That America is divided is nothing new, though headlines may strive to convince you otherwise. From its founding, Americans have fought—sometimes with words, sometimes with weapons—over the nation’s most fundamental questions. The brutal 1856 beating of Senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor wasn’t just an isolated act of violence; it was a warning, a symptom of an America so fractured that political disagreements turned to bloodshed.
Background: Sumner’s Political Views
Charles Sumner had been a founding member of the Republican party and a staunch abolitionist. He belonged to the wing of the Republican party that would later feel that Lincoln was too moderate on the issue of slavery. It was actually Charles Sumner who advised President Lincoln to make the Civil War about slavery only a month into the war, well over a year before Horace Greeley’s impassioned open letter to the president urging emancipation for enslaved people in August of 1862.
When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Sumner, who had been urging the President to issue the Proclamation, was disappointed it had not only taken so long but that it would only come into effect in another 100 days. Moreover, this would delay Lincoln’s ability (of which Sumner was a champion) to enlist blacks into military service.
Sumner initially opposed the Fourteenth Amendment because, though it guaranteed former slaves and others equal protection under the law as citizens, it did not ensure their right to vote. But even years before the Civil War had begun, Sumner had backed his rhetoric with actions.
“Crime Against Kansas” Speech
On May 19, 1856, when the Senate was debating whether to admit Kansas into the Union as a slave or free state, Charles Sumner rose to give a speech, which he called ‘The Crime Against Kansas.’ Sumner’s address would last for over five hours (the printed version was 112 pages long) and take two days to deliver in the blisteringly hot Senate chamber. The physical temperature rose to above 90, embodying (and perhaps exacerbating) the contentious nature of the debate.
Sumner ignited the tinderbox by publicly smearing two leading Democratic senators as Sancho Panza and Don Quixote, respectively.{1} The first was Stephen Douglas, with whom Lincoln would go on to debate as they both vied to be Illinois’s senator. Though Lincoln lost, the debates with Douglas would be a significant milestone in Lincoln’s political ascendence. Sumner launched into a character assassination of Douglas, claiming the Democrat was “not a proper model for an American senator,” in addition to the more detailed “noise-some, squat, and nameless animal.”
But it was Sumner’s attack on a senator who wasn’t present that would cause him the most trouble. Sumner maligned Andrew Butler’s southern sense of chivalry (Butler was from South Carolina) by accusing the senator of taking a mistress “who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight.” Waiting for his scandalous words to land, Sumner clarified, “I mean the harlot, Slavery.”
The 1856 Caning of Charles Sumner
Butler’s cousin, Representative (SC) Preston Brooks, avenged his cousin’s southern pride two days after Sumner had sullied it. Walking into the Senate chamber as Sumner was hunched over his desk, Brooks informed Sumner that the latter’s speech was a libel on Brook’s cousin as well as the great state of South Carolina. With that, Brooks slammed his cane into Sumner’s head. Sumner, blinded by his own blood, jumped under his desk, which was bolted to the floor, but Brooks kept striking him.
This was no crime of passion; Brooks had considered challenging Sumner to a duel, but after consulting with his colleague and fellow Southern Carolinian, Congressman Laurence Keitt, both gentlemen concluded that a man like Sumner was beneath a duel, and a public flogging was more in order. As Brooks continued to smash Sumner’s skull in and even as Sumner lost consciousness, several (Republican) politicians tried to scramble to Sumner’s assistance. Keitt went from being Brooks’s conspirator to being his accomplice when he brandished a pistol and physically prevented anyone from helping Sumner. Brooks continued to beat Sumner until his gold-tipped, hardwood cane snapped. But even that didn’t stop him. Brooks continued to thrash the unconscious Sumner with half of his cane, as blood seeped into the Senate floor, before finally being restrained.
Sumner-Brooks Incident: Aftermath
Though it was obvious that he would be unable to resume his duties for quite some time, the enraged people of Massachusetts reelected Sumner to the Senate that year, preferring that his seat remain empty as a reminder of Southern brutality. Sumner never fully recovered, but within three years was ready to resume his senatorial duties. Brooks was arrested and convicted for the assault of Sumner and promptly reelected by his constituents. Keitt was censured before being reelected by his constituents, as well.
Sumner and Brooks came to personify the North and South respectively, each being elevated in his own territory and berated in the other. What had happened on the Senate floor was a stark reminder of the polarised American political landscape, with Ralph Waldo Emerson commenting on the incompatibility of what the two men represented: “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.” The outbreak of violence in the Senate Chamber in May of 1856 was a horrible portent of the violence to come.