Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography

Thousands of short American lives — soldiers, inventors, preachers, governors, novelists — each given a paragraph: born where, did what, and why anyone remembered.

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Sumner, Charles

journalist, lawyer, United States senator, author, was born Jan. 6, 1811, in Boston, Mass. He was a distinguished Massachusetts statesman who succeeded Daniel Webster in 1851 in the senate of the United States.

He was a fearless opponent of slavery, and, in consequence of this attitude of his, was assaulted in the senate chamber by Preston Brooks, of South Carolina, in 1856, and severely injured. He is the author of The True Grandeur of Nations; and Prophetic Voices Concerning America. His complete works, including his many orations and speeches, have been issued in fifteen volumes. He died March 11, 1874, in Washington, D. C.

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