Abolitionist Beaten Senseless on Senate Floor

• Author: Allen Pusey
• Pages: 72-72

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS AND THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Abolitionist Beaten Senseless on Senate Floor

On the afternoon of May 22, 1856, Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner was sitting at his desk in

the U.S. Senate chambers when a large, nearly apparitional fi gure appeared behind him. A startled

Sumner turned to look when he was struck in the head with the handle of a gutta-percha walking stick.

His seat and desk bolted to the fl oor, Sumner

was unable to right him self as the cane struck

again and again—as m any as 30 times before

the attacker was fi nally p ersuaded to pull away

from his blood-spattered v ictim.

As the attack ended , the assailant bent over,

casually plucking up the cre sted gold handle

that lay among the splintered remain s of the

cane on the Capitol fl oor.

Sumner’s assailant wa s Preston Brooks, a House

member from South Carolina—a Democrat w ith a

reputation for violence. Brooks had ta ken o ense to

insults sallied a gainst his distant cousin, Sen . Andrew

Butler of South Carolina, in a fi ve-hour speech deliver ed

earlier in the week from the Senat e fl oor.

Several onlookers tr ying to intercede were held back

by Brooks’ supporters. Brooks lef t the fl oor unmolested

but later presented himself to aut horities and agreed to

pay a $300 fi ne.

Reaction to the att ack was provincial and complicated.

Despite nearly killi ng a defenseless man, Brooks was

hailed as a hero in the South. In t he North, Sumner was

character ized as a martyr. The muted o cia l response

refl ec ted Congress’ inability to ag ree on anything when

it came to slavery. A hastily convened Sen ate select com-

mittee concluded the obvious: Brooks did indeed “as sault

[Sumner] with considerable violence,” but no Senate rules

were available to punish him. A lthough the House failed

to pass a resolution expell ing the congressman, Brooks

resigned.

Brooks returned home unrep entant. He later wrote to

his brother: “Every lick went where I intended. For about

the fi r st fi ve or six licks, he o ered to make fi ght. But I

plied him so rapidly that he did not touch me. Towards

the last, he bellowed like a c alf.”

In the North, Sumner was not un iversally popular.

Those who shared his view were s ometimes

uncomfortable with h is strident rhetoric. He

wasn’t simply anti-slavery but a determi ned

enemy of racial laws. For that, he was c on-

demned by Sen. Stephen A. Douglas of Il linois

as a champion for “the cause of nigger ism.”

Although Brooks envisioned hi mself as

chivalrous (hi s need for the walking stick grew

from one of two earlier duels), he saw Sumner

as a race and cla ss traitor unworthy of a confl ict of equals,

deserving only the k ind of beating a master might deliver

to an unruly slave. Su mner viewed those such as Brooks

and Butler as brutish, pretentious pur veyors of a culture

whose sole source of existence wa s perpetual violence.

That cultural cha sm grew deeper as the territories

of Kansas and Nebra ska were settled, sparking a strugg le

for their future as slave st ates or free states. Sumner’s

newly founded Republican Party w ished to contain

slavery in states where it a lready existed or eradicate

it completely. Democrats wanted to let the new stat es

decide for themselves.

The speech to which Brooks took o ense, “The Cr ime

Against Ka nsas,” denounced the role Butler and Douglas

had played in the compromise that led to ongoing vio -

lence between pro-slaver y and anti-slavery settlers in the

territory. The day before the Sumner a ssault, pro-slavery

raiders looted the anti-slaver y township of Lawrence. And

three days af ter the caning, abolitionist John Brown led a

raid that killed fi ve pro-slavery r esidents of Pottawatomie

Creek.

Brooks was re-elec ted to Congress a few months after

his summer resignation. He died in Januar y 1857 at age

37. Sumner returned to the Senate af ter 18 months and

served until his dea th in 1874. The violence reached a

crescendo during the Civ il War, but the chasm between

their cultures conti nues to this day.

72 || ABA JOURNAL MAY 2018

Precedents || By Allen Pusey

May 22, 1856

Sen. Charles Sumner