Incredibly, tensions between the North and South had erupted into violence in the very halls of Congress. On about the sixth blow, the cane broke, but Brooks kept whacking Sumner. “Hit him, Brooks, he deserves it,” yelled a fellow Southern senator. Meanwhile, a Northern congressman rushed to Sumner’s aid. “I’m dead,” cried Sumner. “Oh, I’m most dead!” Sumner lived, but he was never the same. It would be more than three years before he was sufficiently recovered to return to his Senate seat.
