The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union
Mark Twain House and Museum
Hartford
May 23, 2024
I concede that not many people spend a lot of time thinking about the Civil War and 19th century history. But if you’ve heard of Charles Sumner, then it’s probably because you’re familiar with his infamous caning 168 years ago last week.
He might have remained a footnote in the run-up to the Civil War for me if not for Stephen Puleo’s virtual presentation for the Mark Twain House entitled “The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union.” Puleo, the first person to write a biography of the Republican Massachusetts senator in 50 years, described him as one of the few non-presidents who truly shaped American history, on the same level as Benjamin Franklin, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King, Jr.
There’s nothing particularly controversial about that statement. I didn’t know much about Sumner before the lecture, but there are tons of influential Americans I know less about than I should.
Puleo made me sit forward when he declared that Sumner was the strongest and most unwavering anti-slavery and equal-rights voice in American history. “That voice did not belong to William Lloyd Garrison, to Lincoln, to Maria Weston Chapman, even to Frederick Douglass.”
Okay. Full disclosure: Frederick Douglass is my second favorite historical figure. The idea that anyone could be more anti-slavery than Douglass left me incredulous. While Puleo did cite how Sumner pushed Lincoln on the Emancipation Proclamation and other anti-slavery measures, those efforts were in line with what Douglass demanded of Lincoln as well. I get the need to sell your own interpretation as an historian, though.
According to Puleo, one of Sumner’s arguments was that slavery wasn’t meant to be part of the federal system because the Constitution doesn’t affirmatively protect the institution. That argument conveniently sidesteps the Three Fifths Clause, which while not explicitly mentioning slavery, certainly was understood then and now to be aimed at determining political representation based on enslaved populations.
Puleo goes on to say that the Founders also didn’t explicitly ban enslavement, because “without the Georgians’, the South Carolinians’, the Virginians’ support, there wouldn’t be this country conceived in liberty to begin with.”
This is one of the most frustrating arguments I’ve heard regarding the founding of the nation, and not the first time I’ve heard it, either. The mental gymnastics necessary to characterize a political bargain that protected enslavement as something “conceived in liberty” are astounding and, honestly, insincere. I don’t mean that people say it in a cynical way, but that a sincere reading of history must always place the hypocrisy of the United States’ claims to liberty and freedom against the injustices of enslavement and disenfranchisement of women and other groups. Historians are far too comfortable with saying that without the compromise, there wouldn’t have been a country, as if that alone justifies the decision. I say that there shouldn’t have been a country if it meant the monstrous mistreatment of millions of people for generations.
There was one moment during the presentation where I found myself in complete agreement with Puleo. One of the audience members stated that the rhetoric coming out of the American South today is similar to the rhetoric used before the Civil War, without references to slavery. He asked if Puleo was optimistic about the next ten years,
“I’m encouraged. I’m generally an optimist about things … I think the period in the 1850s, the run-up to the Civil War, is nothing like today. It was far more polarized, and far more contentious,” he said. He then went on to note that not only did African Americans have no rights, but they were actively enslaved, which makes things much different.
I do think that we’ve become much too comfortable with drawing comparisons to an era that ended with almost 700,000 Americans dead. While there are stark cultural and political differences between Americans today, we shouldn’t be talking about civil war as even a possibility, much less a likelihood.
I enjoy lectures like these because they give me a chance to put to use all the reading I’ve done on history. I can hear another person’s interpretation and say that I agree or disagree based on the evidence I’ve gathered myself. I appreciated hearing Puleo shine the light on someone who might otherwise have been known to me only as the guy who almost died in the Senate.
NEXT
The Mark Twain House hosts a conversation with Gov. Ned Lamont on Wednesday, May 29.
Jamil is going to enjoy the three-day weekend!
