The Caning

by Stephen Puleo

  With the backdrop set, delegates adopted their platform on the first day; unsurprisingly, among its key planks were the party's firm opposition to the “barbaric” extension of slavery into the territories and the specific resolution that Kansas be admitted to the Union as a free state. But the highlight of the first day was not the platform adoption. Just prior to adjournment, Henry Wilson, the U.S. senator from Massachusetts, was invited to address the convention. As he ascended the platform, delegates erupted into a “perfect storm” of wild cheering and applause, “again and again renewed.”

  Wilson, who had helped Sumner through his ordeal, who had defended Sumner's right to speak, who had vociferously condemned Brook's attack on his colleague, had much to say to Republican delegates. Weeks of pent-up emotion tumbled forth and Wilson held nothing back in his efforts to inspire the Republicans. Never known for his soaring oratory, Wilson delivered a speech punctuated with evocative imagery, powerful language, and clarity of purpose, remarks interrupted many times by thunderous applause and delegates leaping to their feet.

  “Our object is to overthrow the Slave Power of the country, now organized in the Democratic Party,” Wilson said to tumultuous cheers. It was the slave power that had generated fear and divisiveness across America, whose members had placed lovers of freedom in peril. “Look now at our friends in Kansas,” Wilson said, “who lie down at night with the conviction that their little dwelling may be burned over them before morning, or they themselves may be murdered because they love liberty.” It is those men, Wilson said, whom the Republicans needed to fight for and represent with strength and conviction. Delegates roared when Wilson said: “I would sacrifice any man and any friend on earth to unite American Freemen for the rescue of the American Government of the United States from the power of slavery.”

  Wilson saved his most pointed and scalding attacks for the current administration of President Franklin Pierce, who, he asserted, bore the most responsibility for the country's condition. Pierce, Wilson said, dared to show himself at the Democratic Convention “with the light of the burning dwellings of Kansas flashing upon his brazen brow…with the blood of the murdered freemen of Kansas dripping from his polluted hands.” Delegates again responded with loud and sustained applause.

  But Wilson's most passionate language, and the delegates' largest roar, came during his references to the caning. “A Senator from a sovereign state…for denouncing the crime against Kansas, has been stricken senseless on the floor of the American Senate,” Wilson reminded the delegates. At this point, he was interrupted by a voice from the audience who shouted: “Three cheers for Sumner!” Delegates in the crowded hall responded with rousing cheers, over and over again. Then, another voice rang out: “Three groans for Brooks!” and delegates unleashed a storm of groans, hisses, and epithets. When Wilson resumed, he told delegates that Southerners had made threats against other antislavery men and the audience shouted in response: “Let them dare! Let them dare!”

  As Wilson reached the end of his speech, enthusiasm in the hall swelled to a frenzy. “In God's name, gentlemen of the North, resolve to do your duty and to blot out the Slave Power of the country. We can do it… I believe in my soul we can do it.” Millions of people across the country were looking with “trembling anxiety” at Philadelphia, with the hope that Republicans would band together and nominate a formidable candidate for the presidency. “Disappoint them not, gentlemen, by any petty little interest,” he warned, an admonition to resist the urge to break into factions. “Nominate a man upon whom you can unite with the most votes, and who is true to your principles.” And whomever the Republicans nominated, Wilson reminded them that the party's mission was the “cause of liberty and the cause of patriotism…the party of the Constitution and of the Union.”

  Amidst a tremendous ovation, a spent but satisfied Henry Wilson returned to his seat. Moments later, delegates adjourned the first day's proceedings and voted to resume work at ten o'clock the next morning.

  On day two, they would get about the task that Wilson had charged them with and inspired them to do: nominate a man for President who shared their principles, and, by seizing on the electrifying excitement the caning had generated, one who could win in November. Only a month ago, the possibility had been almost unthinkable.

  ——

  The convention's second day was filled with speeches and jockeying for position—the delegates had not fully abandoned their agendas or political favorites in exchange for party unity—but in the end, the Republicans nominated a national hero who embodied the boldness and grandness of the American spirit.

  Forty-three-year-old John C. Frémont had painted an adventuresome, swashbuckling, risk-taking life story across the broad canvas of two of America's most cherished milieus: the frontier and the military.

  Born in Savannah, Georgia, the son of a refugee from the French Revolution, he gained his fame as “Pathfinder of the West” for his many successful surveying expeditions and explorations. As a young man, he helped map the region between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and later explored along the Des Moines River. He then solidified his position as a nationally famous explorer and frontiersman by undertaking three great expeditions that contributed significantly to knowledge of the American West—explorations of the Oregon Trail, the Sierra Nevadas, and the Sacramento valley, during which he crossed the formidable Rocky Mountains five times. Adding to his reputation as an intrepid adventurer was the fact that he was accompanied at times by legendary scout Kit Carson.

  Frémont also served in the Mexican War, and although he was court-martialed and convicted in a command dispute between a Navy commodore and an Army general—again, contributing to his status as a rogue with an independent streak—his sentence was suspended by President James Polk. He resigned from the Army, settled in California, and, amazingly enough, promptly struck gold, again adding to the Frémont legend. After California was admitted to the Union, he served briefly (1850–1851) as one of the state's first two U.S. senators.

  Now a retired Army officer, Frémont had two main characteristics that endeared him to Republican delegates: first, he was personally opposed to slavery and politically opposed to its extension into the territories (Frémont did not favor outright abolition in places where slavery existed, believing this to be a matter for states to decide); second, his name recognition and reputation would make him a favorite in both the North and the West.

  Frémont received 359 votes for the Republican presidential nomination, followed by John McLean of Ohio with 100 votes. Charles Sumner received two votes for the nomination. Former New Jersey senator William Dayton was nominated as the Republican's vice presidential candidate, besting his nearest rival, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. Though Sumner had delivered word to the convention that he did not wish to be considered for vice president, he still received thirty-five votes. When Massachusetts delegate Samuel A. Eliot announced, “Massachusetts could not afford to lose Charles Sumner from the floor of the Senate,” delegates again responded with resounding cheers.

  When the votes were counted and the nomination complete, workers unfurled a large white banner that read: “John C. Frémont for President of the United States.” The convention erupted, as delegates flung their hats across the floor and cheered wildly. Workers quickly displayed Frémont banners in the windows to notify crowds in the streets outside, and spectators soon joined in the celebration.

  Building on the momentum of Frémont's nomination and the convention's exhilaration, organizers again asked Henry Wilson to address the crowd just before adjournment, and the Massachusetts senator did not disappoint, leading the crowd in a full-throated exchange that left him flush and the delegates delirious:

  Wilson began: “We have a glorious ticket. And now, all that is required is that we…place that ticket in power. Are you gentlemen for free speech?” There were cheers and shouts of “Aye! “Aye!” Wilson continued, “Then vote for John C. Frémont!” More cheers. “Are you for a free press—
all over the North?” The crowd shouted: “Yes, Yes!” “In Kansas?” “Of course, Yes!” “Everywhere in the territory of the United States?” Wilson's words were again met with cheers and shouts of “Aye.” “Then vote that ticket! Are you for free Kansas?” “Yes!” “Do you want to bring that young sister of ours, now in a condition of civil war, into the galaxy of free confederacies?” Loud cries of “Yes! Yes!” Wilson concluded: “Aye, gentlemen, [then] let our motto be, Free Speech, Free Press, Free Men, Free Labor, Free Territory, and Frémont! For victory!”

  As they had on day one, delegates responded to Wilson's remarks with overwhelming affection and cheers. He had identified the ticket's campaign slogan and they recognized its power. As the caning had been an affront and an attack on free speech and free expression by the slave power, the Republicans would use the nearly eponymous name of their nominee as a reminder of the freedom they cherished and the South disdained.

  They would sound that theme repeatedly during the summer of 1856, contrasting the hope that they offered for America's future with the small-mindedness that had mired Southern slave-owners in the past—and left them with little to offer the country beyond the barbarism that led to the beating of Charles Sumner.

  SIXTEEN

  TWO MARTYRS

  By late June, as bitter debate still consumed Congress, as anger swept across North and South, as Republicans reveled in their nomination of John C. Frémont and dreamed of success in November, Senator Charles Sumner had endured weeks of pain, misery, and deep melancholia.

  While thousands thronged halls, churches, and town squares to either praise or denounce him, while dynamic speakers electrified crowds by declaring him either a courageous defender of freedom's principles or an unsalvageable reprobate, Sumner remained mainly confined to his room and his bed, lonely and debilitated.

  Much of the time he was unable to think clearly, and even when he was lucid, he despaired at his inability to partake in the monumental debate that swirled around him, though he occupied its center. Slavery was still the underlying issue, but the caning of Sumner had gripped imaginations and poisoned debate like nothing ever had—not the Fugitive Slave Law, not the Kansas-Nebraska Act, not the Missouri ruffians who crossed the border to terrorize Lawrence and Topeka.

  “My fingers are quite unused to the pen,” Sumner wrote in a shaky hand to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on June 13, but Sumner said he could not let another day go by without thanking Longfellow for his friendship. He had longed for the companionship of friends during his suffering, whose support he welcomed with a “throbbing grateful heart.”

  He certainly had been heartened by well wishes from friends, colleagues, and like-minded citizens. One supporter thanked him for a “glorious speech,” and the Colored Citizens of Boston, who gathered at the Twelfth Baptist Church, offered their sympathies and condemned the “brutal, murderous assault” against a “statesman” who had long offered his services “in our behalf.” A grateful Sumner nonetheless declined an offer by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to assume his medical expenses. Responding on Sumner's behalf, Rep. Anson Burlingame wrote that the matter should “not be pressed” and instead proposed: “Whatever Massachusetts can give, let it all go to suffering Kansas.” Similarly, when a prominent lawyer proposed a fundraising testimonial on Sumner's behalf, the senator acknowledged his thanks but gratefully declined. “I trust you will not deem me too bold if I express a desire that the contributions intended for the testimonial to me may be applied…to the recovery and security of Freedom in Kansas,” Sumner wrote.

  Sumner was trying to press on, but in the weeks following the caning he was weak and disoriented. Longfellow wrote to him on June 24: “And how is it with you? Are you making the best of it? Are you getting well?” Dr. Perry reported that his patient complained of “oppressive weight or pressure of the brain,” which intensified when he engaged in conversation or became excited. It often came on in waves—a sullen Sumner described it as a “fifty-six pound weight” upon his head. At the same time he lost both “flesh and strength,” his appetite was irregular, and he often lay awake all night in terrible pain. “Increased sensitivity of the spinal cord” and “weakness in the small of his back” made his walk unsteady. “Every step he took seemed to produce a shock upon the brain,” Dr. Perry said. “After slight efforts he would lose almost entire control of the lower extremities.”

  To escape Washington's June heat and aid his recuperation, Sumner was able to move to his friend Francis P. Blair's home in Silver Spring, on the outskirts of Washington. For nearly four weeks, he lay “22 hours out of 24 on my back,” but by June 23, though he was “still very feeble,” he could “totter a mile around the garden…hoping daily for strength which comes slowly.” On the same day, he felt strong enough to write to Richard Henry Dana, thanking his friend for his speech at the Cambridge indignation meeting and asking him to pass along Sumner's thanks to Dana's daughter for her expressions of sympathy. He also apprised Dana of his condition, pointing out that his head and back injuries had caused his “whole system to be overthrown & I am obliged to keep on my bed much of the day.” Sumner lamented that, since the caning, he had written “only five letters” and only two on public matters. “When this will end I know not,” he fretted.

  Silver Spring proved too close to the action in the nation's capital. Numerous visitors called on Sumner at Blair's house, exhausting the senator. A weary Sumner went to Washington on June 25 in answer to a summons to appear before the grand jury sitting on the Brooks assault case. When Sumner finished his testimony, he felt a little better and decided to return to work. He remained in Washington for three days, wrote and dictated letters, and visited with friends who called upon him (including Dana, who was about to sail for England). This overexertion led to a serious relapse. Exhaustion consumed him and he returned to Silver Spring; for a week his doctors prohibited visitors as Sumner fought fever and his wound again suppurated. Dr. Lindsly, after examining the pale Sumner, wrote that Sumner should refrain from any public duties for “some time to come.” Lindsly also advised Sumner to “go into the country [to] enjoy fresh air.”

  On July 4, New York Senator William Seward was allowed to visit Sumner at Silver Spring and he found the patient bedridden and lethargic, “like a man who has not altogether recovered from paralysis, or like a man whose sight is dimmed and his limbs stiffened with age.” Sumner was able to converse and expressed curiosity about goings-on in the Senate, but even he admitted that his “vivacity of spirit” was gone.

  Seward was deeply concerned about Sumner's condition. It had been more than six weeks since Sumner's beating and his colleague not only seemed devoid of energy, but had turned into a sickly old man virtually overnight. “He is much changed for the worse,” Seward wrote on Independence Day of 1856. “It is impossible to regard him without apprehension.”

  There was little doubt that Charles Sumner needed more peaceful surroundings. On July 7, he arranged his affairs in Washington and headed north for further rest. In the coming months, he would stop in Philadelphia, then Cape May, New Jersey, and later, venture high into the mountains of Cresson, Pennsylvania, desperately seeking the restoration of his full health.

  One of his last acts before leaving Washington was to write to District of Columbia U.S. attorney Phillip Barton Key, informing Key that he would not be available to testify at Preston Brooks's trial in U.S. Circuit Court. Key had written to Sumner twice about arranging a voluntary appearance on behalf of the prosecution, believing there was no “impropriety” in doing so; perhaps it would even help the case against Brooks. Sumner had fulfilled his legal obligation when he had testified before the grand jury, and, particularly in his current state, that would have to suffice. “I repeat now what I expressed to the Grand Jury,” Sumner said, “I have no desire to take any part in this proceeding.”

  On July 7, 1856, Preston Brooks appeared before Judge Thomas H. Crawford in the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia to stand trial for the
caning of Charles Sumner. He was charged with assault by the U.S. attorney, rather than a more serious crime such as attempted murder, one of the several prosecutorial decisions Phillip Barton Key made that benefitted Brooks. Those decisions are best understood in the context of Key's Democratic background.

  Key, a strong states'-rights Democrat, was the son of Francis Scott Key, author of “The Star-Spangled Banner” but also the former U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., under President Andrew Jackson. Phillip Key's sister was married to a prominent Ohio Democratic congressman, and his uncle was Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who one year later would become famous for a landmark and controversial decision in support of slavery and the slave power. Like Taney, Key had little sympathy for Sumner and his abolitionist friends, and admired noble, wealthy planters such as Brooks and the Southern way of life they defended.

  It is difficult to say for certain how much Phillip Barton Key's personal beliefs entered into his approach to the case against Brooks. However, as historian Williamjames Hull Hoffer notes, in addition to charging Brooks with a lesser crime, Key insisted on reading into the record his exchange of letters with Sumner in which the Massachusetts senator explained that his continued illness prevented him from appearing in court to offer testimony. Some Sumner supporters would say later that this was a tactical error, perhaps deliberate on Key's part, that made Sumner appear both arrogant and exaggerative of his incapacity. In his own testimony later, Brooks objected to Sumner's absence and hinted that his victim had overstated the severity of the attack.

  Brooks also had a strong defense team, who put Southern lawmakers on the stand to testify that Sumner had engaged in his own premeditated offense—delivering “The Crime Against Kansas” speech. What had the abolitionist senator expected as a response?

  One day after the trial began, on July 8, a sympathetic Judge Crawford found Brooks guilty (there was no jury) and sentenced him to a fine of $300, significantly less than the $1,000 fine he had predicted he'd receive. Sumner supporters were incensed, claiming the “paltry fine” clearly showed the proslavery temperament of the federal courts in the District of Columbia and the overall proslavery leanings of Washington, D.C., in general. Brooks paid the fine and walked out of court. Later, his supporters in the South raised the money to reimburse him. The legal proceedings of the caning incident were officially concluded. The next day, Preston Brooks would face a congressional jury of his peers—the full House of Representatives was scheduled to begin deliberations on whether he should be expelled.