conscience of a nation Tameez, Zaakir creator text bibliography biography nyu 2025 First edition. monographic eng x, 629 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 25 cm "A landmark biography of Charles Sumner, the unsung hero of the American Civil War and Reconstruction Charles Sumner is mainly known as the statesman who barely survived a brutal caning on the Senate floor by the slaveholder Preston Brooks in 1856. This violent episode has obscured Sumner's epic life as one of America's most visionary constitutional thinkers, a man who advocated for multiracial democracy and championed equal rights more than one hundred years before the civil rights movement. A friend of Alexis de Tocqueville, an ally of Frederick Douglass, and an adviser to Abraham Lincoln, Sumner helped devise the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, the Freedmen's Bureau, and the blueprint for what eventually became the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He valued principles above politics and was prepared to put his life on the line for the sake of racial justice. In Charles Sumner, Zaakir Tameez paints a vivid portrait of a civil rights crusader whose story has been overshadowed by the violent caning. With fresh research and lucid prose, Tameez chronicles Sumner's childhood upbringing--only decades after the American Revolution--in a poor white family that lived in a free Black neighborhood in Boston. He argues that Sumner was likely a gay man who struggled with love and heartbreak at a time when homosexuality wasn't well understood. And he depicts Sumner as a towering intellectual, one of the legal masterminds behind Reconstruction, and one of the founding fathers of the postwar Constitution premised on equality for all. An extraordinary achievement of historical and constitutional scholarship, Charles Sumner provides many valuable lessons for an increasingly partisan America divided, once again, over questions of race, democracy, and constitutional law"-- Provided by publisher. Brahmin Outcast -- The Slave Power -- The War Power -- The Republican Guarantee -- Equality Before the Law. Zaakir Tameez. Includes bibliographical references and index. n-us--- n-us-ma Sumner, Charles 1811-1874 United States. Congress. Senate Biography Estados Unidos. Congreso. Senado Biografía Free Soil Party (U.S.) Partido de Suelo Libre (Estados Unidos) Legislators United States Biography Legisladores Estados Unidos Biografías Slavery Political aspects United States History 19th century Esclavitud Aspectos políticos Estados Unidos Historia Antislavery movements United States History 19th century Movimientos antiesclavistas Historia Estados Unidos Siglo XIX Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877) Reconstrucción (Estados Unidos, 1863-1877) United States Politics and government 1849-1877 Estados Unidos Politica y gobierno 1849-1877 Boston (Mass.) Biography Boston (Massachusetts) 002 E 415.9 S956T 2025 973.7/114092 9781250362551 (hardcover) 1250362555 (hardcover) 2024047167 DLC 250108 20260722144757.0 23987456 eng