Publishers Weekly
★ 03/04/2024
Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner’s lifelong devotion to equal rights was akin to “digging a deep well with nothing more than a spoon... yet he never stopped digging,” according to this rousing biography from historian Puleo (Voyage of Mercy). As a young lawyer in 1849, Sumner coined the phrase “equality before the law,” a concept that rapidly propelled universal suffrage to the forefront of abolitionism. Elected senator in 1852, for the next 23 years Sumner was “the nation’s most passionate and inexhaustible” antislavery and equality advocate—someone who not only embraced controversy but would “grab it around the waist, and dance it across speaker platforms.” Sumner’s antagonism of pro-slavery colleagues—he often got “personal”—came to a head in 1856, when enraged South Carolina representative Preston Brooks famously attacked the abolitionist with a cane. A painful and lonely three-year recovery followed, during which Sumner’s vacant Senate chair, an ever-present reminder of the assault, catalyzed the nation’s political polarization. As a trusted wartime adviser to Abraham Lincoln, it was Sumner, according to Puleo, who ultimately guided the president toward emancipation. Postwar, Sumner championed universal suffrage as a pillar of Reconstruction. Puleo’s easygoing narrative style (“The people couldn’t get enough of Sumner”) is peppered with insight, including into how the “personality difficulties” that made empathizing with others impossible for Sumner contributed to his relentless, fact-based argumentativeness. Readers won’t be able to get enough of Puleo’s indomitable Sumner. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
"Puleo’s vast knowledge of 19th-century Boston and its diffident attitude toward slavery and integration—due in no small part to textile merchants and financiers who relied on Southern cotton for their prosperity—adds tremendous value to his account of Sumner’s transformation from depressed and sullen Harvard-educated lawyer to uncompromising and unrelenting civil rights champion, orator, and senator...Required reading for anyone with even a slight interest in Civil War–era U.S. history. A wonderfully written book about a true American freedom fighter."
—Kirkus (starred)
"Charles Sumner was a principled man of unshakable conviction, who fought the good, noble, and heroic fight against slavery, and he deserves to be remembered as a great statesman and one of the foremost champions of civil rights. He also deserves a compelling and wonderfully-written biography, which is what Stephen Puleo has provided."
—Eric Jay Dolin, author of Left for Dead and Black Flags, Blue Waters
“Stephen Puleo's masterful account of Charles Sumner, a prickly, conflicted paradox of an American giant, is told with verve and gusto. It's a vibrant, important story whose echoes still reverberate in our current day. A wonderful read.”
—Dennis Lehane, author of Small Mercies
“A superb new biography. In prose that is perceptive and propulsive, in scenes that are powerful and dramatic, Puleo brings Sumner vividly to life. Once more, he delivers a book that will captivate the general reader and reward the serious historian, too.”
—William Martin, New York Times bestselling author of The Lincoln Letter and December '41
“Charles Sumner, a lifelong crusader for human rights, has not been the subject of a comprehensive biography for more than fifty years. Stephen Puleo fills that gap with this deeply researched and dramatic retelling of Sumner's courageous life and work.”
—James M. O'Toole, University Historian and Clough Professor of History Emeritus, Boston College
“Nearly two centuries on, Charles Sumner’s name still drops loudly in Boston, yet few appreciate the enormity of his impact. Stephen Puleo’s The Great Abolitionist is at once a revelation and an appeal to our better angels to heed the lessons Sumner’s example can teach us.”
—William J. Kole, veteran journalist and author of The Big 100: The New World of Super-Aging
“Puleo’s rich biographical history is a perfectly timed reminder that to survive, our union needs figures with the courage to stand for core ideals which cannot be compromised.”
—Christopher C. Gorham, author of The Confidante: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Helped Win WWII and Shape Modern America
“When it comes to impeccable research—the kind that surprises and never rehashes—no one does it better than Stephen Puleo. The Great Abolitionist is a literary and historical triumph and is sure to be on many year-end ‘best’ lists in 2024.”
—Gregg Olsen, New York Times and Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Amish Wife and If You Tell
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-12-05
The story of a haughty and courageous senator who was dedicated to racial equality and the extinction of slavery.
Boston-based historian and teacher Puleo, author of Voyage of Mercy and American Treasures, presents the first serious treatment in over 50 years of Charles Sumner (1811-1874), one of America’s most influential abolitionists and legislators, now vaguely remembered from textbook images as cowering on the Senate floor when he was nearly caned to death by a fellow legislator for insulting his cousin. As the author reminds us, Sumner was a man of firsts: the first American to employ the phrase “equality before the law,” a member of the first integrated legal counsel in the U.S., and the first to deconstruct the principle of separate but equal. Puleo’s vast knowledge of 19th-century Boston and its diffident attitude toward slavery and integration—due in no small part to textile merchants and financiers who relied on Southern cotton for their prosperity—adds tremendous value to his account of Sumner’s transformation from depressed and sullen Harvard-educated lawyer to uncompromising and unrelenting civil rights champion, orator, and senator. Evenhandedly and adroitly, the author describes the intense sectional and political strife that accompanied the debate about the extension of slavery in the U.S., the role of Sumner’s unsparingly effective rhetoric in moving the republic toward civil war, and the many personal foibles that accompanied the better attributes that won Sumner renown that, at the time, rivaled that of Lincoln. So great was his fame that the base of a statue of him that stands in Boston’s Public Garden is inscribed simply with his surname. Puleo cogently and vividly demonstrates why, and his book is required reading for anyone with even a slight interest in Civil War–era U.S. history.
A wonderfully written book about a true American freedom fighter.
