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(African American, 1859) Letter by Senator Sumner recalling Wisconsin's stand against the Fugitive Slave Act Author: Sumner, Charles Place Published: Washington, DC Date Published: Dec. 4, 1859 Description: Autograph Letter Signed . 2 pp. to Andrew J. Aikens, [Milwaukee], a Republican newspaper editor and “Free Soil” veteran. “Accept my thanks for your welcome! I do not forget my visit to noble Wisconsin, which first taught the country how to treat the tyranny of the Fug.[itive] Sl[ave] Bill.” When Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, the most outspoken Abolitionist in the U.S. Congress, first visited Milwaukee in 1855 as part of a Grand Western Tour of anti-slavery lectures, Wisconsin had just become the first state in the Union to declare unconstitutional the federal Fugitive Slave Act, which required northerners to help slave owners recapture runaway slaves. The state then passed a law forbidding officials from enforcing the Act – the response to tyranny to which Sumner referred in this letter. Months after returning from his tour, Sumner was seated at his desk in the Senate, having delivered a strident speech against Southern slavery when a South Carolina Congressman began beating him on the head with a heavy walking stick, knocking Sumner to the floor. Blinded by his own blood, he managed to stagger to his feet, before collapsing into unconsciousness, while the Congressman continued to strike him with his broken cane. After the assault and a period of convalescence from his severe wounds, still unable to walk following surgery for spinal cord damage, Sumner was advised by his physicians to sail for Europe for a long period of recuperation in the south of France. In his absence, he became a martyr for the anti-slavery movement and the new Republican Party. It was not until November 1859, weeks before he wrote this letter, that he returned to America to again take his seat in the Senate, declaring that after three years as an invalid, his health was completely restored, that he could walk normally and with new found strength. After the outbreak of Civil War, he became a leader of the RadicalRepublicans who pressured President Lincoln to immediately proclaim the emancipation of Southern slaves. Condition: Paste residue and thinned paper at top of second page, not affecting the handwriting; good. Item#: 347159 Headline: Letter from anti-slavery Senator Sumner