Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation

Written by Zaakir Tameez

Narrated by David Lee Garver

Charles Sumner is mainly known as the abolitionist statesman who suffered a brutal caning on the Senate floor by the proslavery congressman Preston Brooks in 1856. This violent episode has obscured Sumner's status as the most passionate champion of equal rights and multiracial democracy of his time. A friend of Alexis de Tocqueville, an ally of Frederick Douglass, and an adviser to Abraham Lincoln, Sumner helped the Union win the Civil War and ordain the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, the Freedmen's Bureau, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.



In a comprehensive narrative, Zaakir Tameez presents Sumner as one of America's forgotten founding fathers, a constitutional visionary who helped to rewrite the post–Civil War Constitution and give birth to modern civil rights law. He argues that Sumner was a gay man who battled with love and heartbreak at a time when homosexuality wasn't well understood or accepted. And he explores Sumner's critical partnerships with the nation's first generation of Black lawyers and civil rights leaders.



An extraordinary achievement of historical and constitutional scholarship, Charles Sumner brings back to life one of America's most inspiring statesmen, whose formidable ideas remain relevant to a nation still divided over questions of race, democracy, and constitutional law.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Jul 22, 2025
• ISBN: 9798331932640

Reviews for Charles Sumner

[pitjrw · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I came to this book through Jamelle Bouie's interview with the author in the NYT. It alerted me to Sumner's unusual experience for a white 19th century politician of growing up in an antebellum freed black community and his subsequent lifelong battle, with black compatriots, for equal rights. Virtuous as Sumner's public stands were, he appears to have been an unpleasant vainglorious individual whose egotism made him increasingly isolated. In many ways, it's a sad story. If Sumner is remembered at all, it is primarily for his victimhood under Brook's cane and not for the pathway to the future he attempted to illuminate during his legal & political career. I recently acquired Zenith's massive biography of Pessoa and so could be charged with hypocrisy, but ever since Holroyd's biography of Lytton Strachey and Ellman's of James Joyce biographies to be considered adequate must be massive. It's a trend I can't fully embrace.

[nancyadair-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Liberty has been won. The battle for Equality is still pending. Charles Sumner

There should be a movie about Charles Sumner! Or a musical! He should be famous! He was larger than life in his time, an agitator and moral compass.

He served in the Senate for twenty-three years, part of three political parties–the Whig, Free Soil, and Republican.

A trip to Europe altered his life when he observed social equality for blacks; he became an abolitionist fighting for the end of slavery and civil and social rights for all men.

Sumner was complicated, imperious and contentious, garrulous and proud, but he always held himself to the highest moral standards and clung to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as his guides.

Sumner’s speeches were famous–and infamous–bringing both accolades and hatred from slave owners; a Southern senator to brutally beat him on the floor of congress, leaving lifelong mental and physical scars.

As an abolitionist, Sumner was first a pariah, then a hero and a close advisor to President Lincoln. But after the war, Sumer became anachronistic, his insistence on a Civil Rights Bill became a bore.

He was appalled when President Grant pursued the purchase of Santo Domingo and mused about taking over self- ruled Haiti to make the island a state where all the black people could relocate. He turned against his own party to support a racist Democrat! Even his old friend Frederick Douglas supported the annexation.

Depressive, a workaholic, with deep friendships with men, his late in life marriage was a disaster. He may have been unconscious of being a gay man.

Sumner rose to each challenge, even when failing health required retirement and a quiet life. He never gave up; with his last breath, he spoke of his Civil Rights bill.

A watered down bill was passed, but the social equality legislation he fought for was not addressed for another hundred years. Leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. took up Sumner’s words and goals. To this day, the fight for equality goes on.

Reading over 600 pages I thought, now it will get boring, but it never did!

An amazing biography that I hope will resurrect an appreciation of Charles Sumner.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.