[ABOLITION] Charles Sumner ALS & Cabinet Card

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Day 2: Early & Historic Americana

By Fleischer's Auctions

Oct 10, 2025

Set Reminder 2025-10-10 09:00:00 2025-10-10 09:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : Day 2: Early & Historic Americana https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/fleischers-auctions/day-2-early-historic-americana-19250
Day one of Fleischer's 2025 Fall Premier auction includes early American artifacts, documents, signatures, ephemera, and weaponry. Rare material relating to African American history is featured, as well as fine examples of antique photography. Fleischer's Auctions info@fleischersauctions.com

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• Lot Description

  Autograph letter signed by Charles Sumner. Boston, [Massachusetts], 24 July 1863. 1 page, 8vo. 

   

  WITH Cabinet card studio portrait of Senator Charles Sumner. N.p., n.d. Unmarked.

   

  This cabinet card of Charles Sumner emphasizes his resilient spirit as well as his commanding presence. Captured in profile, Sumner holds his right arm across his chest, his left hand placed atop the curved back of a chair. Sumner is dressed smartly in a long coat and vest, with a cravat dramatically tied at his neck.

   

  The accompanying letter, written in Boston on 24 July 1863, assures its recipient that Sumner will be “glad to see you” at any time. The letter, written in flourishing script, is signed “Faithfully yours.”

   

  Charles Sumner (1811 - 1874), the son of abolitionist Charles Pickney Sumner (1776 - 1839) and Relief Jacob Sumner (1785 - 1866), was one of the most prominent abolition advocates before and during the Civil War.

   

  As a U.S. Senator representing Massachusetts, Charles Sumner was brutally assaulted by Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina on May 22, 1856. Angered by Sumner’s “Crime Against Kansas” speech, in which Sumner criticized South Carolina senator Andrew Butler, Brooks struck Sumner repeatedly with a heavy cane. During the long recuperation that followed, Sumner’s empty desk in the Senate Chamber stood as a powerful symbol of the tensions between North and South in the years before the Civil War. This dramatic event was just one episode in Sumner's long Senate career which lasted from 1851 to 1874. When he returned to full-time Senate duties in 1859, he continued to fight for abolition, writing several letters to Abraham Lincoln advocating for immediate emancipation. With the end of the war and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Sumner concentrated on providing full political and civil rights to African Americans and went on to author one of the nation’s civil rights bills.

   

  [Civil War, Union, Confederate] [Manuscripts, Documents, Letters, Ephemera, Signatures, Autographs] [African Americana, African American History, Black History, Slavery, Enslavement, Abolition, Emancipation] [Photography, Early Photography, Historic Photography, Daguerreotypes, Ambrotypes, Tintypes, Cased Images, Union Cases, Albumen Photographs, CDVs, Carte de Visites, Cartes de Visite, Carte-de-visite, Cartes-de-visite, CDV, Cabinet Cards, Stereoviews, Stereocards]

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