Charles Sumner is mainly known as the abolitionist statesman who suffered a brutal caning on the Senate floor by the proslavery congressman Preston Brooks in 1856. This violent episode has obscured Sumner's status as the most passionate champion of equal rights and multiracial democracy of his time. A friend of Alexis de Tocqueville, an ally of Frederick Douglass, and an adviser to Abraham Lincoln, Sumner helped the Union win the Civil War and ordain the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, the Freedmen's Bureau, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.
Zaakir Tameez, (pictured above) is author of a Charles Sumner biography to be published on Tuesday, June 3rd by Henry Holt & Co. On June 9th, Tameez with appear at Politics & Prose bookstore in DC with Congressman Eric Swalwell to discuss his book about Sumner. The event will be live-streamed on YouTube.
On May 13, a man who made death threats against Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada) for her foreign policy views was sentenced to nearly four years in prison. Last month, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she was “afraid” of using her voice to speak about political controversies. A month before that, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) released audio recordings of death threats he received while he was considering how to vote on Pete Hegseth’s nomination as defense secretary.From News & Observer:
Threats to lawmakers are nothing new and happens on both sides of the aisle.
Capitol Police reported 9,625 threats against members of Congress in 2021, a record high. That number dropped to 7,501 in 2022, but began to climb again with 8,008 threats in 2023 and 9,474 in 2024. And those are the threats that have been reported.
