The Caning

by Stephen Puleo

  Dr. Perry noticed a dramatic change in Charles Sumner's condition on the evening of Tuesday, May 27, observing that Sumner's skin was hot to the touch, that the senator was feverish, and that his pulse was racing to over ninety—“a very different state of things from what he had had before.” Overnight, Sumner experienced “great pain” in the back of his head, his neck glands were swollen, and his fever increased. By morning, Perry sent for Dr. Boyle, whom he still considered Sumner's attending physician.

  The two doctors closely examined Sumner's wounds and found that they had both closed over. Boyle admitted that the collodion he had applied had blocked the escape of pus, as he had intended, but in so doing, had caused Sumner “to be excited and restless.” The senator's head wounds were hot and his pulse hit one hundred and four. The doctors opened the wounds, Perry noticed a “table-spoon of pus discharged,” which provided Sumner with relief from the “extreme suffering he had during the night” and enabled him to get several hours of sleep.

  Perry told congressional investigators one day later that Sumner's wounds should be considered extremely serious. “Any blow received upon any part of the head with sufficient force to cut through the scalp down to the bone…would [present] a great deal of danger to life,” he said, either from brain trauma or through the possibility of severe infection. He said Sumner was in no condition to leave his lodgings.

  During Perry's questioning, Congressman Campbell held up a hickory stick and asked: “With a cane of the specific gravity of this stick, would blows indiscriminately dealt about the head of a person be safe against death?” Perry answered starkly: “Such blows would certainly endanger the life of the subject.”

  Perry's opinion came on the heels of testimony from House doorkeeper Nathan Darling, a former captain in the Mexican War, who had witnessed and treated wounded soldiers. Darling helped dress Sumner's two large scalp wounds, and he concluded that Sumner was fortunate that the blows from Brooks's cane landed “on the thickest part of the crown” of Sumner's head. “I believe if the licks had been struck with half the force on another part of the head, they would have killed him instantly,” Darling testified.

  On the same day Dr. Perry testified before the House committee, Charles Sumner's brother George dismissed Dr. Boyle, unhappy at the treatment he was providing and likely miffed that Boyle had referred to the senator's injuries as mere flesh wounds (Southerners would later claim that Boyle was dismissed because he would not exaggerate Sumner's injuries). Dr. Perry took over Sumner's care and he brought in Dr. Harvey Lindsly, a Washington physician, as a consultant. They allowed Sumner's wounds to suppurate freely, which relieved his pain and settled his emotions. He was “more calm and composed than he had been.”

  On May 29, a week after his brother's beating, George Sumner wrote to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “The crisis has passed and our noble fellow is safe.” So it seemed.

  FOURTEEN

  HEATED DEBATE IN THE SENATE

  On Monday, June 2, ten days after the caning and following a week of dramatic testimony from twenty-seven witnesses, the investigating committee recommended the expulsion of Preston Brooks from the United States House of Representatives. The committee also called for the censure of Congressmen Henry Edmundson and Lawrence Keitt, who knew of Brooks's intentions, though not the exact time and place he would act on them.

  The 3-2 committee vote broke strictly along party and sectional lines. The two Southern Democrats, Cobb and Greenwood, dissented, insisting that the House had no jurisdiction over an attack that took place in the Senate; thus, it should “remain silent” on the matter, lest the opinion of lawmakers unduly influence the judiciary in Brooks's upcoming court case in which he faced assault charges for his attack on Sumner. Indeed, the minority report stated, by acting prior to Brooks's court appearance, the House committee was violating the jurisprudential precept of presuming a person innocent until proven otherwise: “We are at a loss to understand why it is that members of Congress cannot…enjoy the same privileges and the same protection which is guaranteed to every other citizen of this land.”

  Nonetheless, much like the Northern press, the majority report upbraided Brooks for his premeditation (“of at least two days”), his confronting of a defenseless Sumner (“the senator was in a sitting position”), his choice of weapon (“of deadly character…a large and heavy cane”), and the brutality of his attack (“the blows were indiscriminately dealt…repeated with great rapidity and extreme violence…at the hazard of the life of the assailed”). The report's conclusion left no doubt about the majority's position on the caning or the narrative that would play out in the North over the coming weeks and months: “The wounds were severe and calculated to endanger the life of the Senator, who remained for several days in a critical condition.”

  Moreover, Brooks's claim that the attack was a legitimate response to Sumner's speech was dismissed by the committee, which noted that “The Crime Against Kansas” was “lawfully spoken in debate” while the Senate was in session. Further, the speech was never ruled out of order by the Senate president, nor objected to by any senator as “violative of the rules” established by the Senate.

  The majority report acknowledged that “beyond the character of the attack,” there was no evidence to indicate that Brooks intended to kill Sumner, but simply to punish him. Regardless, the committee declared that the assault was a “most flagrant violation” of the privileges of both the Senate and the House, and of Sumner's personal rights. Perhaps worst of all, because Brooks's attack was an “aggravated assault” on freedom of speech guaranteed by the Constitution, the caning violated the “rights of [Brooks's] constituents and of our character as a nation.”

  Left unchecked and unpunished, Brooks's actions could spark “anarchy,” which would bring with it “all the evils of a reign of terror.” The Republican majority members felt they had little choice. The committee's official resolution to the full House read: “Resolved, That Preston S. Brooks be, and he is forthwith, expelled from the House as a Representative from the State of South Carolina.” The full House scheduled debate on the resolution for July.

  ——

  As restless indignation grew in the cities and towns of the North, and as the South celebrated the thrashing of Charles Sumner by one of its favorite sons, debate raged in Washington; indeed, in every sense, the caning had shifted the nation's eyes and attention from Kansas to the nation's capital.

  On June 12, the United States Senate galleries again were filled to overflowing, this time to hear South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler deliver his first major speech since his honor and reputation were tarnished in absentia by Charles Sumner three weeks earlier. Butler purported to speak about the extraordinary resolutions delivered to Congress by the Massachusetts legislature. It was virtually unheard of for a state legislature to directly petition Congress, but Sumner's home state lawmakers had blatantly ignored the unwritten rule. The joint House-Senate resolves stated that Massachusetts “approved of Sumner's manliness and courage…[in] his defence of human rights and free territory.” Further, the sharply worded resolution labeled Brooks's attack “an assault which no provocation could justify, brutal and cowardly in itself, a ruthless attack upon the liberty of speech.” Perhaps most significantly, the legislature asserted, the caning was not simply an attack upon Sumner, but “an outrage of the decencies of life, and an indignity to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

  Butler rose to his feet, first to condemn the Massachusetts Legislature's breach of protocol. But he quickly shifted focus by declaring that Preston Brooks's detractors were overreacting and that Charles Sumner had suffered mere flesh wounds “which ought not to have detained him from the Senate.” Vanity, perhaps, had kept Sumner from his Senate duties in the days since the caning, but little else. “Being rather a handsome man, perhaps he would not like to expose himself by making his appearance,” Butler said. Indeed, he argued, had Sumner been in the Army, there was no reason “he should not go to the field
the next day [after the caning]; and he would deserve to be cashiered if he did not go.”

  Infuriated, Sumner's Massachusetts colleague Henry Wilson had heard enough from Butler. Wilson had clashed with the South Carolina senator in the days immediately following the caning when he had expressed his sympathy and deep support for Sumner and had endured repeated slings from Southerners. When he declared in a May 27 speech that Sumner had been struck down “by a brutal, murderous, and cowardly assault,” Butler—who had arrived back in Washington that very morning after an arduous trip from South Carolina—stood and shouted: “You are a liar!” Butler's colleagues convinced him to withdraw his impulsive remark (the words were stricken from the official record), but the damage was done—emotions again were inflamed throughout the halls of Congress.

  Wilson was enraged at Butler's epithet, and the Massachusetts senator's anger intensified when Preston Brooks, through an intermediary, challenged him to a duel after hearing the nature of Wilson's remarks, especially his reference to Brooks as a coward. A resolute Wilson refused to withdraw his comments and declined Brooks's challenge, sending back a note that said in part: “I have always regarded dueling as the lingering relic of a barbarous civilization, which the law of the country has branded as crime.” His duty as a senator to uphold the law and his overall opposition to duels “forbid me to meet you,” he told Brooks.

  Now, two weeks later, Wilson had listened over a two-day period “with painful and sad emotions” to Butler's scathing condemnation of Sumner and spirited defense of Brooks, and he no longer could remain silent. He felt it his duty to refute Butler's outrageous claims that Sumner was exaggerating his injuries and his condition. In a long and impassioned speech, Wilson beseeched his fellow senators to sympathize with Sumner's current physical infirmities (“For more than three weeks he has been confined to his room upon a bed of weakness and pain”). He reminded his colleagues that during Sumner's more than four years in the Senate, he had been “systematically assailed” for his antislavery views by Southern senators—with Butler leading the way. Butler's repeated verbal attacks against Sumner were “calculated to wound the sensibilities of an honorable man, and to draw down upon him sneers…and hatred, in and out of the Senate.” The continued assaults on Sumner were unworthy of the Senate and “unparalleled” in its history, Wilson said.

  As for Butler's criticism of the Massachusetts legislature for sending direct resolutions to Congress, Wilson said Sumner's home-state lawmakers were only expressing the fervent views of the Massachusetts citizenry. “The sentiment of Massachusetts, of New England, of the North, approaches unanimity,” Wilson declared. With few exceptions, Massachusetts residents looked “with loathing and execration upon the outrage…[against] their Senator and the honor of their State.” Butler certainly had the right to criticize the Massachusetts resolutions, but, Wilson said, they reflected the will of the people, “and from their verdict there is no appeal.”

  One other speech, one other challenge, epitomized the powder keg that threatened to explode in Congress in the weeks after the caning. Massachusetts Congressman Anson Burlingame—a friend of Sumner's, at once ambitious and politically vulnerable, and a shrewd judge of the direction and power of populist winds—delivered a provocative speech on June 21. His most controversial language came when he accused Brooks of sneaking into the Senate, a place that had until that point “been held sacred against violence,” walked up to Sumner, “and smote him as Cain smote his brother.” South Carolina's Keitt, offended by the biblical comparison, shouted from his seat: “That is false!” Burlingame refused to “bandy epithets” with Keitt and held firm, announcing he would stand by his words.

  Burlingame closed with a crescendo, saying he denounced the caning in the name of the Constitution, in the name of Massachusetts, and in the name of civilization, “which is outraged.” Brooks's attack was not only dastardly, it was cowardly, a violation of “fair play.” The Edgefield congressman had beaten Sumner while he sat at his desk with his legs pinned. “In what code of honor did you get your authority for that?” Burlingame sneered.

  Preston Brooks, furious at Burlingame's evocative language and religious reference, immediately challenged the Massachusetts lawmaker to a duel. Unlike Wilson, Burlingame promptly accepted, insisting upon the following terms: “Weapons, rifles; distance, twenty paces; place, District of Columbia; time of meeting, the next morning.”

  But the acceptance was largely a piece of political gamesmanship by Burlingame, who was facing a tough reelection bid for his Boston seat in the fall. A friend, who would serve as his second and actually fight the duel, quickly substituted as the location for the confrontation the Clifton House in Niagara Falls, Canada, in place of Washington, D.C. Brooks and his advisors decided against participating in the duel, believing—most likely accurately—that a trip to Canada would be dangerous for Brooks. He was now so despised in the North that he ran the risk of being attacked and killed en route to the duel, perhaps by mobs in Boston, New York, or Philadelphia. Burlingame and his colleagues certainly knew this and skillfully backed Brooks into a corner; he could not follow through on his own challenge. Brooks was humiliated, Burlingame was widely criticized in the South for the sham of “accepting” a challenge from which Brooks would have to stand down, and both sides dropped the matter.

  Northerners used the derailed duel to draw a contrast between the inner strength and depth of character of Sumner and the shallowness of Brooks. Sumner, who lay injured in his quarters, was enduring great suffering in defense of free speech, itself an act of courage. Brooks, on the other hand, was a coward—when Burlingame had accepted his duel challenge, he showed his true colors and dodged the confrontation. The New York Evening Post summarized the North's reaction to the Brooks-Burlingame dustup with this ditty:

  To Canada, Brooks was asked to go,

  To waste a pound of powder or so,

  But he quickly answered, No; No; No.

  They might take my life on the way, you know.

  For I'm afraid, afraid, afraid.

  Bully Brooks's afraid.

  The Post's levity aside, the situation in Washington was dire. The inflammatory language, the clashes, the duel challenges, the opposite reactions to the caning among Northern and Southern lawmakers—these all reflected the mood of the entire country and signaled a divisiveness that bordered on the irreparable. Violence and bloodshed, once a product of the Kansas plains, had stormed their way into the United States Senate chamber. Perhaps more frightening, the response to that violence spoke volumes about the chasm between the two sections: abhorrence and condemnation in the North; jubilation and approbation in the South. When it came to the caning, the two sides spoke entirely different languages and stood on opposite sides of a fault line. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote on June 6: “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.”

  FIFTEEN

  AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

  Philadelphia crackled with anticipation and excitement as the first Republican National Convention opened at Musical Fund Hall on June 17, 1856.

  As the more than six hundred delegates and one hundred newspaper reporters made their way into the convention hall, all were aware that the events of the previous weeks—the caning, the Pottawatomie murders, the harsh debates in Congress—had generated at once both a state of national crisis and golden opportunity for antislavery Republicans. A month earlier, Republicans had considered a presidential victory in November as a distant long shot. But these dramatic events, none more so than the caning, had altered the political landscape and their outlook.

  Who would they nominate as their first-ever presidential candidate? Who would take on proslavery James Buchanan, whom the Democrats had recently nominated in Cincinnati? Buchanan was now the standard-bearer of a party that vowed to resist “in renewing in Congress or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question.” The
Republican Party, of course, was founded and built on the agitation of the slavery question. It was clear that the positions of the two parties were at the extremes of the most important issue facing the nation; it was also clear that those positions were intractable. No wonder, then, that the Republican Convention's presiding officer, Col. Henry Lane of Indiana, asserted: “We have assembled at the most important crisis in our post-Revolutionary history.”

  The Republicans were certainly a regional party—almost exclusively from the North and West, though a handful of men from border states and even the South did attend. The Evening Bulletin declared that it was “somewhat astonished” by the attendance of delegates from Kentucky, Delaware, Virginia, and North Carolina. “We had supposed in accordance with the popular impression that there would be no delegations from any southern or slave states,” the paper opined.

  Delegates got down to business quickly on the first day. Edwin D. Morgan of New York, chairman of the Republican National Committee, called the convention to order and addressed the delegates, reminding them of the high purpose for which they had gathered and the expectations the country had for the fledgling party. “You are here today to give direction to a movement which is to decide whether the people of the United States are to be hereafter and forever chained to the present national policy of the extension of human slavery,” Morgan said. The issue was bigger than sectionalism, he asserted, bigger than whether the North or South would rule the debate. The question the Republicans would help decide was “whether the broad, national policy our fathers established…is to be permitted to descend to her sons.” Regardless of the ultimate votes they would cast, delegates should “avoid all extremes,” Morgan urged. “Let us plant ourselves firmly on the Platform of the Constitution and the Union, and only adopt positions consistent with our consciences, our country, and our mankind.”