Editorials on the Caning of Senator Charles Sumner

From the Secession Era Editorials Files of Fuhrman University

(http://history.furman.edu/~benson/docs/index.htm)

Freedom in Debate.

Indianapolis, Indiana, Locomotive [Democratic]

(23 May 1856)

Mr. Sumner, Senator from Massachusetts, was attacked in the Senate Chamber by Mr. Brooks, Representative from South Carolina, and so beaten with a cane, that at last accounts he was in dangerous and critical condition. The assault was made while Mr. Sumner was sitting at his desk, writing, entirely unprepared, and is alleged, for an insult on the State, and on a relative, in the speech of Mr. Sumner. Committees were appointed in both houses to investigate the matter, and pass on the conduct of Brooks. Freedom of speech should be guarantied to all public men in debate on public questions, and the spirit of ruffianism exhibited by Brooks cannot be too highly censured. This is another result of the bitter personal partisan spirit, that characterizes the press and public speakers of the day, and while it continues, will excite men to acts of lawless outrages that they would not think of in calmer moments.

No Title.

Boston, Massachusetts, Atlas [Republican]

(23 May 1856)

[Pointing Finger] Hon. Charles Sumner, one of the Senators of Massachusetts, was yesterday brutally assaulted by a ruffian named Brooks, who represents South Carolina in the lower House. Those who know Mr. Sumner will readily believe that nothing in his conduct or conversation could have provoked the outrage, and that it must be attributed to the bold and vigorous demonstration of the Kansas inequity, which he has just uttered in the Senate. The reign of terror, then, is to be transferred to Washington, and the mouths of the representatives of the North are to be closed by the use of bowie-knives, bludgeons, and revolvers. Very well; the sooner we understand this the better. If violence must come, we shall know how to defend ourselves. We hope, for the credit of the State, that every man in it will feel this outrage upon Mr. Sumner as a personal indignity, no less than an insult to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and that there will be such a general and spontaneous expression of opinion, as will fully manifest our deep disinclination to submit to any repetition of the contumely.

Attack on Mr. Sumner.

Boston, Massachusetts, Bee [American]

(23 May 1856)

-- By referring to our telegraphic column it will be seen that Hon. Chas. Sumner, M. C., of this city, was ferociously and brutally assaulted in the National Senate Chamber yesterday, by a cowardly scoundrel named Brooks. An outrage so gross and villianous was never before committed within the walls of the Capitol. It is rendered additionally infamous and barbaric from the fact that fiendish bystanders prevented persons who were disposed from interfering. This bully Brooks who has disgraced the name of man, ought to be branded as a villain of the blackest dye, and then mercilessly kicked from one end of the continent to the other. The black mark of Cain will stand out on his brow to the last moment of his disgraced life.

THE ATTACK UPON MR. SUMNER.

Boston, Massachusetts, Courier [Whig]

(23 May 1856)

The telegraph gives us an account of an unmanly personal attack by a Representative of South Carolina upon Senator Sumner of Massachusetts, while our Senator was sitting at his desk, after the body to which he was attached had adjourned. We do not know that we have the whole story of the incident, but the fact as mentioned is, that Mr. Sumner was writing at his desk, after the closing of the Senate session, and was brutally assaulted by a South Carolina member of the House. There is no excuse for brutalism -- there is no excuse for the man who assaults another at disadvantage anywhere, and the Senators of the United States will without doubt take care of their privileges and prerogatives.

But we have a word to say about the manner in which this Kansas debate has been carried on in the Senate. Members have shifted the time of the pronouncement of their speeches as it has suited their convenience. The speech of Mr. Sumner was exceedingly insulting towards some gentlemen who sit with him upon the Senate floor. It was not in consonance with the sort of arguments which people expect to hear from U. s. Senators upon a grave question. They do not want flowery adjectives or far-fetched allusions to, or illustrations from Greece and Rome, to give them an opinion as to how they shall act with regard to a practical question which is now before them. When Mr. Sumner compares Senator Butler of South Carolina and Senator Douglas of Illinois to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, assimilating one to the character of a crazy man and the other to that of a fool, he takes a ground which Massachusetts, in her dignity and her ability, never presented before. In the great debate between Webster and Hayne, in which Massachusetts came out best, beyond all comparison, no such allusions were made. The Senator of Massachusetts of that day descended to no low blackguardism. In the strength of his faith and in the force of his ability he presented Massachusetts before the Senate of the United States in such a manner that men bowed down and worshipped her. "There," said he, "is Boston and Concord, and Lexington and Bunker Hill." "I employ no scavengers," said he again, in answer to the taunts of the Senator from South Carolina, who had produced against him the rakings and scrapings of all which political venom could bring out from the cesspool of party politics. Mr. Webster came out of that controversy with South Carolina with the admiration of every man in the country. The time has changed -- a different man takes his place, with only the memory of an insulting speech and a broken head.

We offer no palliation for the brutal assault which was made upon Mr. Sumner by a Representative from South Carolina. It is a well understood axiom and rule of the United States Congress, that no member shall be allowed to be held responsible for words spoken in debate. The member from South Carolina transgressed every rule of honor which should animate or restrain one gentleman in his connections with another, in his ruffian assault upon Mr. Sumner. There is no chivalry in a brute. There is no manliness in a scoundrel. If Mr. Brooks is a nephew to Senator Butler, as it is said that he is, the Senator has only cause to regret that his blood runs through such ignoble veins.

No Title.

New York, Tribune [Republican]

(23 May 1856)

By the news from Washington it will be seen that Senator Sumner has been savagely and brutally assaulted, while sitting in his seat in the Senate chamber, by the Hon. Mr. Brooks of South Carolina, the reason assigned therefore being that the Senator's remarks on Mr. Butler of South Carolina, who is uncle to the man who made the attack. The particulars show that Mr. Sumner was struck unawares over the head by a loaded cane and stunned, and then the ruffianly attack was continued with many blows, the Hon. Mr. Keitt of South Carolina keeping any of those around, who might be so disposed, from attempting a rescue. No meaner exhibition of Southern cowardice -- generally miscalled Southern chivalry -- was ever witnessed. It is not in the least a cause for wonder that a member of the national House of Representatives, assisted by another as a fender-off, should attack a member of the national Senate, because, in the course of a constitutional argument, the last had uttered words which the first chose to consider distasteful. The reasons for the absence of collision between North and South -- collision of sentiment and person -- which existed a few years back, have ceased; and as the South has taken the oligarchic ground that Slavery ought to exist, irrespective of color -- that there must be a governing class and a class governed -- that Democracy is a delusion and a lie -- we must expect that Northern men in Washington, whether members or not, will be assaulted, wounded or killed, as the case may be, so long as the North will bear it. The acts of violence during this session -- including one murder -- are simply overtures to the drama of which the persecutions, murders, robberies and war upon the Free-State men in Kansas, constitute the first act. We are either to have Liberty or Slavery. Failing to silence the North by threats, notwithstanding the doughfaced creatures who so long misrepresented the spirit of the Republic and of the age, the South now resorts to actual violence. It is reduced to a question whether there is to be any more liberty of speech south of Mason and Dixon's line, even in the ten miles square of the District of Columbia. South of that, liberty has long since departed; but whether the common ground where the national representatives meet is to be turned into a slave plantation where Northern members act under the lash, the bowie-knife and the pistol, is a question to be settled. That Congress will take any action in view of this new event, we shall not be rash enough to surmise; but if the Northern people are not generally the poltroons they are taken for by the hostile slavebreeders and slavedrivers of the South, they will be heard from. As a beginning, they should express their sentiments upon this brutal and dastardly outrage in their popular assemblies. The Pulpit should not be silent.

If, indeed, we go on quietly to submit to such outrages, we deserve to have our names flattened, our skins blacked, and to be placed at work under task-masters; for we have lost the noblest attributes of freemen, and are virtually slaves.

Public Approval of Mr. Brooks.

Columbia, South Carolina, South Carolinian [Democratic]

(27 May 1856)

We were not mistaken in asserting, on Saturday last, that the Hon. Preston S. Brooks had not only the approval, but the hearty congratulations of the people of South Carolina for his summary chastisement of the abolitionist Sumner.

Immediately upon the reception of the news on Saturday last, a most enthusiastic meeting was convened in the town of Newberry, at which Gen. Williams, the Intendant, presided. Complimentary resolutions were introduced by Gen. A. C. Garlington, and ardent speeches made by him, Col. S. Fair, Maj. Henry Sumner, and others. The meeting voted him a handsome gold-headed cane, which we saw yesterday, on its way to Washington, entrusted to the care of Hon. B. Simpson. At Anderson, the same evening, a meeting was called, and complimentary resolutions adopted. We heard one of Carolina's truest and most honored matrons from Mr. Brooks' district send a message to him by Maj. Simpson, saying "that the ladies of the South would send him hickory sticks, with which to chastise Abolitionists and Red Republicans whenever he wanted them."

Here in Columbia, a handsome sum, headed by the Governor of the State, has been subscribed, for the purpose of presenting Mr. Brooks with a splendid silver pitcher, goblet and stick, which will be conveyed to him in a few days by the hands of gentlemen delegated for that purpose. In Charleston similar testimonials have been ordered by the friends of Mr. Brooks.

And, to add the crowning glory to the good work, the slaves of Columbia have already a handsome subscription, and will present an appropriate token of their regard to him who has made the first practical issue for their preservation and protection in their rights and enjoyments as the happiest laborers on the face of the globe.

Meetings of approval and sanction will be held, not only in Mr. Brooks' district, but throughout the State at large, and a general and hearty response of approval will re-echo the words, "Well done," from Washington to the Rio Grande.

No Title.

Louisville, Kentucky, Journal [American]

(28 May 1856)

[pointing finger] The assault of Brooks upon Sumner in the Senate Chamber has created a prodigious excitement throughout the North. The assault is deeply to be regretted, because in the first place it was a very great outrage in itself, and because in the second place it will, especially if not promptly and properly punished at Washington, greatly strengthen the anti-slavery and anti- Southern feeling in the Northern States and thus help the Black Republican party.

It may be said with truth that Sumner, in his speech against Butler, Douglas, and others, transcended the legitimate freedom of debate. He certainly did, but that was properly the Senate's business. It is monstrous that a member of the House of Representatives should beat a Senator upon the floor of the Senate for a speech made in the Senate and having no reference to the individual administering the punishment. Sumner's speech, violent and incendiary and disgraceful as it was, was certainly no worse in its personalities than the speeches of Douglas have habitually been; and then its personalities, shameful as they were, had at least the advantage of being expressed in a style of scholarship greatly in contrast with the slipshod billingsgate of the Illinois Senator.

We have no sympathy for Sumner. He has deported himself as a pestilent enemy of the peace and harmony of the country and no doubt deserved more punishment than he has received, yet every consideration of propriety and of the public good demands that Mr. Brooks shall be expelled from the House of Representatives. The Senate should deem his expulsion necessary to the maintenance of its dignity and its rights. And if the House should refuse to expel him, we think the Senate would be right in withdrawing from the members of the House the privileges they now enjoy upon the floor of the Senate.

We are not surprised to see that the people of South Carolina are holding meetings and passing resolutions in approbation of Mr. Brooks's conduct. They are a violent people, and we don't think they ever fail to approve an act of violence against what they hate -- whether it be a man, a party, a law, or the Constitution of the United States. The U. S. Constitution ordains that a member of Congress shall not be called to account for words spoken in debate, and Mr. Brooks has sworn to support this very Constitution which he deliberately violated in the Capitol where the oath was taken, breaking his oath and violating the Constitution and perpetrating what looks like an act of gross cowardice, all at the same time, and yet the Soutch Carolina Democracy resolve that for his conduct he is worthy of all praise. This only proves, that, bad as the representative may be, he is no worse than the State he represents.

We do not believe that Senator Butler approves the conduct of his nephew. Sumner's bitter attack upon Mr. Butler in that gentleman's absence was contemptible, and contempt would have been a very proper punishment to be meted out for it. The absurd and wicked resolutions which the South Carolina people are adopting will serve only to exasperate to a still greater degree the public sentiment of the North. But this is what the South Carolinians want. They rejoice in whatever seems likely to promote the dissolution of the Union. There were twice as many traitors in South Carolina in the days of the Revolution as in any other State in proportion to population, and we think that her soil as a general rule grows worse men now than it did then.

COL. BROOKS AND SUMNER

Yorkville, South Carolina, Enquirer [Democratic]

(29 May 1856)

In another column the reader will find an abstract of the remarkable debate in the Senate, last week, on the Kansas question; and in the letter of our correspondent, a full account of the severe castigation inflicted upon the notorious Massachusetts Senator, by our representative, Col. Preston Brooks.

Such events, entirely unprecedented in the annals of our legislation, furnish ample cause, not only for serious reflection, but, for the most profound regret. Surely, it is a sad thing for our country, when the Senate-hall, the citadel of all that is good and conservative in our councils, is made the theatre for the exhibition of the most loathsome and degraded traits of character, and for harrangues, fanatical, vulgar, insulting, and in very near keeping with the vilest ribaldry let loose from the crowded thoroughfares of Billingsgate. And it is even more to be regretted that it has become necessary for the defenders of the South to throw aside argument and sound reason, the weapons of honorable, high-minded combat, and to resort in their stead to the argument of the cow-hide, in avenging insult and protecting their own and the honor of those whom they represent. While we thus express a deep sense of mortification because of such an imperative necessity, we must not be understood to reflect unfavorably upon the course of our representative. If ever a high-minded man can be justified in promptly resenting insult and injury, surely Col. Brooks will receive from the people of his own State, at least, the mead of a most cordial approval. No better or more gallant man could have been selected to begin the argument; and because he has thus begun it so thoroughly, we give him an unstinted commendation. Well done!

It will be seen that large mass meetings have been held in Boston and other towns of Massachusetts, expressing a suitable degree of indignation at the cow-hiding of their Senator. On the other hand, we are gratified to learn that enthusiastic meetings have been held at Columbia, Charleston, and Newberry, and at other points, and resolutions adopted and transmitted to Col. Brooks, commending his course and assuring him of the approbation and confidence of his friends at home. This is right; and we earnestly trust that, along with others, a meeting will be called in Yorkville to give expression to like sentiments on the part of the people of our District. The battle waxes hot and strong, and if we expect our champions to wage it bravely and effectually, we must be prompt to lend them a hearty support.

Possuming.

Richmond, Virginia, Whig [American]

(31 May 1856)

The daily and hourly reports from Washington concerning the condition of Sumner, are all very strange and funny, and lead us to believe that the Abolition wretch, with his Abolition physicians as accomplices in the trick, is playing possum. We hear one moment that he is "comfortable and deing well" --we hear the next, that his condition is "extremely critical," and that no one is allowed to see him; and then a few hours afterwards we are favored with a different story.

Now, for our part, we never have believed that Sumner was sufficiently hurt to make it necessary for him to take to his bed at all. Least of all do we believe that the well-deserved gutta- perching he received was of so severe a character as to detain him in confinement for more than a week. But we believe it is a miserable Abolition trick from beginning to end -- resorted to to keep alive and diffuse and strengthen the sympathy awakened for him among his confederates at the North Nigger-worshipping fanatics of the male gender, and weak-minded women and silly children, are horribly affected at the thought of blood oozing out from a pin-scratch. And Sumner is wily politician enough to take advantage of this little fact.

We suggest that the Senate appoint a committee, consisting of one Southern man, to ascertain Sumner's actual condition. We think the bare sight of a hundredth part of a Southern man would impart to the possuming wretch strength enough to enable him to take up his bed and walk -- yea, walk even to Boston.