While a large swath of Boston’s elite business and cultural leaders had become increasingly uncomfortable with Sumner’s radical views, his vociferous opposition to slavery endeared him to the city’s black community that lived along the north slope of Beacon Hill—just blocks from Sumner—about two thousand people that formed a close-knit neighborhood known across the city as “Nigger Hill.” It was not lost on Morris that Sumner found the designation abhorrent.
