Charles Pinckney Sumner was a man ahead of his time, in the sense that he knew not only that slavery was wrong, but that slaves need not only to be freed, but to be treated as equal citizens.

He also carried a rather Utopian view of what society should be like, that Nature was at least as important as Nurture, if not more so.

Although he and his wife Relief Jacob had at least nine children, they were considered to be not especially demonstrative with one another, even described by some as “formal.”

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