Sumner's Speech

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On May 19, 1856 Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts gained the floor of the United States Senate. The Senate had been embroiled in a bitter debate over the problems in Kansas since March. The territory had become a lightning rod for the anger that surrounded the issue of slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had set in motion a conflict that was rapidly polarizing the members of Congress along strictly sectional lines. Under the provisions of this act, which allowed the settlers of the territory to choose at the polls whether the territory was to be slave or free, the territory had erupted in several violent actions between opposing forces. In truth, most of the actual bloodshed in Kansas had come about as a result of arguments over claims concerning land and profits, but the slavery issue was the litmus test by which the participants chose sides.
Senator Stephen A. Doulas, who had sponsored the Kansas-Nebraska Act originally, had recently came out in open support of the "Law and Order" government of Kansas. This group, mostly from the neighboring state of Missouri, held elections, drawn up a code of laws, and were actively pursuing their own recognition as the legal government. Douglas, who also happened to be running for president, had characterized the opposing group as abolitionist interlopers. This group which had drawn much of its early financial support from the New England Emigrant Aid Company. This company had been formed specifically to guarantee that slavery did not expand into Kansas. Douglas had characterized them as lawless interlopers who, armed with Sharps rifles, were pledged to using them against peaceful southerners. Sumner took offence at these characterizations which were undoubtedly as biased as his own characterizations of the opposing faction which he was soon to unleash upon the unsuspecting Senate.
Sumner had been drafting the speech for at least a month before he gave it that fateful day on the Senate floor. The printed version of Sumner's speech was to run some 112 pages in length. He had carefully crafted it to not only repudiate Douglas' claims against the New England Emigrant Aid Company, but also to point out the past failings of the southern states that supported it. He had recieved national acclaim in the debates surrounding the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and was hungry for more. He felt Douglas had cast unfounded slurs upon his home state and abolitionist groups that he championed and he was ready to repay the insults. He memorized the speech entirely so that he could give a more dramatic presentation. He had carefully rehearsed the speech for days and read the speech in it's entirety for Senator Seward of New York to get his advice. Sumner had been heard to remark that the occasion was "the greatest.....that has ever occurred in our history," and he felt his speech, titled "the Crime Against Kansas", was up to the test.
Sumner gained the floor around one o'clock in the afternoon and commenced his speech. "Mr. President; ......You are now called to redress a great transgression. Seldom in the history of nations has such a question been presented........A crime has been committed, which is without example in the records of the past..........It is the rape of a virgin territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of slavery......".
The gallery was full that day in the Senate. Sumner had heralded his upcoming speech with all the skill of an artful politician. He had already gained a considerable reputation as a first class mud slinger and the issue at hand was as heated as debate in Congress had been for many years. Sumner did not disappoint them.
He spoke for 3 hours that day. "The crime against Kansas originated in the ONE IDEA, that Kansas, at all hazards, must be a slave state." He characterized the Kansas-Nebraska Act as a "swindle". He apologized for the use of the word that had "not the authority of fitness," but it possessed "the indubitable authority of fitness" as no other word could adequately express, "the mingled meanness and wickedness of the cheat." He lambasted the banditti and border ruffians of Missouri who had "renewed the incredible atrocity of the Assassins and of the Thugs." He ridiculed Douglas' idea of "Popular Sovereignty" as "ending in Popular Slavery".
He then went on to ridicule the positions expressed by Douglas and others on the admission of the Law and Order legislature in a series of explanations of his view of their positions. The first was Douglas' own "Apology tyrranical," as he termed it. This was the idea that the pro-slavery legislature in Kansas had been properly authenticated by law, "whatever may have been the actual force or fraud in its election,.....the whole proceeding is placed under the formal sanction of the law."
His next target was President Pierce himself who had issued what Sumner termed an "Apology imbecile" proclaiming that there was an "alleged want of power in the President to arrest the crime." Sumner refuted this argument that the President had recently found no such constitutional obstacle when he enforced the fugitive slave acts.
Sumner then moved on to what he termed the "Apology absurd," which cast the blame for the troubles in Kansas on the free-soil society The Kansas Legion. Sumner characterized this society as a "poor mummery of a secret society" and ridiculed the idea that they had the power to cause such troubles.
Sumner then attacked the idea that the New England Emigrant Aid Company was the cause of the problems in Kansas. He called this the "Apology absurd" and pointed out that the New England society was entirely legal and based on the idea of simply supporting freedom in the territory. He expounded that the Company had "supplied no arms of any kind to anybody," a statement that was not entirely true; whether Sumner realized it or not. He ended his time on the floor that day with a rousing defense of Massachusett's attempts to defend freedom in the new territories. "I am proud to believe that you may as well attempt, with puny arm, to topple down the earth-rooted, heaven kissing granite which crowns the historic sod of Bunker Hill, as to change her fixed resolves for Freedom everywhere, and especially for Freedom for Kansas."
Sumner finished his remarks the speech the next morning by declaring that the only rightful remedy for the problem at hand was to adopt a proposal earlier offered by Seward to immediately admit Kansas as a free state. While the political nature of Sumner's speech was concerned with an issue that the Senate was sharply divided over, it was essentially the personal attacks that he intermixed with the message that caused the greatest stir.
On the first day, he had branded Senator Butler of South Carolina as the "Don Quixote of slavery".
Butler was in South Carolina at the time of the speech as Sumner continued, "he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his site..........the HARLOT, Slavery." He had followed by labeling Douglas "the squire of Slavery, its very Sancho Panza, ready to do all its humiliating offices."
During his continuation on the second day, Sumner had went even ****her in his denunciations. He made light of Butler's slight speech impediment which he had obtained as a result of a partial paralysis. Sumner charged the Butler "with incoherent phrases, discharged the loose expectorations of his speech" upon the representatives of free Kansas. "There was no extravagence........which he did not repeat; nor was there any possible deviation from truth which he did not make........But the Senator touches nothing which he does not disfigure---with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes of fact. He shows an incapacity of accuracy.........He cannot open his mouth, but out there flies a blunder." Sumner continued that this Senator had dared to come "forward in the very ecstacy of madness" to compare his State of South Carolina, with "its shameful imbecility from Slavery," to the free territory of Kansas. Sumner continued, "Were the whole history of South Carolina blotted out of existence, from its very beginning down to the day of the last election of the Senator to his present seat on this floor, civilization might lose----I do not say how little, but surely less than it has already gained by the example of Kansas, in its valiant struggle against oppression."
Sumner then progressed with a further jab at Senator James Mason of Virginia, "who represents that other Virginia, from which Washington and Jefferson now avert their faces, where human beings are bred as cattle for the shambles."
The response from the Senate was immediate. As soon as Sumner had taked his seat at the completion of his remarks. Senator Cass of Illinois arose to pronounce Sumner's speech "the most un-American and unpatriotic speech that ever grated on the ears of the members of this high body."
Douglas arose in his own defence and complained against the personal attacks in Sumner's speech which he termed "personal assaults and malignity." He characterized these attacks further as "classic allusions, each one only distinguished for it lasciviousness and obscenity---each drawn from those portions of the classics which all decent professors in respectable colleges cause to be suppressed, as unfit for decent young men to read." He objected especially to the obvious fact that these attacks were carefully planned and rehearsed for effect. "Is it his object to provoke some of us to kick him as we would a dog in the street, that he may get sympathy upon the just chastisement?" Douglas asked.
Mason of Virginia, arose to defend his position as well. "I am constrained to hear here depravity, vice in its most odious form uncoiled in this presence, exhibiting it loathesome deformities in accusation and vilification against the quarter of the country from which I come........because it is a neccessity of my position, under a common Government, to recognize as an equal, politically, one whom to see elsewhere is to shun and despise."
Sumner once again gained the floor to rebut the remarks against him. He admonished Douglas to "remember hereafter that the bowie-knife and the bludgeon are not the proper emblems of senatorial debate..........I say, also, to that Senator...........that no person with the upright form of man can be allowed------" here, Sumner seemed to regain control and hesitated.
Douglas spoke up from his seat "Say it."
"I will say it," Sumner went on; "no person with the upright form of man can be allowed, without the violation of all decency, to switch out from his tongue the perpetual stench of offensive personality.......The noisome, squat, and nameless animal, to which I now refer, is not the proper model for an American Senator. Will the Senator from Illinois take notice?"
"I will," came the sharp reply from Douglas; "and therefore will not imitate you sir."
"Mr. President, again the Senator has switched his tongue, and again he fills the Senate with its offensive odor," Sumner replied with anger.
Sumner then once again turned his argument directly upon Mason of Virginia. Facing him flatly and reminding him that "hard words are not argument; frowns not reasons; nor do scowls belong to the proper arsenal of parliamentary debate."
Mason was heard to make a further assessment of Sumners mental stability under his breath but he mercifully kept it off the Congressional record and the debate came to an end.

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The response to Sumner's speech was varied. Many in the Northern Press praised his effort effusively. Seward, who had earlier urged Sumner to remove the personal attacks was not so adamant. Many of the leaders of the Republican Party recognized that Sumner had went too far in his condemnation of the states of Virginia and South Carolina and most agreed that the personal nature of many of his allusions were not defensible. Edward Everett's remarks are fairly typical. "Language equally intemperate and bitter is sometimes heard from a notorious parliamentary blackguard, but from a man of character of any party I have never seen anything so offensive." Southern newspapers and Democrats were even sharper in their criticism. The Washington Star reported; "personal vilification and abuse of Senator Butler......caused a flush of shame to mantle the cheeks of all present who respect the character of the body before whom it was uttered; because it was wholly unjust and untrue, and, in style, far better suited to some low doggery."
Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina was furious. Brooks was 36 years old at the time of the speech. He was serving his second term in the House of Representatives for the state of South Carolina and was a veteran of the Mexican War. Some six feet tall and weighing around 170 pounds, Brooks was known as somewhat of a nationalist to many of the Democratic leadership for the decidedly neutral position he had taken during the debates over the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He had made his way to the gallery of the Senate to hear Sumner's speech and was extremely incensed at both the personal attacks on Butler and the slur on his home state. Butler was a cousin of Brooks, and Brooks surmised that the elder Butler would have no choice upon hearing that assault upon his honor but to respond; and respond violently. Brooks decided to head off this eventuality by taking matters into his own hands. "I felt it was my duty to relieve Butler and avenge the insult to my state." Brooks waited until he could get a printed version of the speech and May 21 before making a final plan of action.
Brooks had fought a duel in his younger days but apparently decided that such an action would not be suitable in this case. He knew that Sumner would not accept such a challenge for in his own words, "the moral tone of mind that would lead a man to become a Black Republican would make him incapable of courage." He further reasoned that only social equals could settle such affairs on the field of honor and did not want to imply that Sumner deserved to be treated as an equal. "To punish an insulting inferior," Brooks reasoned, "one used not a pistol or sword but a cane or horsewhip. "
Brooks later explained his reasoning further, " I speculated somewhat as to whether I should employ a horsewhip or a cowhide, but knowing that the Senator was my superior in strength, it occurred to me that he might wrest it from my hand, and then........I might have been compelled to do that which I would have regretted the balance of my natural life. I was expressly to avoid taking life that I used an ordinary cane." The cane Brooks chose for his attack was a gutta-percha walking stick. It was approximately one inch in diameter at the large end, tapering to a diameter of some 3/4 inch. It was hollow on the extreme interior to a size of some 3/8 inch with a gold ornamental head for a handle.
While it is unclear to what extent other members of Congress were involved in Brook's plan for revenge it is clear that at least 3 members were aware of the plan and actually gave their blessing. Representatives Lawrence M, Keitt and James L. Orr of South Carolina were early on informed of Brook's plan to cane Sumner. Representative Henry A. Edmunson of Virginia was intimately aquainted with the plan and even made several suggested changes to help carry it out. Brooks attempted to intercept Sumner on his way into the Capitol building on May 21 and failed. He brooded further over the insults overnight and determined to make sure of his assault the next day. A further attempt at intercepting Sumner on his way into the Capitol building seemed to have went wrong that morning and Brooks decided to wait until the Senat was in recess that afternoon. Edmundson came into the Senate chamber that afternoon to find Keitt and Brooks present. Brooks was sitting at one of the Senator's seats in the back of the chamber and Edmundson made a joke asking Brooks if he had now become a Senator. Brooks replied angrily that he was waiting on Sumner but could not approach him while there were ladies present. Brooks seemed to lose patience and arose to go out into the vestibule where he was going to send word to Sumner to come outside. Edmundson convinced Brooks that such a plan would not work as Sumner would just ask Brooks to come to him in the chamber. Edmundson then became involved in a conversation with another friend and Brooks returned to the Senate floor. Finding the ladies gone, he approached Sumner who was sitting at his desk on the floor of the Senate franking copies of his infamous speech to send out in the mail.
Sumner was hunched over with his head very close the desk and did not notice the approach of Brooks, who he did not know at any rate. Brooks addressed him formally, "Mr. Sumner."
Sumner remained seated but raised his head to peer at the man addressing him. Brooks continued, "I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine-----". At this point Sumner seemed to realize that something was about to occur and attempted to rise from his desk. Brooks proceeded to give him a "slight blow" with his cane to which Sumner responded by throwing his arms up to protect himself. At this point Brooks determined to dispense with the explanations and commence with the caning, and began to rain blows down on Sumner's head heavily. Sumner seemed stunned by the force of the blows and could not manage to free himself from under his desk, which was bolted to the floor, while Brooks pummelled him with the cane hard enough to splinter its end. Sumner finally succeeded in getting up by jerking the desk free from its anchors and overturning it while lurching toward Brooks. This put his arms forward and availed Brooks of an even cleaner target of Sumner's head which was bleeding profusely by this time. Brooks, who had carefully picked a cane that he felt would not break, then proceeded to snap the cane in half over Sumner's exposed head. Continuing the assault with the broken cane on Sumner who was in full retreat by then Brooks was finally caught by the arm by Representative Ambrose M. Murray and Edwin B. Morgan who had rushed to stop the fracas when they heard it. Morgan caught the nearly unconscious Sumner before he hit the ground and subsequently passed out. While Murray held the struggling Brooks Senator John J. Crittendon of Kentucky came upon the scene and began admonishing Brooks for his action on the very floor of the Senate. Brooks responded, "I did not intend to kill him, but I did intend to whip him."
About this time Keitts seemed to have gotten word of the attack and bounded up the aisle towards Crittendon with his cane upraised shouting," Let them alone, God Da@# you." By this time the chamber was filling with people and Senator Toombs of Georgia warned Keitts not to strike the elderly Crittendon.
The extent of Sumner's injuries are a matter of some debate but it is without doubt that he was beaten unconscious and had to have several stitches to close the wounds on his scalp. According to Brooks himself, " Every lick went where intended. I gave him about 30 first rate stripes. Towards the last he bellowed like a calf. I wore my cane out completely but saved the Head which is made of gold."
Brooks was arrested on a charge of assault and freed on $500 bail. The Senate itself declined to take action against Brooks as he was not a member of the Senate body and they referred his punishment to the House of Representatives. The House immediately formed a committee to investigate and by July 14 had the results posted and a vote taken on whether to expel Brooks. The vote was 121-95 in favor of the expulsion but lacked the 2/3 majority needed for such an action. Edmundson was aquitted completely but Keitt was formally censured along with Brooks. Both made defiant speeches condemning the censure and resigned their seats. They were promptly re-elected by in landslides. Brooks was finally fined $300 in the district court at Baltimore.
The political results of the attack were much more sensational. It crystallized the difference in Congress as every southern congressman but one voted against the expulsion. The newspapers in the North almost completely condemned both the actions of "Bully Brooks" and the actions of the Southern Congressmen that voted against his expulsion. The Democratic Party in the North suffered indeterminably from the publicity the incident caused and some estimated that party lost "a hundred thousand votes for every blow of the cane."
In the South the reaction was different. Brooks own constituents held a public meeting where they voted to endorse his actions profusely and raised funds to buy him a replacement cane with the gold-inlaid inscription; "hit him again." At the University of Virginia, students purchased a cane with a heavy gold human head which was stylishly cracked in remembrance of Sumner's own. Newspapers supported the action. The Richmond Whig; "A GOOD DEED. The only regret we feel is, that Mr. Brooks did not employ a horsewhip or a cowhide upon his slanderous back, instead of a cane." The Richmond Enguirer went further; "These vulgar abolitionists in the Senate......must be lashed into submission. Sumner, in particular, ought to have nine-and-thirty early every morning. He is a great strapping fellow, and could stand the cowhide beautifully."
There were at least two abortive attempts at duels over the incident amongst members of Congress and the country was fast sliding toward worse agitations in the coming years. For the most part, the only political voices of dissent in the south came from those who objected to the place of the punishment and not the manner.