William Graham Sumner

William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) was a leading American social scientist of the late 19th century. based at Yale College, he influenced generations of students and a very wide readership. He is best known for promoting his version of libertarian political philosophy. Many of his ideas have been thoroughly incorporated into American conservative thought. His academic work in sociology, economic history and anthropology proved influential in its day.

Career

His father was a skilled worker in England who emigrated to the U.S. in 1836; the family settled in Hartford, Connecticut. The father worked in a railroad repair shop, and was entirely self educated. His interest in social and economic questions influenced the son. After graduation from the excellent Hartford public schools, young Sumner entered Yale College in 1859. He did not serve in the Civil War, and devoted himself to studies. Sumner made friends easily, and they helped fund his further education in Europe after he graduated Yale in 1863. He always wanted to be an Episcopal priest, so he studied theology at Geneva, Göttingen, and Oxford. Returning to America, he was tutor at Yale from 1866 to 1869. In late 1867, he was admitted to the diaconate of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and in 1869 he became assistant to Dr. E. A. Washburn, rector of Calvary Church, New York, where he was ordained priest in July 1869. In addition to his clerical duties he edited, The Living Church, an monthly magazine that supported the "Broad Church" faction of Episcopalians. In 1870 he became rector of the Church of the Redeemer, in Morristown, N. J.; in 1871 he married Jeannie Whittemore Elliott, daughter of a wealthy New York merchant.

Rev. Sumner was an able and scrupulous priest, but he put religion away in a drawer and when he came back years later, he recalled, the drawer was empty.

Teacher

Sumner was one of the great teachers in the history of American undergraduate education. Teaching was always his first priority. A large man, fastidiously dressed, with a "magnificently bald" head and stern countenance, his "iron voice," and total control of his materials commanded the attention and confidence of generations of students. Starting with common observations anyone could make, he peeled away layer after layer of complexity to reach the core economic and social principles with a freshness and brilliance that went straight to the heart of his subject. he stated the facts in plain and often epigrammatic language. Honest and fearless, indifferent to tradition, he struck hard blows, never glossed over anything, and never spared any feelings. Sumner deplored the prominence given to Greek and Latin at Yale, and lobbied his colleagues to broaden the curriculum, especially by introducing scientific studies into the academic department. When President Noah Porter objected to Sumner's use of Herbert Spencer's The Study of Sociology as a textbook, Sumner won a vigorous fight for academic freedom, which through newspaper reports attracted national attention

Political theory

Sumner played with a Social Darwinist themes borrowed from Herbert Spencer during the 1880s, but unpublished manuscripts by Sumner discovered in the 1970s show that he came to reject the basic premises of Social Darwinism by 1900. Sumner's thought was a synthesis of Scottish Common Sense Realism, classical republicanism, and laissez-faire economics. His synthesis continues to inform much of modern conservative social thought. Sumner's opposition to the Spanish-American War in 1898 emerged from his fear that imperialism would undermine republican government by strengthening the hand of the plutocracy, "the political power of capital."

Bibliography

• Curtis, Bruce. William Graham Sumner. (Twayne's United States Authors Series, no. 391.) (1981) 186 pp. on Sumner as a writer
• Marshall, Jonathan. "William Graham Sumner: Critic of Progressive Liberalism." Journal of Libertarian Studies 1979 3(3): 261-277. 0363-2873
• Pickens, Donald. "William Graham Sumner as a Critic of the Spanish American War." Continuity 1987 (11): 75-92. 0277-1446, by a conservative scholar.

Sumner's Writings

• Sumner, William Graham. On Liberty, Society, and Politics: The Essential Essays of William Graham Sumner, ed. Robert C. Bannister (Liberty Fund, 1992). online
• A History of American Currency: with chapters on the English bank restriction and Austrian paper money : to which is appended "The bullion report" (1874)
• Lectures on the History of Protection in the United States: delivered before the International Free-Trade Alliance (1877)
• Andrew Jackson as a Public Man (1882)
• What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883)
• Protectionism: the -ism which teaches that waste makes wealth (1885)
• Alexander Hamilton (1890)
• The Financier & the finances of the American Revolution (2 vols. 1891)
• Robert Morris (1892)
• Folkways: a study of the sociological importance of usages,manners, customs, mores, and morals (1906)
• The science of society , edited by Albert G. Keller, (1927)
• Collected Essays in Political and Social Science (1885)
• War, and other essays, ed. by , Albert Galloway Keller (1911)
• Earth-hunger and other essays , ed. Albert Galloway Keller (1913) full text online
• The Challenge of Facts: and Other Essays ed. Albert Galloway Keller (1914)
• The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays] ed. Albert Galloway Keller (1918) online edition
• Selected Essays of William Graham Sumner, edited Albert Galloway Keller ... and Maurice R. Davie (1934)
• Social Darwinism: Selected Essays of William Graham Sumner, ed. Stow Persons (1963).
• The conquest of the United States by Spain, and other essays ed. Murray Polner (1965 edition)
• "The Conquest of the United States by Spain," Molinari Institute.