Charles Sumner was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 6, 1811, the son of Relief Jacobs Sumner and Charles Pinckney Sumner.

Sumner graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School in 1833. During his early career, he practiced law in Boston, lectured at Harvard Law, and worked with Horace Mann to reform the Massachusetts public education system. From 1852 until 1874, Sumner served as a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.

Sumner was a staunch and vocal abolitionist. While serving in the Senate, Sumner voiced strong opposition against the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, denouncing the latter in his speech, “Crime Against Kansas,” delivered in 1856. This speech sparked the ire of Preston S. Brooks, a Congressman of South Carolina, who brutally assaulted Sumner with a cane on May 22, 1856. Sumner spent the subsequent three years recovering from the incident and was largely absent from congress, but was reelected for another term. From 1861 through 1871, Sumner served as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee. During this time, Sumner worked closely with William Henry Seward, the Secretary of State, on the acquisition of Alaska, otherwise known as “Seward’s Folly.” While serving in congress, Sumner corresponded frequently and at length with William and Frances Adeline Seward.     

On October 11, 1866, Charles Sumner married Alice M. Hopper. Sumner was more than twenty years Alice’s senior and the marriage ultimately ended in divorce.

Charles Sumner died on March 11, 1874, from a heart attack.