Civil War's first battle broke out in Congress
By: Austin Wright
January 20, 2012 12:15 AM EST
Think the level of discourse in Congress is at an all-time low?
Think again.
The weapons of today — filibusters, recess appointments and pointed fingers — are no
match for a cane to the skull.
In 1856, with the country deeply divided over slavery, the Senate’s most notorious case of
assault captured the nation’s attention and accelerated the march toward civil war. Rep.
Preston Brooks (D-S.C.), in an act that would define his legacy, repeatedly struck Sen.
Charles Sumner (R-Mass.) in the head until the senator was semiconscious and nearly
dead.
The incident transformed both men into heroes in their respective regions — symbols of
the frayed relations between North and South and omens of the violent end to the
impasse over slavery. It also forever changed Congress, creating a black mark on the
prestigious, stodgy upper chamber.
It all began when Sumner, one of the leading anti-slavery voices in Congress, delivered
his famous “Crime Against Kansas” speech, in which he argued that Kansas should be
admitted to the union as a free state. The speech was most remarkable, though, for its
insults.
“The Senate has all kinds of rules of decorum, and he went way beyond those,” said
Senate historian Don Ritchie. “He attacked many senators by name.”
The two main targets: Sens. Stephen Douglas (D-Ill.) and Andrew Butler (D-S.C.), chief
architects of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed settlers to decide for themselves
whether slavery would be allowed in the territories.
Sumner told Douglas to his face that he was a “noise-some, squat and nameless animal”
and said Douglas was “not a proper model for an American senator,” according to the
Senate Historical Office.
But Sumner saved his most personal attacks for Butler, who he noted, regretfully, was not
present in the chamber. He charged Butler with taking a mistress, one “who, though ugly
to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his
sight.”
He then explained his metaphor: “I mean the harlot slavery.”
Payback came three days later.
Brooks, a relative of Butler and a fellow South Carolinian, entered the Senate chamber
bent on defending the honor of his family and his state. He approached Sumner, who was
putting his name on copies of his controversial speech.
Brooks then slammed his cane into Sumner’s unsuspecting head.
“Brooks beat Sumner so severely — about 40 blows — that his cane broke into pieces,”
Ritchie said. “It all took place in a minute’s time.”
Sumner spent the next three years recovering before he returned to the Senate as an ally
of President Abraham Lincoln. During his absence, Ritchie said, Sumner’s “empty desk
was a very powerful symbol that the political compromises that they were trying to reach
on slavery and the spread of slavery into the territories were doomed and the issue had
gotten too emotional and too divisive.”
As for Brooks, the congressman resigned but was immediately reelected. “Many in the
South cheered him,” Ritchie said. “They sent him canes to replace the one he broke in the
chamber.”
No matter how bad it gets in today’s gridlocked Congress, the incident acts as a powerful
reminder: It could be much worse.