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'Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation' (Full Bio)
01:18:25
We present our complete July Full Bio about Senator Charles Sumner with author Zaakir Tameez.
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- [00:00]
Host
All of it is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the Name youe Price Tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match Limited by state law not available in all states Full Bio is our book series where we spend a few days with the author of a deeply researched biography to get a fuller understanding of the subject. Today we'll discuss the book Charles Sumner Conscience of a Nation by Zakir tammies. Born in 1811, Senator Charles Sumner was a prominent abolitionist and leader for integration. Now there have been several other bios of Sumner, but this one we're going to talk about has an interesting twist. Its author Tammies was recently a graduate from Yale Law School and He's in his 20s. He's taken a new look at Sumner and what he stood for in this 533 page book. As the New York Times reported, until last year there hadn't been a study of Sumner in four decades and almost none with his impact on this nation. Charles Sumner was a man who was the grandson of a revolutionary fighter, the first librarian of Harvard Law School, a senator from Massachusetts, and he was at President Lincoln's bedside when he died. And he was a brilliant legal mind, which the book gets into. Sumnu argued that quote, the Constitution is not mean, stingy or pettifogging, but open handed, liberal and just, including always in favor of freedom. He used his position to help the country see that slavery was wrong and would destroy the country. It almost assured him. Sumner of course was nearly beaten to death on the Senate floor for his anti slavery views. The book uses 600 of Sumner's personal and professional letters, 400 contemporaneous newspaper articles in the work of the men who influenced him growing up. Which is where we will start with his family tree which dates back to the American Revolution. I think before talking about Charles Sumner, it's important to understand his ancestry which dates back to the Revolutionary War. His paternal grandfather was named Job Sumner. What role did Job play in the American Revolution?
- [02:32]
Zakir Tammies
Job Sumner was the child of farmers in rural Massachusetts. He descended from one of the first generations of Americans to come to this soil in the 1600s and he decided to go to Harvard University in his mid teens and right after he gets there, ironically, the American Revolution begins in the farming town that he had left and next thing you know colonists are fighting British redcoats at Lexington and Concord. Job Sumner was itching to get involved in the fight. But the fight came to him when revolutionaries arrived at Harvard University's campus and demanded to take over the college campus, to set up a military encampment in Cambridge in order to try to take Boston, which was in British possession at that moment. Harvard asked the student body to leave campus and to continue their studies in the countryside. But Job Sumner said no. Instead, he stayed at Harvard and joined the Revolution. And within just a few years, this farming boy rises the ranks of the Revolutionary Army. And by 1783, he is a leading major who helps to supervise the evacuation of the British from New York City, escorts George Washington into the city to liberate New York, and becomes one of the leading revolutionaries.
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Host
It's really interesting because one of our listeners, we had a segment on Franz's Tavern and that he was there, Job was there to help George Washington celebrate the end of the war. But I'm curious, what did he do with himself after the war?
- [04:43]
Zakir Tammies
That's right. Job Sumner was there with Washington, Fraunce's Tavern, when Washington is kissing goodbye to the officers. And then Job Sumner afterwards gets an appointment to be a commissioner in Georgia. And here is what is really striking. Job Sumner, this revolutionary who fought for freedom, goes to Georgia, hobnobs with Southern planters, and becomes a slaveholder. And unbeknownst to Washington, or probably to anyone in the Revolutionary Army, Job Sumner had a son, which was Charles Sumner's father, Charles Pinckney Sumner. Job Sumner impregnated a farm girl. And in Massachusetts, around the same time of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, he did not marry this woman. And so he has this bastard son in rural Massachusetts who is literally toiling to survive, who is herding cows late at night, who doesn't have much of an education at first, while Job Sumner is enjoying a prestigious life as a Southern planter, it's interesting.
- [05:57]
Host
The girl that he impregnated named him Job Jr. But he didn't take too kindly to that, gave him the name Charles Pinckney Sumner. Why Charles Pinckney?
- [06:08]
Zakir Tammies
Charles Pinckney was a founding father from the south who was extremely pro slavery, who was probably one of the most pro slavery founding fathers. And for Job Sumner, it was an honor to name his son after this man. And yet, Charles Pinkney Sumner grows up deeply resentful of his father, Understandably so. When his father ultimately dies, he gets some money and enrolls himself at Harvard College. And while there, he becomes an abolitionist, probably as a way to reject his father's contradictory ideals of being both a revolutionary and being a Slaveholder. And Charles Pinckney Sumner would go on after graduating from Harvard to become a sailor. A sailor who traveled on a ship that stopped in Haiti during the Haitian Revolution. And while he's there, General Jean Pierre Boyer, one of the leading Haitian revolutionaries, organizes a birthday party to celebrate George Washington's birthday. And this white boy from Massachusetts, son of the American Revolution, joins this celebration in Haiti and actually lifts his glass and gives a toast to liberty, freedom and equality for all men. General Boyer is so shocked to see this white American celebrating the Haitian cause and invites him to the front where he stays for the rest of the night. And I think this combination of Charles Pinckney Sumner celebrating the Haitian Revolution and his father, Job Sumner celebrating the American Revolution probably informed the grandson Charles Sumner's upbringing and ideology.
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Host
My guest is author Zakir Tammies. We're discussing his book, Charles Conscience of a Nation. Our choice for full bio. All right. Charles Pinckney Sumner marries a woman named Relief Jacobs. I love that name. And the subject of your bio. Charles Sumner is born. He's a twin of Matilda. He's the eldest of, I believe, eight children. What kind of child was Charles Sumner?
- [08:33]
Zakir Tammies
Charles Sumner was a fascinating kid. He is very scrawny. He looked sickly. He didn't engage or enjoy physical activity. He didn't go swimming with his siblings. He was not interested in dance class, and he just loved to learn. So while he's young, he decided that he wanted to learn Latin and he wanted to go to the Boston Latin School. Now, the Sumners didn't have much money, and Charles Sumner decides to borrow money from an older classmate to give him a Latin textbook. And he comes down the stairs one day, confronts his father while his dad is shaving and starts to speak in Latin. And he's like 9 years old at this moment. And that was his way of persuading his parents to give him an opportunity to take the entrance exam to the Boston Latin School. He's accepted, and next thing you know, this scrawny kid is starting to learn the classics, something that he would enjoy for the rest of his life.
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Host
He grew up in a neighborhood where black Bostonians lived sort of the black Beacon Hill area. Tell us a little bit about the people that live there and how do you think that shaped Sumner's feelings about race early on?
- [10:03]
Zakir Tammies
So Sumner grows up in a contradiction. On the one hand, he's a third generation Harvard educated man, or he grows up and becomes a Harvard educated man. On the other hand, he is living in this ethnic enclave of Boston that has a large free black community because his family did not have any money to live anywhere else. And that experience gave him a deep sense of empathy and sympathy for his black neighbors. Black Boston at this time is a small community of extremely persecuted and marginalized people. But there are also a number of artists, of writers, musicians. Free Black Boston, around 1,000 people, was in many ways the cultural capital of black America in the early 1800s. Only a few blocks from Charles Sumner's home was the African Meeting House, one of the first black churches in the country, still standing today. There was also a black Masonic lodge, the first of its kind. There was the African Mutual Aid Society, an organization of free blacks that would try to give money to protect their own community. Sumner saw black schoolchildren going to the Smith School, one of the earliest black schools in the country. And there were writers in the community, like David Walker, a famous black abolitionist, who wrote a tract that called out white Americans for their hypocrisy in celebrating the Revolution and the Declaration of Independence, but not granting that freedom and equality to their black neighbors.
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Host
How was Sumner viewed by his neighbors, by his black neighbors?
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Zakir Tammies
Sumner's father was an abolitionist, and not only that, he believed in racial equality. He was known to not use the word Negro, and he preferred calling his neighbors people of color, a term that we think is a modern term, but actually has been around for more than 200 years. In addition, he was known to tip his hat whenever walking past an African American on the street. He once said that he was waiting for the day that there would be black judges in Boston. And so the Sumners were a family, a white family that was respected and honored and considered a peer by their black family neighbors. And Sumner had this upbringing that taught him to treat everyone as equal and that also gave him a window into the daily brunt of oppression that this community faced every day.
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Host
You're listening to full bio. We're discussing Charles Sumner, conscience of a Nation. My guest is Zakir Tammiz. What was Charles Sumner's experience while at Harvard and Harvard Law School?
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Zakir Tammies
When Sumner gets to Harvard, he is so excited. And then he discovers how difficult and tedious the curriculum was at the time. He complained about the food. He complained about his peers. Most of all, he complained about his teachers who just wanted him to memorize, memorize and memorize. That changes when he finally gets to Harvard Law School. Now, this quote unquote law school barely existed at the time. It was really just a small group of students and one teacher named Joseph Story. Joseph Story was a titan of American law. He was a justice on the US Supreme Court. He was in many ways a lieutenant to Chief Justice John Marshall. And Story pretty much founds the school, and Sumner is one of his first students. Story comes up with a new curriculum for teaching law. He decides to have his students read before class, and then in class, he would call on them to explain the reading for anyone who has been to law school. It's called the Cold Call. Story had invented it, and Sumner is one of the first students to ever be cold called in history. And he was good at it. Story very quickly realizes that Sumner is a kind of prodigy. He starts to invite Sumner to his home, where Sumner would just riddle Story with questions about this topic and that topic. Story asked Sumner to be his research assistant and to find cases for him to edit some of his treatises. Story's son William would go on to say that his father treated Sumner like a son, which I'm sure made for an interesting dynamic because Story had a son. But Story's son William goes on to become an artist. Yeah, Sumner becomes the lawyer and the jurist that Story wanted for his own child.
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Host
Well, Story believed in equity jurisprudence. First of all, please explain what that means and how did that impact Sumner's opinion of the Constitution? Because this becomes very, very important, as we will discuss later.
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Zakir Tammies
Historically, in English common law, courts were only able to grant remedies in the form of monetary compensation. That changed sometime in, I want to say, the 15, 1600s, when the English kings invented a new system of courts called the courts of equity. Equity courts were able to do all kinds of fashionable remedies. They could issue injunctions which would order a party to do something. So your compensation as an injured party might not be money, but it might be an order from a court. Equity jurisprudence is really important to Sumner's early training in the law because Story was a proponent of equity. And the logic of equity is that sometimes a court needs to be creative about how to right a wrong, that courts need to come up with new ideas and new strategies to address the violation of rights, even if there is no remedy on the books or there's no monetary remedy in law. So Story trains Sumner to have a deep respect for equity jurisprudence, which is something that Sumner takes with him for the rest of his life in trying to think creatively about how law can right wrongs, even when historically there was no right to the wrong.
- [17:41]
Host
It's interesting. Initially, though, he didn't do well as an attorney. You write in the book, Sumner's legal career would fail to take off and achieve the high expectations everybody placed on him. First of all, what were the expectations of him, of Sumner?
- [17:59]
Zakir Tammies
When Sumner graduates from law school, he first becomes the librarian for Harvard Law School, the first librarian ever of the school who actually published his first catalog. Then he practices law briefly, but he tells his mentors that he wants to go to Europe. And his mentors are very nervous about this. One mentor, Josiah Quincy, the president of Harvard, says, you will go and get a cane and a mustache and an additional stock of vanity. Another mentor, Simon Greenleaf, writes to him and says to see through all the Jacobinism, radicalism and atheism of modern Europe and all the other isms, and come back to be the good conservative that God made you. So there is enormous pressure from his mentors for him to be a conservative lawyer, for him to be an attorney representing the Boston merchant class rather than getting involved in any kind of human rights activism, and to please these mentors who trained him, who taught him, who took care of him. He does exactly what they tell him to do. After returning from Europe, he becomes a corporate lawyer in Boston. He represents Boston merchants, but he is not enjoying this at all. While he does well at first, his client lists quickly dwindles down, probably because they recognize he had no enthusiasm for his practice. And next thing you know, he's barely practicing law, even though he is one of the most educated lawyers in the continent. He had a nickname, the briefless barrister, because he was so smart and so talented, but had no cases. And very quickly his legal career flounders.
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Host
One of the things about him traveling to Europe, Charles Sumner traveling to Europe, is. I think you said it in a really interesting way. It sort of set the intellectual tone for the rest of his life. What's an example of something he saw or an experience he's had that changed his mind about what the United States could be?
- [20:38]
Zakir Tammies
I'll give you two examples. When Charles Sumner arrives in Europe, he first goes to Paris, and he is just shocked at how terrible his French is. Even though he had studied French in school, he couldn't hold a conversation with the Frenchman. So he decides rather than go see all the sights, go visit the chateaus, go explore the countryside, or do whatever one does in Paris, he is going to go to university lectures and learn French. He told one of his professors, I'm not even sure I believe this, but he said in a letter that he attended more than 150 lectures in French in Paris. And as he's going to these different universities, including the Sorbonne, he sees White and black students sitting side by side, learning philosophy, learning history, learning literature. And he is startled by this sight, because in his own country, even in Boston, where he lives in a black community, it was inconceivable to imagine black and white students learning together. At the same time. He is also meeting a number of French aristocrats. And many of these aristocrats were totally ignorant of the United States. They didn't care for it. He was shocked to meet one aristocrat who was extremely well educated, but who asked him with a serious question, which was, do you Americans speak the same language as Montezuma? In other words, do you speak Aztec? And he is startled by this level of ignorance from an educated man, which I think may resonate with many immigrants to America today who might meet someone educated who asks a really dumb question about where they're from. So Sumner realizes that America is more or less a backwater considered by Europe. And then he realizes that if educated Frenchmen knew anything about America, the thing they knew was slavery. By this time, Europe had abolished slavery in most countries. It still existed in the colonies, but continental Europe had very little slavery, at least in Western Europe. And so Europeans are just disturbed by the existence of chattel slavery in America. They're also disturbed by the racism in America. And Charles Sumner realizes that, my God, my country will never be respected on the world stage until we address the question of slavery and racism. And he also realized that another world was possible, a world in which whites and blacks were equal, were learning together, were governing together, as he was seeing at these university lectures in Paris.
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Host
When Charles Sumner returned to Boston, what were some of the earliest causes that he showed interest in?
- [24:12]
Zakir Tammies
He took an interest in a variety of causes, much of which revolved around education. He became close to Horace Mann, often considered the father of American public education. He ran for school board unsuccessfully. He tried to campaign to create a teachers college that would teach teachers to become better educators for the next generation. In fact, when it wasn't going well, he decided to pledge his own money to building this teacher's school and then to collect money from donors later to compensate himself. And the whole thing fell apart. And he realized the donors who were promising money weren't actually going to give it. And that was a hard lesson for him, which is that when you're trying to do good in the world, you will often have people who are saying the right things, who are encouraging you down the road, but they themselves are not willing to reach into their pocketbooks and contribute, or not willing to give their time or to risk anything. And Sumner learns at that time how difficult it is to pursue reform. And yet he has this deep passion for it, and he continues to give it his best. Federal funding for public media is again on the chopping block.
- [25:29]
Host
It's part of the President's effort to cut what he says is waste, fraud and abuse from the federal government.
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Zakir Tammies
Donald Trump and his allies are coming for it, and we have to be prepared for an incredible political battle, if that matters to you.
- [25:44]
Host
Check out this week's on the media from WNYC. I'm going to take you to the 4th of July, 1845. This perhaps shows us Sumner's fire, but also his naivete. On the 4th of July, gave a speech that left the audience in shock in Boston because he spoke about how awful it would be to enter a war with Mexico. What was his argument?
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Zakir Tammies
Let me paint a picture. At this time, Boston organized an annual military parade on July 4th, and they recognized one young orator who seemed to be having a promising career. So, for example, John Quincy Adams and Horace Mann and other famous individuals had an opportunity in their youth to speak at this military parade. In 1845, it was Charles Sumner's turn, and this was considered a low risk pick. He is a Harvard educated corporate lawyer in Boston. Yet unbeknownst probably to the organizers, Charles Sumner was going through a transformation at the time. He was just mortified by the prospect of America going to war with Mexico. At this time, slaveholders were desperate to spread slavery into the West. Of course, most of the American west belonged to Mexico at that time. And so there is a push for the President to invade Mexico. And Sumner decides that he cannot stay silent, that he has to use his platform to denounce this war. Now, all that's well and good, but Sumner had no sense of moderation. If he was going to condemn this war, he was going to go all out. So he asked rhetorically at the beginning of his speech, who is the God of war? And he responds, it is not the Christian God of Abraham, it is Mars, man slaying blood, polluting pagan Mars. Then he goes on and he argues that in this age of Christian light, there can be no war that is not dishonorable. He denounces West Point Academy as a place of idleness and vice. He denounces the American Navy as a useless and expensive toy. He mocks the military officers who are sitting in the crowd, such that one officer tried to get up and tell his peers that they should just walk out. So this was the amazing scene he articulated this extreme pacifist ideal and in the wake of the speech, he is losing his own social reputation in Boston. The mayor of Boston, Samuel Elliott, says the young man has cut his own throat.
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Host
Yeah, Boston elites. He loses place in society. He gets turned down for jobs. After this. There's this great quote, a letter that a professor wrote to the Harvard Board of Governors. It rejected Sumner twice in a row because of his political views. I'm reading from your book this. Sumner has become an outrageous philanthropist, neglecting his law to patch up the worlds, reform prisoners, convicts, put down soldiers in war and keep the solar system in harmonious action. The conservative corporation of Harvard College considers Sumner in the law school and unsuitable as a bull in a china shop.
- [29:51]
Zakir Tammies
Yeah, it was pretty extreme. He gets disinvited from all the aristocratic parties of Boston that he was once an honored guest. He tells a friend while walking down Beacon street, one of these wealthy streets on the city, that there was a time when every door was open to him and now they are all shut. His legal career, which is already floundering, gets even worse. He said, quote, they are trying to starve me into silence. And as this is happening, his speech simultaneously becomes famous. It goes viral. Peace societies across North America are printing the speech and reading it at different organizations. The speech even goes to Europe, where in the United Kingdom, pacifist societies are circulating the speech, publishing it. One peace society even mails a copy of the speech to Queen Victoria, who probably never read it. And so, as Sumner is losing favor among Boston aristocrats, he is also gaining favor among abolitionists, pacifists, young people, many women's circles. And he experiences his own career transformation.
- [31:12]
Host
My guest is author Zakir Tammies. We're discussing his book, Charles Sumner, Conscience of a Nation. It's our choice for full bio. Charles Sumner got involved with a case involving a black girl who wanted to attend a school in Boston. How did he get involved? Who did he get involved with?
- [31:35]
Zakir Tammies
By 1849, Charles Sumner is 38 years old. He has a broken law practice. He is active in a number of radical progressive causes. And then one day, a young black attorney walks into his door. His name was Robert Morris, the first African American lawyer in our history to win a jury trial. Robert Morris is 26 years old. Morris had been representing a young black girl who wanted to go to a white only public school. He had sued the Boston school board. He had lost a district court. And now he thought that he could use the benefit of an older, more experienced and more educated co counsel. So he asked Charles Sumner to join the case. And Sumner responds, not only agreeing to the case, but saying that he will do it for free. And together, Sumner and Morris become the first interracial legal team in American history. And they argue their case at the Massachusetts Supreme Court for Equality in Education.
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Host
How did Sumner's view on integration, where was it at this point? Because it shifts over his lifetime.
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Zakir Tammies
Yeah, it is really striking because, in fact, in Massachusetts, black school children were attending white schools across the state. It was only in Boston where they were prohibited from doing so because Boston had already built a black only public school. So the logic was, there's a public school for African Americans, so that's the only school they should go to. But Sumner and Morris point out that the school is very far from this young girl's home, that she walks past several other elementary schools on the way, and that she will have a stigma against her for attending this school, even if the resources are the same. And then Sumner analogizes what she is going through to what Jewish people were experiencing in Italy. He says that just as the ghettos of Rome might have equal public services, they are still not equal because of the stigma of being from the ghetto. Similarly, there's a stigma of going to a black school. Sumner argues that the Massachusetts State Constitution, which had an equality provision, required the integration of public schools. He essentially argues that separate cannot be equal. And he coins the expression equality before the law. He says that just as a Declaration of Independence pointed out that we are equal before God, we should therefore also be equal before the law.
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Host
Why did Charles Sumner want to become a senator?
- [34:58]
Zakir Tammies
Well, he loses this case, and I think that drove him to do even more because even as he lost, the Massachusetts Supreme Court did rule that everyone should be equal before the law. And then it just said that separate schools can be equal. So there was an amazing success in the dicta of the court establishing this principle of equality before the law. Come 1850, the situation in America becomes extremely dire for black Americans. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act. This act is so outrageous that Charles Sumner calls it the, quote, most cruel, unchristian, devilish law. The act essentially authorized bounty hunters to kidnap black Americans in the north, take them to a magistrate. The magistrate would get paid $5 for letting that person go free and $10 for sending that person into slavery. Black identity is essentially criminalized in the north. And Sumner sees what is happening in his own community of his black neighbors who are now fleeing in the hundreds to Canada because they are afraid of being abducted and sent or returned to slavery. And Sumner decides that he cannot stay silent. He joins forces with a number of other white and black lawyers, including Robert Morris and some activists, to create something they called the Vigilance Committee, which was essentially a group of vigilantes who are protecting fugitives from being re abducted and sent into slavery. Sumner does this for several years and while he's doing so, he is also getting involved in politics. He runs for Congress unsuccessfully. He joins a new political party called the Free Soilers, which stood for the non expansion of slavery into the West. And he is now furious, most of all at Daniel Webster, the famous Senator of Massachusetts, this incredible orator, this man who championed the idea of an indestructible American Union. He is furious with Webster, one of his childhood heroes, because Webster signed on to the Fugitive Slave Act. Webster had calculated that he needed to appease the south if he ever wanted to be president of the U.S. webster was planning to run for President very soon. And Sumner basically says that Webster had made a deal with the devil. And now Sumner wants a new person, an anti slavery person, to take that seat when Webster becomes Secretary of the Senate, leaving that seat open and vulnerable.
- [38:06]
Host
My guest is author Zakir Tammies. We're discussing his book Charles Conscience of a Nation. It's our choice for full bio. When Charles Sumner went to Washington D.C. he had an exposure to slavery that he really hadn't had before. What did the Black population of D.C. look like?
- [38:27]
Zakir Tammies
In the early 1850s, Washington D.C. was a Southern city, a slave city. There were some free blacks in Washington, but their freedom was extremely precarious. Due to the Fugitive Slave Act, Washington straddles between Maryland and Virginia, which are both slave states. Sumner is now living among slavery for the first time and he is deeply uncomfortable. Even worse perhaps for him, he is often harassed and accost on the streets of Washington on his way to and from Capitol Hill because he's an abolitionist senator, one of the only abolitionists in the city. And pro slavery voices in the city were just furious with him. So he is getting death threats, he is getting accosted, he is extremely uncomfortable. And yet this is the job he signed up for by becoming a US Senator.
- [39:35]
Host
One of the things that was so interesting in the way you describe it is Sumner describes slaveholders as having a slave oligarchy, sort of claiming that slaveholders were dominating the free will of Americans. Can you explain that? A little longer, a little more.
- [40:02]
Zakir Tammies
So Sumner pointed out in a speech that there were only 92,000 slaveholders in the country that had more than two slaves. This is roughly 1.5% of the American population. And he says this small 1% of the population, 1.5% of the population, quote, dominates over the Republic, determines its national policy, disposes of its offices, and sways all to its absolute rule. He said there was nothing, the national government that was not controlled by the slave oligarchy. He said they owned the keys to the presidential Cabinet. He said that you couldn't be appointed to any office in the executive branch without the Senate approving you and without the Senate clearing your views on slavery, in fact, from George Washington until James. But until Abraham Lincoln, there was not a single US President or Cabinet member who had an antislavery political position while they were in office. So that was how strong slavery dominated American politics at the time. One of Sumner's colleagues warned him when he first started that at Washington, slavery rules everything. And Sumner tells the public that until you unseat the slave oligarchy, there is nothing you can really do in the country. He was saying, prostrate the slave oligarchy and then the country will be open to all kinds of generous reforms. He said, in vain. You seek economy in the government, improvements of rivers and harbors, or dignity and peace in our foreign relations, while the slave oligarchy holds the national purse and the national sword. So to him, the primary issue in America was to unseat this oligarchy before anything else meaningful could be achieved by the country.
- [42:11]
Host
Charles Sumner was known for giving elaborate speeches. Some people marveled at his ability to be so eloquent. Other people were like, who is this guy? I can't believe what he's saying. He should resign immediately. You know, in some ways he thought it was cordial, but in retrospect, was he wrong.
- [42:36]
Zakir Tammies
So Sumner didn't have any sense of moderation. One of his friends said that Sumner uses words as boys do stones, to break windows and knock down flower pots. He was extremely vituperative in his speech. Another friend said that if Sumner attacks you, he attacks you in broad daylight. He did not scheme behind the scenes. He did not know how to be two faced, to be nice to you in front of you and then to scheme behind you, which was a good quality in some respects, but in other respects, it meant that if he disagreed with you politically, he would just eat, chew you up on the Senate floor, and he would do so with really extreme, but also clever language. So, for example, he. I mean, there's so many. But he would bring all these classical allusions into his speech. He once said that we have the Whole arsenal of God, including scorn, mockery, denunciation, disgust. And to him, he said, the whole arsenal of God is ours, and I will not renounce one of the weapons. Not one.
- [43:59]
Host
I'm ready to talk about the canning incident. Are you ready to talk about the canning incident?
- [44:04]
Zakir Tammies
Let's do it.
- [44:05]
Host
May 22, 1856. Abolitionist Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. He was nearly beaten to death on the Senate floor by pro slavery South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks, for criticizing his equally pro slavery cousin, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler. I tried to squish that into one sentence. When you think about this incident, which most of us learned about in school, what is a piece of information about the canning incident that you think has been overlooked?
- [44:41]
Zakir Tammies
We lose the context of why Sumner delivered this speech. By 1856, more than 4 million people are in chains in the South. That's one quarter of the Southern population. Slaveholders are terrified of domestic rebellion, and for that reason, they are doing everything to spread slavery into the west and to suppress abolitionist speech. Southern states are monitoring the mail for abolitionist newspapers and letters. You could get sentenced to prison, even the death penalty for helping an enslaved person escape. There was no freedom under slavery, not even for white people. All this came to fore in Kansas, which is going to have a vote on whether to become a slave state or a free state. And pro slavery politicians are desperate to make sure that Kansas becomes a slave state. So desperate that Sumner's colleague, David Rice Acheson, a senator from Missouri, the former President pro tempore of the Senate, goes back to his home state, organizes a gang of more than 1,000 men, storms into Kansas, takes over polling locations at gunpoint and stuffs the ballots. So Sumner is in Washington seeing one of his former colleagues organize a treasonous insurrection with violence. And what is more shocking is that many of Sumner's colleagues were too afraid to speak out against this tremendous threat to American democracy because they lived in Washington, D.C. where if you were anti slavery, you could get death threats, you could get harassed and accosted on the streets. And Sumner decides that, you know what, he has to speak out anyway. And he is going to do so in the most extreme way possible, because that's the only way Sumner ever did anything.
- [46:58]
Host
What is something about the caning incident that has been that people give too much credit to? They pay a little too much attention to this particular part of the story.
- [47:10]
Zakir Tammies
Yeah. So Sumner gives a speech and he condemns Senator Acheson for being a Roman traitor who should be hung for treason. He condemns President Pierce as a Roman dictator. He condemns Stephen Douglas as Lucifer incarnate. And then he targets Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina. He condemns Butler as an apologist for slavery. And he says that Butler has a harlot, a mistress, slavery. What he's doing is he's highlighting that Butler was an enslaver who had more than 70 slaves. And through this research, I was able to find that one of Butler's former slaves actually recalled Butler having a, quote, unquote, mistress and having two children by her, probably a woman that he had raped. Which is something that no previous biography of Charles Sumner has ever mentioned. No account of the caning ever acknowledges that Butler probably was indeed a rapist. So Sumner gives all this, and Preston Brooks, Butler's nephew, a Congressman, decides to, quote, unquote, avenge his uncle's honor. And the Canning story is often framed as a question of Southern honor, that Brooks is standing up for his family's dignity. What is missed is that Brooks is also trying to silence an anti slavery voice in Washington. Brooks comes from a place where you could be sentenced to death for helping an enslaved person escape, where you could go to jail for speaking against slavery, even as a white person. Brooks is raised as a slaveholder. He is taught from a young age to resort to violence, even torture, to get their way. He knew how to flog someone, he knew how to whip someone. That's what he did on his own plantation. And so he decides, by attacking Sumner, to give Sumner the same treatment that he would give on the daily to his own slaves. It is to degrade Sumner and to equate him with a slave. Essentially, according to one Southern newspaper, forgive the language, Sumner represented the sentiments of a Negro and Brooks decided that for that reason, Sumner needed to be attacked. So was there some Southern honor going on? Yes. But another huge part of the story is that this is Brooks, a slaveholder, attempting to assert dominance over anyone who spoke against his right to be a slaveholder.
- [49:55]
Host
Charles Sumner, it took a very long time for him to recover. In your research, did you discover, did he have a traumatic brain injury?
- [50:07]
Zakir Tammies
It takes him years to recover. He definitely had a severe concussion. He struggled to read or write for months. He even struggled to walk and had trouble with his balance. All indications of a severe concussion. He probably had some neuralgic pains, occipital neuralgia or something like that, because of just the sheer physical wounds that he had experienced, both on his back, his shoulders and his head didn't give him necessarily nerve damage, but pinched the nerves and aggravated them. He also had PTSD when he came back to The Senate. Two years later, feeling good, feeling like he's ready to resume his duties. He gets a throbbing headache as soon as he enters the Senate chamber, and he comes home and just cries and cries and cries. And he tried for a few weeks to go back, but every time he went there, he would get this headache and then come back crying. It was only in 1860, when there is a new Senate chamber, the modern one is constructed, that Sumner is able to resume his duties, probably because he was in a new room that did not trigger the traumatic memory of what had happened to him years before. What?
- [51:30]
Host
Oh, my goodness. Wow.
- [51:36]
Zakir Tammies
Oh, my God. Wow. Oh, my God. Radiolab. Whoa. Adventures on the Edge of what We Think We Know.
- [51:58]
Host
Early in the book, you write about Sumner's sexuality. You write, the evidence suggests that Sumner was probably gay insofar as modern terms means much when applied retroactively to the past. From the day Howe was married, friends were alarmed by the scale of Sumner's heartbreak. They tried to find a wife who could heal his wounds. In the wake of Howe's departure, Would you please explain the relationship between Sumner and Howe?
- [52:37]
Zakir Tammies
In the 1830s, there is a riot in Boston, and Charles Sumner decides to step into the crowd, be a hero, and put down the riot. He's not athletic, but he is 6 foot 4, and he thinks, foolishly, that he can put this riot down. He fails spectacularly. He's thrown to the ground and there are people throwing rocks at him. And then an older, strapping young man literally comes into the crowd, pulls Sumner out and saves possibly his life. That is Samuel Gridley Howe. Samuel Howe is a doctor by training who had previously gone to Europe and served in the Greek and Polish revolutions against the Ottoman Empire. He's a dashing man. He's a horseback rider, and he later becomes a social reformer. He founds the Perkins School of the Blind, which is still one of the leading institutions in the country for the service of blind people. Howe and Sumner become very, very close very quickly. They used to go on horseback rides into the countryside, and then come back, go to a pub, order strawberries and cream, and then go retire at Howe's home and talk all night long, often about their loneliness and shared experience of bachelorhood. Ultimately, Samuel Howe gets married, and when Hao gets married, Sumner is heartbroken. According to the records, he climbed into his bed in his mother's home and supposedly he did not get out for a month. Meanwhile, Hao feels tremendously guilty. He says that he felt like he went to heaven with his wife and left his Best friend outside. He spends most of his honeymoon writing letters to Sumner instead of spending time with his new wife. His new wife is so jealous that she says Sumner ought to have been a woman and you to have married him. His wife is Julia Ward Howe, the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. She wrote a number of books and poems, and she wrote a manuscript that was only discovered in 1970 and published in 2004 called the Hermaphrodite, where she analyzes her husband's sexuality by exploring him as an intersex man who goes back and forth between male and female partners. What that suggests is that Howe may have been bisexual and Sumner may have been gay. Now, there's a caveat to all this, which is that the term homosexuality was not introduced into the English language until the 1870s, so the concept of homosexuality did not exist at this time as such. And yet Sumner did have this deep love for Howe, whatever that may have meant to them, whatever that may have looked. When Sumner is elected to the US Senate, Howe burns many of their letters and will continue to burn letters for the rest of their life. He said he burned the letters out of fear they would one day be seen by unfriendly eyes. What was in those letters? Was it evidence of Sumner's sexuality, or was it bad political opinions that Howe didn't want the world to see? We will never know. But I suggest that looking at this relationship, what we can deduce is that Sumner and Howe really did love each other, whatever that may have meant.
- [56:07]
Host
Was Sumner's bachelorhood ever a liability for him?
- [56:13]
Zakir Tammies
Yes. When Sumner's growing up, being a bachelor was considered, you know, a little weird, a little different, but it wasn't a big deal. By the 1850s and 1860s, however, Victorian England had influenced the social mores of America, such that bachelors were looked upon with contempt, disgust, and most of all, suspicion. Because if you were a middle aged man, why wouldn't you marry a woman? If you didn't, you probably had some kind of sexual perversity, or you were a degenerate of some kind or another. There was a sense that if you were a bachelor, you were gross, you were weird, you were a problem. And Sumner then experiences the stigma not of being gay, but of being a bachelor. In the Senate at a time when there was only one, he was one of only two senators that had never married before. And in 1854, one colleague, Andrew Butler of South Carolina, gave this racist drunken screed. While the Senate is full of hoots and hollers, where he says that Sumner should go marry a black princess because he's chaste and because he's a bachelor. So Sumner experiences a stigma that may have influenced his decision to target Andrew Butler in a speech, the Crime Against Kansas, a couple years later. And that may have influenced Sumner to ultimately get married because he was looking for that. He was looking for a stronger social reputation. He gets married to a young widow named Alice. The marriage is a disaster.
- [58:00]
Host
It sounded like she had quite a.
- [58:02]
Zakir Tammies
Temper to say, yeah, she was hot headed. She had a temper. She was known to just yell and shout at Sumner and we will never know the full story. But I think part of that arose because after they had separated, Alice started to spread rumors that her husband was sexually impotent. So I think a lot of their marital discord arose because they weren't able to conjugate the marital relationship, probably. And Alice was just very angry at Sumner for this. Sumner is, of course, heartbroken, not so much at losing Alice, a woman that he never missed, but because he had gone from being a bachelor, achieving that status as a married man, then losing that status again, and then he's just so embarrassed because there's newspaper reports about him being sexually impotent.
- [58:55]
Host
This calls from some speculation on your part, but it's something that I thought when I read the book that he seemed to be a lonely man, but that his passion for civil rights, for integration, like maybe that is where his passion went. Once Howe got married, that is where Sumner put all of his attention. What do you think?
- [59:23]
Zakir Tammies
You may be right. I don't make that speculation myself. But Southern newspapers were calling him Eunuch Sumner. Another paper called him an unsexed creature. There were politicians who described him as effeminate. And so he is marginalized and stigmatized through his life. For his bachelorhood, for maybe his choice of clothing, he was often known to wear lavender checkered trousers.
- [59:52]
Host
Oh, my.
- [59:53]
Zakir Tammies
Yeah, he was very flashy with his clothing. He stood out. And he may have experienced a social cost for that and that may have helped him empathize with black Americans.
- [60:08]
Host
You are listening to full bio. My guest is Sakir Tammies. The name of his book is Charles Sumner, Conscience of a Nation. It's our choice. For full bio, let's talk about Sumner and Lincoln. What did Sumner think of Lincoln and vice versa.
- [60:27]
Zakir Tammies
So when Lincoln comes to Washington, he and Sumner have a meeting and the first thing they discover is that both of them are 6 foot 4. And I don't think Lincoln or Sumner would see someone the same height as him. And Lincoln says, we should match backs and see who is taller. Sumner had no sense of humor, and he was mortified by this. This is in 1861. The country is on the verge of a civil war. South Carolina and other states have already seceded. Sumner's meeting Lincoln for the first time, the man who is supposed to lead the Union in this great question of the future of America. And Sumner is horrified that Lincoln is just making jokes. And so he responds to Lincoln and says, Mr. President, this is not a time for us to match backs. We need to present a united front. So then Sumner leaves. Lincoln finds this whole thing hilarious, and he tells another man, I didn't have many bishops down where I live, but Sumner reminds me of a bishop. I call one of my chapters Lincoln's Bishop, because that's the role Sumner played in Lincoln's life. He would continually and repeatedly insist to Lincoln the necessity of emancipating Southern slaves. He called on Lincoln to see the. The greater moral dimension to the war and to see God's role in the war, to recognize that this was a war not only to bring the Union back together, but to guarantee freedom for everyone. And Lincoln does not agree at first. But what is striking is that from the first day on, the day of the Battle of Fort Sumter, Sumner goes to Lincoln and tells him that now he can use his wartime powers to emancipate Southern slaves. Lincoln disagrees, but they argue about it until midnight, which is a suggestion that Lincoln took Sumner very seriously. And for the next few years, they would argue and argue and argue and argue. But Sumner never stopped going to Lincoln and Lincoln never stopped hearing him out. And that leads to the Emancipation Proclamation, which Sumner helped to write. And after Lincoln issues it, he gifts the pen that he used to write the proclamation to Sumner.
- [62:52]
Host
You also note that Sumner had a strong relationship with Mary Todd Lincoln. Many people thought her to be a problem. What did she see in Sumner and what did Sumner see in her?
- [63:07]
Zakir Tammies
They were both, in many ways, social outcasts in Washington, D.C. they were at the highest echelons of power. Sumner as a prominent US Senator, Chair of Foreign Relations Committee, Mary Lincoln as First Lady. And yet they were not welcome at many parties in Washington, D.C. they were considered weird and outcast. So Sumner and Mary Lincoln become very close very quickly. He would often take Mary Lincoln to the opera, into the theater. She was his goat. He was Mary Lincoln's go to date whenever her husband, President, United States, didn't have time. And Sumner helps to inspire a transformation in Mary Lincoln, who had grown up in Kentucky in a slaveholding family who had several brothers who fought for the Confederacy, and Mary Lincoln, who honestly didn't think much of the slavery question prior to the war to more or less become an abolitionist. Mary Lincoln once bragged that Sumner says that he wishes my husband was as good an abolitionist as me. And they were very close for many years and long after Lincoln dies. Mary Lincoln is poor and broke. She is struggling to get by, and she's asking Congress for a pension. And it was Sumner who pushed and pushed to secure that pension for Mary Lincoln and is ultimately successful. And Mary Lincoln would always say that Sumner was her closest friend in Washington.
- [64:40]
Host
When Lincoln was assassinated, President Andrew Johnson proved to be, we'll call him, an inhibitor of civil rights. How did Charles Sumner maneuver around Johnson?
- [64:56]
Zakir Tammies
So the day Lincoln died, Sumner is there holding Lincoln's hand. He was there all night long after the assassination at Ford's Theater. And he's there until the morning where he's clutching Lincoln's hand. And the moment Lincoln dies, Sumner leaves the room, he goes back home, and he gets to his house, he's slumping over his breakfast. He hasn't slept all night. And there are people visiting him to make sure he's alive because nobody knew who had been killed that night. And one of his visitors asked him, how will the country go on now that Lincoln is gone? And Sumner responds, our leaders are gone, but the Republic remains. And it was this emphasis on the Republic that Sumner continues to push through the administration of Andrew Johnson. Johnson is obstinate, he is racist. He's incompetent and arrogant. But Sumner decides to put all of his focus on Congress. He pushes for Congress and for the Republican Party to win a supermajority in the primaries, such that by 1866, Sumner is now a dominating force in Washington, D.C. he's pushing for the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. And he's also pushing us through a slate of bills to triumph over Johnson's veto. The bill that he stewarded in particular was the Freedmen's Bureau Act. This is to create a whole new government agency that is going to deal with the most major question of political and economic significance in the history of America. What do you do with 4 million free people in the South? Sumner helps to create this agency and delegate tremendous authority from Congress to this agency without supervision from the President of the United States. He helps to fashion other administrative agencies and to get the executive branch to do things in spite of the President. And then, of course, he's pushing Congress to impeach Andrew Johnson. When that impeachment is unsuccessful, he is just furious with his colleagues.
- [67:16]
Host
I'm curious, during this period around 1866, and he's fighting for civil rights, a civil rights bill, and he believes that integration is possible at this time. What were African American leaders thinking about him? What was Frederick Douglass thinking about him? What was the black elite in Washington D.C. thinking about Charles Sumner?
- [67:46]
Zakir Tammies
Frederick Douglass once said, there is now a man at Washington who represents the future and is a majority in himself. That man is Charles Sumner. Douglass and Lincoln and Sumner were very close. There is one report that Douglass and Sumner would often walk hand in hand on Capitol Hill. And Sumner takes pains to become close to both Douglass and to a number of black businessmen, entrepreneurs, lawyers and other middle class members of society in Washington D.C. so for example, by early 1870s, Sumner's closest friend in Washington is a man named George Downing. George Downing operates the mess hall for the House of Representatives. He is the top chef in Congress, an African American man who has a restaurant business. And he and Sumner are not only friends. Sumner is going to Downing for political advice. He would talk to Downing and to others about his own theories and what bills he's trying to work on, how he should approach different political questions. They would advise him. They were often at his home giving him advice. They were all very close. And they helped to teach Sumner that even after the passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, the 14th Amendment guaranteeing birthright citizenship, the 15th Amendment granting Black men the right to vote, that even then black members of the middle class are still relegated to a second class status because their children are shut out of common schools, because they themselves often cannot get on white only streetcars, because they can't get on the train together, the bus together. And so Sumner recognizes that even now there needs to be an additional civil rights push, a push for racial integration in order to fulfill the promises of the Civil War.
- [69:47]
Host
Your book goes deep into the annexation of Santo Domingo, also known as the Dominican Republic, about Grant and Sumner not getting along that much. What I want to focus on though is the division within the Republican Party that happens at this time and Sumner's role in that division. How would you describe it?
- [70:15]
Zakir Tammies
By 1872, Sumner is very, very angry with his colleagues. He had helped to write a civil rights bill. He had introduced a civil rights bill that would have created a right of public accommodation for anyone, regardless of race to enter a common carrier, a restaurant, a hotel and sue for damages if they are denied and discriminated against. He wrote that bill with the help of John Mercer Langston, the dean of Howard Law School, the first black law professor to have that title. Sumner in Langston helped to push for this bill, and Howard University directly gets involved. The university itself lobbies for this bill and calls on the Republican Party to pass this integration bill. And the Republicans are just not interested. Grant, often considered a champion of black rights and black voting rights in particular, was not interested in the Civil Rights bill either. When Langston and other black leaders visited Grant and asked him about this bill, he responded by saying he wasn't a lawyer and couldn't comment on it. So Sumner is just outraged at the failure of Republicans to advance integration. And that, along with outrage over Grant's foreign policy, he decides in 1872 to not endorse Grant for reelection. Instead, he endorses Horace Greeley, a media mogul and huckster who kept changing his views about a variety of things, had once been an abolitionist, but is now just screeching racist remarks and is calling for the end of Reconstruction. And many people, including many African Americans, are just startled by Sumner, this great champion of equality, endorsing Greeley, an enemy of equality. But Sumner tells an audience of black voters, quote, never vote for a man who is not true to you. He was more interested in punishing Grant, a man of his own party, than in supporting Greeley necessarily. And he feared that if black voters only voted for one political party, that political party would ultimately take them for granted. And so he wanted there to be electoral consequences against his own political party for its failure to sufficiently advance the cause of racial equality.
- [72:42]
Host
You are listening to full bio. My guest is Sakir Tammiz. The name of his book is Charles Sumner, Conscience of a Nation. It's our choice for full bio. Toward the end of his life, Sumner's life, you note that people were worried that he was sick, possibly losing his mind. He was lonely at this point. Was he?
- [73:12]
Zakir Tammies
Yes and no. He was lonely in the sense that very few of his white colleagues would spend any time with him. He was no longer being invited to parties in Washington, D.C. he loses his chairmanship, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, gets stripped of all of his committee appointments, and basically becomes a pariah in the Senate. And on top of all this, he is now separated from his wife. He has no family left, more or less. His mother had died. He lives in Washington, D.C. he doesn't even have a residence in his home base in Boston. When he returned to black Boston for an election, he actually said that he wasn't sure where he was going to vote or if he could vote because he no longer had a residency in Massachusetts, even though he's a US Senator, and yet at the same time that he's very lonely from white America, he's not from black America. There's a number of black friends that he has who are taking care of him. His neighbor was James Wormley, the operator of a famous Wormley Hotel, the largest black owned hotel in the country. And Wormley would visit him almost on the daily. Had a pair of keys into Sumner's home. Then there's George Downing, then there's John Mercer Langston. There's another man named Joshua Smith, that these are all black friends of his, Frederick Douglass, even who had spent time with him, who had almost tried to take care of his health and who became in many ways his family. Which is really striking to think that you've got black leaders in Washington D.C. also a few black politicians in Washington by this time, and also black students at Howard University who are all comfortable guests at Sumner's home. And they would actually take care of him when he was sick. And they became his family.
- [75:04]
Host
He died on March 11, 1874. 40,000 people paid their respects to him at the State House. First of all, what happened to his civil rights bill?
- [75:16]
Zakir Tammies
When Sumner is dying, he's high on morphine. He just had a heart attack and a crowd of people comes to visit him. The speaker of the House is there, many Senators are there, many Congressmen are there. Frederick Douglass is there, all in his home as he lay dying. And Sumner kept trying to get up. They thought he was delusional and tried to hold him down. Then he says to his secretary, take care of my bill. My bill. His secretary responds and says, don't worry, I'll take care of your household bills. You won't die in debt. And then Sumner gets angry and he kind of, he gets alert all of a sudden and he says, no, you don't understand me. My civil rights bill. Take care of my civil rights bill. And then they realized that Sumner was trying to get up because he was trying to go to the Senate as he's high on morphine, as he's dying from a heart attack, to keep pushing for the civil rights bill. In fact, just a few days earlier, he had told George Downing that prostrate as I am, if I could crawl to the Senate and pass the civil rights bill, I'd be content to die. He dies without passing this bill, of course. But people are so moved by this moment. The speaker of the House. Many other members of Congress are crying in Sumner's library right after he dies, the papers publish Sumner's final words. Take care of the Civil Rights Bill. Don't let the Civil Rights Bill fail. Frederick Douglass helps to lead a campaign in Washington, D.C. to pass the bill in Sumner's honor. The Senate does pass the bill three months later, but the House does not until the following year, whittling it down to the extreme, making it basically unenforceable. The bill gets passed, Grant signs it into law. Grant does not enforce the civil rights bill for racial integration. Eight years later, the Supreme Court overturns the bill in the civil rights cases of 1883, and the bill becomes a dead letter. But what is amazing is that if you Fast forward to 1964 when Congress passes the Civil Rights act, the first two provisions are almost verbatim what Charles Sumner had written nearly 100 years earlier.
- [77:45]
Host
If you go into a black neighborhood, you'll find a Thaddeus Stevens school and you'll find Charles Sumner schools. How would you like people to remember him?
- [77:59]
Zakir Tammies
I think we need to do a lot more to remember Sumner as one of America's founding Fathers. Let me explain why. Sumner is one of the architects of the 13th Amendment, the 14th Amendment, and the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution. He's one of the leading constitutional lawyers of the century. Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, she said that Sumner was the, quote, great defender of the Constitution. Black lawyers for generations considered Sumner to be their hero and to be their ideal legal statesman. In 1950, when the NAACP is filing the brief in Brown vs Board of Education, 1954. Sorry. Thurgood Marshall says that Sumner was the founder of the equal protection clause to the U.S. constitution. And he says that the Declaration of Independence established the principle that all men are equal. But it was none other than Charles Sumner who concretized that principle into American law. So generations of black lawyers and thinkers have regarded Sumner as one of America's founding Fathers, in effect a second founder coming from that second generation of founders during the 1860s with the Reconstruction Amendments. And I think that is something we all ought to remember today. And we need to put Charles Sumner into the center of America's constitutional story.
- [79:36]
Host
Thank you so much to Zakir Tammies for joining us. The name of the book is Charles Conscience of a Nation.
- [79:43]
Zakir Tammies
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- [80:15]
Host
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