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U.S. Civil War – Charles Sumner – Zaakir Tameez
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Ep 059 – Nonfiction. Author Zaakir Tameez discusses his book, “Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation.”
‘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 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 but fast-paced 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, whose legal contributions to Reconstruction have been overlooked for far too long.
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.’
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
00:00:01
A.J. Woodhams
Hi, everyone. This is A.J. Woodhams, host of the War Books podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war-related topics. Today, i am extremely excited to have on the show Zakir Tamiz for his new book, Charles Sumner, Conscious of a Nation.
00:00:19
A.J. Woodhams
Zucker is a scholar of antitrust and constitutional law, a graduate of Yale Law School and the University of Virginia. He has published award-winning scholarship and co-authored amicus briefs before the Texas and United States Supreme Courts.
00:00:33
A.J. Woodhams
He is a Fulbright Scholar and Humanity in Action Senior Fellow from Houston, Texas. Zucker, you doing today?
00:00:41
Zaakir
Doing fantastic and even better now that I'm on your show. Thank you for having me.
00:00:44
A.J. Woodhams
Oh, thank you. Thank you for saying that.
Charles Sumner's Legacy and Influence
00:00:46
A.J. Woodhams
um I got to say, The one thing now, tell me if this was your experience. I grew up, I have to check myself when I do civil war topic shows, because I grew up in Indiana, Northern Indiana, obviously people in Indiana maybe you have a different um take on the civil war than somebody in Alabama.
00:01:06
A.J. Woodhams
But growing up, the only thing I think they ever taught us about Charles Sumner was that he was the guy who got caned in the Senate. And that's all I knew about him.
00:01:17
A.J. Woodhams
was Was this your experience? I don't know where you grew up, but am I on a boat here?
00:01:21
Zaakir
ah yeah you're You're on the mark. I grew up in Texas. All I learned about Charles Sumner was about the caning, which we can talk about later.
00:01:29
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:01:29
Zaakir
There was a study done by my friend Tom Donnelly, where he actually showed that pretty much every single American history textbook discusses Charles Sumner, but only once, which is the context of the caning.
00:01:44
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:01:44
Zaakir
And when I pitched this book to publishers, one of the agents who first got back to me said she had never heard of Charles Sumner. But I had said in my pitch that every high school student who takes US s history knows who Charles Sumner is.
00:01:58
Zaakir
So she asked her kids at the dinner table if they knew about Charles Sumner. And they were like, yeah, that's the guy who got caned. And that was when she got back to me.
00:02:06
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. I mean, it's such, and you know, he's such a, um, uh, uh, an influential and admirable character in American history. And it's kind of it's unfortunate that that's, that's what people know. Well, I mean, a lot of the the things he championed, obviously, you know, we're, we're living in the world that he helped build.
00:02:26
A.J. Woodhams
Um, but yeah, the textbooks, they only really discussed the caning, um, Well, we're going to talk about much more than that. ah the ah The first question that I actually like authors to ah ah to answer when they come on the show is, if in your own words, ah can you just tell us what is your book about?
00:02:46
Zaakir
Yeah. The book tells the story of Charles Sumner, but not just through the prism of the caning. He talks about Charles Sumner as a champion of multiracial democracy, equality, and constitutional law.
00:03:07
Zaakir
He was all those things. I first came across Charles Sumner while I was reading the brief that Thurgood Marshall in the NAACP filed in Brown. And there I see the name of Charles Sumner more than 40 times.
00:03:23
Zaakir
Because 100 years before Brown, Sumner actually tried to integrate the schools of Boston in a case at the Massachusetts Supreme Court with a black attorney. And he goes on and, of course, becomes a leading US s senator. He's an advisor to Abraham Lincoln.
00:03:38
Zaakir
He is one of the architects of Reconstruction. He was brutally tackled the Senate floor in the 1850s. He's all those things. But more than anything, I think he was a champion visionary of true racial egalitarianism and multiracial democracy.
00:03:54
Zaakir
And that's the angle with which I take the whole book project.
00:03:58
A.J. Woodhams
Now, you're a ah a legal scholar, so yeah you do um take a legal angle a lot
Author's Background and Writing Challenges
00:04:05
Zaakir
Yeah.
00:04:05
A.J. Woodhams
ah in in this this book.
00:04:07
A.J. Woodhams
um what what you know I wish more people wrote about the Civil War. And I don't know if it's because publishers maybe... If you want, you can tell me about your publishing journey, trying to get this published. But maybe publishers aren't aren't so interested. But you know what...
00:04:22
A.J. Woodhams
You just mentioned you saw Charles Sumner's name pop up so many times, but what is it about this Civil War figure that you were like, I got to write i got to write about him?
00:04:32
Zaakir
Yeah, so i grew up in Texas and then I went to school at the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson. And there's lots of debates ongoing at UVA and other schools about how we remember historical figures like Jefferson, who represent contradictory values.
00:04:57
Zaakir
Jefferson, on the one hand, said all men are created equal. On the other, he was a slave-a-crap. The same could be said of many founding fathers, and it could be said of many politicians leading up to the Civil War.
00:05:11
Zaakir
And I remember in Charlottesville, we had a statue of Robert E. Lee, and there was a movement to remove the statue, which is what galvanized the far right to organize the quote-unquote Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.
00:05:29
Zaakir
when Ku Klux Klan members and members of the Proud Boys and different white supremacist groups converge on Charlottesville to try to argue that the Robert E. Lee statue should remain. And one of the sentiments of people who continue to glorify the Confederacy is that we have to treat men by their times.
00:05:48
Zaakir
We can't judge by today's standards. We have to judge by the standards of that time. And I've always agreed with that. Like, I don't think we should be applying modern values necessarily to the past when we judge historical figures.
00:06:03
Zaakir
And then you come across men like Charles Sumner from the same time period as Robert E. Lee, from the same era, or a little bit later than Thomas Jefferson, who described slavery as a system of utter brutality, who championed freedom and equality for all men,
00:06:22
Zaakir
who literally wanted there to be integrated schools in Boston in the late 1840s. And if we are to judge men by their times, Sumner sets a really high bar.
00:06:36
Zaakir
And I thought, my God, this bar, we need to we need to write about this bar and have a sense of like what of what that actually looked like in that era.
00:06:43
A.J. Woodhams
i had I'm so glad you just said that because i had when when I was reading this, I had a thought that this is somebody really worth writing about because he he really does not change.
00:06:56
A.J. Woodhams
People who never change their opinions, especially when their opinions turn out to be the right opinions, really fascinate me because I changed my i change my opinion all the time.
00:06:59
Zaakir
Yeah. Right. right
00:07:04
A.J. Woodhams
Now, obviously, I'm not like a lawmaker contending with um you know legislating in the age of slavery. um But I'm just so fascinated by people who are were very steadfast in their their beliefs, and especially when it's some someone like Charles Sumner who consistently championed um equality and um was a a leading abolitionist.
00:07:28
A.J. Woodhams
and And so so he's just such a figure we worth writing about. Was this for for, I don't want to go too much into the nuts and bolts of publishing because i want to get into his life.
00:07:40
A.J. Woodhams
what did your What did the publisher say when you're like, i want to write this 700 page book about Charles Sumner?
00:07:46
Zaakir
Well, I pitched it as 200 to 300 pages.
00:07:48
A.J. Woodhams
Okay, nice.
00:07:49
Zaakir
um and i think publishers were quite receptive
00:07:54
A.J. Woodhams
Oh, great. Yeah.
00:07:55
Zaakir
because they found it to be new and interesting.
00:07:55
A.J. Woodhams
great
00:07:59
Zaakir
There had not been a Sumner biography in a major press for more than 50 years when I pitched this book. The last biography by David Donald in 1960 and 1970, it was two volumes, but it characterizes Charles Sumner as this pompous, arrogant man who couldn't consider other perspectives And a lot of that is true.
00:08:23
Zaakir
Not saying it's
Sumner's Early Life and Personal Relationships
00:08:24
Zaakir
not true. it It's valid. But looking at it now, I think it's important to recognize that, yes, he was arrogant. Yes, he was pompous. Yes, he couldn't see other sides because he believed in the side of freedom and equality for all.
00:08:38
Zaakir
And he never wavered in that belief. There was, in fact, one moment where someone had told him that he wasn't considering other sides. And he starts screaming and he shouts, there is no other side.
00:08:48
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. True.
00:08:49
Zaakir
So I present Sumner as this kind of moral hero, even though I i do critique him quite a bit throughout the book.
00:08:50
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:08:56
Zaakir
And publishers found that to be an important intervention after many years of other books characterizing Sumner in a way that I think is unfair and that is not fully accurate.
00:09:09
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, um and maybe towards the end of the podcast, we we might go into how the scholarship around him has changed, just like all Civil up civil War scholarship.
00:09:15
Zaakir
Yeah.
00:09:18
A.J. Woodhams
um But let's dive into um the man and his life. um Talk about Charles Sumner's upbringing, ah where he came from, what his background's like, his his family.
00:09:30
A.J. Woodhams
um start Start from the beginning for us.
00:09:34
Zaakir
So the last page of biography characterized Sumner as this pompous, erudite, arrogant man because of his classical education. He was indeed third generation Harvard educated man.
00:09:46
Zaakir
His father went to Harvard. His grandfather went to Harvard. He went to Harvard. He could speak Latin and Greek and French and German. He was classically educated, that, and the other.
00:10:00
Zaakir
But what was not mentioned previously is that Sumner grew up in a neighborhood that was predominantly African-American. He lived on the north slope of Beacon Hill, which at that time in Boston was a home to several hundred black families that lived right where Sumner lived. He was just a couple blocks away from the African Meeting House, one of the first black churches in the country.
00:10:25
Zaakir
He was a couple of blocks away from Prince Hall Mason, and the first the de first black Freemasonic Lodge. And he was there because his father was racial egalitarian.
00:10:37
Zaakir
who believed that everyone should be treated equally, who would tip his hat when walking past an African-American on the street, who actually preferred the term, quote, people of color and used that instead of saying Negro.
00:10:48
Zaakir
So Samarit grew up in that environment. And he also, interestingly, grew up in poverty because his dad, who, yes, went to Harvard and was a lawyer, was just a really bad lawyer and couldn't seem to make any money.
00:11:02
Zaakir
And for that reason, it was partly why they lived in this particular neighborhood. But Sumner had a classical education mixed with a steep empathy for his neighbors.
00:11:11
A.J. Woodhams
A pretty tumultuous relationship with his father, I believe. um Hardly ever spoke about him. what what What was um growing up in the Sumner household, ah what what was that life like?
00:11:23
Zaakir
It was very secretive and hard to figure out. I found almost nothing from Charles Sumner's letters describing his childhood.
00:11:37
Zaakir
ah there's When his father died, one of his friends wrote to Sumner and said, who your father is, we need not speak about, or who your father is to, we need not speak about. I know that your emotions must be very complex.
00:11:50
Zaakir
And there's almost nothing left, which leads me to suspect that Sumner probably either destroyed or just didn't leave behind many writings about his father.
00:11:59
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:12:01
Zaakir
um i i think his father was a very strict man and uh his father was extremely demanding um they were not close at all but all that said for the rest of his life sumner did find inspiration from his father's ideals what i'll say
00:12:20
A.J. Woodhams
but I was just going to say, his father was his father was the sheriff, right? ah ah And
00:12:26
Zaakir
So his father was a sheriff of Suffolk County.
00:12:29
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:12:30
Zaakir
um Here's one story that gives you sense of who his father is. His father once had to execute the prisoner for the crime that the prisoner had committed.
00:12:41
Zaakir
And his father gets onto the stage where basically the gallows are, this person is about to be hung. And he tells the audience not to worry effectively because this man is about to be hung, did have religious rights delivered to him before and could have had an opportunity to meet with new with a clergy member.
00:12:59
Zaakir
And so in a sense, you know don't feel bad. He's he's got his religion. And then teach his father trips on on the man's foot before he's about to hang him. And then he takes his hat off and apologizes.
00:13:13
Zaakir
And then he hangs the guy.
00:13:16
A.J. Woodhams
Sure. it's a and I'm sure that disciplinarian in the Sumner household maybe doesn't quite describe Charles Sumner's father, but you know imagine your dad's like the ah the kind of guy who's ah the town executioner.
00:13:27
Zaakir
Yeah.
00:13:30
Zaakir
Right.
00:13:31
A.J. Woodhams
ah
00:13:31
Zaakir
Exactly.
00:13:32
A.J. Woodhams
And I believe too, um so he as far as his one of the the foundational moments for him, I think this might, maybe this was a little bit later, but um he had a a few siblings, all of them throughout their lives, not in the greatest of health.
00:13:46
A.J. Woodhams
believe he had a sister who died from tuberculosis. Is that is that right?
00:13:51
Zaakir
So...
00:13:51
A.J. Woodhams
What was his relationship with his siblings?
00:13:54
Zaakir
He was very close to this one particular sister named Mary. And after Sumner goes to Harvard, and now he's a corporate lawyer in Boston, and he gets very sick, and his sister also gets sick.
00:14:07
Zaakir
His sister dies, but Sumner survives. And Sumner is full of grief, and he's writing to friends saying, why was I spared? If only I could take the blood in my veins and give it to her.
00:14:23
Zaakir
And it was right after that, as Sumner begins to pivot his career into fighting for justice and using his legal training to advance a more equitable world.
00:14:34
Zaakir
And I think a large part of that was his own reflection on losing his sister and realizing that for whatever reason, Providence had afforded him an opportunity to live. And it probably wasn't so that he could continue to be a corporate lawyer, but to do something more meaningful with his career.
00:14:46
A.J. Woodhams
Sure. Yeah. ah Talk about his ah personality. we've We've already kind of alluded to him. and i don't know, being, he wasn't like, ah he's not the kind of guy who would like go around telling jokes.
00:15:04
A.J. Woodhams
He's kind of a serious man.
00:15:04
Zaakir
Yeah.
00:15:05
A.J. Woodhams
um tell to Tell us a little bit about his personality.
00:15:08
Zaakir
Yeah. So one of his best friends, Carl Scherz, who is a prominent Civil War general and then a U.S. Senator. Carl Scherz once said that Charles Sumner is not the sort of man you could go up to and pat on the back and say, hey, Charlie.
00:15:23
Zaakir
He's very serious. He's six foot four. So he's colossal. He is always dressed to the nines, even at home. And he didn't have any sense of humor.
00:15:37
Zaakir
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., the father of the Supreme Court Justice of the same name, once said that if he told Charles Sumner the moon was made of green cheese, Sumner would give you a point by point argument on why it could not be so.
00:15:52
A.J. Woodhams
i love I love that.
00:15:53
Zaakir
There's some speculation that he may have been on the autism spectrum. I think there's something to that. I don't really get into it in the book, but I do mention ah that I think there is plausible theory.
00:16:02
A.J. Woodhams
too
00:16:06
Zaakir
Yeah.
00:16:07
A.J. Woodhams
Now, ah you say he was probably gay. ah Explain that.
00:16:11
Zaakir
Yeah. So Charles Sumner was always looking for love and he never seemed able to find it. He became very close to this one man named Samuel Gridley Howe.
00:16:23
Zaakir
Samuel Howe and him used to go out to the countryside on horseback and then come home, go to the pub, order strawberries and cream, and then retire to Howe's residence. And they would spend all night talking, often about their loneliness and their shared experience of bachelorhood.
00:16:41
Zaakir
Howe ultimately does get married to Julia Ward, later it becomes the author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. And on their honeymoon, Howe is spending most of his time writing letters to Sumner instead of spending time with Julia.
00:16:57
Zaakir
Julia feels incredibly jealous and she tells Howe Sumner ought to have been a woman and you two have married him. Howe writes that he felt like he had gone to heaven with his best with his with his wife and left his best friend outside the gate.
00:17:12
Zaakir
Sumner is heartbroken and depressed. He said to Howe that we are like two ships parting in the ocean. He um eventually does marry decades later while he's a sitting U.S. senator.
00:17:25
Zaakir
The marriage is an absolute disaster. His wife leaves him a few months later and begins to tell people that her husband is sexually impotent. So these are a number of the signs we can get into more of why I argue that Sumner was probably gay.
00:17:40
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:17:42
Zaakir
I do say with an important caveat, which is that the term homosexuality was not introduced into the English language until the 1870s, after the writings of Sigmund Freud had been translated into English.
00:17:55
Zaakir
And so the concept of homosexuality as such did not exist in Summers' time. He didn't understand himself to be gay. This is how I interpret it in so far as the modern term means much when applied retroactively to the past.
00:18:09
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. And you know I find myself, ah I catch myself like making sure that I'm not applying what I know today to the past.
00:18:17
Zaakir
Right.
00:18:17
A.J. Woodhams
For example, a friend and I were talking a while ago.
00:18:17
Zaakir
Exactly.
00:18:21
A.J. Woodhams
I only learned this year that apparently Abraham Lincoln shared a bed with a man for three years. And the first time I heard that, I'm like, oh,
00:18:26
Zaakir
yeah
00:18:29
A.J. Woodhams
But then i was having this discussion with my friend and maybe that was common during the time. And you know today that's something that we would go, oh, at, but maybe it wasn't you know so uncommon and um in in this time period.
00:18:35
Zaakir
exactly
00:18:42
Zaakir
Yeah, so this is this is a very good point. So Lincoln spent three years sharing a bed with Joshua Speed as there were lawyers riding on circuit. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is that beds were expensive and it's cheaper to have two guys in one bed than to have them in two.
00:18:54
A.J. Woodhams
Right.
00:18:56
Zaakir
ah Two, it was, again, this is a time in which the term homosexuality did not exist. And so there was no label attached to this kind of behavior.
00:19:04
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Sure.
00:19:04
Zaakir
And there was also no fear or stigma attached to it. It was normal if you were best friends with a man that you would hold hands or you might cuddle together just hug a lot or just be very touchy.
00:19:14
Zaakir
And that didn't have the same kind of stigma or the same kind of sexual
00:19:21
Zaakir
innuendo attached to it as it might today, which also makes it, ah it can can be perilous to overstate and to say, oh, is Lincoln gay? Was this person gay? Was that person gay? And it's like, well, yeah is it's a very different era.
00:19:34
Zaakir
So I do talk about Sumner in my view being homosexual, but I think um I try to be careful about saying like, look, like this is very context dependent and there's a lot of unknowns here.
00:19:34
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:19:44
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Well, and let's let's get into um his his time as a senator.
Sumner's Political Career and Anti-Slavery Advocacy
00:19:52
A.J. Woodhams
um Talk about um how he becomes a senator and some of the issues that ah immediately he's um advocating for.
00:20:03
Zaakir
So in 1850, Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Act. What Sumner describes as the most cruel, unchristian, devilish law. This is a law that authorized bounty hunters to come to the north and kidnap any black person, accuse them of being a runaway, true or not, take them to a magistrate.
00:20:24
Zaakir
The magistrate would get paid $5 for letting that person into freedom, $10 for sending that person into slavery.
00:20:34
Zaakir
It effectively criminalizes black identity in the north and Sumner is furious and horrified by this law. He mobilizes other lawyers and activists to protect black runaways and black fugitives and just ordinary black people in Boston.
00:20:49
Zaakir
And he also starts to lead campaign to try to secure an anti-slavery senator in Massachusetts because Daniel Webster, this great famous Massachusetts senator, endorsed the Fugitive Slave Act and shortly afterwards gets appointed to the Secretary of State position.
00:21:10
Zaakir
And Sumner thinks that Webster had essentially made a deal with the devil. And Sumner is determined to get someone who opposes the Fugitive Slave Act to succeed Webster in the Senate seat.
00:21:23
Zaakir
And Sumner ends up being that person who takes that seat.
00:21:28
A.J. Woodhams
Now, um obviously slavery is the issue that defined the 1850s and even before that. um i i want to ask this question now because later I want to talk about how Charles Sumner, obviously we know now he was right.
00:21:45
A.J. Woodhams
um But I want to talk later about maybe his high points during the Civil War where people were like, oh yeah, he was right about a lot of things. How popular, if we're talking about the entire country, how popular in like 1850 are Charles Sumner's views when it comes to things like the fugitive slave law or or or any of the any related ah slavery type legislation?
00:22:03
Zaakir
yeah
00:22:10
Zaakir
So there's a range of opinions across the North. In the South, there are no there's no range. Southerners detested Northern abolitionists and anti-slavery politicians.
00:22:22
Zaakir
They saw them as a threat to the stability of America. They saw them as arrogant and as having no concept of what the South really looked like. But in the North, there's a range of opinions.
00:22:35
Zaakir
Sumner was very close to a number of abolitionists. Abolitionists being extreme radicals who not only wanted to end slavery, but wanted to do so immediately without compensation and who wanted equality between whites and blacks.
00:22:49
Zaakir
Then you've got people who oppose slavery, but want to pursue the project of colonization, of effectively deporting freed people, quote unquote, back to Africa. Then you have people who just want to... explod stop the expansion of slavery into the west then you have others who are actually pro-slavery across the north um sumner lived in boston the so-called cradle of liberty the place where the american revolution in many respects began ah place teeming with abolitionists and of course a place with this vibrant black community
00:23:06
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:23:26
Zaakir
But it's also a place that has a lot of economic ties to the slave system. Sumner's best friend, Henry Longfellow. Longfellow's father-in-law, Nathan Appleton, introduced the textile industry into New England and then formed partnerships with Southern slavocrats to bring cotton to Boston for manufacturing.
00:23:48
Zaakir
Sumner's other best friend, Francis Lieber, the famous author of The Lieber Code during the Civil civil war Lieber was a slaveholder in the and that's Sumner's best friend.
00:24:02
Zaakir
So Sumner is surrounded by people who are abolitionists, who are anti-slavery, and he's also surrounded by people who make all their money off the slave system.
00:24:12
A.J. Woodhams
So if we were talking about maybe the the opinions in the north, those um thinking four groups, three groups, three or four groups, you just described, um what percentage of northerners would you say agreed with Charles Sumner's views?
00:24:26
Zaakir
I don't know. it depends what year you're asking and when. Definitely minority.
00:24:29
A.J. Woodhams
Say 1850.
00:24:31
Zaakir
1850? Okay. Somewhere
00:24:32
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Are we talking like 2%? Are we talking 10%? Are we talking 80%? Okay. Yeah. Well, what
00:24:36
Zaakir
between two and ten 1850.
00:24:36
A.J. Woodhams
eighty percent okay
00:24:40
A.J. Woodhams
yeah but what is
00:24:40
Zaakir
But that changes rapidly over the course of the next 10 years.
00:24:43
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, and um like we mentioned, of course, Charles Sumner is right. um What are some of the, i kind of want to, and I guess, break this this question about the 1850s up to before the caning and after the caning, um for better for worse. So leading up to his caning, um what are some of the issues that he's talking about?
00:25:09
A.J. Woodhams
And um what what is the opposition that he's running up against? What does that look like?
00:25:14
Zaakir
Yeah. So Sumner's big political platform stands on three principles, which emerges from the Free Soil Party, his political party. Free soil, free men, free speech.
00:25:32
Zaakir
Free soil means no slavery in Western territories. That soil should be free. Free men means slavery is generally bad and we should have less of it.
00:25:46
Zaakir
And then free speech is standing up for the free speech rights of abolitionists and anti-slavery advocates. By this time in the 1850s, Southern states had effectively abolished free speech.
00:25:59
Zaakir
Southern states monitored the mail for anti-slavery pamphlets. If you spoke out against slavery, you could go to jail. If you helped an enslaved person escape, you could get the death penalty.
00:26:11
Zaakir
even if you were a white person, no one was free. And so Sumner is working on this can on these various campaign messages for many years.
00:26:22
Zaakir
And free soil is particularly important.
00:26:28
Zaakir
Sumner had this theory, and he was not alone. This was the popular theory among free soilers, that if slavery was forced to remain within the South,
00:26:41
Zaakir
the slave population would continue to grow and grow and grow. It was already more than 4 million people, around a quarter of the Southern population. And as it kept growing, the threat and the fear of domestic rebellion would get so significant that slaveholders would have no choice but to grant enslaved people their freedom.
00:27:01
Zaakir
Otherwise, there would just be a massive uprising. And in order to contain slavery in the South, to not allow the spread of slavery westward, which would reduce the Southern slave population.
00:27:16
Zaakir
Sumner wanted territories to be free. They called this the scorpion sting theory. It comes from this legend, which is probably not true, but the science at the time said that if a scorpion was surrounded by a cordon of fire, it was more likely to sting itself to death than just wait to get burned up.
00:27:39
Zaakir
Scorpion would commit suicide.
00:27:41
A.J. Woodhams
Tom.
00:27:41
Zaakir
So the logic here was to surround the Southern states with a cordon of freedom. So slavery it would sting itself to death. That was Sumner's political project in the 1850s.
00:27:54
A.J. Woodhams
And obviously that angered the Southerners. um ah let's Let's talk then about the Caning, ah which was in 1856, I believe. Is that right?
00:28:05
Zaakir
Yeah,
00:28:05
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:28:06
Zaakir
that's right.
00:28:07
A.J. Woodhams
um So, you know, the Southerners feel like he's a threat to their way of life. And um we haven't actually talked about this too much, but he is ah ah he's a fiery speaker.
00:28:19
A.J. Woodhams
um he He gives impassioned oratories. And um he he, as the the beginning of the eighteen fifty s progresses into the mid-1850s, he gives more and more of these speeches.
00:28:34
A.J. Woodhams
um Talk about how it has come about in the United States Senate. that ah Talk about the speech that Charles Sumner is giving. Talk about then why that resulted in him getting caned.
00:28:47
Zaakir
Yeah, so Sumner gives a speech called The Crime Against Kansas, where he is talking about the crisis in Kansas, a territory that is going to have a vote on whether to be a slave state or a free state.
00:29:01
Zaakir
Southerners and Northerners think that the Kansas question is an existential question for the future of America. Will there be a cordon of freedom surrounding the South or will there be a cordon of slavery surrounding the North?
00:29:16
Zaakir
Kansas is at the focal point. so Sumner had a colleague named David Reich Atchison, a US Senator from Missouri, the former president pro tem of the Senate, who goes back to Missouri, gets a gang of more than 1000 men.
00:29:32
Zaakir
They storm into Kansas, take over polling locations at gunpoint and stop the ballots. They're committing a treasonous and anti-democratic insurrection. Sumner is appalled and horrified in Washington, but many of his colleagues are not speaking out because they lived in Washington, DC, a slave city.
00:29:52
Zaakir
It was dangerous to speak out. You could get harassed and accosted on the street for speaking out. Sumner decides that he is going to speak. As you mentioned, he's a fiery orator.
00:30:04
Zaakir
He has no sense of moderation. He wrote to a friend that he will utter the most thorough Philippic ever uttered in the history of a legislative body. In other words, Philippic is an insulting speech.
00:30:19
Zaakir
So he literally planned to give the most insulting speech ever. And he does. He calls David Ocheson a Roman traitor, comparing him to a historic Roman traitor who had been hung for treason.
00:30:35
Zaakir
He compares President Franklin Pierce to a Roman dictator. He compares Stephen Douglas effectively to Lucifer incarnate. In a previous speech, he had called Stephen Douglas a noisome squat and of an an of an animal.
00:30:52
Zaakir
And then he targets Senator Andrew Pickens Butler of South Carolina. Butler is from South Carolina and Sumner says the state of south South Carolina could be, quote, blotted out of existence and civilization would look the same.
00:31:07
Zaakir
He makes fun of Butler's hair. He makes fun of Butler's speech impediment. And then he says that Butler had a mistress, ugly in the sight of the world, but beautiful in his own eyes, the harlot slavery.
00:31:24
Zaakir
There is evidence to suggest that Butler did in fact have a quote unquote mistress of an enslaved woman that he probably raped and sired children by. And Sumner is telling the whole world about what Butler is up to.
00:31:38
Zaakir
It's an extremely provocative speech. Many people anticipate violence after Sumner's delivery. And that is exactly what happened.
00:31:48
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. And first too, um to give a little bit of context, the other Senate, the, I guess, atmosphere of the Senate is um other senators also too ridiculed Charles Sumner when when they would talk, they would they would make fun of his um maybe more effeminate characteristics.
00:32:05
Zaakir
Yes. Right.
00:32:11
A.J. Woodhams
that They would um They would dish it to him as well. Not that it's like a who started this type thing.
00:32:17
Zaakir
right
00:32:18
A.J. Woodhams
um What really fascinated, I don't know, fascinated is, fascinated actually is probably the wrong word. um What is really unbelievable to me is when Charles Sumner is caned, it seems like everyone's just kind of standing around and watching it happen. Is that correct?
00:32:39
Zaakir
Yes and no. um Brooks, Preston Brooks, Congressman from South Carolina, Butler's nephew, approaches Sumner in the Senate, but he comes with two colleagues.
00:32:50
Zaakir
One of them, Lawrence Keat, probably had, he definitely had a cane raised above his head to stop anyone from interfering. And he also possibly had a pistol.
00:33:01
A.J. Woodhams
Okay.
00:33:01
Zaakir
So when Brooks stages his ambush effectively, He's got backup to prevent anyone from interfering. He starts to beat Sumner over the head with the cane.
00:33:13
Zaakir
Brooks' own recollection is that he gave Sumner a couple dozen first-rate stripes. That's what he calls it. Others said was like a couple hits. Some said it was like 30 or 40. So we we don't know how many times Brooks actually hit him, but it probably transpired in the course of maybe one or two minutes.
00:33:32
Zaakir
um So it was very much an ambush. There were others who tried to intervene and who ultimately succeed. One Southerner grabs Brooks and pulls him back and says, you're going to kill him. You're going to kill him.
00:33:43
Zaakir
And Brooks are spen responded, I do not intend to kill him. I only intend to flog him.
00:33:51
A.J. Woodhams
Now, what does this do? We'll talk about now post caning. What does this do to Charles Sumner, the man? Where is he at? Where is his psyche at? How does this um impact him both physically and
Sumner's Recovery and Continued Influence
00:34:05
A.J. Woodhams
mentally?
00:34:06
A.J. Woodhams
What's the journey post caning like for Charles Sumner?
00:34:07
Zaakir
So when Sumner first gets caned, he sees a doctor, of course, almost immediately who treats him. The next person he talks to is a reporter.
00:34:16
Zaakir
And so he already, from the very beginning, recognizes the political utility of being beaten nearly to death on behalf of the anti-slavery political cause.
00:34:28
Zaakir
But I think he probably did not anticipate just how hard it would be to recover. the next several years he is struggling. He definitely had a severe concussion.
00:34:40
Zaakir
He probably had occipital neuralgia, which is basically when your nerves are pinched and aggravated by tense muscles. He had just the physical injuries and the bruising that came from being beaten. And it's important to understand the severity of his wounds.
00:34:55
Zaakir
When we call it a canning, it doesn't really sound that bad. He had an injury above his left ear that was probably nearly an inch deep into a skull. Another one ah but on his forehead that's probably an inch of wide.
00:35:07
Zaakir
So he's very severely injured. um He spends years recovering. He goes to Europe in search of recovery. And there he meets a doctor named Brown to court who if there's any neurologist listening.
00:35:22
Zaakir
You've heard of Brown-Saquard because there's a few disorders and diseases named after him, which I understand doctors think is like a cool thing to have a disease named after you. of
00:35:31
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:35:32
Zaakir
So Brown-Saquard is one of the inventors of modern neurology, a brilliant doctor, also eccentric and known for experimenting with his patients. So Sumner meets Brown-Saquard.
00:35:44
Zaakir
Brown-Saquard has his whole theory about Sumner's injuries and decides that it arises in the spinal cord. Not quite right. And Sumner says, what's the solution? And Brown-Saquard responds with one word, fire.
00:35:59
Zaakir
He has Sumner lie down and he puts these pieces of cottonwood on Sumner's bare back and then he lights them on fire. Logic beaten being that he was applying this like ancient Chinese therapy known as Mach-Subustion.
00:36:16
Zaakir
Any practitioners of Mach-Subustion don't do it quite this way. They don't apply like direct fire on the back. They might just have some heat a little bit above the back. Brown-Saquart put it right on a Summoner's back and just scalds him every everywhere with burn wounds.
00:36:31
Zaakir
And Brown-Saquart offered Summoner core for him but said, you probably shouldn't take it. The more the pain, the more likely you will recover.
00:36:39
Zaakir
I think that speaks to Sumner that he hears this advice and fully believes it. He decided that, yeah, sure. The more pain, the more, the higher chance of recovery.
00:36:51
Zaakir
He was had a very high pain tolerance. He goes back seven times for more fire treatments. And by the end, his entire back is full of burn wounds. And he, and then after all this, he develops angina and he is writhing in bed from the heart pain.
00:37:07
Zaakir
But as he's tossing and turning in bed, he's hurting even more because of the burn wounds on his back. And so he is just suffering through this for several years. It takes a long time to recover.
00:37:18
A.J. Woodhams
yeah.
00:37:19
Zaakir
He does come back. The first time he was back in the Senate, he starts to have these severe headaches, which are probably PTSD, and he leaves. It's only in 1860 when the Senate moves into a new chamber, the chamber we still have today, that Sumner fully recovers and re-embraces his role in the Senate.
00:37:37
Zaakir
But I misspoke. He really doesn't fully recover. He continues to walk with a cane himself for the rest of his life. He looks older. He seems older and sadder. And of course, he's got the angina now on top of the physical injuries.
00:37:49
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, and it it seems like this was obviously, personally for him at this point, it just seems like a real low point in all areas of life. I mean, his his physical health, obviously, um his mental health, he's very depressed, but the country itself is inching.
00:38:07
Zaakir
Yeah.
00:38:08
A.J. Woodhams
And at this point, really, it's not even inching. It's it moving very quickly towards war. And um in in some sense, and we'll talk later,
00:38:20
A.J. Woodhams
you know We'll transition to the war now, but we'll talk about this later. In some sense, Charles Sumner wanted the war because he thought that's what was going to end slavery. um But at this particular moment, that war had not come and things were falling apart. and ah The South was getting stronger.
00:38:40
A.J. Woodhams
ah Talk about right before. So we're in 1860 now. Obviously, war breaks out in 1861. eighteen sixty one um Talk about right before the war, what Charles Sumner is doing in the Senate, um how he's involved in ah the response that starts the war.
00:38:59
A.J. Woodhams
um
00:38:59
Zaakir
Yeah.
00:39:00
A.J. Woodhams
ah Talk about this period.
00:39:02
Zaakir
Yeah. So this is a period known as secession winter. This is the winter beginning in December 1860, when South Carolina announces that it is going to leave the Union.
00:39:13
Zaakir
And then slowly over the next few months, other southern states decide to join South Carolina in this and this exit. And there's a debate going on in the north about how to respond.
00:39:27
Zaakir
We think today that the South started the war by choosing to rebel. And i actually don't think that's accurate. The South was choosing to leave. The North had to decide whether to allow the South to leave, option A, form a compromise with the South to keep the Union together, option B, or go to war to hold the Union together, option C. Sumner comes to the mind of option C.
00:39:56
Zaakir
There are other abolitionists, most prominently William Lloyd Garrison, who said, let the South go. Let them go.
00:40:02
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:40:03
Zaakir
And suddenly the the border of freedom won't be can at Canada anymore. Now it'll northern states right on the border with the southern states. And any enslaved person wants to go to freedom has a much easier way of getting to freedom.
00:40:19
Zaakir
And Garrison thought that that this newly formed Confederacy would be international pariah and would barely survive and would probably have domestic slave insurrection not too long after. There were others like William Seward, a prominent anti-slavery politician who his views changed significantly during the secession crisis.
00:40:36
Zaakir
He's panicking about the prospect of the South leaving, and he wants to form compromises with the South, even if that means preserving slavery that the Union does not disappear. And then there's Charles Sumner,
00:40:49
Zaakir
whose solution was to go to war. He had learned from one of his mentors, John Quincy Adams, that during a war, a president can use war powers to confiscate the property of the enemy.
00:41:09
Zaakir
Idea being here, now the Confederates are the enemy, the president can confiscate their property and grant that property freedom. John Quincy Adams had proposed the whole thing decades or earlier, where he had said on the House floor while he was served in Congress after being president, that if there was ever a war, the president could use the wartime powers to emancipate slaves. Of course, Adams did not see any war on the horizon. He was just speculating there.
00:41:36
Zaakir
But Sumner takes this idea and he actually tells it to Abraham Lincoln on the day that Fort Sumter is bombed. And over the next few months, someone repeatedly goes to Lincoln proposing the wartime emancipation order.
00:41:49
Zaakir
And they would debate and debate and debate often till midnight, which was a sign that even though Lincoln did not agree, he was gradually warming up to the idea.
00:41:59
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, and and when when I think maybe when from the Southern perspective, when um people talk about how the North you know maybe quote unquote wanted war, they're talking about Charles Sumner and um his really aggressive stance ah towards slavery and and what they consider there their way of life.
00:42:15
Zaakir
yeah
00:42:22
A.J. Woodhams
um How receptive is Abraham Lincoln to the the messages that Charles Sumner is delivering to him um even up to the outbreak of war.
00:42:32
Zaakir
Yeah. So let me tell you about Lincoln and some of them that, and then we can talk about how like receptive he is. Lincoln comes to Washington during succession winter.
00:42:45
Zaakir
in February 1861.
00:42:48
Zaakir
And when he first meets Charles Sumner, the first thing both men notice about the other is that they are both six foot four. And neither man was accustomed to seeing other people their height.
00:43:01
Zaakir
And so Lincoln says we should match backs and see who's taller. And Sumner, who had no sense of humor, is horrified by this. He's very skeptical Lincoln from the get go.
00:43:13
Zaakir
Lincoln is this folksy politician from the Midwest. Lincoln only speaks one language, English. He's only been to one country, the United States. Lincoln is self-educated.
00:43:25
Zaakir
Sumner, meanwhile, speaks six languages. He's traveled all across Europe. He's dressed to the nines. He had been in Washington now in politics politics for 10 years. Lincoln had only spent two years in Washington in politics prior to becoming president.
00:43:39
Zaakir
And so Sumner is horrified by this man trying to make a joke in this in this environment. And so Sumner responds, Mr. the President, we should not be matching our backs. We need to present a united front.
00:43:50
Zaakir
So then Sumner leaves and Lincoln is telling this this story to another guest and says, I didn't have many bishops down where we live, but Sumner reminds me of a bishop.
00:44:02
Zaakir
So Sumner played that role, right, of a bishop through Lincoln's life.
00:44:02
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. and
00:44:06
Zaakir
He is this kind of moral voice who constantly goes to Lincoln and tells him that he needs to emancipate Southern slaves. Sumner believes that Lincoln, for all of his flaws, for all of his inexperience, had the capacity for real greatness.
00:44:24
Zaakir
He says that Lincoln could one day go down in history like Columbus and Washington if he emancipates the slaves.
00:44:34
A.J. Woodhams
Mm-hmm.
00:44:34
Zaakir
And over the course of two years, he continually pushes and pushes Lincoln to do this. Lincoln would respond saying, yeah, maybe someday Lincoln once said to Sumner, you and I agree we are only six weeks apart.
00:44:46
Zaakir
It's more like two years. um But ultimately, Lincoln does sign the Emancipation Proclamation. And when he does, he gives a pen that he used to write it to Charles Sumner.
00:44:58
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. um Well, firstly, um you know, one can imagine yeah Abraham Lincoln famously just like told jokes all the time. He told story, he was a storyteller.
00:45:09
Zaakir
Right?
00:45:09
A.J. Woodhams
And that really, even people who weren't as serious as Charles Sumner, that really aggravated them. And so you can can imagine what a conversation between Abraham Lincoln and Charles Sumner um would would be like.
00:45:14
Zaakir
right
00:45:20
A.J. Woodhams
um But Charles, i would say, um and you just so obviously, um you know emancipation is a big deal for Charles
Sumner's Role in Foreign Affairs and the Emancipation Proclamation
00:45:31
A.J. Woodhams
Sumner.
00:45:32
A.J. Woodhams
ah He spends most of the war, his contribution to the war really is in the area of foreign policy, um kind of excluding the, you know, the um Emancipation Proclamation.
00:45:45
A.J. Woodhams
um Talk about why that is and talk about Charles Sumner's initial role at the beginning of the war.
00:45:51
Zaakir
So Charles Sumner is appointed chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1861, which was a very logical appointment. He spoke six languages. He had been to Europe three times, including during his recovery from the Caning.
00:46:06
Zaakir
And so particularly in this
00:46:07
A.J. Woodhams
And he wanted to be Secretary of State too. And he was he was very upset that he did not become Secretary of State.
00:46:11
Zaakir
Right, right. Yes. so So he also, like his brother led a campaign to try to get Lincoln to appoint him Secretary of State, which he may or may not have accepted, but he wanted just to be offered the position because he had morep he had more foreign experience than pretty much anyone else in the Republican Party.
00:46:28
Zaakir
And Sumner had been informed many years earlier, and Sumner was in his 30s. He had gone to Europe and he was asked constantly about slavery.
00:46:41
Zaakir
So he knew that slavery was stain on America's international reputation. He also knew that if America was not pursuing an abolition war, that European powers were likely to get involved with the Confederacy.
00:47:01
Zaakir
He knew this from his own correspondence with leading statesmen in Great Britain.
00:47:07
Zaakir
British aristocrats relied on Southern slave produced cotton for their textile industry. American cotton was one of the leading imports into Great Britain.
00:47:18
Zaakir
And Sumner is also afraid because he knows that many British aristocrats would just love to see America's democratic experiment fail. Proof that mob rule could not be successful as a government form.
00:47:33
Zaakir
There's also Europeans who see a similarities between the Confederate cause for quote-unquote self-governance and independence, as just like many of the nationalistic revolutions that swept through Europe in 1848. So some receives all this, but he also knows that Europe is teeming with abolitionists.
00:47:52
Zaakir
Most European states had abolished slavery, at least domestically, even if they had it in the colonies. And some renew that if if the war had a moral valence to it,
00:48:05
Zaakir
that even British aristocrats would not be in a political position that would allow them to intervene on behalf of the Confederacy.
00:48:12
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, and I thought this was such an interesting point because it's not one that I've heard before, um but it makes sense. Domestically, ah the the Lincoln administration is is focused on framing this war as not about an end of slavery.
00:48:29
A.J. Woodhams
it's um it's so It's almost framed in like a practical
00:48:34
Zaakir
Yeah.
00:48:35
A.J. Woodhams
way, and in like a business-like way. And that you know Lincoln kind of famously said, not kind of, he famously did say, like if I could um preserve the union without freeing a single slave, I would do it.
00:48:49
A.J. Woodhams
And a very interesting point I think you make is Charles Sumner is like, that is not the mentality of people in Europe. ah There is a moral dimension that would have the opposite effects in America, but in Europe, that's actually a way that we could get people on our side.
00:49:07
A.J. Woodhams
And I thought that was worth noting, and it's not something I've heard before.
00:49:08
Zaakir
Right.
00:49:12
Zaakir
Yeah. So Lincoln, who comes from borderlands of Kentucky, is very worried about making sure that the border states remain with the union. And he once said, allegedly, that I want God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.
00:49:30
Zaakir
So Lincoln is very concerned about these border states and making sure that they do not see this as an abolition war because then they were more likely to leave the Union. Sumner, meanwhile, is concerned about Europe, where he had a lot of familiarity.
00:49:42
Zaakir
Sumner hadn't spent much time in the border of states. He had been once before, but that was it. Lincoln, of course, had never been to Europe. And so they have very different experiences that are informing their attitude towards this war. But over the years, Lincoln came to trust on Summers' advice, and he eventually does does tell ah Carl Schurz, who at the time was the ambassador to Spain, I believe.
00:50:04
Zaakir
And some Lincoln tells Schurz that he now sees that that the war—I'm paraphrasing a lot here— but Lincoln basically tells Schurz that he now sees that the war needs to be an abolition war in order to avoid intervention European powers, but the problem is still domestic.
00:50:23
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. And um I think too, it's it's worth saying that at the beginning of the war, um the Secretary of State, William Seward, um he he kind of starts bungling some things and and Lincoln turns to Charles Sumner.
00:50:35
Zaakir
Yeah.
00:50:39
A.J. Woodhams
And I think eventually Lincoln's like, I'm not going to make any foreign policy decision without consulting you or something like that. um So he he really leans on Sumner um to keep um really to keep Europe out of the war because France is very eager to support the Confederacy.
00:50:57
A.J. Woodhams
Great Britain has declared and themselves neutral, which um both sides actually have reasons for thinking that that's baloney. um talk ah Talk a little bit. So we've obviously foreign policy contributions um were major with Charles Sumner.
00:51:15
A.J. Woodhams
ah But let's talk about his involvement with the Emancipation Proclamation. um Talk about the... Give us just like some very brief background on why the Emancipation Proclamation is about to happen and Charles Sumner's involvement with it.
00:51:35
Zaakir
So the Emancipation Proclamation arises from this theory that in war you can do things that you can't do in peace. Summer points out that in war you can kill, you can starve your enemy, you can take their land, you can do all sorts of things.
00:51:54
Zaakir
And if you can do those things, if you can even kill enemy soldiers, then surely you can take their property.
00:52:03
Zaakir
This theory of war powers has a long history throughout Europe, and it was common among European empires to recruit the enslaved people of the enemy side and offer them freedom in exchange for rebelling.
00:52:21
Zaakir
That's in fact what Great Britain did during the American Revolution. lord lord the British lord of in Virginia i famously offered freedom to slaves who it supported the British cause against the American insurrection, so to speak, right? The American war of independence.
00:52:38
Zaakir
um And so Seminer applies that same theory to the Civil War. He introduces it to Lincoln. He then introduces it to the public. He and others are pushing for it and pushing for it for multiple years.
00:52:52
Zaakir
Meanwhile, Sumner is also trying to build political will behind emancipation. So Lincoln feels more comfortable issuing the order. So Sumner is giving a number of speeches and he is telling people, he wrote in one of his letters he says, or it may have been in his speech, he said, emancipation is to be presented in strictly military language.
00:53:17
Zaakir
He's obviously ah moral crusader against slavery. but he recognizes strategic value in the Emancipation Proclamation because he says that it is slavery that powers the Confederate rebellion.
00:53:32
Zaakir
Southerners are able to go and join the Confederate army because they have slaves doing their work for them at their plantations.
00:53:41
Zaakir
Who is feeding this the the Confederate army? It's slave-produced food. who's working in some of the factories in the South building artillery and this and that and the other is slaves.
00:53:52
Zaakir
So Sumner says that if you free slaves, then then the Confederate cause is going to lose all that power. And further, you're going to inspire mass rebellion among enslaved people in the South.
00:54:04
Zaakir
And that's in fact what happened. Enslaved people were running towards Union lines, coming to the Union army and offering themselves up either offering, if they were a man, to fight, or if they were a woman, they would come and offer to serve as, do the laundry, or to serve as cooks or maids.
00:54:22
Zaakir
And so you have tens of thousands of enslaved people escaping their plantations, coming to Union lines, offering to be recruited. The Emancipation Proclamation ultimately invites enslaved people to come and join the Union army.
00:54:35
Zaakir
By the end of the war, nearly 10% of of the army Union Army is black people, black men, forgetting about even all the black women who are also involved in the and the Union Army.
00:54:47
Zaakir
And Sumner, he's very bold about this. His one speech, he says that, I wish to see 100,000 Negroes with muskets in their hands.
00:54:58
Zaakir
He also sees ah parallel between military service and citizenship. He knows this from his own time, being the grandson of an American Revolutionary War hero, that there's a connection in citizenship.
00:55:14
Zaakir
Citizenship is not just about what you get from the government, but it's also what you do for the government. And he recognizes that if you have hundreds of thousands of black men serving the US government, serving the union cause, serving the flag, putting their own lives at risk, he hopes that will lead to suffrage and equal rights afterwards.
00:55:33
A.J. Woodhams
yeah And right after the Emancipation Proclamation, i believe you're right his he's his he His popularity has taken a turn in the North um where he's actually maybe at the height of his influence.
00:55:46
Zaakir
Right. Yeah.
00:55:49
A.J. Woodhams
um talk about just Talk about how people view Charles Sumner now post-Emancipation Proclamation um as opposed to what we talked about earlier in 1850 or whatever, where 2% of people actually agreed with his views.
00:56:02
Zaakir
yeah
00:56:05
Zaakir
So in 1854, Charles Sumner gave a speech where he said that the arrogance of slaveholders could one day lead to a fracticidal, parasital war, one the most cruel wars in the annals of human history that will evoke the avenging pen of history and the avenging judgment of a just God.
00:56:26
Zaakir
By 1864, 10 years later, all that has happened. A fracticidal, parasital war, right? that is now evoking the judgment of a just God, and that is now leading to emancipation.
00:56:39
Zaakir
And he had been saying for years that there should have been emancipation order, and Lincoln did ultimately issue it, and it proves to be very successful. and she So many of his ideas that he had been proposing for decades were coming to be true.
00:56:51
Zaakir
In one of his first political speeches as a Whig in in the late 1840s, Sumner proposed amending the Constitution to abolish slavery.
00:57:03
Zaakir
which is a wild proposal. It was just as unthinkable then as it was now as it is now to amend the constitution. And yet that's what happened the 13th amendment.
00:57:13
A.J. Woodhams
yeah and he really steps
00:57:13
Zaakir
look depressionion right And he seems to be like a moral prophet and people start to trust his judgment for a short period of time because it seemed that everything he had said for many years was finally coming to transpire.
00:57:24
A.J. Woodhams
It seemed like he had even he had really stepped into it himself and had had become this, his his self-concept is like somebody of somebody champ championing liberation and and
Sumner's Impact on American Law and Civil Rights
00:57:36
A.J. Woodhams
freedom.
00:57:36
A.J. Woodhams
So much so that towards the end of the war, it becomes a little bit of a problem with foreign policy.
00:57:42
Zaakir
Yeah.
00:57:42
A.J. Woodhams
and um with um Great Britain because he starts talking about Irish independence.
00:57:47
Zaakir
Right.
00:57:48
A.J. Woodhams
um And so, you know, he's ah nothing if not consistent and helpful at some times, maybe not helpful at at other times.
00:57:53
Zaakir
Right.
00:57:57
A.J. Woodhams
um Talk about how he he ends the war. ah Talk about um well talk about the end of the war for Charles Sumner.
00:58:07
Zaakir
So when
00:58:10
Zaakir
After Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln gives a very famous speech, the Gettysburg Address, where he says four scores and seven years ago, our nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition of America to equal.
00:58:21
Zaakir
And Sumner begins to describe the Gettysburg Address as a legal precedent. He uses the term precedent over and over again to characterize the speech. He says the ideas are more important than battles and that the speech was more important than the battle itself.
00:58:37
Zaakir
To him, the end of the war signified not just the end of a conflict, not just the bringing back together the union, but a whole new America, a new conception of what it means to be an American and a new conception of the Constitution.
00:58:53
Zaakir
He later says that a ah new rule of constitutional interpretation was conquered at Appomattox, Appomattox being the courthouse where General Lee gives his sword to grant and surrenders.
00:59:08
Zaakir
He said that now under the new rule, every clause, every line, every word of the constitution is to be interpreted uniformly in favor of human rights. He said that the greatest victory of the war was the emancipation of the constitution.
00:59:25
Zaakir
So to him, the war had this meta meaning of transforming American law. And that's really what civil war to him signified.
00:59:36
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, and also too, it should be noted that Charles Sumner, not a pacifist, he actually thought that there needed to be more more suffering towards the end of the war. more um it needed to get worse because only then will people you know really have sacrificed for true equality, which I thought was an interesting point.
00:59:54
Zaakir
Yeah, he acknowledged the Civil War to the book to the book of Exodus and to the story of the Israelites, but really the story of the Egyptians experiencing plague after plague after plague after plague.
01:00:00
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
01:00:07
Zaakir
And it took so many plagues before Pharaoh finally agreed to let Moses' people go. And Sumner similarly believed that God was bringing plagues down in America. And he thought there needed to be more plagues and more plagues and more plagues until finally Lincoln signed the Municipal Proclamation until finally the white Americans finally granted freedom to black Americans.
01:00:30
A.J. Woodhams
Well, I'm curious if just kind of thinking about Charles Sumner's total contributions um during the war, it's one of these questions that's impossible to answer, but I'm going to ask it anyway.
01:00:41
A.J. Woodhams
um What is the war?
01:00:42
Zaakir
Yeah.
01:00:43
A.J. Woodhams
What do you think the war looks like without Charles Sumner?
01:00:47
Zaakir
Sorry, one more time, but the war.
01:00:49
A.J. Woodhams
What do you think it looks like? What does the US Civil War look like without Charles Sumner in the picture?
01:00:52
Zaakir
Yeah.
01:00:55
A.J. Woodhams
If there is no Charles Sumner, how does that impact the the war's outcome?
01:00:58
Zaakir
Yeah.
01:01:00
Zaakir
So we often teach the Civil War as just a story of battles. That's how I learned the Civil War. I learned about Chancellorville. I learned about Gettysburg. I learned about Antietam.
01:01:12
Zaakir
I learned about the Anaconda Plan and this and that and the different regiments. And that's all important. It's very important history. And then for certain war buffs, that's that's all you're really interested in, right?
01:01:23
Zaakir
But there's other dimensions to the war. First is this foreign policy perspective, right? There's a war going on in the Atlantic, just as there is in um the mainland. And then there is the the the war of ideas, the war about the meaning of America.
01:01:40
Zaakir
That is where Sumner is really important. recognizing the war for its legal significance, its constitutional significance, for its meaning on race and equality. And when we put Charles Sumner into the picture, we get that fuller understanding of what the war signified.
01:01:56
Zaakir
And Sumner is a little bit to the extreme on this. see There's a great quote from one of his friends who who who noticed that Sumner throughout the Civil War did not seem to particularly pay attention to the actual battles taking place um In fact, for someone who had the reputation of being a know-it-all and being very arrogant, this was a place where he was very humble and he would just kind of vote whichever way his colleague, Henry Wilson, who chaired the military affairs committee, whatever Wilson did, someone just went along with it because he knew nothing about battles.
01:02:30
Zaakir
And um one of his friends said that it sometimes seemed as if Sumner thought the rebellion itself was put down by speeches in the Senate. And that the war was an unfortunate and most annoying, though trifling disturbance, as if a fire engine had passed by.
01:02:45
Zaakir
So to him, the actual battles mattered very little. he was very he thought the whole battle, the Civil War, was being fought in the Senate rather than and you know in the in the various military camps.
01:02:56
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, he was he was fine to just like to defer to the generals. And um really, i mean for somebody so and invested in the outcome that this war brought, tactically didn't really
01:03:00
Zaakir
Right.
01:03:12
A.J. Woodhams
involve himself too much in the actual
01:03:13
Zaakir
Yeah, and that's probably for the best. He would have bloodied the whole thing.
01:03:16
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
01:03:16
Zaakir
um And anyone who studies Civil War knows that there are plenty of politicians in Washington who are ready to tell the generals how to do their job.
01:03:23
A.J. Woodhams
Right. Yeah. He was not an armchair general. But you mean
01:03:26
Zaakir
Yeah, there many armchair generals in Washington. Sumner was not one of them.
01:03:30
A.J. Woodhams
you yeah. Well, um what do you think, I guess, kind of fast forwarding to today? um and why Why is this story important today? Why is Charles Sumner um worth writing about? And what lessons do we have to take from him?
01:03:48
Zaakir
We learn American history. Specifically, we learn about American constitutional history primarily through the founding fathers. We learn about Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Monroe.
01:04:02
Zaakir
We learn about the New Jersey Compromise and this compromise and the Three-Fifths Compromise. And we learn about the Constitutional Convention and this, and the other. And that's all good. It's all good and important and we need to learn it.
01:04:13
Zaakir
But there's a lot of constitutional debate and transformation during the Civil War era. The 13th Amendment granting freedom to blacks, the 14th Amendment establishing birthright citizenship and equal protection, the 15th Amendment establishing the right of black men to vote, and the enforcement clause of all three amendments, which authorizes Congress to enforce these amendments through appropriate legislation, thereby expanding congressional power dramatically.
01:04:40
Zaakir
These are huge constitutional transformations. And to Sumner, those three amendments are not just being tacked at the bottom, they're reinterpreting everything that came before it. It was almost like a New Testament, Old Testament dynamic, where to Sumner, he he and his reconstruction leaders were coming in not to abolish the law of the founders, but to fulfill the law, to fulfill his highest aspirations in the Declaration Independence and to transform it.
01:05:05
Zaakir
And so I think it's really important nowadays to look back at this era, to learn more about the constitutional dimensions to this war, because many of these same themes of equal protection, of birthright citizenship, of freedom, of congressional power.
01:05:23
Zaakir
They're all being debated and litigated and politicized in this moment. And very few of us know much about the history of how these ideas came about and how grounded it was in the Union's victory in 1865.
01:05:36
Zaakir
five
01:05:37
A.J. Woodhams
Wonderful. Well, um we will leave it there. Zakhar Tamiz, Charles Sumner, Conscious of a Nation. um Go out, buy a copy, check it out from the library.
01:05:50
A.J. Woodhams
Really, what an interesting story here. um Also, Zakhar, if people want to to follow the yeah the work you're doing, any other writing that's coming out? Are you on social media? Do you have a website? Where can people stay in touch with your work?
01:06:04
Zaakir
Yeah, thank you. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blue Sky, and there's also a website charles Sumner.co.
01:06:11
A.J. Woodhams
Wow. You've got it all covered, even LinkedIn.
01:06:14
Zaakir
Even LinkedIn.
01:06:17
A.J. Woodhams
All right. Well, Zacher, thanks so much for for coming on the show and um ah appreciate your time.
01:06:23
Zaakir
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.