Lester, C. Edward. Life and Public Services of Charles Sumner; Sold Only By Subscription. New York: United States Publishing Company, 1874. First Edition. [9246]
Brick red publisher's cloth decorated in gilt & black, 9 1/4 x 6 1/2 inches, beveled board edges, binding worn with frayed ends & corners, gilt still bright. Yellow end papers; lacks the first front free end paper. Fine steel engraved portrait of Sumner with facsimile signature & tissue guard, engraved by Augustus Robin. (vi), 596 clean pp., many additional wood-engraved plates. Good. Hardcover.
Charles Sumner (1811-1874), US Senator from Massachusetts, formidable orator and a leader of the Radical Republicans, famously caned in the US Senate by Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina in May of 1856. His career in the US Senate after the American Civil War included support for Reconstruction but opposition to the hanging or imprisonment of Confederate leaders; support for the annexation of Alaska; and eventual opposition to the Grant Administration over corruption within it.
