The Caning

by Stephen Puleo

  Massachusetts Governor Henry J. Gardner, who had months earlier proposed that the commonwealth assume the costs of Sumner's medical expenses, now urged the crowd to help him welcome Sumner, “the eloquent orator, the accomplished scholar, and the acknowledged statesman…the earnest friend of suffering humanity and of every good cause.” He reminded the crowd that, once the reception had ended, they should refrain from disturbing Sumner in his own home, but reminded them also that Sumner was “the successful defender of honor and integrity of Massachusetts,” and pledged that the state would stand by him “today, tomorrow, and forever.”

  When Sumner finally began speaking, it was with great difficulty and in a feeble voice. He was able to continue for barely a minute before his strength failed him, and then he handed his prepared remarks to a reporter. Nonetheless, the crowd cheered wildly as Sumner sat down. His written manuscript, published in many places afterward, expressed his deep appreciation to Bostonians and paid tribute to his fellow senator from Massachusetts, Henry Wilson. But he also recalled his painful five months of disability and expressed his sorrow that he had been unable to partake in the slavery debate during a critical moment in history. He sought only “the triumph of truth” and pledged to continue his fight against the slave power: “Show me that I am wrong, and I stop at once; but in the complete conviction of right I shall persevere against all temptations, against all odds, against all perils, against all threats—knowing that whatever will be my fate the right will surely prevail.”

  He also made the veiled case for his own reelection as U.S. Senator when the Massachusetts legislature considered the matter in January 1857; he said he expected soon “to be permitted, with unimpaired vigor, to resume all responsibilities of his position.” And, unbowed and undeterred despite his poor health, he lashed out at opponents of the Republican Party in Massachusetts. These misguided souls were “in sympathy, open or disguised, with the vulgar enemy, quickening everywhere the lash of the taskmaster, and helping forward the Satanic carnival” of slavery.

  It was close to five o'clock in the afternoon when a weary Sumner was taken to the family home at 20 Hancock Street on the back side of Beacon Hill. After he entered the house, throngs of people gathered out front on the narrow street and cheered repeatedly, too excited to remember Governor Gardner's plea to allow Sumner his privacy.

  Finally, in response, Sumner and his mother appeared at a window, and bowed in acknowledgment to the crowd—after more cheers, the people began to disperse. Charles Sumner would need his rest in anticipation of the critically important Tuesday that was only hours away. November 4, 1856—election day in Massachusetts and across the nation.

  On Tuesday, as the nation prepared to vote, a weary but gratified Charles Sumner received letters of support that kept alive the warm spirit of the previous day's reception. “A weight has been taken from my heart by hearing that you are better today, thank God,” Samuel Gridley Howe scribbled. “As a friend, I shall keep away from you until you say it would be well for you to see me.” Lois Caswell, secretary of the State Normal School, bid Sumner a “grateful and joyous” return to Boston, explaining that the entire school had followed his recovery anxiously “[from you] uncertain steps to the sea-shore and on the mountain-top.” Carola Wildgrove penned a lengthy poem welcoming Sumner home as Massachusetts's “champion of freedom,” and identifying him as a “martyr in a sacred cause.” One important stanza alluded to the long-term positive impact the caning might portend for Sumner and the North:

  Each blow the demon's fury sped

  To fall upon thy classic head,

  Still deeper in a nation's heart

  Engraved thy Heaven-lighted name

  And carved for thee a higher fame

  Newspaper accounts of the Sumner reception must also have pleased the recovering senator. Many of them contrasted Sumner's magnanimous comments with the mocking, defiant tone Brooks exhibited at rallies in his honor. The event was, “in every respect, a noble one,” the Boston Daily Atlas declared. One writer concluded that the reception represented the “unaffected homage of a humane and enlightened people to a faithful and fearless defender of human rights.” This was vastly different from the Brooks rallies, both in the “tokens of honor bestowed, and in the temper and spirit of the people.” Indeed, more than anything, “the two occasions typified the two civilizations, which confronted each other.”

  While this summary was rife with flowery language and Northern bias, the reception honoring Sumner clearly illustrated one indisputable fact: the collective joy and love expressed by thousands of attendees meant that a plethora of political opinions, a multitude of special interests, and a cacophony of voices all spoke as one, banding together to celebrate Sumner's return. The caning had succeeded in accomplishing something Sumner and his antislavery acolytes could not do by themselves—unify a previously divided Boston, wild-eyed abolitionists and staid commercial merchants alike, against what its citizens now saw as the common enemy of Southern barbarism.

  Their fellow Northerners would weigh in when they cast their ballots.

  NINETEEN

  THE ELECTION OF 1856

  For North and South alike, the most shocking, significant, and prophetic outcome of the 1856 election was not that Republican John Frémont was defeated in his bid for the presidency, but that he received as many votes as he did. The new Republican Party, which did not even exist in several Northern states only a year earlier, made a resounding statement in its first bid for the nation's highest office, and in the process, threw a scare into Southerners and Northern Democrats.

  The message of the 1856 election was clear: Bolstered by the caning and its aftershocks, the new antislavery party had made an astounding showing across the North, and while it had fallen short of its ultimate goal, voting trends clearly infused Republicans with momentum for 1860. Almost overnight, the tremors from the caning had begun shifting national power in profound ways.

  Frémont won eleven Northern states, all but five in the section, and collected more than 1.3 million popular votes and 114 electoral votes. Democrat Buchanan, who won every Southern state, plus Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey, Illinois, and Indiana, garnered 1.8 million popular votes and 174 electoral votes. At first glance, the Buchanan margin seems comfortable, but his weakness is more apparent when third-party candidate Millard Fillmore's popular vote total is tallied. While Fillmore won only one state (Maryland), more than 870,000 Americans voted for him and it is likely that the majority of his votes would have gone to Frémont. Indeed, many of those who did vote for Frémont would once have supported Fillmore, since Know-Nothings were considered the main alternative to Democrats; had several thousand more made the switch to Frémont, he might have claimed victory. The most ominous sign for Democrats to consider in any future two-person race was that the combined popular vote total of Frémont and Fillmore exceeded Buchanan's by a significant margin.

  There were other signs. Frémont's victory across New England was not a surprise, but his vote total was astonishing. He received more than 300,000 votes in the six-state region, while Buchanan and Fillmore combined got fewer than 200,000. In the sixteen Northern states collectively, Frémont's vote exceeded Buchanan's by more than 100,000, and the fact that Buchanan won only five of them was a stunning development for Democrats to ponder.

  Looking even deeper into the election results, one state in particular illustrated the perilous situation for the South and the Democrats—Illinois, home to Democratic icon Stephen Douglas, architect of the divisive Kansas-Nebraska Act. Douglas had boasted in late 1855 that Illinois would furnish a huge Democratic majority, perhaps by as many as 40,000 votes. But the caning had disrupted the landscape dramatically. Buchanan won Illinois, but his margin of victory was razor thin—only about 9,000 votes more than Frémont (of nearly 240,000 cast), and the combined Frémont-Fillmore total trounced Buchanan by nearly 30,000 votes. A switch of a few thousand votes would have swung Illinois to the Republicans, which would have utt
erly embarrassed Douglas and the Democrats.

  Moreover, historian Allan Nevins points out that, within Illinois, the North-South schism is starkly illustrated: the state's five pro-Southern districts voted overwhelmingly for Buchanan and the four pro-Northern districts gave Frémont a huge majority. It also illustrated a larger Southern problem: the northern part of the state was increasing in population much more rapidly than the southern region, causing Douglas and the Democrats deep concern about future voting patterns in Illinois.

  In all, while Buchanan's election indicated that the majority of voters chose a safe, “Union-saving” course (the South's threats to secede if the Republicans won did sow fear in some Northern states), Frémont had carried a remarkable 60 percent of the Northern popular vote. Three Northern states had won the election for Buchanan, and all of them—Pennsylvania (Buchanan's home state), Illinois, and Indiana—were increasingly Republican. In Pennsylvania and Indiana, the combined Frémont-Fillmore vote nearly equaled Buchanan's total, and in New Jersey exceeded it. More warning signs for Democrats: Buchanan had won just 45 percent of the total popular vote and became the first man in American history to win the presidency without carrying a preponderance of free states.

  The heavy vote for Frémont in the North and West alarmed Southerners for the future it suggested: “The strength developed by Frémont portends the continued agitation [against] slavery,” the New Orleans Bee said on November 8. Had Frémont been trounced, Republicans would have slunk away, discouraged and dispirited, but his formidable showing would convince the anti-slavery element “to renew their exertions, to organize their forces for another contest, and to keep up the struggle with energy and perseverance.” The fight would go to the bitter end. The election results had revealed that the North and South were enemies; they were “countrymen only in name.” It now appeared that white Southerners would have to choose “between submission and dissolution,” warned South Carolina Congressman Lawrence Keitt. Another prominent Southerner disgustedly declared that the Republicans had fomented a “complete revolution” in the North, replacing honest government with “sheer despotism” and warning that the new Republican congressional delegation was “vulgar and fanatical, hating us and hating our institutions.”

  The New Orleans Daily Crescent best expressed the Southern conservative reaction to the election by saying the Northern voting results were a “stunning shock” and, as a result, the paper no longer “laughed at those who hinted at the…possibility of disunion.” The Crescent voiced its outrage that Frémont, “the candidate of the…abolitionists and haters of the South generally, has received the electoral votes of a large majority of Northern people!” The Republican candidate had won the North based upon a platform “which would inflict immeasurable degradation upon the Southern people,” one which would “strip them of respect at home and abroad and render them the laughing stock.” Worse, the 1856 results had occurred with a Republican Party that was barely organized. What could the South expect in another four years? The handwriting was clear.

  Historian Eric Walther points out that had Frémont carried Pennsylvania or the combination of New Jersey, Illinois, and Indiana (he carried all the other free states except California), he would have won a clear victory without a single ballot from Southern states. The frightening future for the South to contemplate was that, in the realm of presidential politics, the South needed the North and the North could ignore the South. A “solid North” could win the Presidency outright—the South did not have enough electoral votes or population to achieve the same result with one of its candidates. What the South feared most was that any solid North in the future would undoubtedly sweep into power the despised anti-slavery Republicans.

  Far from being disappointed at Frémont's defeat, Republicans expressed hopefulness and even a measure of glee about the Presidential results. “Republicans are reveling in the conviction that they have suffered a victorious defeat,” crowed W. H. Furness of Philadelphia succinctly. “They have not got a President, but they have what is better—a North.” In a letter to Sumner, William Jay added: “The news from Michigan and Illinois is glorious.” For his part, Sumner repeatedly referred to the Republican election defeat as “our Bunker Hill,” the Revolutionary battle in which an overmatched colonial army surprisingly inflicted heavy losses on British regulars before finally succumbing. As Bunker Hill helped colonists measure their progress, the presidential election result was an indication of Republican strength “and gives assurance of speedy triumph.” Sumner described the election results as “the beginning of the end” of the slave power's stranglehold on Congress, the presidency, and the nation. “All New England, with New York, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa, constitute an irresistible phalanx for Freedom,” he wrote.

  More moderate Northerners recognized that the election results signaled the end of a middle-ground political position in the North. Before the election, Massachusetts statesman and orator Edward Everett had observed, “There is really no ground left on which a northern conservative man can stand,” and this argument was validated by Frémont's strong showing and Fillmore's feeble one in the free states.

  Without question, Northerners and Southerners identified the caning as playing the key role in the Republicans' election outcome. One worried Southern Democratic activist noted to Buchanan: “The Club which broke Mr. Sumner's head has…turned more votes than all other causes that were at work.” Robert Winthrop suggested that Preston Brooks and Stephen Douglas “deserve Statues from the [Republican] Party. The cane of the former and the Kansas bill of the latter…have secured a success to the Agitators which they never could have accomplished without them.”

  Historian William Gienapp, who has done extensive research and analysis on the timing of thousands of new Republican supporters, points specifically to Connecticut as an illustration of the caning's impact. In the last election before the caning—the spring of 1856—Republicans did no better than they did in the previous fall's election, polling about 11 percent of the vote. Yet, Frémont easily defeated Buchanan in Connecticut, polling more than 53 percent of the vote. The caning had shifted Northern voters' feelings, immediately and irrevocably, and also highlighted the vast gulf between North and South. Gienapp points out: “Because of the Sumner assault, the common values of the two sections seemed fewer, and increasingly less important.”

  Or, as Pennsylvania Republican Alexander K. McClure, who visited Sumner at Cresson, wrote nearly fifty years after the caning, Brooks's attack caused thousands of Democrats with natural “anti-slavery proclivities” to sever their ties with the Democratic Party and unite in support of Frémont. McClure wrote: “The most effective deliverance made by any man to advance the Republican party was made by the bludgeon of Preston S. Brooks.”

  Despite what both men could consider at least some good news—for one, Frémont's outstanding showing; for the other, Buchanan's victory—neither Charles Sumner nor Preston Brooks appeared to enjoy any personal happiness after the 1856 presidential election.

  Brooks, like many Southern lawmakers, remained subdued and avoided public controversies when he returned to Congress in the fall of 1856. Republicans had become much bolder—they had carried the House and were soon to have twenty senators (of thirty-two total)—and Southern congressmen were much less aggressive. The notion of Kansas becoming a slave state had largely dissipated as a result of the election. Brooks made one major speech when the session resumed after the election, a measured oration in which he addressed the issues in Kansas. In a remarkably conciliatory tone, he announced that he was ready to vote for the admission of Kansas “even with a constitution rejecting slavery.” Northerners were astonished and Southern proslavery radicals were disappointed with the tone of Brooks's remarks.

  In fact, by the winter of 1856, Brooks apparently was growing weary of the public attention that centered upon him and was hurt by the hostile attitudes of former friends from the North. Though never doubting the justice of the caning, he conf
ided to fellow South Carolina Congressman James L. Orr that he was “tired of his new role” and “heartsick of being recognized the representative of bullies, the recipient of their ostentatious gifts, and officious testimonials of admiration and regard.” Northerner Julia Ward Howe's contention that Brooks displayed “an evil expression of countenance” when she spotted him at a Washington hotel was not an unusual reaction; without knowing or ever meeting Brooks, the abhorrence of his deed was enough for many to categorize him as a despicable human being. The New York Times had picked up similar reactions from its sources: “We have heard that in conversation Colonel Brooks more than once deplored his conduct as the blot and misfortune of his life.”

  Any regrets Brooks felt about the caning's aftermath were moot. For the entire nation, he and his deed had come to define the persona of the entire slaveholding South: aghast Northerners decried the belligerence and the violence that Brooks and the caning represented; proud Southerners reveled in his courageous defense of honor, order, state, and region. The 1856 presidential election results had merely painted a clear picture of an already unmistakably divided land.

  For Charles Sumner, while he was heartened by the results nationally and in Massachusetts (Republicans swept the state and Burlingame was reelected in a close race), his ill health and slow recovery dominated his thoughts and actions during the fall and winter of 1856–57. He again suggested that “at last we may have seen the beginning of the end of our great struggle,” noting the election had made it clear that the North had “assumed an attitude which it cannot abandon…our duty is clear, to scatter everywhere the seeds of truth.” But Sumner would not be the one to sow those seeds, at least not publicly.