Charles Sumner (1811-1874) was a white Massachusetts Senator who was a staunch advocate for abolition and Black civil rights throughout his political career. Sumner, along with Senator Thaddeus Stevens, are the only historical personages W.E.B. du Bois treats as somewhat heroic in his narrative, although he does have some criticism for their political ideologies.

As alluded to in Black Reconstruction, Sumner nearly died fighting for abolition. In 1856, Representative Preston Brooks beat Sumner half to death on the Senate floor in response to Sumner’s advocacy for the abolition of enslavement. In 1859, having recovered from his wounds, Sumner returned to the Senate as a Radical Republican who criticized President Abraham Lincoln for not taking a firmer stance against the Confederates. Sumner was excluded from the Congressional Joint Committee on Reconstruction, or the Committee of Fifteen, which negotiated Congressional Reconstruction legislation due to his radicalism. Nevertheless, he continued to advocate for abolition, Black suffrage, and Black civil rights in the Senate, to President Andrew Johnson, and to the public throughout his political career.

Du Bois praises Sumner’s “high humanitarianism” and staunch advocacy for equal rights. He admires how Sumner pushed for Black suffrage and equal rights in the face of overwhelming political conflict. He objects to the manner in which Sumner’s reputation has “been besmirched almost beyond recognition” (645) by Southern apologists and their Northern allies.

Despite this broadly positive portrait, Du Bois does not shy away from critiques of Sumner’s liberalism, which he identifies as a limit to the effectiveness of Sumner’s political advocacy. This dual perspective is neatly encapsulated in the sentence, “Doggedly to the end of his days and with his dying breath Charles Sumner strove for his peaceful revolutionary ideal” (529). On the one hand, this sentence praises Sumner’s idealism, determination, and drive. However, it also implicitly critiques Sumner for his liberal belief that revolution can be achieved “peacefully” when people like the Southern planters would never give up power willingly through persuasion; Du Bois believes that true revolution often necessitates forceable redistribution of property and power.

Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868) was a white Representative from Vermont who, like Sumner, was an advocate for abolition and Black civil rights. Unlike Sumner, who was staunchly radical and uncompromising in his political positions, Stevens was willing to compromise to pass legislation that would improve circumstances for Black Americans even if he felt the changes did not go far enough. Stevens served on the Committee of Fifteen overseeing Congressional Reconstruction. In this role, he advocated for important elements of Reconstruction legislation, such as the creation and maintenance of the Freedmen’s Bureau and expansion of Black suffrage. Stevens was also a key proponent of reparations for freed Black Americans.

As with Sumner, Du Bois warmly praises Stevens throughout Black Reconstruction. He portrays Stevens as a man of principle, writing that Stevens “was at heart the greatest and most uncompromising of abolitionist-democrats” (168). Du Bois particularly admires Stevens for his recognition that “beneath all theoretical freedom and political right must lie the economic foundation” (176). The analysis that politics and civil rights are innately connected to economics is resonant with Du Bois’s own political position. Du Bois particularly praises Stevens for holding true to his values of equality even in death, as he “was buried in a colored graveyard” (306).

However, Du Bois tempers this praise with critiques of Stevens’s liberalism and pro-capitalist politics, writing that “[Stevens] had just as distinctly in mind the welfare of the laborer as the profit of the employers” (168). In other words, Stevens was concerned with appealing to “the new power” of “super-capital,” rather than taking a more radical or revolutionary political position (541).

In Black Reconstruction, President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) is a complex and somewhat flawed figure whom Du Bois avoids lionizing while acknowledging his accomplishments. The portrait of Lincoln in this work develops Du Bois’s broader theme of The Civil War as a Form of Class Struggle and reflects his efforts to promote The Importance of Challenging the “Propaganda of History.”

Du Bois uses evidence from Lincoln’s speeches and letters to illustrate Lincoln’s evolving position on enslavement and Black civil rights over time. As characterized by Du Bois, Lincoln was initially vocal on his position that the Union had no intention of abolishing enslavement (54). When a Union general took it upon himself to emancipate the enslaved people of nearby Southerners, Lincoln “repudiated” the general’s actions. He considered “colonization” of Black Americans, that is sending them somewhere like Liberia or Haiti, as late as August 1862. 

However, as the Civil War dragged on, Lincoln’s view on Black emancipation evolved. Du Bois attributes this shift to two key factors: Lincoln’s recognition that the Black proletariat was essential both to deprive the South of its economic engine and to shore up the Union Army as soldiers and laborers; and the desire of Northern industrialists to tap into opportunities for economic development that a weakened or demolished Southern planter class deprived of enslaved labor would provide. This analysis of Lincoln’s views hews closely to Du Bois’s overall argument that the Civil War was a form of class struggle. In this Marxist analysis, Lincoln was not overly moved by the moral argument for abolition, but rather was responding to the material realities of political economic forces.

This presentation of the figure of Abraham Lincoln as, effectively, a rational economic actor serves to counter the various mythologies about Lincoln that are and were predominant in American historical narratives. For Union supporters or American liberals more generally, Lincoln is lionized as the Great Emancipator who freed Black Americans from enslavement out of his moral clarity and leadership. Du Bois pushes back against this view by stating that “Lincoln discussed Emancipation as a military measure” (74). For Confederate supporters or American conservatives more generally, Lincoln was a villain who installed military dictatorships throughout the South and interfered with the white supremacist project more generally. Du Bois counters this view by identifying Lincoln’s desire to compromise with the Confederacy at the close of the war, illustrating that Lincoln was not driven by a vindictive desire to crush Southerners.

On April 14th, 1865, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Du Bois signals his disgust with this act by not even calling Booth by name: He simply refers to Booth, a famous actor, as a “young Southern fanatic” (115).