December 5, 2025 • 29 mins
Tracy shares how her Charles Sumner research yielded a three-part episode. Holly mentions that while there's not a lot of scholarly work about Cassius Coolidge's life, he is featured in a lot of newspaper mentions from his time.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello, and Happy Friday.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
This week, we finished off our three part episode on
Charles Sumner, the previous two parts happening last week, and
we just saved most of our behind the scenes on
Charles Sumner for today rather than trying to have two
different Charles Sumner behind the scenes is and keeping track
of what was said.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yeah, we probably would have said a lot of repetitive
stuff if we tried to do it across.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, it would have been a little weird. So what
I will say about Morocco. One of the things that happened, well,
I was working on this before we left for Morocco.
I when we left for Morocco had a word count
in my notes document that was essentially a two part
episode already, so I was like, I'm going to have
(01:01):
to work on this. And yet on my Kindle I
downloaded two different books about Charles Sumner to read on
the Morocco trip. One of them I did not read
at all. It went back to the library unopened. The
other was Zachertimus's book Charles Sumner Conscious of a Nation Again.
I already had a two part episodes worth of writing
(01:26):
when I read this book, and I did not start
reading it until the last day of the Morocco trip,
and I was reading it on my phone and just
like highlighting sentences that were like little details that I
didn't know already to potentially add into the episode.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Later.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
As I was working on the episode, though, there was
a moment where I was like, this is going to
be four parts, and we've only we've never had like
a four part episode on one person, right, we.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Had sort of a four partner.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah, way, we had a sort of four interconnected episodes
that were all about China or under Chairman Mao, Right,
And those had been to some extent researched and written
in tandem, but to some extent research and written separately.
And it was just like I kept working on one
thing and being like, Oh, there's this other thing that's
(02:21):
related to this that also needs more time. With Charles Sumner,
it was just a lot of it was just he
did so much, and he was involved in so much,
and he wrote so much. And part of the reason
it was not it did not turn into a four
part episode instead of three. Is that I felt like
I did not have the fullest understanding of everything about
(02:45):
Grant wanting to annex what is now the Dominican Republic,
and that would have been one of the things that
could have pushed it into a four part episode, and
I was I was out of time. I needed to
finish writing the episode and send it to you so
that we could record it, so that there will be
a podcast coming out on the Monday after we record this.
(03:07):
Otherwise we would have just not had one. But that's
that's just so much that he was involved with, and
so much of it was ahead of his time. So
many of the things he was arguing were things that
would be re argued again during the civil rights movement.
Some of it is stuff that is being re argued
again now. And he was definitely not a perfect person.
(03:30):
If he, you know, in my ideal world, he would
have also spoken out on women's rights and the rights
of indigenous people, and the right the rights of other,
you know, non white people, in addition to the previously
enslaved and other people of African descent. At the same time,
though Charles Sumner was right, he was right about so
(03:51):
much stuff, and so much of the criticism he got
at the time was kind of like, Wow, that guy,
he just wants to much when what he wanted was
the abolition of slavery and equal rights for black people.
Something that was in the outline at one point that
I wound up taking out because of the whole I'm
(04:12):
trying to keep this to three parts thing was how
in the early twentieth century, historians writing about the Civil
War and writing about him got really dismissive of him.
They this was, you know, a period of history and
historiography that was really informed by the whole Lost Cause
(04:34):
mythology of the Civil War, which we have covered as
a whole episode on the show before. And so people
talked about Charles Sumner like, wow, that guy really forced
the United States toward a Civil war by being so
uncompromising about slavery. If he had just moved to the
middle and tried to make nice with the Southern people,
(04:56):
maybe things would have gone differently. And I'm like, no,
how about we don't do that. How about Charles thunder
was correct?
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, I mean particularly, here's my thing. I had two
things that really jumped out to me in this series.
One is very silly but the one that is germane
to this. That letter that Brooks wrote is the chilling
wording of a psychopath in my book, right, being so
(05:30):
proud that he caned this person almost to death. Yeah,
and that's the person we're supposed to be like cool
with and like yeah, work with them hard pass. I
didn't know. I don't know. Yeah, all of that rhetoric
around that and the weird news articles praising it are
(05:54):
just like they make me physically ill. It goes back
to the thing we talked about in the behind the
scenes when we were talking about ballooning, and I said
humans are always just a breath away from violence, right,
and that it's so upsetting to me. Yeah, after the fact,
nobody's like, ooh, that kind of went too far. I
mean some people were, obviously, but the supporters of Brooks
(06:17):
were all like, right on, you really almost killed him.
That was great, Like what is wrong with your brain
and heart at that point? Like, I don't understand. It's
very upsetting to me. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
This is one of the reasons why there have been
multiple times over the last several years that I have
been like, wow, wish that old episode on the caning
of Charles Sumner was more than twelve minutes long, because
like it feels really resonant with things that are happening
right now, Like when Paul Pelosi got attacked with a
(06:50):
hammer and there were people celebrating it and making fun
of him, Like that kind of reminds me of how
people talked about Charles Sumner having been beaten almost to
death on the Senate floor. Various examples of like people
just spouting absolutely abhorrent rhetoric, like absolutely abhorrent pro slavery rhetoric,
(07:16):
and other people acting like that is normal, right, like
just sort of minimizing it and being like, oh, yeah,
Like the Southerners, they're really attached to slavery. We've said
in episodes before, including in this one, that like the
northern economy was deeply interconnected with that. It was not
like at this point leading up to the Civil War,
(07:37):
the South was where slavery was actively happening, but like
the North was complicit in it in a lot of ways,
if not actively involved in some ways. But like a
lot of the way that people talked about the institution
and talked about the people who were enslave was just horrifying. Yeah,
then talked about by people who were sort of seen
(08:00):
as moderate at the time as like, yeah, but we
really have to make sure that those people have equal
power to the Free States in Congress, right, we can't
not have equal power between them. So that is how
we wound up with a three part episode with that,
because that's twelve minute one just like could not really
(08:23):
be brought out easily as a Saturday classic when I
was like, man, this feels like an echo of Charles
Sumner being beaten almost to death.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, there's been more writing recently, of course about his
relationships with Longfellow and how and one theme that kind
of came up that I did not put in the
(08:55):
episode because I just don't know if I agree with it.
And if I had personally read all of his surviving
personal documentation, I might feel differently, But I like, I
don't have access to all of that, and it's not
reasonable for me to read in a person's entire lifetime
of like personal letters and correspondents and stuff to write
(09:17):
a history podcast Like That's just not how it works.
But there are people who characterized him as confused about
his own feelings for other men. It is absolutely true
that like the identity of gay or queer as it
(09:38):
exists today was not a thing in the mid nineteenth century, right.
There were people who were living together as couples. There
were people who, like we have talked about many people
on the show who were examples. There have always been
people who's like the definition that we read who's to
(10:00):
sex or gender or sexuality like doesn't coincide with what
is expected by society. That has always been the case.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
But this like.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Identity and this sense that a person's sexual orientation expresses
something intrinsic about themselves, like that was not really part
of the public consciousness when he was living. All that
is true, and so there's some interpretation that's like people
who sort of conclude, like I think he was a
gay man who was confused because he did not have
(10:31):
the language to understand his own feelings. And part of
me sees that argument, and part of me also is, like,
this man was extraordinarily well read. He knew six different
languages proficiently to fluently. He read extensively through like Latin
and Greek literature and literature and other languages, and so
(10:55):
it is hard for me to believe that a person
who has that in enormous breadth of historical and literary
knowledge to have no way to sort of look at
their own feelings and say, I have feelings for this person.
Like there's just so much, so much that he could
(11:18):
have been exposed to in the worlds of history and
literature that could have given him a little bit of language,
and so there's just this sort of Oh, I think
he was just confused, and I'm like, maybe, but maybe
also there have always been people who were living outside
of these binaries and structures, right, there were other examples
(11:42):
from literature and history who he could have also had
He wasn't in a vacuum.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Does this make sense? It does well. Moreover to me,
it doesn't. Even your case doesn't even need to be made,
because even the examples that we shared in the course
of this, this is a man who was very in
touch with his feelings, you know what I mean. Like,
I don't think it was a mystery to him that
he loved these men. They may not have had the
language to say, oh, I'm gay. He was like distraught
(12:11):
that they were going to go into their married like
heateronormative life and leave him behind. I don't think he
was confused at all, he knew exactly how he felt
about other men, Like I compare it, for example, to
somebody I always like love to talk about this topic.
But would you compare it to like the way Bram
Stoker wrote about other men, and like his letters to
(12:35):
Walt Whitman that are very romantic and almost strangely raw
about like himself and his feelings. But he seemed to
not make the connection that, oh, I'm I'm having an
attraction to this person. Yeah, And also when you then
read his ouvre of work and you're like, wow, women
really are scary, Like, I don't think he understand that
(13:00):
that was what was going on, Whereas I do feel
like Charles Sumner one percent knew he was deeply in
love and devoted to these people and he was grieving
the loss of that relationship. I don't think it sounded
right like he didn't get it at all. Yeah. Yeah,
used language that's different than we would today.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
But yeah, it is absolutely possible, and it happened. It
happens for a person not to have a word for
something about themselves, and when they encounter that word for
the first time to be like, oh, that's me actually,
and so I can see how something like that would
(13:39):
have applied to Charles Sumner, right, But I just I
found descriptions of him that sort of were just like, yeah,
I think he was just confused, And I'm like, I'm
I don't think confusion doesn't feel like the right word there.
I even though, you know, even though he was not
a perfect person in any way, I love him. I
(13:59):
did not I'd expect to be ride or die for
Charles Summer. But that is where I wound up over
the course of working on this, And yeah, if I
had had more time, we might have wound up with
our first four parter on a single subject.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah. I mean he's extremely admirable. As you said, like,
he's not a perfect person. Nobody is. Yeah, we know
that intrinsically after years of working on this show. Yeah,
there are a lot of great people who had problematic
views on various things. Yeah, but he sure did put
himself on the line for people a lot of the time,
(14:36):
like literally physically on the line for them. Yeah. Yeah,
in ways that he did not have to and that
none of his colleagues were doing. He gets points for that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
His telling voters about the three things to look for
we're backbone, backbone and backbone. Yeah, I have some representatives
right now that I'm just like, you want backbone. Yeah,
you keep putting on blue sky that you're fighting for
us with everything you have. What does that mean? What
are you doing right? Specifically right?
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Do you want to know the other thing before you
get to any sort of summation? Oh? Sure, that made me.
This is so rebellious nineteen eighties teenager. Yeah. The whole
thing with his parents of like, well, do you have
to get a job sooner rather than later because you
got to support the family. I know that's historically a norm.
It makes me crazy every time I hear it. I'm
(15:32):
like the I mean still, the whole idea of people
having kids and then burdening them with the responsibility of
caring for the family makes me bananas.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah, it's so much.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Again, I know that's a cultural norm in a lot
of places, but my whole thing is like, what is
that the only reason you had your kid? Like, I
don't Yeah it again, I'm a very rebellion I was
always a rebellious kid who was like I very much
played the I didn't ask to be born card a lot.
Oh sure, but like, I just that attitude always seems
(16:11):
so cruel to me. Yeah, because it's like, welcome to
the world. Here's the anvil that we put around your neck.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Like I don't know, Yeah, yeah, I understand. So I'm
under the impression that, like their parents, his parents were
like very strict and not particularly demonstrative people. But it
was a time when it was the norm to have
big families and fewer really effective ways to prevent pregnancy.
(16:44):
It's like there's multiple layers of stuff going on there,
and the fact that he was the oldest put him
in the position of like having that expectation of also
caring for younger siblings. And he also made it clear
that that he was like, no, I want to I
want to go to the fancy school. I want to, Like,
(17:05):
this is what I want, and I'm going to study
Latin in secret, right to convince you to let me
do it.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah, this is where I'm like, dude, I get you.
Get you. Yeah. I was like, dude, I get you.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
When he was just like I'm gonna I'm gonna make
big lists of.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Facts, Well, it reminded me. I I know, I've told
the story before on the show of How I used
to write little pamphlets and leave them around the house
in the hopes of educating my family. Yeah, seriously, I
was not a not a cool seven year old. I
was mean. It was very judgy, but it reminded me
of that. I was like, I get you, I get you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
We also have talked many, many times about not wanting
to try to diagnose people with things like it is
not possible to diagnose people with things based on their
written correspondence and stuff like just he is here to
talk at. But I did see some speculation about him
(18:04):
possibly being like neurodivergent in some way, which possibly possibly
so who knows really, but anyway, I love him. If
you live in the Boston area, I learned when I
sat into my group chat that this is who I
was working on a podcast on. He is not the
(18:24):
person the Sumner Tunnel was named for. That was a
different Sumner. Just in case you're curious.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
We talked about Cash Coolidge this week. Yeah, this one
was a little bit tricky because there is some scholarly
work around his UVRA, but not as much as I
would like. But then when you start kind of digging
into newspapers, he gets mentioned, so much that it's easy
to pull stuff. He was a busy bee in New
(19:01):
York in the eighteen nineties. Yeah, he was involved in
all the things, and people literally seem to love him.
So he seems like he must have been a fun
guy to hang out with, even before he started painting.
Dogs playing poker. Yeah, I love dogs. Playing poker has
been referenced so much in pop culture.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Ah Ton, ah Ton.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Everything, The Simpsons, Cheese.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
The Simpsons was the first thing that I thought.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah, I don't know if you watched Cheers when you
were growing up, but I think Sam had a collection
of yeah cash Coolidge pieces or he was really into it.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
I've more watched it in syndication, Like I watched it
some when I was growing up, but it has uh
when it has been either in syndication or on streaming services,
I've watched an amount of it.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Yeah, I love those paintings. It's a little bit funny
to me. We included talk about it in here because
it does come up a lot, so I didn't want
to act like that was not part of the zeitgeisty
discussion about it the whole. Like, people love his work
because it's a man's world and I'm like, that never
(20:12):
even occurred to me no growing up or looking at
any of these pieces of art. I always just thought
they were hilarious and fun and I never was like, right,
because they're also very masculine. That never crossed my mind
for a second, because puppies. Yeah, I was sort of
surprised when I came across and then saw it in
(20:33):
multiple examinations of his work. The fact that he modeled
some of the dogs. I don't Caravausio figure. That was
very funny to me. And then I was never need
I need an image of the card sharps immediately and
I was like, oh, yeah, he did model some of
those dogs. Yeah, I don't know why that's so funny
(20:55):
to me. Yeah, I'm obviously familiar with the dog playing poker,
and I had just never really seen the appeal of it.
They existed, and I was like, Okay, it's dogs and
they're playing poker. And I've been candid about the fact
that I have always been more of a cat person
than a dog person, and I don't know if that's
(21:15):
related to the fact that I like, my response to
them has always just been kind of like, huh, it's
dogs and they're playing poker. Yeah, I love, I love,
I love, but I also I love kitch which is
like I always crack up when I think about how
much I love kitchy things, because do you remember in
(21:37):
the unbearable likeness of being, when Sabina says to Thomas,
in the kingdom of kitch, you would be a monster.
And it's like a compliment to him that he is,
you know, intellectual and highbrow and he is not in
any way interested in like trashy things. And I'm like, well,
I guess in the kingdom of high brow intellectualism, I
(21:57):
would be the monster. I'm like, yeah, give me dogs,
play poker all day long, give me all the weird
kitchy art. I just think it's fun. And I also
think it's an interesting I mean one. We've talked so
much on the show about my feelings about art and
how art should be democratized, and this idea of only
(22:18):
fine art should count as art is right messed up. Yes,
love all the masters, YoY. You've seen me cry in
front of any Dutch Golden Age painting we encounter in
our travels. But there is also an interesting place not
just to say like this is or is not like
high quality in terms of realism or it's you know,
(22:38):
proportions or whatever, like actual technique, but it also says
something about the world that it was created in. There
is something to be gleaned from the fact that in
the early nineteen hundreds there was a company that was like,
you know, it's gonna sell a kajillion copies calendars with
these dogs play in poker. Clearly, the appeal of that
(23:01):
in that moment, right speaks to what that moment was
like to live in, and that to me is the
interesting part. And they did, I mean they were right.
Those things sold like crazy. Yeah, that's why they then
were like, well, let's put them on plates and on
socks and prints and everything else because people love it. Yeah.
(23:25):
And the fact that people need to embrace something silly
sometimes that is humorous probably reflects like the fact that
they maybe didn't always have hilarity and frivolity in their
day to day life and they just want one damn
picture to hang on their wall that made them smile
every day. Yeah, bring on the kitchen baby.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
If they were Louis Waynecats playing poker, I would have
been incredibly into it.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Your species is Tracy. I guess so I love a
big goofy dog. I do love that he very clearly
had breed preferences, right. I do not see a lot
of little dogs in these paintings. Once in a while
you'll see one pop up in like a background of
a big scene, but for the most part, they are
all the bigger dog breeds. Yeah, like cobby body dogs.
(24:18):
It's kind of funny. I feel like if he were
watching the Westminster Dog Show, he would have clearly very
big interest in certain groups and not others. Yeah. Yeah,
I'd be like, you keep your toy group away from me,
is what he would say. I wouldn't say that I
want all the groups, but I love it.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
What I love, speaking of dog shows, is watching the
dogs that do so terribly at agility trials. That is
my favorite dogs.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Like when they're just ill behaved and they won't pay
attention to cues.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yeah, and they're just like or I mean, my favorites
are the dogs that do seem to be trying but
don't quite understand what needs to be happening right now,
and they'll get confused and turn around and go backwards,
or they will run part way over the little teeter totter.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
And then go back or uh. I find it all
very delightful. I know you want something, I'm going to
try a number of things and hope one of them
is the right one. Yeah. Yeah, they're very They delight me.
I love when they use that opportunity to showcase like
shelter dogs that maybe don't have amazing agility training, but
they're very seat and sweet. Yeah. Great, anything that gets
more animals adopted is a good move in my book,
(25:30):
because we have plenty of them. Yeah, if you want
a dog out there, I guarantee there's a perfect one
at a shelter that is exactly the right fit for
you and your family. So please adopt puppies, adopt them.
I would love to adopt dogs, but I travel too
much and it would make chaos, yeah for them, and
(25:51):
they would probably be very stressed.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
My cats are stressed, and they are you know, a
different level of care needed. We have a pet sitter
who comes when we travel, and they're spoiled, so the
petsitter comes twice a day. But still we get home
and they are very needy and it's clear that they
are upset that we have been gone. Yeah, I mean
We're very lucky because our pet sitter is our close
(26:16):
friend that we trade pet sitting with, so like she
has been involved in our cat's lives from the gate,
like the day they come home, she will come over
and meet them and spend time with them, and you know,
they all know her very well. And like she was sending.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Us pictures of while we were in her roco the
cats on her lap every night, some of which do
not normally sit on our laps, and there was a
little bit of like, what do you mean, Marva said
in her lap, a minor jealousy. She also has a
very great way with cats. But even so, I don't
think there is traumatized, but they do get like one
(26:53):
of our cats has been a barnacle on me since
we got home, where she's like, do not do that again, please,
thank you. Right.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Our pet sitter, toward the end of the Morocco trip,
sent pictures of one of our cats on the dining
room table, where she is not supposed to be. She
gets up there, she knows she's not allowed up there
because if she hears us stand up in the other room,
we will hear her jump down off the table. Right,
But the you know pet sitter doesn't know necessarily what
(27:23):
all the rules are the house of the house are.
She took a couple of pictures of Onyx on the table,
and after we got back, Onyx was like, I'll show you.
I will get on the table while you are looking
at me. How's that baby still not allowed of there?
Kitty cat babies?
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yeah, but I do love a pupper. Oh they're fun.
Doggies are fun. Maybe one day, when my life calms
down and I stop doing things, I can have a pup.
But at this point I also don't want to like
jack up the cat's life either, so many short So
in the meantime, I just donate a lot to shelters
(28:03):
because I want those dogs to have toys and beds
and yummy food and all the things they need. Yeah,
and you know, maybe we should be donating prints of
dogs playing poker so that the dogs will think, Hey,
I could do other things with my time. I could
monetize my adorableness and play poker and win money. I
(28:25):
doubt that would really work out, but it's fun to
think about. If you are headed into your weekend, I
hope that you get to think about doing fun things,
whether that is with your pets or without. If you
do not have time off, I hope you still get
to spend time with pets if you love them, or
with other people that make you happy and feel content,
or anything that makes you feel joy, whether that is
(28:47):
kitchy or high brow. Whatever you love is great. Just
engage with it and make your heart happy. We will
be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode, and
then on Monday with something brand new.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello, and Happy Friday.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
This week, we finished off our three part episode on
Charles Sumner, the previous two parts happening last week, and
we just saved most of our behind the scenes on
Charles Sumner for today rather than trying to have two
different Charles Sumner behind the scenes is and keeping track
of what was said.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yeah, we probably would have said a lot of repetitive
stuff if we tried to do it across.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, it would have been a little weird. So what
I will say about Morocco. One of the things that happened, well,
I was working on this before we left for Morocco.
I when we left for Morocco had a word count
in my notes document that was essentially a two part
episode already, so I was like, I'm going to have
(01:01):
to work on this. And yet on my Kindle I
downloaded two different books about Charles Sumner to read on
the Morocco trip. One of them I did not read
at all. It went back to the library unopened. The
other was Zachertimus's book Charles Sumner Conscious of a Nation Again.
I already had a two part episodes worth of writing
(01:26):
when I read this book, and I did not start
reading it until the last day of the Morocco trip,
and I was reading it on my phone and just
like highlighting sentences that were like little details that I
didn't know already to potentially add into the episode.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Later.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
As I was working on the episode, though, there was
a moment where I was like, this is going to
be four parts, and we've only we've never had like
a four part episode on one person, right, we.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Had sort of a four partner.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah, way, we had a sort of four interconnected episodes
that were all about China or under Chairman Mao, Right,
And those had been to some extent researched and written
in tandem, but to some extent research and written separately.
And it was just like I kept working on one
thing and being like, Oh, there's this other thing that's
(02:21):
related to this that also needs more time. With Charles Sumner,
it was just a lot of it was just he
did so much, and he was involved in so much,
and he wrote so much. And part of the reason
it was not it did not turn into a four
part episode instead of three. Is that I felt like
I did not have the fullest understanding of everything about
(02:45):
Grant wanting to annex what is now the Dominican Republic,
and that would have been one of the things that
could have pushed it into a four part episode, and
I was I was out of time. I needed to
finish writing the episode and send it to you so
that we could record it, so that there will be
a podcast coming out on the Monday after we record this.
(03:07):
Otherwise we would have just not had one. But that's
that's just so much that he was involved with, and
so much of it was ahead of his time. So
many of the things he was arguing were things that
would be re argued again during the civil rights movement.
Some of it is stuff that is being re argued
again now. And he was definitely not a perfect person.
(03:30):
If he, you know, in my ideal world, he would
have also spoken out on women's rights and the rights
of indigenous people, and the right the rights of other,
you know, non white people, in addition to the previously
enslaved and other people of African descent. At the same time,
though Charles Sumner was right, he was right about so
(03:51):
much stuff, and so much of the criticism he got
at the time was kind of like, Wow, that guy,
he just wants to much when what he wanted was
the abolition of slavery and equal rights for black people.
Something that was in the outline at one point that
I wound up taking out because of the whole I'm
(04:12):
trying to keep this to three parts thing was how
in the early twentieth century, historians writing about the Civil
War and writing about him got really dismissive of him.
They this was, you know, a period of history and
historiography that was really informed by the whole Lost Cause
(04:34):
mythology of the Civil War, which we have covered as
a whole episode on the show before. And so people
talked about Charles Sumner like, wow, that guy really forced
the United States toward a Civil war by being so
uncompromising about slavery. If he had just moved to the
middle and tried to make nice with the Southern people,
(04:56):
maybe things would have gone differently. And I'm like, no,
how about we don't do that. How about Charles thunder
was correct?
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, I mean particularly, here's my thing. I had two
things that really jumped out to me in this series.
One is very silly but the one that is germane
to this. That letter that Brooks wrote is the chilling
wording of a psychopath in my book, right, being so
(05:30):
proud that he caned this person almost to death. Yeah,
and that's the person we're supposed to be like cool
with and like yeah, work with them hard pass. I
didn't know. I don't know. Yeah, all of that rhetoric
around that and the weird news articles praising it are
(05:54):
just like they make me physically ill. It goes back
to the thing we talked about in the behind the
scenes when we were talking about ballooning, and I said
humans are always just a breath away from violence, right,
and that it's so upsetting to me. Yeah, after the fact,
nobody's like, ooh, that kind of went too far. I
mean some people were, obviously, but the supporters of Brooks
(06:17):
were all like, right on, you really almost killed him.
That was great, Like what is wrong with your brain
and heart at that point? Like, I don't understand. It's
very upsetting to me. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
This is one of the reasons why there have been
multiple times over the last several years that I have
been like, wow, wish that old episode on the caning
of Charles Sumner was more than twelve minutes long, because
like it feels really resonant with things that are happening
right now, Like when Paul Pelosi got attacked with a
(06:50):
hammer and there were people celebrating it and making fun
of him, Like that kind of reminds me of how
people talked about Charles Sumner having been beaten almost to
death on the Senate floor. Various examples of like people
just spouting absolutely abhorrent rhetoric, like absolutely abhorrent pro slavery rhetoric,
(07:16):
and other people acting like that is normal, right, like
just sort of minimizing it and being like, oh, yeah,
Like the Southerners, they're really attached to slavery. We've said
in episodes before, including in this one, that like the
northern economy was deeply interconnected with that. It was not
like at this point leading up to the Civil War,
(07:37):
the South was where slavery was actively happening, but like
the North was complicit in it in a lot of ways,
if not actively involved in some ways. But like a
lot of the way that people talked about the institution
and talked about the people who were enslave was just horrifying. Yeah,
then talked about by people who were sort of seen
(08:00):
as moderate at the time as like, yeah, but we
really have to make sure that those people have equal
power to the Free States in Congress, right, we can't
not have equal power between them. So that is how
we wound up with a three part episode with that,
because that's twelve minute one just like could not really
(08:23):
be brought out easily as a Saturday classic when I
was like, man, this feels like an echo of Charles
Sumner being beaten almost to death.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, there's been more writing recently, of course about his
relationships with Longfellow and how and one theme that kind
of came up that I did not put in the
(08:55):
episode because I just don't know if I agree with it.
And if I had personally read all of his surviving
personal documentation, I might feel differently, But I like, I
don't have access to all of that, and it's not
reasonable for me to read in a person's entire lifetime
of like personal letters and correspondents and stuff to write
(09:17):
a history podcast Like That's just not how it works.
But there are people who characterized him as confused about
his own feelings for other men. It is absolutely true
that like the identity of gay or queer as it
(09:38):
exists today was not a thing in the mid nineteenth century, right.
There were people who were living together as couples. There
were people who, like we have talked about many people
on the show who were examples. There have always been
people who's like the definition that we read who's to
(10:00):
sex or gender or sexuality like doesn't coincide with what
is expected by society. That has always been the case.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
But this like.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Identity and this sense that a person's sexual orientation expresses
something intrinsic about themselves, like that was not really part
of the public consciousness when he was living. All that
is true, and so there's some interpretation that's like people
who sort of conclude, like I think he was a
gay man who was confused because he did not have
(10:31):
the language to understand his own feelings. And part of
me sees that argument, and part of me also is, like,
this man was extraordinarily well read. He knew six different
languages proficiently to fluently. He read extensively through like Latin
and Greek literature and literature and other languages, and so
(10:55):
it is hard for me to believe that a person
who has that in enormous breadth of historical and literary
knowledge to have no way to sort of look at
their own feelings and say, I have feelings for this person.
Like there's just so much, so much that he could
(11:18):
have been exposed to in the worlds of history and
literature that could have given him a little bit of language,
and so there's just this sort of Oh, I think
he was just confused, and I'm like, maybe, but maybe
also there have always been people who were living outside
of these binaries and structures, right, there were other examples
(11:42):
from literature and history who he could have also had
He wasn't in a vacuum.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Does this make sense? It does well. Moreover to me,
it doesn't. Even your case doesn't even need to be made,
because even the examples that we shared in the course
of this, this is a man who was very in
touch with his feelings, you know what I mean. Like,
I don't think it was a mystery to him that
he loved these men. They may not have had the
language to say, oh, I'm gay. He was like distraught
(12:11):
that they were going to go into their married like
heateronormative life and leave him behind. I don't think he
was confused at all, he knew exactly how he felt
about other men, Like I compare it, for example, to
somebody I always like love to talk about this topic.
But would you compare it to like the way Bram
Stoker wrote about other men, and like his letters to
(12:35):
Walt Whitman that are very romantic and almost strangely raw
about like himself and his feelings. But he seemed to
not make the connection that, oh, I'm I'm having an
attraction to this person. Yeah, And also when you then
read his ouvre of work and you're like, wow, women
really are scary, Like, I don't think he understand that
(13:00):
that was what was going on, Whereas I do feel
like Charles Sumner one percent knew he was deeply in
love and devoted to these people and he was grieving
the loss of that relationship. I don't think it sounded
right like he didn't get it at all. Yeah. Yeah,
used language that's different than we would today.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
But yeah, it is absolutely possible, and it happened. It
happens for a person not to have a word for
something about themselves, and when they encounter that word for
the first time to be like, oh, that's me actually,
and so I can see how something like that would
(13:39):
have applied to Charles Sumner, right, But I just I
found descriptions of him that sort of were just like, yeah,
I think he was just confused, And I'm like, I'm
I don't think confusion doesn't feel like the right word there.
I even though, you know, even though he was not
a perfect person in any way, I love him. I
(13:59):
did not I'd expect to be ride or die for
Charles Summer. But that is where I wound up over
the course of working on this, And yeah, if I
had had more time, we might have wound up with
our first four parter on a single subject.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah. I mean he's extremely admirable. As you said, like,
he's not a perfect person. Nobody is. Yeah, we know
that intrinsically after years of working on this show. Yeah,
there are a lot of great people who had problematic
views on various things. Yeah, but he sure did put
himself on the line for people a lot of the time,
(14:36):
like literally physically on the line for them. Yeah. Yeah,
in ways that he did not have to and that
none of his colleagues were doing. He gets points for that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
His telling voters about the three things to look for
we're backbone, backbone and backbone. Yeah, I have some representatives
right now that I'm just like, you want backbone. Yeah,
you keep putting on blue sky that you're fighting for
us with everything you have. What does that mean? What
are you doing right? Specifically right?
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Do you want to know the other thing before you
get to any sort of summation? Oh? Sure, that made me.
This is so rebellious nineteen eighties teenager. Yeah. The whole
thing with his parents of like, well, do you have
to get a job sooner rather than later because you
got to support the family. I know that's historically a norm.
It makes me crazy every time I hear it. I'm
(15:32):
like the I mean still, the whole idea of people
having kids and then burdening them with the responsibility of
caring for the family makes me bananas.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah, it's so much.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Again, I know that's a cultural norm in a lot
of places, but my whole thing is like, what is
that the only reason you had your kid? Like, I
don't Yeah it again, I'm a very rebellion I was
always a rebellious kid who was like I very much
played the I didn't ask to be born card a lot.
Oh sure, but like, I just that attitude always seems
(16:11):
so cruel to me. Yeah, because it's like, welcome to
the world. Here's the anvil that we put around your neck.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Like I don't know, Yeah, yeah, I understand. So I'm
under the impression that, like their parents, his parents were
like very strict and not particularly demonstrative people. But it
was a time when it was the norm to have
big families and fewer really effective ways to prevent pregnancy.
(16:44):
It's like there's multiple layers of stuff going on there,
and the fact that he was the oldest put him
in the position of like having that expectation of also
caring for younger siblings. And he also made it clear
that that he was like, no, I want to I
want to go to the fancy school. I want to, Like,
(17:05):
this is what I want, and I'm going to study
Latin in secret, right to convince you to let me
do it.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah, this is where I'm like, dude, I get you.
Get you. Yeah. I was like, dude, I get you.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
When he was just like I'm gonna I'm gonna make
big lists of.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Facts, Well, it reminded me. I I know, I've told
the story before on the show of How I used
to write little pamphlets and leave them around the house
in the hopes of educating my family. Yeah, seriously, I
was not a not a cool seven year old. I
was mean. It was very judgy, but it reminded me
of that. I was like, I get you, I get you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
We also have talked many, many times about not wanting
to try to diagnose people with things like it is
not possible to diagnose people with things based on their
written correspondence and stuff like just he is here to
talk at. But I did see some speculation about him
(18:04):
possibly being like neurodivergent in some way, which possibly possibly
so who knows really, but anyway, I love him. If
you live in the Boston area, I learned when I
sat into my group chat that this is who I
was working on a podcast on. He is not the
(18:24):
person the Sumner Tunnel was named for. That was a
different Sumner. Just in case you're curious.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
We talked about Cash Coolidge this week. Yeah, this one
was a little bit tricky because there is some scholarly
work around his UVRA, but not as much as I
would like. But then when you start kind of digging
into newspapers, he gets mentioned, so much that it's easy
to pull stuff. He was a busy bee in New
(19:01):
York in the eighteen nineties. Yeah, he was involved in
all the things, and people literally seem to love him.
So he seems like he must have been a fun
guy to hang out with, even before he started painting.
Dogs playing poker. Yeah, I love dogs. Playing poker has
been referenced so much in pop culture.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Ah Ton, ah Ton.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Everything, The Simpsons, Cheese.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
The Simpsons was the first thing that I thought.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah, I don't know if you watched Cheers when you
were growing up, but I think Sam had a collection
of yeah cash Coolidge pieces or he was really into it.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
I've more watched it in syndication, Like I watched it
some when I was growing up, but it has uh
when it has been either in syndication or on streaming services,
I've watched an amount of it.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Yeah, I love those paintings. It's a little bit funny
to me. We included talk about it in here because
it does come up a lot, so I didn't want
to act like that was not part of the zeitgeisty
discussion about it the whole. Like, people love his work
because it's a man's world and I'm like, that never
(20:12):
even occurred to me no growing up or looking at
any of these pieces of art. I always just thought
they were hilarious and fun and I never was like, right,
because they're also very masculine. That never crossed my mind
for a second, because puppies. Yeah, I was sort of
surprised when I came across and then saw it in
(20:33):
multiple examinations of his work. The fact that he modeled
some of the dogs. I don't Caravausio figure. That was
very funny to me. And then I was never need
I need an image of the card sharps immediately and
I was like, oh, yeah, he did model some of
those dogs. Yeah, I don't know why that's so funny
(20:55):
to me. Yeah, I'm obviously familiar with the dog playing poker,
and I had just never really seen the appeal of it.
They existed, and I was like, Okay, it's dogs and
they're playing poker. And I've been candid about the fact
that I have always been more of a cat person
than a dog person, and I don't know if that's
(21:15):
related to the fact that I like, my response to
them has always just been kind of like, huh, it's
dogs and they're playing poker. Yeah, I love, I love,
I love, but I also I love kitch which is
like I always crack up when I think about how
much I love kitchy things, because do you remember in
(21:37):
the unbearable likeness of being, when Sabina says to Thomas,
in the kingdom of kitch, you would be a monster.
And it's like a compliment to him that he is,
you know, intellectual and highbrow and he is not in
any way interested in like trashy things. And I'm like, well,
I guess in the kingdom of high brow intellectualism, I
(21:57):
would be the monster. I'm like, yeah, give me dogs,
play poker all day long, give me all the weird
kitchy art. I just think it's fun. And I also
think it's an interesting I mean one. We've talked so
much on the show about my feelings about art and
how art should be democratized, and this idea of only
(22:18):
fine art should count as art is right messed up. Yes,
love all the masters, YoY. You've seen me cry in
front of any Dutch Golden Age painting we encounter in
our travels. But there is also an interesting place not
just to say like this is or is not like
high quality in terms of realism or it's you know,
(22:38):
proportions or whatever, like actual technique, but it also says
something about the world that it was created in. There
is something to be gleaned from the fact that in
the early nineteen hundreds there was a company that was like,
you know, it's gonna sell a kajillion copies calendars with
these dogs play in poker. Clearly, the appeal of that
(23:01):
in that moment, right speaks to what that moment was
like to live in, and that to me is the
interesting part. And they did, I mean they were right.
Those things sold like crazy. Yeah, that's why they then
were like, well, let's put them on plates and on
socks and prints and everything else because people love it. Yeah.
(23:25):
And the fact that people need to embrace something silly
sometimes that is humorous probably reflects like the fact that
they maybe didn't always have hilarity and frivolity in their
day to day life and they just want one damn
picture to hang on their wall that made them smile
every day. Yeah, bring on the kitchen baby.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
If they were Louis Waynecats playing poker, I would have
been incredibly into it.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Your species is Tracy. I guess so I love a
big goofy dog. I do love that he very clearly
had breed preferences, right. I do not see a lot
of little dogs in these paintings. Once in a while
you'll see one pop up in like a background of
a big scene, but for the most part, they are
all the bigger dog breeds. Yeah, like cobby body dogs.
(24:18):
It's kind of funny. I feel like if he were
watching the Westminster Dog Show, he would have clearly very
big interest in certain groups and not others. Yeah. Yeah,
I'd be like, you keep your toy group away from me,
is what he would say. I wouldn't say that I
want all the groups, but I love it.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
What I love, speaking of dog shows, is watching the
dogs that do so terribly at agility trials. That is
my favorite dogs.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Like when they're just ill behaved and they won't pay
attention to cues.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yeah, and they're just like or I mean, my favorites
are the dogs that do seem to be trying but
don't quite understand what needs to be happening right now,
and they'll get confused and turn around and go backwards,
or they will run part way over the little teeter totter.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
And then go back or uh. I find it all
very delightful. I know you want something, I'm going to
try a number of things and hope one of them
is the right one. Yeah. Yeah, they're very They delight me.
I love when they use that opportunity to showcase like
shelter dogs that maybe don't have amazing agility training, but
they're very seat and sweet. Yeah. Great, anything that gets
more animals adopted is a good move in my book,
(25:30):
because we have plenty of them. Yeah, if you want
a dog out there, I guarantee there's a perfect one
at a shelter that is exactly the right fit for
you and your family. So please adopt puppies, adopt them.
I would love to adopt dogs, but I travel too
much and it would make chaos, yeah for them, and
(25:51):
they would probably be very stressed.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
My cats are stressed, and they are you know, a
different level of care needed. We have a pet sitter
who comes when we travel, and they're spoiled, so the
petsitter comes twice a day. But still we get home
and they are very needy and it's clear that they
are upset that we have been gone. Yeah, I mean
We're very lucky because our pet sitter is our close
(26:16):
friend that we trade pet sitting with, so like she
has been involved in our cat's lives from the gate,
like the day they come home, she will come over
and meet them and spend time with them, and you know,
they all know her very well. And like she was sending.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Us pictures of while we were in her roco the
cats on her lap every night, some of which do
not normally sit on our laps, and there was a
little bit of like, what do you mean, Marva said
in her lap, a minor jealousy. She also has a
very great way with cats. But even so, I don't
think there is traumatized, but they do get like one
(26:53):
of our cats has been a barnacle on me since
we got home, where she's like, do not do that again, please,
thank you. Right.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Our pet sitter, toward the end of the Morocco trip,
sent pictures of one of our cats on the dining
room table, where she is not supposed to be. She
gets up there, she knows she's not allowed up there
because if she hears us stand up in the other room,
we will hear her jump down off the table. Right,
But the you know pet sitter doesn't know necessarily what
(27:23):
all the rules are the house of the house are.
She took a couple of pictures of Onyx on the table,
and after we got back, Onyx was like, I'll show you.
I will get on the table while you are looking
at me. How's that baby still not allowed of there?
Kitty cat babies?
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yeah, but I do love a pupper. Oh they're fun.
Doggies are fun. Maybe one day, when my life calms
down and I stop doing things, I can have a pup.
But at this point I also don't want to like
jack up the cat's life either, so many short So
in the meantime, I just donate a lot to shelters
(28:03):
because I want those dogs to have toys and beds
and yummy food and all the things they need. Yeah,
and you know, maybe we should be donating prints of
dogs playing poker so that the dogs will think, Hey,
I could do other things with my time. I could
monetize my adorableness and play poker and win money. I
(28:25):
doubt that would really work out, but it's fun to
think about. If you are headed into your weekend, I
hope that you get to think about doing fun things,
whether that is with your pets or without. If you
do not have time off, I hope you still get
to spend time with pets if you love them, or
with other people that make you happy and feel content,
or anything that makes you feel joy, whether that is
(28:47):
kitchy or high brow. Whatever you love is great. Just
engage with it and make your heart happy. We will
be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode, and
then on Monday with something brand new.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
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