Summers was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1827 and opened a law practice in
Charleston. In 1830, voters in
Kanawha County elected Summers to the
Virginia House of Delegates, where he served from 1830 to 1832 (when he was defeated by
James H. Fry, whom he defeated two years later), and again in the part-time position from 1834 to 1836. Later, in 1840, voters elected Summers was a
Whig to the
U.S. House of Representatives, where he represented what was then Virginia's 19th Congressional District. Summers served in the Twenty-Seventh and Twenty-Eighth Congresses, and despite the abolition of the 19th district after the 1840 census. He won re-election to the restructured 14th Congressional district, but was defeated for reelection in 1844 by
Joseph Johnson. Summers again represented Kanawha County as a delegate in the 1850
Virginia Constitutional Convention. However, his attempt to become
Governor of Virginia failed in 1851, as he again lost to Joseph Johnson. The Virginia General Assembly, nonetheless elected Summers a circuit court judge for the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit (which covered several counties in the Kanawha Valley) and he served for six years, replacing slaveholder
David McComas and being replaced by him after six years when he resigned and resumed his law practice for the final near decade of his life. In 1861, Kanawha County voters again elected Summers to represent them, at the
Virginia Secession Convention of 1861. He vehemently opposed Virginia's secession from the Union. In March 1861 hoped, with associates, to call a border state convention in
Nashville or
Frankfort (sometimes called the "Guthrie Plan" after
James Guthrie of Kentucky) to forestall the looming conflict. Instead, after he spoke at the Secession convention, former president
John Tyler and University of Virginia professor
James P. Holcombe spoke at length to refute his argument. After President Lincoln called for troops following the
Battle of Fort Sumter and the convention voted for secession, Summers resigned and was replaced by Andrew Parks. ==Death and legacy==