in five or six different forms, and met with a ready sale. Rich

ard Cobden, in a letter to the author, called it "the most noble contribution of any modern writer to the cause of peace;" and the venerable poet Rogers wrote to him, "Every pulse of my heart beats in accordance with yours on the subject.” His oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University, in August, 1846, entitled "The Scholar, the Jurist, the Artist, and the Philanthropist," excited equal admiration; and John Quincy Adams offered as a sentiment, at the annual dinner of the society, "The memory of the scholar, the jurist, the artist, and the philanthropist, and-not the memory, but the long life of the kindred spirit who has this day embalmed them all." Writing to the orator shortly afterward, on the success of his performance, he observed, in allusion to the approaching close of his own career: "I see you have a mission to perform. I look from Pisgah to the promised land-you must enter upon it." How fully the injunetion of the aged statesman has been obeyed, Mr. Sumner's life attests. Thenceforth he frequently appeared before public bodies and literary associations as the earnest and eloquent advocate of philanthropic measures; and the two volumes of his "Orations and Speeches," published in 1850, contain noble specimens of national oratory.

Previous to 1845, Mr. Sumner had kept aloof from politics, his tastes being averse to the rough experiences and demoralizing influences to which the professed politician must too often accustom himself, and inclining wholly to those studies which can be pursued in the peaceful walks of private life. "The strife of parties," to use his own words, "had seemed ignoble to him." He had always. however, borne his testimony against slavery; and upon the agitation, in 1845. of the question of the annexation of Texas, which involved the extension of slave-territory within the Union, he came promptly forward as an opponent of the measure. His speech on this subject, before a popular convention held in Faneuil Hall, in Boston, in that year, is one of the most brilliant and pointed he ever delivered.

In the autumn of 1845, the Dane professorship of law in the Cambridge Law School became vacant by the death of Justice Story; and it was supposed, in accordance with the expressed desire of the late incumbent, that Mr. Sumner would be appointed his successor. If that recommendation were not sufficient. the declaration of Chancellor Kent that he was "the only person in the country competent to succeed Story," might have been entitled to some weight with those having the appointment. It was, however, never offered to him—a proof that the estimation in which he had been held a few years previous had for some reason declined. The extreme views expressed by him on questions of public interest which had then begun to agitate the community, probably alarmed the conservatism of many who had been his admirers, and weighed against him. It is certain, however, that his social status with a portion of the community thence