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Charles Sumner, a distinguished legal scholar and ardent reformer who served in the U.S. Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874, was one of the most prominent political figures of the mid nineteenth century. His major contributions to decision making at the national level were his involvement in wartime foreign-policy decisions during an era when U.S. interests were endangered abroad and his relentless espousal of antislavery initiatives and full civil equality for African Americans.
Sumner's racial progressivism continues to earn the admiration of scholars. He was the highest-ranking political leader of the Civil War era to make black equality the primary goal of his adult life. In the long course of his highly personalized reform program, Sumner's policy responses to the biracial character of American society proved far in advance of political opinion in Congress and the nation at large. Although not a prewar supporter of the Garrisonian doctrine of immediate abolition, Sumner vigorously advocated the abolitionist position on black rights as early as 1849, and in 1852, with little support, he urged congressional repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law.
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