This article argues that the traditional portrayal of William Graham Sumner as a social Darwinist is inaccurate. Based mainly on two of Sumner's unpublished essays just recently discovered at the Yale University Library, it shows that Sumner's mature views on social change were quite different from those of his student Albert G. Keller and from those found within The Science of Society (which was published 17 years after his death, yet which lists him as a coauthor). Unlike Keller and The Science of Society, Sumner clearly rejected social Darwinism during the final decade of his career.
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