A landmark biography of Charles Sumner, the unsung hero of the American Civil War and Reconstruction
Charles Sumner is mainly known as the abolitionist statesman who suffered a brutal caning on the Senate floor. This violent episode has obscured his 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 but fast-paced narrative, Zaakir Tameez presents Sumner as one of America’s forgotten founding fathers. He argues that Sumner was a gay man and explores his critical partnerships with 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 touch on questions of race, democracy, and constitutional law.
“A magnificent and definitive biography of Charles Sumner… a towering achievement.”
Jeffrey Rosen, President & CEO of the National Constitution Center, author of The Pursuit of Happiness
“Zaakir Tameez offers unique insight into Sumner as a pathbreaking constitutional theorist.”
Drew Faust, President Emerita of Harvard University, author of This Republic of Suffering
“Written with the rigor of a historian, the prose of a poet, and the sensitivity of an essayist.”
Cornell William Brooks, Harvard Kenndy School, Eighteenth President and CEO of the NAACP
“With the flair of a novelist and the astuteness of a scholar, this is biography at its best.”
Manisha Sinha, author of The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920
“Sumner has long deserved a definitive new biography: Mr. Tameez has written it.”
Fergus M. Bordewich, author of Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction
“Tameez gives us a Charles Sumner for our time and for all time… This book is worthy of its towering subject."
Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of King: A Life
“Thanks to Zaakir Tameez, this powerful story can again be read with the close attention it deserves.”
Ted Widmer, author of Lincoln on The Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington
“Few American lives from the past speak to our present as self-evidently as Charles Sumner’s.”
Samuel Moyn, Yale University, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World
“What Chernow did for Hamilton, Tameez now does for Sumner. Musical, anyone?”
Akhil Reed Amar, Yale University, author of America’s Constitution: A Biography
“In this courageous new book, Zaakir Tameez finally addresses Charles Sumner's sexuality.”
Jim Downs, author of Stand By Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation
“This is a biography for our time. Zaakir Tameez’s smart, well-crafted story of Charles Sumner brings the crux of the American project to life.”
Jefferson Cowie, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power
“The antislavery movement wrought this country’s greatest revolution. Thanks to Zaakir Tameez, we are reacquainted with one of its leading revolutionaries.
Matthew Karp, Princeton University, author of This Vast Southern Empire