Attack in the Senate Chamber
In 1856, Senator Charles Sumner was beaten with a cane by a congressman responding to Sumner’s bitter condemnation of slavery. Reaction to this attack reflected the deep divisions between North and South.
In the decade prior to the War Between the States (1861-65), Charles Sumner of Massachusetts had become one of the most vocal anti-slavery critics in the Senate. He vividly expressed his point of view in a speech during the debate over whether or not slavery should be allowed in the new Kansas Territory. The speech was called “Crime Against Kansas.”
Sumner angrily denounced the recently enacted Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed settlers in Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. To Sumner, slavery should have been prohibited in all U.S. territories, which would stop the “Slave Power” from expanding its political influence on the federal government. Sumner equated the Slave Power pushing for slavery in Kansas to a man forcing sexual relations on a woman:
“Not in any common lust for power did this uncommon tragedy have its origin. It is the rape of a virgin Territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of slavery; and it may be clearly traced to a depraved desire for a new Slave State, hideous offspring of such a crime, in the hope of adding to the power of slavery in the National Government.”
Sumner then targeted Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina, one of the top proponents of spreading slavery into the territories:
“The senator from South Carolina… has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him… I mean the harlot, Slavery. For her his tongue is always profuse in words. Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this senator.”
Sumner’s words shocked and outraged many senators from both northern and southern states. His use of sexual imagery in condemning slavery, as well as his declaration that the history of South Carolina should be “blotted out of existence” prompted Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, sponsor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, to call Sumner a “damn fool” who “is going to get himself shot by some other damn fool.”
Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina was especially outraged, mainly because he was Butler’s nephew. Two days after Sumner delivered his speech, Brooks entered the Senate chamber and told Sumner that “I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine.” As Sumner tried to stand, Brooks struck him on the head with a heavy cane.
As Sumner fell, he became trapped under his desk, and Brooks struck him several times. Sumner finally freed himself and tried escaping, but he fell in the aisle unconscious, and Brooks continued beating him until the cane broke. Senators trying to intervene were stopped by another South Carolina congressman, who brandished a pistol. After Brooks’s cane broke, he left the chamber with his colleagues and the senators tended to Sumner.
Sumner suffered severe head trauma, chronic pain, and various other disorders attributed to the beating. Even though he was unable to serve in the Senate due to his injuries, the Massachusetts General Assembly reelected him that November as a symbol of resistance to slavery. Sumner did not return to the Senate until three years later.
Northerners reacted to the assault with horror. The Cincinnati Gazette declared, “The South cannot tolerate free speech anywhere, and would stifle it in Washington with the bludgeon and the bowie-knife, as they are now trying to stifle it in Kansas by massacre, rapine, and murder.” Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute one state. I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.”
Southerners celebrated Sumner’s beating, as Brooks received several canes as a gesture of gratitude. The Richmond Enquirer stated that Sumner should be caned “every morning,” praising the attack as “good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequences,” and denounced “these vulgar abolitionists in the Senate” who “have been suffered to run too long without collars. They must be lashed into submission.”
Brooks resigned from the House of Representatives that summer, even though a motion to expel him was rejected. He declared that had he intended to kill Sumner, he would have used a different weapon. He was tried in a District of Columbia court, found guilty of assault, and fined $300.
This incident helped propel Sumner and his Republican Party to the forefront of national politics. More northerners began siding with the new Republicans, and more southerners began resisting the Republican agenda of barring slavery in the territories, raising tariffs to protect northern industries, and nationalizing finance. The stark difference between northern and southern reactions to Sumner’s vicious beating demonstrated a rift that would ultimately lead to separation.
