Page "Charles Sumner" Paragraph 56

Sumner was a friend of Samuel Gridley Howe and a guiding force for the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, started in 1863.

He was one of the most prominent advocates for suffrage for blacks, along with free homesteads and free public schools.

His uncompromising attitude did not endear him to moderates and sometimes inhibited his effectiveness as a legislator.

He was largely excluded from work on the Thirteenth Amendment, in part because he did not get along with Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee and did much of the work on it.

Sumner introduced an alternative amendment that combined the Thirteenth Amendment with elements of the Fourteenth Amendment.

It would have abolished slavery and declared that " all people are equal before the law ".

During Reconstruction, he often attacked civil rights legislation as inadequate and fought for legislation to give land to freed slaves.

He viewed segregation and slavery as two sides of the same coin.

He introduced a civil rights bill in 1872 to mandate equal accommodation in all public places and required suits brought under the bill to be argued in the federal courts.

The bill failed, but Sumner still spoke of it on his deathbed.