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THE CANING
THE ASSAULT THAT DROVE AMERICA TO CIVIL WAR
STEPHEN PULEO
WESTHOLME
Yardley
©2012 Stephen Puleo
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Westholme Publishing, LLC
904 Edgewood Road
Yardley, Pennsylvania 19067
Visit our Web site at www.westholmepublishing.com
ISBN: 978-1-59416-516-0 (ebook)
Also available in hardback.
Produced in the United States of America.
To Kate
Forever the song in my heart
CONTENTS
Introduction
Prologue
PART I
1. Bleeding Kansas
2. Omens of War
3. The Spread of Slavery
4. The Fugitive Slave Act
5. The Making of Charles Sumner
6. The Crime Against Kansas
Part II
7. Nothing But a Cane
8. A Son of South Carolina
9. Valuable Property
10. The Southern Code of Honor
PART III
11. The Caning
12. A Divided Response
13. Enter John Brown
14. Heated Debate in the Senate
15. An Opportunity for the Republican Party
16. Two Martyrs
17. Shamming Illness
18. The Empty Chair
19. The Election of 1856
20. The Most Popular Man in Massachusetts
21. The First Casualty
22. A Miscast President
PART IV
23. Dred Scott
24. Fire Treatment
25. The Lecompton Constitution
26. A House Divided
27. A New Saint
28. The Final Speech
29. President Lincoln
30. The Inevitability of War
Epilogue
Bibliographic Essay
Acknowledgments
Index
INTRODUCTION
Deep in the locked vaults of the McKissick Museum, on the campus of the University of South Carolina in Columbia, sits a precious artifact that represents one of the most shocking and dramatic events in American history.
The gleaming silver goblet is truly a work of art: elegantly designed and crafted, a hexagonal body graced with ornamental chasing, a bedded molding at its lip and lead banding around the foot, its stem adorned with sculpted leaves and acorns. But those few museum visitors lucky enough to view and handle this five-inch-tall chalice—as I was—recognize that its true significance and irreplaceable value is derived from the flowery inscription engraved on one of its panels:
“To Hon. Ps Brooks From Citizens of Columbia, May 22, 1856.”
Perhaps the date is most revealing. It is not the date Columbia residents presented the goblet to South Carolina Congressman Preston S. Brooks—the presentation ceremony actually occurred three months later at an enormous rally celebrating Brooks's triumphant return to the South after leaving Washington.
The inscription on the silver chalice immortalizes the date of a far more important event. Early in the afternoon of May 22, 1856, the ardently proslavery Brooks strode into the United States Senate chamber in Washington, D.C., and began beating renowned antislavery Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a gutta-percha cane. Brooks struck again and again—more than thirty times across Sumner's head, face, and shoulders—until his cane splintered into pieces and the helpless Massachusetts senator lay unconscious, covered in blood.
It was a retaliatory attack by Brooks. Forty-eight hours earlier, Sumner had concluded a speech on the Senate floor that had spanned two days, during which he vilified Southern slave-owners for violence occurring in Kansas and hurled personal slurs against Brooks's second cousin, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler. Sumner also insulted the entire South for its support of and reliance on slavery.
Brooks not only shattered his cane during the beating, but also destroyed any pretense of civility between North and South. One of the most stunning and provocative events in American history, the caning hardened positions on both sides and convinced each that the gulf between them was unbridgeable; that they could no longer rationally discuss their sharp differences of opinion regarding slavery. The polar opposite reactions to the caning from the North and the South were clear omens about the nation's future.
In the North, the assault cemented the abolitionist view that slaveholders were barbarians; but of far greater consequence, it convinced moderate Northern voices that the South could no longer engage in reasonable debate about slavery and sectional differences. Even Northerners who deplored Sumner's vitriolic language in the Kansas speech, and who normally did not support his extreme antislavery views, were left with little choice but to stand with him and condemn the bloody beating.
Just as significantly, the newly formed antislavery Republican Party used the caning to seize dominance across the North; it was the caning of Charles Sumner that mobilized thousands to join the party that nominated Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
In the South, Sumner's Kansas speech, especially his personal attack on Senator Butler, enraged the entire region. Southern slave-owners, who already hated Sumner and all he stood for, had battled since the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to preserve a slave system that supported their region's economy and, as Brooks eloquently argued in the midst of the caning debate, fueled much of the North's economy as well. Brooks and his countrymen feared that elitists such as Sumner, whose antislavery views were among the most radical in the country and who expressed dangerous ideas about freeing the slaves, would, if not directly confronted, destroy the Southern way of life.
In addition, Sumner's use of inflammatory language, his superior attitude, and his personal attack on Andrew Butler cried out for revenge according to the Southern code of honor, by which Preston Brooks was bound. These precepts condoned, even demanded, physical confrontation when insults were hurled at a man's family or state, and Sumner's words served as the perfect provocation for Brooks to defend both his family and his region. Virtually the entire South cheered him for doing so.
Storm clouds gathered rapidly after the caning. Across the country, citizens pondered the questions Brooks's attack had raised: If physical violence could occur inside the U.S. Capitol between elected lawmakers and educated men, was there any hope of resolving sectional differences through discussion and compromise? Could the slavery debate ever be settled peaceably?
The merciless beating of the North's strongest and most eloquent antislavery voice ensured that all of these questions would be answered in the negative. The caning had a tremendous impact on the events that followed over the next four years: the increasing militancy of the abolitionist movement, the meteoric rise of the Republican Party, and the secession of the Southern states and the founding of the Confederacy. While Sumner eventually recovered, compromise had suffered a mortal blow and in its place came escalating tensions and violence.
Many factors conspired to cause the Civil War, but i
t was the caning that made conflict and disunion unavoidable five years later.
——
Others have written about the caning (see my Bibliographic Essay), but to my knowledge, this is the first treatment that fully develops the characters of Sumner and Brooks in the same book. Sumner has been the subject of numerous biographies, but even the most recent—and best, in my view—a masterpiece by historian David Donald, is more than fifty years old and offers only limited insight into Brooks. (Volume 1 of Donald's eventual two-volume epic, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, which covers the caning episode, was published in 1960; the second volume, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man, was published ten years later.) Indeed, historically, Brooks is often portrayed as a stereotypical cliché, a Southern ruffian whose attack on Sumner is seldom put into context. Sumner's history of provocation and Brooks's adherence to the Southern code of honor are generally not explored.
Sumner's virtues are many: moral courage, a deep belief in equality between races, honesty, clarity of thought, virtually unwavering in principle regardless of political consequences. Yet, his vices—narcissism, arrogance, deep insecurity, inflexibility, alienation from family, disrespect for the feelings of others, contempt for opinions different from his own, an unwillingness to compromise—all played a critical role in Brooks's bloody attack. Sumner was clearly the victim on May 22, 1856, but he could hardly be characterized as blameless.
Unlike Sumner, Brooks was a strong family man and regarded as a gentleman in every sense, but his personal rambunctiousness and latent proclivity for violence, long dormant until that fateful day in the Senate chamber, overcame him when he confronted Sumner. He and other slave-owners, who craved the order that plantation life had long represented in the South, saw that order come crashing down after the caning. Ironically, Brooks helped destroy the Southern order he cherished so much.
There is another irony that surrounds these two men. Brooks began his political career as a moderate amidst radical proslavery forces. Sumner began as a self-proclaimed antislavery fanatic, an abolitionist in all but name, representing a Massachusetts that was far more moderate. As time went on, Brooks veered closer to the extreme proslavery, “fire-eating” point of view, while Massachusetts, and the rest of the North, moved closer to Sumner's utter disdain for slavery.
After May 22, 1856, these extremist views came to the fore and became mainstream and intractable. The two sides clung desperately to their positions, each convinced of their righteousness. Sumner and his Northern supporters demanded total, immediate, and uncompensated abolition, regardless of its impact on the Southern culture or economy. Brooks and his fellow Southern planters, and most of the South, wanted slavery to grow unfettered, uninhibited, and thriving, and would not even entertain the notion that black slaves were anything but subhuman in the evolutionary chain; thus, slavery's expansion presented them with no moral dilemma.
After the caning, the slavery question was transformed from a political and intellectual debate to a visceral maelstrom that pushed the country inexorably toward civil war.
PROLOGUE
May 19, 1856, U.S. Senate Chamber
Washington, D.C.
Even the Ladies' Gallery was filled to overflowing.
The sweaty Senate chamber crackled with tension and suffocating heat and the expectant murmurs of nervous lawmakers, but of all the indicators that big events were afoot, the most stunning was the number of women present. Normally, their section stood empty or contained a mere handful of occupants. This day, though, dresses clinging and hand-fans waggling in the stiflingly close quarters, women jostled for position and craned their necks for a better view of the drama. Their trip into the chamber had forced them into unladylike behavior: they had slogged through the thick mud on the streets outside; avoided squealing pigs that ran wild and feasted on garbage strewn across Pennsylvania Avenue; and covered their mouths with lacy hand-kerchiefs as they high-stepped through the dust-choked construction area, part of the Capitol building's renovations. But it was worth it to secure a spot in the Senate chamber on this potentially historic day.
The import and energy of the women's presence even eclipsed several other noteworthy and telltale signs that something special was in store: the throngs of eminent statesmen, former politicians, and ordinary citizens who clogged the aisles and doorways and anterooms; the many members of the House of Representatives, including South Carolina's Preston Brooks and Lawrence Keitt, who had ventured to the Senate chamber to witness the moment; the presence of Southern delegates, en route to the Democratic National Convention in Cincinnati, who detoured to the nation's capital to witness the day's events; the fact that every journalist's chair was filled, and that virtually every senator was uncharacteristically seated at the session's outset, awaiting the words of a colleague. South Carolina's Andrew Butler, a notable exception, was home recovering from a stroke. One newspaper reporter later wrote that “the galleries were crowded with intellect, beauty, and fashion” for the occasion. Another added: “No such scene has been witnessed since the days of [Daniel] Webster.”
Anticipation filled the room, too. The temperature in the chamber had soared above ninety degrees, but rather than induce lethargy, the heat, in the words of one correspondent, added to the “breathless suspense” that gripped senators and spectators alike.
Some of those in attendance admired the tall, broad-shouldered man who was about to speak. Many despised him. Still others simply wanted to catch a glimpse of one of Washington's most polarizing figures, who also happened to be one of the nation's most eloquent and incendiary orators. Whatever the reason, all eyes were focused on him.
The object of this attention, forty-five-year-old United States Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, relished every moment. He was a complex man of immense contradictions—at once educated and pedantic, worldly and petty, principled and pious, cultured and close-minded, refined and arrogant, steadfast and stubborn, altruistic and narcissistic. Filled with self-righteousness, the humorless Sumner believed devoutly in his cause and, even more fervently, in assailing the stupidity and ignorance of his adversaries' positions.
He coupled this blind conviction with his legendary speaking style—contentious, caustic, sometimes cruel, but also animated, fiery, and persuasive. A prolific and careful writer, yes, but Sumner's greatest artistic gift was his soaring oratory. If the pen was mightier than the sword, Sumner believed the spoken word was the most powerful weapon of all. Whether wielded with deft precision or unsparing blunt force, the right words uttered by a skilled speaker could slice through deception, smash an opponent's spirit, or create a dazzling and unassailable argument from a shapeless block of blandness and ambiguity.
Onlookers flocked to the Senate chamber on this day, sensing that the grand setting and Charles Sumner's rhetoric would bring a white-hot intensity to the most combustible debate topic in Washington. The crowd would no doubt help the senator's delivery; as one reporter would later note, Sumner had an audience “to arouse all his faculties.” That audience knew full well that Sumner would expend enormous energy attempting to persuade his colleagues and the nation to join him in rejecting the institution he so bitterly detested—slavery—and in denouncing the Southern planters and slaveholders who insisted on its continued and unchecked proliferation.
Sumner would deliver his message by focusing on the violence taking place in faraway Kansas, which for months had served as the crucible of the slavery firestorm between North and South; this much the spectators knew in advance. What caused the pensive stirring in the chamber was not so much what Sumner would say, but how he would say it. What explosive language would he employ? Whom would he anger or single out for criticism? Would he tweak his political opponents or insult them outright?
Sumner had anticipated the speech for weeks, and was thrilled when he found out days earlier that he would be permitted to deliver it. “I have the floor next Monday on Kansas, when I shall make the most thorough and complete speech
of my life,” he boasted to a friend. “My soul is wrung by this outrage, & I shall pour it forth.” Another friend cautioned Sumner about his tone, predicting that an antagonistic speech could evoke “gnashing of teeth among the defenders of slavery. Be prepared, there-fore, for the worst of their endeavors.”
Undeterred and uncompromising, Charles Sumner paid no heed. He loved the big stage and he was just moments from the most memorable and controversial performance of his life.
PART I
ONE
BLEEDING KANSAS
Most of the nation's attention was focused on Kansas at the beginning of 1856. “My dear sir—help us,” a despondent Hannah Ropes had written to Charles Sumner from Lawrence, Kansas, on January 22, 1856. “Where should the weak flee if not to strong heads and hands like yours?”
Months before Sumner prepared to deliver his dramatic speech in the U.S. Senate chamber, Kansas was suffering through a punishing winter and a desperate war for its very soul. Heavy snow blanketed the prairie, howling wind ripped across the plains, and temperatures plunged to thirty degrees below zero. All of this threatened “total destruction,” Ropes wrote, but she was more frightened by the storm of wanton violence perpetrated by proslavery forces—lawlessness that caused “the most heroic hearts among us [to] cower.” Lydia P. Hall agreed and pleaded to Sumner in her letter: “What will you do for us in Congress? We trust you will do a great deal.”
For nearly two years, since the controversial passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854—fashioned by Illinois Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas and signed by President Franklin Pierce—sectional strife, assaults, barbarism, and mayhem had rocked the territory. The sweeping, radical legislation repealed the portion of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that forbade slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the 36° 30´ latitude parallel—except within the boundaries of the then newly admitted slave state of Missouri. Instead, the new Kansas-Nebraska Act stated that the future of slavery in those territories would be decided by the popular vote of residents.
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