Charles Sumner Revisited (part 3)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
This is the third part of our three parter about
Charles Sumner. I don't want to call this a cliffhanger,
because we're talking about a person's actual human life, but
we did leave off at a precarious moment. Charles Sumner
had delivered an incendiary speech before the Senate called Crime
against Kansas. He had delivered that over two days in

(00:39):
May of eighteen fifty six, and so we are picking
up with what happened two days later on May twenty second,
when Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina came into the
Senate chamber and attacked Charles Sumner at his desk. Representative
Brooks thought Senator Sumner deserved to be punished for what
he had said in his against Kansas speech. Brooks also

(01:03):
thought this should be humiliating for Sumner, and his initial
plan was to use a whip. But Sumner was a
big man. He was six foot four with a barrel chest,
and he outweighed Brooks by about thirty pounds Brooks thought
that Sumner might just take a whip out of his hand,
so he decided to use a walking cane. When Brooks

(01:24):
arrived at the Senate chamber that day, Sumner was at
his desk. He was franking copies of the speech that
he had just given. Another South Carolina representative, Lawrence Kitt,
accompanied Brooks and was prepared to get in the way
of anybody who might intervene. Kit was a major part
of planning this attack and of encouraging Brooks to go

(01:44):
through with it when it seemed like he might change
his mind. Brooks and Kit waited for the session to
end and for some women who were in the hallway
to leave. Then Brooks approached Sumner. In a letter he
later wrote to his brother, Brooks said he told the
senator quote, mister Sumner, I have read your speech with
care and as much impartiality as was possible, and I

(02:06):
feel it my duty to tell you that you have
libeled my state and slandered a relative who is aged
and absent, and I am come to punish you for it.
In this letter, Brooks went on to say, quote at
the concluding words, I struck him with my cane and
gave him about thirty first rate stripes with a Gutta
purchase cane, which had been given me a few months

(02:29):
before by a friend from North Carolina named Vic. Every
lick went where I intended. For about the first five
or six licks. He offered to make a fight, but
I plied him so rapidly that he did not touch me.
Towards the last he bellowed like a calf. I wore
my cane out completely, but saved the head, which is gold.

(02:51):
The fragments of the stick are begged for as sacred relics.
Every Southern man is delighted, and the abolitionists are like
a high of disturbed bees.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
I have so much to say on our behind the scenes.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Colonel Joseph H. Nicholson gave an eyewitness account to the
Senate in which he said, quote, I saw Colonel Brooks
lean on and over the desk of Senator Sumner and
seemingly say something to him, and instantly, and while Senator
Sumner was in the act of rising, Colonel Brooks struck
him over the head with a dark colored walking cane,

(03:25):
which blow he repeated twice or three times, and with rapidity.
I think several blows had been inflicted before Senator Sumner
was fully in possession of his locomotion and extricated from
his desk, which was thrown over or broken from its
fastenings by the efforts of the Senator to extricate himself.
As soon as Senator Sumner was free from the desk,

(03:47):
he moved down the narrow passageway under the impetuous drive
of his adversary, with his hands uplifted as though to
ward off the blows which were rained on his head.
With as much quickness as was possible for any man
to use a cane on another whom he was intent
on chastising. Nicholson described the cane as being broken into
several pieces during this attack, and said Sumner finally collapsed

(04:10):
in a quote bleeding and apparently exhausted condition.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Sumner's injuries, which were serious, went beyond just the ones
that Brooks had inflicted on him. This desk that he
was seated at was large, and it was heavy, and
it was bolted to the floor, so when Brooks started
attacking him, Sumner was basically pinned in between the chair
and the underside of the desk. Trying to get away

(04:37):
involved wrenching the desk out from the floor, and both
of his thighs were severely bruised in the process.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Violence in the halls of Congress was not unheard of
at this point. The previous year, there had been an
altercation between Senators Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri and Henry
Foot of Mississippi, in which Foot had pulled a gun.
Other fights over slavery had come to blows. In eighteen
fifty eight, Kit would be involved in what was effectively

(05:05):
a brawl in the House over a proposed pro slavery
constitution for Kansas, but this was different. In addition to
being a much more serious and violent attack, Brooks's decision
to attack Sumner with a cane had parallels to the
way in slavers delivered physical punishments with things like canes

(05:25):
and whips.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
People noticed the similarity between what Brooks did to Sumner
and what enslavers did to the enslaved. More broadly, this
included black journalists and abolitionists who condemned the attack. Mary
Anne shad Carey, who we covered on the show in
July of twenty sixteen, described this as an indication that
the violence of slavery had spread quote from the black

(05:50):
man to the white.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Thanks to the existence of the telegraph, word of the
attack spread quickly, with people in major cities hearing about
it less than an hour after it happened. Broadly speaking,
Brooks's actions drew outrage from the North and praised from
the South, although there were Southerners who thought it went
against Southern ideas of gentility and gentlemanly behavior.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Brooks received a letter from five people from Charleston, South Carolina,
who wrote, quote, you have put the senator from Massachusetts
where he should be. You have applied a blow to
his back. He has undergone the infamy of personal punishment.
His submission to your blows has now qualified him for
the closest companionship with a degraded class.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
An Alabama newspaper also celebrated the attack, saying, quote, Sumner
has been needing something of the sort since the first
day he put his foot into the Senate chamber. The
Richmond wig was exuberant, quote A glorious deed, A most
glorious deed, mister Brooks of South Carolina administered to Senator Sumner,
a notorious abolitionist from Massachusetts, and effect usual and classic caning,

(07:02):
we are rejoiced. The only regret we feel is that
mister Brooks did not employ a slave whip instead of
a stick. From the northern point of view, Julia Ward
Howe wrote a poem praising Sumner called a Woman's Word
for the Hour, which was published in the New York Tribune.
It set in part quote, never on a milder brow

(07:23):
gleamed the crown of the martyr. The Reverend Henry Ward
Beecher drew a comparison between the North and the South
in response to the attack, quote the symbol of the
North is the pen. The symbol of the South is
the bludgeon. Sumner also got a lot of support from
Boston's black community. Attorney Robert Morris wrote to him and

(07:44):
said quote, no persons felt more keenly and sympathized with you,
more deeply and sincerely than your colored constituents in Boston.
There was also a meeting of black abolitionists at Boston's
twelfth Baptist Church, who wrote in support of our senator,
saying quote that in this dastardly attempt to crush our
free speech, we painfully recognized the abiding prevalence of that

(08:07):
spirit of injustice, which has for two centuries upon this
continent ground our progenitors and ourselves under the iron hoof
of slavery, that we hereby expressed to mister Sumner our
entire confidence in him as a faithful friend of the slave.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Perhaps unsurprisingly, or at least, that was how I felt
about it. Living in the year twenty twenty five, Brooks
and Kit faced minimal consequences. The Senate investigated, but found
that it did not have the standing to discipline representatives
from the House. The House voted on a measure to
expel Brooks and Kit from their number, and while a

(08:44):
majority did vote in favor of that measure, it did
not get the two thirds majority that was necessary to
actually expel them. There was also a recommendation to censure
Henry A. Edmondson of Virginia for having prior knowledge of
the attack, but he was not censured. The House did
censure Kit, and both Kit and Brooks resigned in protest.

(09:07):
When special elections were held to fill their seats, they
were both re elected.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
Brooks was also charged with misdemeanor assault he confessed, or,
to be more accurate, he bragged about it. He was
fined three hundred dollars, which his supporters raised money to pay.
Brooks died the following year at the age of thirty
seven after coming down with what people initially thought was
just a cold. Kit would later be killed in action

(09:34):
during the Civil War. Kansas was eventually admitted to the
Union as a free state in eighteen sixty one. Sumner's
injuries included multiple severe bruises, lacerations, and a concussion. He
initially appeared to be recovering pretty well, but then he
developed a high fever, and when some of his sutured

(09:55):
wounds were examined, it became clear that he had developed
an infection. As his body started to heal, some of
his other symptoms persisted. A lot of his regular activities,
including reading and writing, made his head hurt. He just
couldn't get comfortable. He couldn't keep his balance while he
was walking. In today's terms, he also probably developed post

(10:16):
traumatic stress disorder. Three months after being attacked, Sumner had
worked his way up to being able to write ten
letters a day. He had to lie down and rest
between each one, and he had to travel on horseback
since he could not keep his balance when he walked.
There is some speculation that the pro slavery doctor who

(10:37):
treated him, Cornelius Boyle, didn't do an adequate job. Boyle
definitely minimized the extent of Sumner's injuries. When talking to
investigators in the press, Southerners and slavery supporters accused Sumner
of faking it. On January seventh, eighteen fifty seven, a
little more than seven months after the attack, Lydia Marieta Child,

(11:00):
wrote a letter to her husband about a visit she
had from Sumner. Quote Charles Sumner called to see me
and brought me his photograph. We talked together two hours,
and I never received such an impression of holiness from
mortal man. Not an ungentle word did he utter concerning
Brooks or any of the political enemies who have been
slandering and insulting him for years. He only regretted the

(11:24):
existence of a vicious institution which inevitably barbarized those who
grew up under its influence.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
While this letter makes it sound like Sumner might have
been doing better than he had been the year before,
he still did not feel fully well. Not long after
this visit with her, he left for Europe, arriving in
Paris in March of eighteen fifty seven, he both traveled
and rested, and he visited the UK, Switzerland, Germany, Holland

(11:53):
and Belgium. He also spent a lot of time with
Alexis de Tokville. He returned to the US in November
and briefly tried to get back to his work in
the Senate, but he was still having issues. He described
fatigue in what sounds a lot like brain fog, along
with serious back spasms, other pain, and susceptibility to illnesses

(12:13):
which he had not had before being attacked. He went
back to France in the spring of eighteen fifty nine.
This time he went to Paris and he sought medical
treatment from physician Charles Edoar Brown Scard, who was from Mauritius.
Brown Sicard was a groundbreaking as a physician, but he
also could advocate experimental treatments that did not really seem

(12:35):
to have a foundation in medical thought as it existed
at the time. He diagnosed Sumner with a contracoup brain injury,
which is an injury that develops on the opposite side
from the point of the impact. His treatment involved burning
the skin along Sumner's spine over the course of six
weeks This raised concern and alarm from Sumner's friends, like

(13:00):
these were not mine or burns. Some of them seemed
very serious, and during these treatments, Sumner started experiencing angina,
which he dealt with for the rest of his life.
Four years passed before Sumner was well enough to fully
be able to resume his work in the Senate. During
that time, he was reelected. The Massachusetts legislature saw his

(13:21):
empty Senate chair as a visible reminder of what had
happened to him and the brutality of slavery. This whole
attack on Sumner is seen as one of the things
that led up to the US Civil War and kind
of made it seem like tensions between the North and
South could not be resolved. Civil War, of course, started
after Sumner returned to the Senate, and we will get

(13:43):
to that after a sponsor break. Charles Sumner returned to
the US Senate full time in eighteen fifty nine, and
he continued to represent Massachusetts for well over a decade.
On June fourth of eighteen sixty, he delivered his first

(14:05):
major speech after his return to the Senate, called the
Barbarism of Slavery. This was another long speech. It was
about thirty thousand words, and it began quote, when I
last entered into this debate, it became my duty to
expose the crime against Kansas, and to insist upon the
immediate admission of that territory as a state of this

(14:27):
Union with a constitution forbidding slavery. Time has passed, but
the question remains.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
This speech made it obvious that Sumner would not back down,
even after being severely beaten. After his last speech, he
went on to say, quote, the slave trade is bad,
but even this enormity is petty compared with that elaborate
contrivance by which, in a Christian age, and within the
limits of a republic, all forms of constitutional liberty were perverted,

(14:56):
by which all the rights of human nature were violated,
and the whole ole country was held trembling on the
edge of civil war. While all this large exuberance of
wickedness destable in itself, becomes tenfold more detestable when its
origin is traced to the madness for slavery. He continued, quote,

(15:16):
Slavery must be resisted not only on political grounds, but
on all other grounds, whether social, economical, or moral. Ours
is no holiday contest.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
It is a solemn battle between right and wrong, between
good and evil. Such a battle cannot be fought with
excuses or rosewater. There is austere work to be done,
and freedom cannot consent to fling away any of her weapons.
While this was an anti slavery speech, it had some

(15:49):
racist elements, like comparing in slavers to these so called
uncivilized primitive peoples of the world, meaning various indigenous peoples.
He also compared in slavery to Brigham Young's practice of
polygamy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.
A number of pro slavery senators walked out of this speech,

(16:09):
and afterward Sumner got death threats, and people started to
worry about what would happen if Republican Abraham Lincoln became
president in the upcoming eighteen sixty election. There were a
lot of worries about Lincoln becoming president from multiple directions,
and it seemed likely that Sumner would wind up with
a lot of power if Lincoln were president. People on

(16:32):
both sides of the aisle thought that he might be
just too radical to be entrusted with that power. But
this speech was widely praised by abolitionists. Frederick Douglas printed
it in his paper, along with the statement quote, at last,
the right word has been spoken in the chamber of
the American Senate. Long and sadly have we waited for

(16:53):
an utterance like this, and were beginning to despair of
getting anything of the sort from the present generation of
Republicans state hetsmen. But Senator Sumner has exceeded our hopes
and filled up the measure of all that we have
long desired in the senatorial discussions of slavery. Of course,
Abraham Lincoln was elected president, and soon after that southern

(17:15):
states started seceding from the Union. South Carolina was the
first to do so on December twenty fourth, eighteen sixty,
with its declaration of secession citing quote an increasing hostility
on the part of the non slaveholding states to the
institution of slavery. Other states followed, with many of them
issuing similar statements citing that they were leaving the Union

(17:37):
over the issue of slavery. Initially, Sumner thought that if
only the most extreme slaveholding states seceded, it might be
best for the Union to just let them. He thought
those states wouldn't be strong enough to form a functioning
national government, and that they'd also be vulnerable to slave uprisings.
He envisioned something like the Haitian Revolution taking place in

(18:00):
those states. Sumner's late father had been in Haiti during
the revolution, and Sumner saw it as evidence that black
people could advocate for and govern themselves. Sumner's earlier advocacy
had included anti war advocacy, and one of his earliest
major speeches that we talked about in Part one had
been an anti war speech. But as states were seceding

(18:24):
from the Union, he started to conceive of the oncoming
Civil War as a just one and one that could
put an end to slavery. And since the South saw
enslaved people as property, he thought that under the rules
of war that property could be confiscated and then freed.
President Lincoln made Sumner Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

(18:47):
On May thirteenth, eighteen sixty one, shortly after the start
of the Civil War, Queen Victoria issued a statement of neutrality,
and the Confederacy started working to try to get British
support for their cause. Britain had abolished slavery, the British
economy was deeply interconnected with the Southern cotton industry. Sumner

(19:07):
had to work to try to keep Britain from becoming
involved in the war on the side of the Confederacy.
He also had to try to keep Secretary of State
William H. Seward from antagonizing the UK and possibly getting
into a war with the United States. At one point,
this required him to do something he really didn't want
to do. A US Army officer captured two Confederate diplomats

(19:32):
from a British mail ship that was headed to London.
They were James Mason and John Slidell, who had both
served with Sumner in the Senate. They had both been
on the opposite side from Sumner. Northerners were delighted by
the two men's capture, but the British thought this was
a violation of international law, and they demanded that the

(19:53):
men be released. Sumner had to convince Seward and the
President to release these two men, even though who would
have rather them stay in custody, because if they did
not do so, they would wind up at war with
Britain and possibly also with France, because France had also
condemned the men's capture. When the Civil War started, Lincoln's

(20:15):
goal was to preserve the Union. Charles Sumner played a
major role in convincing him to make it about putting
an end to slavery. This should not be interpreted as friendly,
mutually supportive work. The two men had very fierce arguments
about it. Black men at this point had been advocating
for themselves to be able to enlist in the US Army,

(20:37):
and during the war, Sumner took up that cause as well.
He also argued for emancipation to be part of the
Republican Party platform, and he worked on getting the United
States to recognize the governments of Haiti and Liberia and
to negotiate a treaty with the United Kingdom to try
to stop the transatlantic slave trade. Some of the issues

(20:58):
Sumner became involved during these years had to do with
the citizenship rights of black men. In eighteen fifty seven,
the U. S. Supreme Court had issued its decision in
dread Scott versus Sandford, including that people of African descent
were not and were not intended to be US citizens.
That meant that they could not petition US courts and

(21:20):
that they could not be issued US passports. Robert Morris
came to Sumner on behalf of his son, who wanted
to go attend a university in France, since he was
excluded from most colleges in the US because of his race.
Sumner took this matter up with the Secretary of State,
who ultimately issued Morris's son a passport. Similarly, in February

(21:43):
of eighteen sixty five, Sumner helped a black lawyer named
John Rock get admitted to the Supreme Court bar. Rock
had approached Sumner to ask for his help with this,
and in addition to Sumner feeling like it was just
the right thing to do, he thought that if the
Supreme Court admitted a black lawyer to its bar, that

(22:04):
would help undermine that earlier decision in dred Scott.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
During the Civil War, Sumner also developed a close relationship
with First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. This really started after
the death of Lincoln's son, eleven year old Willie, who
died on February twentieth, eighteen sixty two. She became depressed
in a way that sounds very similar to what Sumner
experienced after the marriages of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Samuel

(22:30):
Gridley Howe. Sumner had also been through a whole series
of personal tragedies, including the death of his twin sister,
the loss of his brother Albert and Albert's whole family
in a shipwreck, and the death of another brother, Horace,
in another shipwreck. Sumner's brother George had been injured in
an accident and was paralyzed, and he was slowly dying.

(22:52):
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's wife, Fanny, had also died, and Sumner
had not only lost her as a friend, but was
also watching Longfellow, who dearly loved her, grieve for her.
Sumner became Mary Todd Lincoln's closest male friend, as their
losses seemed to bring them together. He also talked to
her a lot about slavery, and she credited him with

(23:15):
convincing her to be an abolitionist.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
In eighteen sixty two, Sumner started trying to build an
argument in the Senate that the states that had seceded
from the Union no longer existed as states, but the
land those states had occupied was still US territory. Territories
were controlled by Congress, which had extremely broad authority to

(23:40):
pass laws to govern them, so Sumner believed that the
Constitution allowed for Congress to simply rewrite the constitutions of
the seceded states so that those constitutions would outlast slavery.
I feel like it is a really good argument. The Senate,
of course, did not go for this plan.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
However, more and more republic Licans started describing themselves as
radicals and pushing for legislation that would free people. This
included the Second Confiscation Act, which freed and slave persons
who were able to reach territory that was held by
the US Army. Congress also abolished slavery in Washington, d c.
And in US territories, with provisions to compensate in slavers

(24:22):
for the loss of their alleged property.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, that's another thing, yet another thing that we've talked
about on the show before, and we talked about the
contraband camps and other episodes. After months of negotiations and discussions,
Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September twenty second,
eighteen sixty two. This was something that Sumner had been

(24:46):
advocating for, and it gave the rebelling states one hundred
days to either return to the Union or have their
enslaved population freed. We have an episode on this document
that's from August of twenty sixteen. Of course, the rebelling
States did not return to the Union, and on January first,
eighteen sixty three, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which proclaimed

(25:07):
that all persons being held as slaves and the rebelling
states were now free. This was exactly the kind of
emancipating people that Sumner had been arguing for, but he
also felt this did not go far enough. There were
a lot of people who were still enslaved.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
The Civil War would go on for more than a
year after this, but Sumner was already thinking about what
would need to happen during reconstruction. He argued that by
seceding from the Union, the Southern States had lost the
protections that are given to the states under the Constitution,
and that to return to the Union they would have
to form a republican government that would give equal franchise

(25:45):
to black men. He also started proposing bills that would
redistribute land to freed people, understanding that freed people would
need some way to support themselves.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
The United States won the Civil War, which ended in
the spring of eighteen sixty five. We will talk about
Sumner's work during reconstruction after another sponsor break after the
Civil War, Charles Sumner was a huge advocate for a

(26:21):
constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, among other things. He worked with
the Women's National Loyal League, founded by Elizabeth Katie Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony. He submitted the league's petition on
the subject, nicknamed the Mammoth Petition to Congress. It had
about one hundred thousand signatures, two thirds of them women

(26:41):
and one third of them men.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
This amendment would ultimately become the thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Sumner argued for it to include equality under the law
and not to include involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime,
neither of which happened. While he supported the amendment, he
wasn't a huge part of getting it drafted, passed, and ratified.

(27:06):
As should be obvious by now, Sumner often just was
not a very diplomatic person, and even people who agreed
with him could find him relentless and almost zealous and
hard to work with. And even though he worked with
Stanton and Anthony on the Mammoth Petition, he was never
a public advocate for women's rights.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Sumner was made chair of the Senate Select Committee on
Slavery and Freedom, and he introduced bills to repeal the
Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty, to give black people
the right to testify in federal court, to hire black
postal workers, to desegregate street cars, and to get equal
pay for black soldiers. He also introduced a bill to

(27:46):
try to create an independent federal agency specifically to assist
the freed people. This was a proposal that was controversial,
including among some Republicans, because some legislators did not think
white people should be excluded from getting that kind of aid.
While Sumner's bill on this did not pass, a different

(28:07):
bill establishing the Freedman's Bureau did later on.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
As all of this was happening, the federal government was
trying to figure out how the states that had rebelled
could be readmitted to the Union. A proposal to readmit
Louisiana allowed it to have a constitution that did not
give black men the right to vote. Sumner saw voting
rights as critically necessary to achieving racial equality, and he

(28:31):
was afraid of the precedent it would set if Louisiana
were readmitted under these terms. He said he would quote
employ every parliamentary device which is allowable to stop Louisiana
from being admitted. And then he did, introducing all kinds
of amendments to the bill, filibustering, and just on and on.
He did this knowing that he was running the risk

(28:53):
of destroying his relationship to the president, since the readmission
of States was part of Lincoln's reconstruction plane.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
Sumner and Lincoln were still on reasonably good terms though,
when Lincoln was inaugurated for a second term on March fourth,
eighteen sixty five, and Sumner escorted the First Lady to
the inaugural ball. But a little more than a month later,
Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Sumner rushed to
Lincoln's side when he heard that the president had been shot,

(29:23):
reportedly sitting by Lincoln's bedside for hours as he died,
weeping and holding his hand.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Sumner helped plan Lincoln's funeral, and he had meetings with
his successor, Andrew Johnson to discuss reconstruction plans. Sumner was
optimistic after these initial meetings because Johnson gave him the
impression that he was in favor of black suffrage. But
of course this was not at all the case. When
Sumner saw Johnson's actual reconstruction proposals, which included things like

(29:53):
a blanket amnesty for most Confederate soldiers, and the readmission
of states without black suffrage, he did described them as madness.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
In eighteen sixty six, Congress was working on what would
become the fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which finally incorporated
the idea of equal protection under the law, something that
Sumner had been talking about going all the way back
to Roberts versus the City of Boston. This amendment also
included language about how representatives were apportioned among the states

(30:26):
based on their population. The Constitution originally counted three fifths
of the number of enslaved people in each state, known
of course, as the three fifths Compromise. The fourteenth Amendment
instead counted the whole number of persons in each state
quote excluding Indians not taxed. But if a state denied

(30:49):
any male inhabitant under the age of twenty one the
right to vote under the fourteenth Amendment, unless that person
had participated in a rebellion or other crime, that states
representation would be reduced in proportion to the number of
men who were excluded. In other words, under the fourteenth Amendment,

(31:09):
states could exclude black men from the vote if they
were willing to also exclude their black population from that
apportionment equation.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
Sumner was opposed to this language. He gave a speech
on the subject called the Equal Rights of All on
February fifth and sixth, eighteen sixty six, in which he
said the time had come in which quote, all compromise
of human rights should cease. He also laid out an
argument based on Article four, Section four of the Constitution,

(31:39):
known as the Republican Guarantee Clause, which says, in part quote,
the United States shall guarantee to every state in this
Union a republican form of government. In Sumner's opinion, any
state that did not give black men the right to
vote did not have a republican form of government, so
the Constitution empowered the federal government to issue. As happened

(32:02):
with so many of Sumner's Senate speeches, he was applauded
from the gallery, but he didn't get much of a
response from the other senators.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Sumner's mother died in June of eighteen sixty six, and
by September of that year, he was engaged to a
young woman named Alice Hooper. She was twenty six and
he was fifty five, and they got married on October seventeenth.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
They were not.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Well matched at all. Among other things, she wanted an
active social life and he wanted to stay at home.
She started a very flirty friendship with a diplomat who
was closer to her age and her temperament, and even
though this seems to have been platonic, there were rumors
that it was not. She and Sumner quickly separated and

(32:47):
eventually divorced, and she spread rumors that Sumner was impotent.
We already talked about Sumner being mocked and facing suspicion
for being a bachelor. Now he faced the same for
his failed relationship and the rumors about both him and
his ex wife.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Sumner continued to introduce ambitious bills and amendments in the Senate.
He tried to expand the Homestead Act to explicitly apply
to the land claims of freed people. The Homestead Act
didn't technically mention race, but most of the people who
were able to claim land through it were white. He
also tried to introduce an amendment to establish free, integrated

(33:27):
public schools across the country. These efforts failed.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
In eighteen sixty seven, the Reconstruction Act finally set the
requirements for states to be readmitted into the Union. States
had to draft new constitutions, which had to be approved
by a majority of the voters, which included black men,
and they had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. Johnson vetoed
this bill, but Congress overrode his veto.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Also in eighteen sixty seven, Sumner helped ratify the treaty
that had been secretly drafted for the United States to
purchase Alaska from the Russian Empire. Finding that there wasn't
a lot of widely available information about the area, Sumner
also drafted a whole treatise on it based on everything
he could find at the Library of Congress. Sumner's writing

(34:18):
about Alaska simultaneously acknowledged the harm that the indigenous population
had faced while living under the Russian Empire, while also
implying that the best course of action for the United
States would be to establish mission schools to civilize them.
Somewhat similarly to how Sumner never really advocated for women's rights,
his comments on the rights of indigenous peoples were largely

(34:41):
limited to condemning specific massacres or acts of violence.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
In eighteen sixty eight, President Johnson unilaterally fired Secretary of
War Edwin Stanton, which violated the Tenure of Office Act
of eighteen sixty seven. So Johnson was impeached, and Sumner
was strong in favor of that impeachment. Beyond just the
violation of the Tenure of Office Act, Sumner thought the

(35:07):
impeachment might pave the way for a president who was
actually committed to equal rights for black people. This was
the first presidential impeachment in US history, and Johnson was acquitted.
Just before the end of Johnson's term, Congress passed the
fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing black men the right
to vote. While this sounds like exactly the sort of

(35:30):
thing Sumner would have supported, he had stayed from voting
on it. He didn't think the amendment was doing anything.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
More than an ordinary law would do, and it didn't
prohibit tactics that could be used to keep black men
from voting, like expensive poll taxes and unfair literacy tests.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Okay, he had a lot of foresight on this issue.
Ulysses S. Grant had been elected as the next president,
and after his inauguration that March, he and Sumner frequently
butted heavy. In the words of Secretary of State Hamilton
Fish in eighteen seventy one, quote, no wild bull ever
dashed more violently at a red flag than he goes

(36:11):
at anything he thinks the president is interested in.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
One big issue was Grant's proposed annexation of the Dominican Republic,
then known as Santo Domingo, which Grant worked on secretly.
Getting into all the details of this would have turned
this into a four part podcast, but the short version
is that Sumner was strongly opposed. In addition to the
fact that it had intentionally been kept secret from him

(36:37):
even though he was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Sumner thought Dominican President Bueneventura Bayez was a corrupt dictator
who was being enabled by the United States. He was
also furious that the US had dispatched warships to Haiti
to deter Haitian retaliation against the plan. This conflict ultimately

(36:58):
led Sumner to being removed as Chair of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
In eighteen seventy Sumner started working with Black attorney John
Mercer Langston to draft a civil rights bill, which included
the right to access public accommodations, including theaters, regardless of
a person's race, as well as the integration of schools
and hospitals. Republicans had a majority in Congress, and Sumner

(37:25):
thought this bill would easily pass, But a lot of
these ideas and the intensity of Sumner's devotion to them
were considered so radical that he started losing the support
of his party. He would reintroduce this civil rights bill
every congressional session for the rest of his life. In
eighteen seventy two, Congress started working on the Amnesty Act,

(37:48):
which removed restrictions that prohibited most former Confederates from holding
state or federal office. Sumner tried to append his civil
rights bill to it. This is a move that biographer
Zacher Tomese describes in his twenty twenty five book Charles
Sumner Conscience of a Nation as quote extraordinary in its

(38:08):
prescience and moral clarity. It forced Congress to have a
debate on the issue of civil rights for black people.
Because the Amnesty Act was written to override a portion
of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, it had to
have a two thirds majority to pass It didn't get
that majority with Sumner's civil rights bill attached, but a

(38:29):
standalone version of just the amnesty bill was passed later.
By this point, Sumner was frequently ill. He had started
to wonder if it was time to retire. He made
another trip to France for more treatment by Charles Edward
Brown Scard. After returning to the Senate, Sumner proposed a
constitutional amendment that would limit the presidency to a single term,

(38:53):
and one that would have elected the president through a
popular vote. If no candidate won a majority of votes
in this popular vote, he proposed a runoff would be held. Obviously,
neither of those constitutional amendments passed.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
In December of eighteen seventy two, Sumner was censured after
he proposed a bill that would prohibit regimental flags from
celebrating Union victories in the Civil War. His belief was
that victories over fellow citizens should not be celebrated, even
in the context of a civil war, but people interpreted

(39:28):
the whole thing as anti veteran. After ongoing petitions for
his censure to be rescinded, it finally was in January
of eighteen seventy four.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
A few months later, on March eleventh, eighteen seventy four,
Charles Sumner died at the age of sixty three after
a heart attack. As he was dying, Sumner repeatedly talked
about his civil rights bill, saying over and over that
it should not be allowed to fail. A congressional delegation
escorted his body to the Capitol, flanked by three hundred

(40:00):
black men, including Frederick Douglas. After his body lay in
state in the Rotunda, it was transported to Boston by rail,
where he lay in state in the State House. His
funeral was held at King's Chapel, and afterward tens of
thousands of people, including thousands of black Massachusetts residents, and
a uniformed black honor guard, were part of the five

(40:22):
mile procession to Mount Auburn Cemetery, where he was buried.
There were flowers everywhere at his services, including a shield
made of white carnations and blue violets, the violets spelling
out the words do not let the Civil Rights Bill fail.
Henry Ward Beecher said of Sumner, quote, he was a
man of courage and of fidelity to his convictions. He

(40:45):
never meanly calculated. He never asked the question whether it
was dangerous to speak. He was one of those heroic
spirits that carried the fight further than it needed to
be carried. He aired by an excess of bravery. He
was a self sacrificing man, giving up every prospect of
life for the sake of doing his duty and establishing rectitude.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
The executor of Sumner's estate was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who
tried to gather and preserve his correspondents. Samuel Gridley Howe
sent only the letters he thought were appropriate.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
In the wake of Sumner's death, Congress passed the Civil
Rights Act of eighteen seventy five, which was not nearly
as broad as what Sumner had been striving for. It
did say that quote, all persons within the jurisdiction of
the United States shall be entitled to the full and
equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns,

(41:43):
public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places
of public amusement, subject only to the conditions and limitations
established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every
race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude.
This Act was not widely enforced, and the Supreme Court
struck it down as unconstitutional in eighteen eighty three. A

(42:08):
lot of Sumner's proposed provisions, though, did become law under
the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four, almost one
hundred years later.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
That is our three parts on Charles Sumner. Do you
have a single part listener mail?

Speaker 2 (42:24):
I do. It is from Krista, Krista, Holly, and Tracy.
I learned a few years ago that the most common
animal that causes deaths is mosquitos, so I joined Tracy
in disliking mosquitos for that alone. I know they're good
for the ecosystem, but it's a shame they spread to
so many diseases. I also hate tics. Tics do not

(42:46):
occur where I lived when I was a kid, which
was in Ontario. The idea of tics is so vile,
and now my area of the world is a hot
spot Offlyme disease. Something like half of ticks test positive
for lyme where I am. Some test potositive for antaplasmosis
and babiosis. Very rude, so I appreciated Tracy saying she
is on the same page as me. I would also

(43:08):
get a line vaccine with seventy five percent reduction.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yay science.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
I'm looking forward to spooky season podcasts, and I'm looking
forward to December holiday slash Christmas y podcasts. I love
baking podcasts and the eponymous foods, sewing history, anything and
everything science related, and as many whimsical themes as you
can come up with. And I miss Crampis and Friends.
But of course the reason you don't do them every
year is because how many can possibly be left. So

(43:33):
I was trying to find new friends and research to help.
I don't think I found enough for one episode, but
I found a few things, so I'm passing them along
in case others help you out. In between all this,
you can cobble together an episode. Laba Fana is still
my favorite, but I've enjoyed them all. And then there
is just a list of possible ideas for maybe future

(43:55):
Crampus and Friends. So I'll be making sure that Holly
has this since Crampis and f has been Holly's holiday
winter season tradition. Yeah, I just was. I also just
wanted to say yes tics Mosquitoes. Still not a fan,
So thank you so much for this email, Christa and

(44:17):
these ideas. If you would so like to send us
a note about this or any other podcast. We're at
History podcast atiheartradio dot com and you can subscribe to
our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you
like to get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History

(44:37):
Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Charles Sumner Revisited (part 3)