Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation
An even more thorough recounting of the great legislator’s life and deeds, one that, while not without its flaws, is unlikely to be bettered anytime soon ... A 600-plus-page biography is no mean feat. Copious footnotes evince a comprehensive grasp of the relevant historiography, and Tameez is expert at explaining Sumner’s legal thought. At times, however, the writing feels unpolished, rife with clichés and awkward, anachronistic phrasings ... And yet Tameez succeeds in giving us a richer understanding of Sumner’s private life than previous biographers.
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Zaakir Tameez’s sumptuous biography, Charles Sumner, captures, in rich detail, a life that connected the Revolutionary generation with the collapse of Reconstruction ...
Only a year out of Yale Law, the mortifyingly gifted Tameez sees in Sumner the modern birth of the constitutional order. Tameez has crafted a propulsive narrative around a visionary who put his stamp on our social compact. Charles Sumner reads like a work from a seasoned biographer rather than a debut—never has a Victorian-era legacy been more vital.
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Tameez is clear-eyed about Sumner’s foibles, limitations, and missteps. But he makes a persuasive case for Sumner’s heroism, for the brilliance of his moral vision of a multiracial democracy, and for the prescience of his unyielding insistence that the Constitution demanded universal freedom and legal equality.
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