As counterpoint to the fighting in Kansas there arose an almost continuous clamor in the halls ofCongress. Red-faced legislators traded insults and threats. Epithets like “liar” were freely tossed about. Prominent in these angry outbursts was a new senator, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Brilliant, learned, and articulate, Sumner had made a name for himself in New England as a reformer interested in the peace movement, prison reform, and the abolition of slavery. He possessed great magnetism and was, according to the tastes of the day, an accomplished orator, but he suffered inner torments of a complex nature that warped his personality. He was egotistical and humorless. His unyielding devotion to his principles was less praiseworthy than it seemed on casual examination, for it resulted from his complete lack of respect for the principles of others. Reform movements evidently provided him with a kind of emotional release; he became combative and totally lacking in objectivity when espousing a cause.
In the Kansas debates Sumner displayed an icy disdain for his foes. Colleagues threatened him with
In this cartoon Charles Sumner of Massachusetts is caned on the floor of the Senate by Preston Brooks of South Carolina.
Source: J. L. Magee, Southern Chivalry-Argument Versus Clubs, 1856. Lithograph. Weitenkampf Collection #745, Prints Collection: Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.
Assassination, called him a “filthy reptile” and a “leper.” He was impervious to such hostility. In the spring of 1856 he loosed a dreadful blast titled “The Crime Against Kansas.” Characterizing administration policy as tyrannical, imbecilic, absurd, and infamous, he demanded that Kansas be admitted to the Union at once as a free state. Then he began a long and intemperate attack on both Douglas and the elderly Senator Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina, who was not present to defend himself.
Sumner described Butler as a “Don Quixote” who had taken “the harlot, slavery” as his mistress, and he spoke scornfully of “the loose expectoration” of Butler’s speech. This was an inexcusable reference to the uncontrollable drooling to which the elderly senator was subject. While he was still talking, Douglas, who shrugged off most political name-calling as part of the game, was heard to mutter, “That damn fool will get himself killed by some other damn fool.”
Such a “fool” quickly materialized in the person of Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina, a nephew of Senator Butler. Since Butler was absent from Washington, Brooks, who was probably as mentally unbalanced as Sumner, assumed the responsibility of defending his kinsman’s honor. A southern romantic par excellence, he decided that caning Sumner would reflect his contempt more effectively than challenging him to a duel. Two days after the speech, Brooks entered the Senate as it adjourned. Sumner remained at his desk writing. Waiting until a talkative woman in the lobby had left so that she would be spared the sight of violence, Brooks then walked up to
Sumner and rained blows on his head with a cane until Sumner fell, unconscious and bloody, to the floor. “I. . . gave him about 30 first-rate stripes,” Brooks later boasted. “Towards the last he bellowed like a calf. I wore my cane out completely but saved the head which is gold.” The physical damage suffered by Sumner was not life-threatening, but the incident so affected him psychologically that he was unable to return to his seat in Congress until 1859.
Both sides made much of this disgraceful incident. When the House censured him, Brooks resigned, returned to his home district, and was triumphantly reelected. A number of well-wishers sent him souvenir canes. Northerners viewed the affair as illustrating the brutalizing effect of slavery on southern whites and made a hero of Sumner.
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