The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union

Tuesday, May 21, 7 pm

James Library & Center for the Arts, 24 West Street, Norwell

Tickets: $20 general admission, $10 students

*A limited number of free tickets for seniors are available, courtesy of the Cordelia Family Foundation

For a quarter of a century, including twenty-three consecutive years in the Senate from 1851 until his death, it was Charles Sumner – not Lincoln, not William Lloyd Garrison, not Frederick Douglass, Lydia Maria Child, or anyone else – who was the nation’s most passionate, vociferous, unrelenting, and inexhaustible anti-slavery, and equal rights champion.

Before and during the Civil War, at a great personal sacrifice, Sumner was the conscience of the north and the strongest and most influential voice in favor of abolition. Throughout Reconstruction, no one championed the rights of the emancipated Freedmen more than Charles Sumner. Through the force of his words and his will, he first moved his state, and then the nation, toward the twin goals of abolitionism – which he achieved in his lifetime – and equal rights, which eluded him and the country, but for which he fought literally until the day he died. In so doing, he laid the cornerstone arguments that civil rights advocates would build upon over the next century as the country strove to achieve equality among the races.

Author, historian, teacher, public speaker, and communications professional Stephen Puleo has published seven narrative history books. His eighth book, The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union, is due for publication this April.  Sponsored by Norwell Historical Society, the Edward and Estelle Mosher Fund, and Napier Financial. Also supported in part by Norwell and Scituate Cultural Councils, local agencies supported by Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.