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CHARLES SUMNER

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Political Memorabilia Start Price:375.00 USD Estimated At:750.00 - 1,000.00 USD
CHARLES SUMNER
(1811 - 1874) American senator and a strident abolitionist, his vitriolic attacks on slavery on the Senate floor resulted in a vicious beating by South Carolina Rep. Preston R. Brooks. Fine content A.L.S., 2pp. 8vo., Philadelphia, Sep. 20, 1856. While still recovering from the beating administered to him by Rep. Preston Brooks four months earlier, Sumner writes to Vermont Sen. Solomon Foot. In part: "...I hope you will be able to comply with the strong desire here & keep the cause by your presence. I am not strong enough to do anything. I am still under the constant care of a physician. For two months & more I have been in Pennsylvania, & though I have not had the advantage of mingling actively with the people, yet I have observed darkly the tendencies...this state will become for Fremont. But work remains to be done. You are needed...". Folds, old mounting traces in blank corners on verso, else very good. John C. Fremont was the first presidential candidate of the new Republican Party in 1856. It crusaded for free farms (homesteads) and against the Slave Power. He would be defeated by James Buchanan whose idleness would bring the country to the brink of war.