by Herb Karl
By the time he stepped out of the cab at his hotel, Brooks had gone lame. Though he tried to ignore it, the stinging in his hip came in bursts with each stride, and his body accommodated by turning his gait into that of an old man. He uncharacteristically waved off familiar faces in the lobby, told the desk clerk he’d take dinner in his room, and ordered two bottles of Madeira to be sent up immediately. And no visitors. He needed time to think, to gather himself.
That night he slept fitfully. The Madeira dulled the pain in his hip but not the memory that had haunted him for sixteen years. As he lay on his bed fully clothed, slipping in and out of consciousness, the images returned, as they had many times in the past—nagging him, goading him into reconstructing the events of a cold November day in 1840 on an island in the Savannah River just a few miles from his Edgefield home.
As dawn broke that day, a mist obscured a flurry of activity. A few men—three, maybe four—worked with axes to clear a field covered with cane and underbrush. At the river’s edge, two skiffs were pulled ashore. In one of them sat two men. They passed a smoothbore flintlock pistol between them, testing the firing mechanism, cocking and releasing the hammer. Alongside the men lay an open leather case containing a matching pistol. These were not ordinary pistols. Brass engraved barrels, mahogany grips. They were designed for one purpose: to test the honor and personal courage of gentlemen who represented a privileged class, a class defined by bloodlines, professional status, and, to a lesser extent, wealth.
Observing the activity were the two principals. Brooks, then only twenty-one, his cloak drawn tightly against the morning chill, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His opponent, arms folded, stood some distance away, teeth clamped onto the stump of a black cigar. By now the cause of their confrontation had lost its significance. All that mattered was the contest. Like knights of feudal Europe, the two men were to meet in a trial by arms that would not only test their courage—their manliness—but also affirm the beliefs of the class to which they both belonged. It was a ritual in which only true gentlemen were expected to participate.
By early afternoon the field had been cleared. The adversaries were called to their posts. They stood back to back, pistols in hand. The order came to march the customary ten paces. At sixty feet they turned, assumed the shooting stance, their bodies sidelong, and awaited the final command. At the call “Ready” they aimed—and fired.
In his hotel room Brooks tossed feverishly. His bed linens and shirt were soaked with sweat. The images that dominated his restless sleep lost their clarity, dissolved in shadows. Then, as had been the case in countless recurrences of the dream, he heard the booming reports of the pistols, felt the pain of the lead ball tearing through his flesh, narrowly missing his spine, shattering a portion of his pelvis, finally glancing off a bone in his arm. He howled.
Outside the room Keitt shouted, pounded on the door. “For God’s sake, Brooks, are you hurt?”
Brooks lay on his bed barely aware of the commotion. Sunlight streamed through an unshaded window.
Again, Keitt’s voice intruded into the room. “Open the door, Preston. It’s Laurence. We need to talk.”
Brooks struggled to compose himself. He stumbled to the washbasin, filled it with water from a pitcher, cupped his hands, doused his face. His attempt to bring some tidiness to his disheveled clothing was futile. He opened the door to a startled Keitt.
“Come in, Laurence. You must pardon my appearance. It’s been a difficult evening.”
“I should think it has,” Keitt agreed. “And I’m afraid the worst lies ahead. The damned abolitionist is only half finished with his speech and already he’s humiliated your cousin, called him a liar. He rails against the entire South, Preston, calls us the slave power—over and over: the slave power. There is no end to it. And the president—the scoundrel insults the president. He has no honor.”
Keitt had come to escort Brooks to the Senate. It was almost noon, and Sumner was scheduled to resume his speech at one o’clock. But Brooks was hesitant, noncommittal. He needed time to devise a suitable response to Sumner’s provocation. Besides, he was in no condition to make an appearance at the Capitol. The Senate chamber already would be nearing capacity. He urged Keitt to go without him.
They could meet later, after the speech—maybe have dinner downstairs in the hotel dining room.
Brooks spent the remainder of the day in his room, leaving only briefly to pick up a copy of the National Intelligencer at the front desk. The parlor and lobby swarmed with guests, mostly Southerners. The chatter was about Sumner. It was impossible for Brooks to avoid being noticed. He politely excused himself from a phalanx of young men with notepads. Newspaper reporters. They knew he’d attended the first day of Sumner’s speech. He had no comment.
At six o’clock Keitt was back at Brooks’s door. He heaved his body into the room. The blood vessels in his eyes were red and swollen. He carried a stack of pages smelling of printer’s ink and tossed them onto the bed.
“Sumner’s speech,” he said. “The bastard ordered copies to be printed, intends to mail them to every Northern newspaper.”
Dinner could wait. The two men headed straight for the hotel bar.
As they walked through the parlor they were approached by several ladies, among them the wife of a South Carolinian prominent in President Pierce’s administration. She was suppressing her anger as she stood before Brooks and expressed revulsion at what she called Sumner’s “perfidious and vile treatment of Senator Butler and our glorious state.” She said, “I am sure Sumner’s treachery shall not go unchallenged by the good and righteous men of South Carolina.”
The bar was overflowing—an amalgam of legislators and Washington’s distinctively Southern social elite, all just returned from Sumner’s speech. By the time they stepped away from the bar, Brooks and Keitt were well fortified with scotch whisky and advice on how to teach the damned Yankee abolitionist a lesson in civility.
Keitt recited parts of the senator’s speech. The worst of it was the attack on the homeland, their hallowed South Carolina. Sumner had piled insult upon insult, condemning South Carolina’s long covenant with slavery and the slave trade. Keitt was enraged, but Brooks expected as much. Sumner was, after all, an abolitionist—the latest in a parade of abolitionists to mock slavery as it existed in South Carolina and elsewhere. Brooks and Keitt had been exposed to this sort of abuse for most of their adult lives. To them, the struggle in Kansas Territory simply gave the abolitionists an excuse to renew their attack on the South’s peculiar institution.
“They are different from us,” Keitt said, referring to Northern abolitionists like Sumner. “They are not to be reasoned with. And they have no understanding of good manners. Sumner is no gentleman and doesn’t deserve to be treated as one.”
Brooks respected Keitt even though he regarded his politics as extreme. If Keitt had had his way, South Carolina would have seceded from the Union years ago. He’d fallen under the influence of men like Robert Barnwell Rhett and David Jamison, and that meant Keitt regarded Northern abolitionism as an imminent threat to the South. He was immersed in Southern chivalry with its code of honor; he longed for the opportunity to defend Southern rights—on the battlefield if necessary.
Keitt implored Brooks to act boldly. “The damned abolitionists want to take away our freedom,” he said. “They cannot be allowed to trample on our rights. They would have us change places with our servants.” Like many slaveholders, Keitt chose to substitute the word servant for slave.
Brooks nodded politely. He knew what was expected of him and needed no encouragement. Insults had been delivered publicly. The reputation of an elder statesman, a blood relative—as well as the reputation of South Carolina—had been rudely besmirched. No apology was offered. Brooks knew he couldn’t face his constituents, much less the entire state of South Carolina, without gaining satisfaction. The question that remained was how it would be obtained. And therein lay the problem.
“I�
��m sure you will do the right thing, Preston,” Keitt said before retiring for the evening. “I only wish I were in your place. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to put a ball through that cur’s black heart.”
In the light of a whale oil lamp Brooks sat up in bed reading and rereading Sumner’s speech. His hip ached and he couldn’t sleep. He poured himself a glass of Madeira, but it only made him more agitated. He lay awake, pondering an honorable course of action. Sleep finally came.
He arose at dawn determined to act. Two days had passed since Sumner began his rant and there was still no hint of regret from the senator from Massachusetts. Brooks was groggy, hungover, but he wouldn’t delay another minute. He felt drawn into a whirlpool of emotions—his own, those of his colleagues, and those shared by all Southerners. Charles Sumner had come to represent those abolitionists who were determined to make the South bend to their will. Brooks needed to do something and do it quickly. To hesitate any longer would be a sign of weakness.
Before leaving his room he paused at a brass umbrella stand beside the door. The stand was filled with canes he’d brought to Washington from his home in Edgefield. He removed one—a recent gift. It had a gold head, and its shaft was fashioned from a new material, gutta-percha—a latex compound that was rigid yet elastic enough to be used in the manufacture of golf balls. The cane had a hollow core.
Brooks arrived at the Capitol at eleven o’clock, hoping to confront Sumner before the Senate reconvened at noon for its Wednesday session. He knew Sumner typically walked to the Capitol from rooms he rented on New York Avenue. That meant he would approach the west portico from Pennsylvania Avenue. Brooks paced nervously, oblivious to the clutter, the construction shanties, the mounds of building materials.
He prowled the tree-lined path leading to the west front of the Capitol and eventually ran into his colleague and friend Henry Edmundson, a representative from Virginia. But no Sumner. Brooks was dejected. He had no interest in taking his seat in the House. He found a young page sitting on the Capitol steps and gave him a message intended for Keitt and James Orr, an upcountry congressman whose moderate political views Brooks respected. He wanted them to join him in his hotel room that evening, to get their advice on what he should do about Sumner.
The meeting with Keitt and Orr quickly turned ugly, the language rambling and heated. Brooks had been drinking. “The people want revenge,” he said, “and I have failed to give it to them.” He confessed he had no desire to challenge Sumner to a duel. To do so would be to regard him an equal. The code of honor governed only the conduct of gentlemen, and as Keitt had already made clear, Sumner was no gentleman.
“I intend to whip him,” Brooks said, “as I would whip a servant who was disobedient or behaved badly. I have no whip, so I’ve chosen a cane instead.”
While Orr urged restraint, Keitt spoke approvingly. “I envy you this opportunity, Preston,” he said, “to strike a blow that might alter the destiny of our people. The abolitionists have degraded us, insulted us. They would take away our peace, our very existence.” He paced about the room, his words taking on the passion that earned him his reputation as a radical secessionist. “We must defend our rights . . . our honor . . . and leave the consequences to God.”
Between Keitt’s exhortations and the wine Brooks had been consuming since early afternoon, Brooks began to find Orr’s plea for calmness and reason less appealing. Orr must have sensed the futility of his arguments. He wished both men well and excused himself.
In a gesture Brooks would deny in the coming days and weeks, he reached into the umbrella stand filled with canes, removed one, handed it to Keitt. “I expect you to be ready should things not go well for me tomorrow,” he said. “Use it, Laurence, if you must.”
“Sir, I would be honored.”
After Keitt’s departure, Brooks collapsed in bed. Two nights of little sleep and heavy drinking left him sullen, edgy. He fretted over what lay ahead.
He didn’t remember falling asleep.
A knock at Brooks’s door at first light meant fresh water had been delivered. He brought the pitcher inside, washed, took a straight razor to the stubble on his face, then slipped into one of his finely tailored linen suits. He lifted the gutta-percha cane from the umbrella stand and gave it a quick snap against his thigh.
It was another warm spring day in Washington. Brooks’s goal was the same as the day before. Only this time the deed would be done.
The plan to cut off Sumner outside the Capitol, however, proved fruitless. He again ran into Edmundson on the grounds near the west front. The two men spoke briefly, then together ascended the long flight of stairs to the rotunda. Each step sent a twinge through Brooks’s hip, reminding him of the obligation he now carried like a millstone. While Edmundson went directly to the House, Brooks headed for the Senate in search of Sumner. He reached the door to the chamber breathing heavily.
The Senate was in session, but Brooks knew there would be an early adjournment in honor of the recent death of a congressman. He spotted Sumner at his desk, then returned to the vestibule. Though exhausted, Brooks was determined to stay until Sumner or the senators—whichever came first—vacated the chamber.
At twelve forty-five the senators began streaming through the doors. Brooks reentered the chamber and took a seat in the top tier of desks, across the aisle and three rows behind Sumner.
An hour had passed since the lady and the senator she held captive began their conversation in the lobby.
Brooks was glad to see that Keitt had joined the small group gathered in the loggia behind the Senate president’s chair. Keitt glanced up, displaying the cane Brooks gave him the previous evening. He tapped his forehead with the tip. Brooks returned the gesture.
When Brooks turned his attention back to the lobby, he saw that the lady and the senator were gone.
A wave of uneasiness struck him. The punishment he was about to deliver had to be administered quickly, deliberately. He couldn’t let his emotions get in the way. Nor could he wait any longer. It was apparent Sumner had no intention of completing his work anytime soon. Brooks stood up and stepped into the aisle, descended the three levels to Sumner’s row, slid into position alongside the senator’s desk. Sumner was still absorbed in his writing; he didn’t seem aware of Brooks’s presence.
“Sumner!” Brooks called out.
The senator looked up, squinted, a puzzled expression on his face.
Brooks continued, his words stiff and mechanical, evidence that he’d rehearsed them. “I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is my duty to tell you that you have libeled my state and slandered a relative, Mr. Butler, who is aged and absent, and I am come to punish you for it.”
Brooks raised his cane and struck the side of Sumner’s head sharply, near the temple, not a particularly forceful blow but one that surely stunned the senator. Sumner raised his hands in self-defense, attempted to rise from his chair. Then, as though a switch had been thrown, Brooks surrendered to an impulse—a primitive and dark impulse that loosed itself from a part of his brain over which he had no control. He found himself swinging his cane repeatedly, each blow crashing down on Sumner with greater fury, until the cane split into a clump of slender fibers. All that remained was the gold head and a section of the shaft that allowed Brooks to retain his grip on what no longer resembled a cane at all but looked more like a cowhide whip with its plaited thongs unraveled.
Brooks had intended to execute his mission without emotion. It was to be a simple act of punishment, a means of correcting behavior, as one would correct the behavior of a dog or a servant. But something went awry. The unspoken fears that slumbered in the deepest recesses of his being were awakened. And Sumner had come to embody all those fears: the loss of a way of life enjoyed on the piazzas of the great plantation houses . . . the loss of pleasures made possible by those who labored in the fields, served in the houses, who cooked, washed, cleaned, even took to their breasts their masters’ babies as they would their own .
. . the collapse of a social system that Brooks and others like him were required to preserve, a system that had already begun to suffer the stresses brought on by the constant pressure of the abolitionists, the growing acts of resistance in the settlements, the runaways. All of the demons were released upon the helpless Sumner, who was finally able to wrench himself from the confines of his desk. In a desperate, Samson-like effort, he rose, his powerful legs snapping the screws that fastened the desk in place. He tumbled into the chamber’s center aisle, his face so lacerated and bloodied as to make it impossible to identify whose face it was.
All this in less than a minute, and Brooks was not done yet, though by now the spectacle claimed the attention of the stragglers who remained in the chamber. Several of them rushed to restrain Brooks, only to be challenged by Keitt, brandishing the cane he’d pledged to use should the need arise. He raised it over his head and shouted, “Let them alone. Let them alone, God damn you.”
Keitt’s efforts were unnecessary. Sumner lay on the floor unconscious, blood pulsing from deep wounds in his head.
A doctor was summoned.
As Keitt led Brooks out of the chamber, the pain in his hip returned, the chronic ache to which he’d grown accustomed. Brooks disliked admitting it, but the pain wouldn’t go away. Nothing would ever change that.
