Author Stephen Puleo discusses his recent book THE GREAT ABOLITIONIST: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union. This is the first major biography of Charles Sumner to be published in over fifty years. It tells the story of one of the most influential non-presidents in American history (included in this exclusive club were Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Susan B. Anthony, and Martin Luther King, Jr.) – and far more influential than many presidents – a leader who exhibited true courage and authenticity.

In the tempestuous mid-nineteenth century, as slavery consumed congressional debate and America careened toward civil war and split apart – when the very future of the nation hung in the balance – Charles Sumner’s voice rang strongest, bravest, and most unwavering.

Where others preached compromise and moderation, he denounced slavery’s evils to all who would listen and demanded that it be wiped out of existence. More than any other person of his era, he blazed the trail on the country’s long, uneven, and ongoing journey toward realizing its full promise to become a more perfect union.