A lesson learned from CHARLES SUMNER: CONSCIENCE OF A NATION, by Zaakir Tameez

 Freedom is a constant struggle.

    Those famous words--an iconic anthem of the Civil Rights era-- echo across Zaakir Tameez's excellent new biography of Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation. It is a great new biography of the famous 19th century senator that is worth reading for anyone who loves studying the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and that is even if like me you read--and enjoyed--Stephen Puleo's The Great Abolitionist, a similar Sumner-focused work from a couple years ago. Tameez's new book does a deep dive into the life and times of Sumner, a man of great passions who was capable of alienating so many of his peers, but was also far ahead of his time in realizing the need for America to embrace being a more multiracial and multicultural nation, often at great personal cost. Sumner's battles against the bigotry of his era echo across the ages, as we hear the warnings of a man who saw great advancements in civil rights throughout his lifetime, while also seeing the toll of racist violence and how easy gains could be lost once people become tired and complacent enough.

    Much of Sumner's ground I covered back in my blog on The Great Abolitionist, although Tameez is a good writer who does an excellent job bringing new depth to studying Sumner's personality and personal relationships. Growing up in a household that was low on warmth and emotional support (headed by Sumner's father, by all accounts a man of great integrity but also a cold and distant figure), Sumner struggled throughout his life to connect on a personal level with fellow humans, especially women (Tameez takes the leap and fully speculates that Sumner may have been gay, a modern interpretation that's difficult to prove from the available evidence but fully matches with a man who never showed much interest in marriage and children, despite all the pressures of his era). In spite of his personal struggles, Sumner was a brilliant workaholic of a man who devoted himself to the cause of public service, believing his main mission in life was to leave the world a better place than the one he arrived in.

    To that end, once Sumner got elected the senator of Massachusetts, he devoted his life to the cause of ending slavery, and once that was accomplished he refocused all his energy on promoting civil rights and racial equality. Such sentiments were dangerous to have in the turbulent America of the 1850's, culminating in the vicious attack against him on the floor of the Senate when an angry slaveowner nearly caned Sumner to death in 1856, one of the worst acts of violence seen in Congress to date and a major early moment in priming the nation for the violence of the Civil War. Pushing through the physical and emotional toll of the attack (including the years of PTSD that followed), Sumner was one of the first and most adamant leaders in saying that the primary cause of the Civil War was the destruction of slavery, and he spent much of the war trying to push a sometimes-reluctant President Lincoln more in the direction of the cause of justice.

   Much of this was also covered in The Great Abolitionist, but perhaps the most intriguing portion of Tameez's book is its final act which focuses on the Reconstruction battles that Sumner fought even as he became increasingly weak and frail (likely with a degenerative heart disease). After the abolition of slavery, Sumner believed that the next great goal of the government was to promote the cause of racial equality, and he was furious at the rise of the KKK and other neo-Confederate forces across the South--but he was perhaps even more angry with the increasing reluctance of white northerners to resist the forces of racism. Sumner spent his final years demanding the passage of a national civil rights act that would empower the government to enforce racial equality, and he also grew increasingly nervous seeing the bumbling incompetence of presidents Andrew Johnson and Ulysses Grant, that the presidency itself could one day become a destructive and dangerous force in American politics. To that end, he also spent his final days demanding presidential term limits (which the country eventually agreed to, the complaints of our current president notwithstanding), and the banning of the electoral college, which he believed would force presidents to campaign for all votes nationally rather than focusing on a narrow number of states (something we have never adopted). As Sumner lay dying, one of his final pleas was for Congress to move on national civil rights legislation, something it did halfheartedly in his honor and had completely backtracked from within a couple decades.

    Ultimately, Tameez paints a deeply sympathetic and fascinating picture of a flawed man (his petty grudges could be something to behold), who nonetheless had a shockingly forward vision for what the United States could be, and who was deeply critical of the racist and imperialist sympathies of many of his fellow 19th century Americans. I had always held Sumner in high regard, but these recent studies have elevated him into my pantheon of American heroes, a man who understood that constant vigilance and a never-ending battle against the forces of bigotry were the necessary price of an American freedom which tries to include people of all races and backgrounds.