Charles Sumner served in the U. S. Senate from Massachusetts during the Kansas territorial era. He was an outspoken abolitionist and helped the Free-Soil party in 1848. He was opposed to the Fugitive Slave Law and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. After making his well-known speech "The Crime Against Kansas" on May 20, 1856, he was brutally assaulted (caned) by Preston Brooks, a Representative from South Carolina. Sumner was unable to return to his Senate duties until December, 1859.