The Caning

by Stephen Puleo

  Brooks was ready. “I can't fight every body who denounces me,” he wrote to his brother, Ham, “[but] I shall do my full duty [and not] shrink from any issue which involves a yielding of the constitutional rights or a taming of the lofty spirit…of the southern portion of the Confederacy.” Brooks sought to allay his brother's concerns that he might face physical harm once the full House hearings began, assuring him that he was always armed “and will use my weapons if attacked.” Nor would he hear of Ham traveling to Washington to defend him. “You…must not think of [it],” he wrote. “I have as many friends as I want and never intend to permit a friend to be involved on my account.” Brooks's confidence was bolstered by his belief that, despite the threats he had received, his enemies did not have the stomach for a physical confrontation. He reassured Ham: “The dogs may bite when I kick them but, will never dare assail me, though I have fifty letters saying I shall be killed.”

  * * *

  His bravado aside, Preston Brooks was beginning to feel the pressure that accompanies fame or infamy.

  To the entire North, he was an object of scorn, representative of the incivility and increasing barbarism of slave-owners. To his beloved South, he wore the mantle of courageous hero, someone with the guts to finally silence the arrogant abolitionists after their years of insolence and repeated interference in Southern affairs. Brooks was not comfortable in either role. “The responsibility of my position is painfully heavy,” he admitted to his brother, Ham, “for I have lost my individuality in my representative capacity.” In his new role as “exponent of the South,” Republicans—“Black Republicans” as the most radical abolitionists were labeled by Southerners—were “war[r]ing in my person.” It pained him that Northerners considered him “a fair sampling of every slaveholder” or “the type, the result, of the effect of slavery.” Later, he would say with regret: “I feel that my individuality has in great measure been destroyed.”

  This would not change when the full House took up the investigating committee's recommendation to expel Brooks. The brazenness and ferocity of the caning had awakened long-buried, almost primal responses from Congressional members, and they would direct either their fury or their jubilation not toward Brooks the man, but toward Brooks the symbol: diabolical miscreant to the North, avenging angel to the South. The political order in Washington was unraveling. Debate had deteriorated, mistrust had multiplied, and compromise was no longer seen as a sign of political virtue and maturity, but merely as weakness.

  The tension was palpable when members crowded into the steamy House chamber on July 9 to debate Preston Brooks's future. To consider expelling a member was weighty enough, but every representative knew that the debate over the next few days was about far more than a lone man's fate; the nation's future could hang in the balance. Congressmen were well aware that whatever their decision, one side would be angry, perhaps irreconcilably so. Voting to expel Brooks would satisfy the North and infuriate the South; letting Brooks retain his seat would send renewed outrage through the Northern states.

  Despite the stakes and the hot weather (“I feel very languid and indisposed to exertion” admitted Thomas L. Clingman of North Carolina), representatives did not shy away from the chamber or the debate. One after another, members of the House stood and delivered lengthy speeches, in part to educate their colleagues and in part to ensure that their remarks were reprinted in the more than three thousand newspapers that Americans relied on to get their information.

  Their positions were predictable. One Tennessee congressman claimed that Brooks, “instead of deserving punishment, merited the highest commendation.” Sumner, he said, “did not get a lick more than he deserved,” and that he, as well as some members of the House deserved “a good whipping.” Through the course of their speeches, Southerners generally agreed with Rep. James L. Orr of South Carolina, who argued that Brooks felt he had a “high and holy obligation resting on him to step forward and repel the insult made on the character of his state and his relative.” Orr parroted the Southern belief that Brooks had little choice but to assault Sumner, that Sumner's intentional provocation in “The Crime Against Kansas” demanded nothing less, and that Sumner's injuries were far from serious.

  Orr also accused the North and the Republicans of using the caning for their own political purposes. He noted that eighty members of the House had voted that very morning to reprint a hundred thousand extra copies of the House committee report investigating the caucus—“one third of which is the offensive speech in full.” Why would they do so? “It is intended as an electioneering document for the Republican Party…part of a systematic effort to mislead and inflame the public,” Orr said.

  Northerners disagreed vehemently on all counts. New Jersey's Alexander Pennington said Orr's “arrow” was “pointless, though poisoned, and fell wide and short of its mark.” Setting the tone for the remarks of virtually every other Northern member, Pennington called the caning “a gross and unparalleled outrage committed upon the Constitution.” While he ascribed “no murderous purpose” to Brooks, he believed the “deadly weapon [was] wielded in a murderous manner.” This could not stand in a nation that cherished the right of free speech. If individuals were protected by the First Amendment against lawsuits, fines, and imprisonment for speaking out, was it not also reasonable to protect them against the “bludgeon of the bully, the ruthlessness of the ruffian, and the assaults of the assassin?”

  And on and on it went, for nearly six full days inside the sweltering House chamber, with neither side offering quarter nor compromise. Every Northern representative sounded themes similar to Pennington—that the caning was an attack against the laws of the nation. Orr spoke for virtually all Southerners (though three Southern lawmakers did agree that the House at least had jurisdiction to censure Brooks)—they maintained that Brooks's action was in retaliation for personal insults against his relative and his region. These arguments spoke volumes about how far apart North and South were on this issue, and by extension, on the issue that lay at the root of the caning: slavery. Debate did not soften battle lines between sections; instead, the two sides dug in and reinforced their positions.

  When debate was exhausted, House Speaker Nathaniel Banks of Sumner's home state of Massachusetts requested a roll-call vote on the committee's motion to expel Brooks from the House. For one of the first times in recent memory, the slave power was outnumbered, but not by enough. A two-thirds majority vote was required to pass the expulsion resolution, and Preston Brooks knew the Republicans did not have the votes. Three weeks earlier, Brooks had predicted that about 120 members of the House would vote in favor of his expulsion and 70 would vote against the measure; while those numbers would fall short of the two-thirds majority required to expel him, he admitted such a margin would be “censure enough for me.” Brooks actually had underestimated his support.

  After nearly a week of debate, the House voted 121 to 95 to expel Brooks, a full 23 votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority. All but one of the majority votes were from the free states. Thirteen free-state Democrats voted with Southerners against the expulsion resolution. The House also fell short of the necessary two-thirds majority to officially censure South Carolina's Lawrence M. Keitt, and the vote to censure Henry Edmundson was defeated outright.

  Immediately after the humiliating though mostly symbolic July 14 vote, a proud and wounded Preston Brooks requested and was granted permission to address the House.

  Brooks had remained silent during the debate about his future, trusting his defense to his colleagues and friends “who are abler and more learned than myself.” He believed the issues under discussion transcended his particular interests and deed, and affected his constituents, the House, and “the Constitution itself.” Now, though, it was time.

  Flanked by Senators Butler and Mason, who remained seated, Brooks stood tall and surveyed the packed House galleries, his neat wavy brown hair, natty goatee, piercing eyes, and defiant demeanor all reflecting his position
as a Southern gentleman and a proud representative of Edgefield and South Carolina.

  He began, as his Southern brethren had argued, by insisting that the caning was a “personal affair,” carried out in retribution for Sumner's attack on Butler and South Carolina. Had he not responded, Brooks believed he would have forfeited his own self-respect, “and perhaps the good opinion of my countrymen.” By taking actions into his own hands, Brooks said he meant “no disrespect” to the Senate nor to the state of Massachusetts.

  But beyond those acknowledgments, Brooks expressed no contrition for his attack against Sumner, nor did he believe the House had any authority to censure him, let alone vote on expulsion. Interrupted by both applause and hisses—Speaker Banks threatened to clear the House galleries of spectators—Brooks argued that if he had committed any “breach of privilege,” it was against the Senate and not the House, yet the Senate had chosen not to act on the issue. The House's argument that its authority extended to every member regardless of where transgressions occurred was absurd on its face, Brooks said. “How far does your authority extend?” he asked. “Across the Potomac? To my own home?” Would Brooks be punished by the House if he returned to South Carolina, found that “one of my slaves had behaved badly in [his] absence,” and ordered the slave flogged?

  Of course not, Brooks argued. The Constitution itself provided him with the authority to “inflict [punishment] upon my slave, who is my property.” Thus, the House's claim that it had the power to wield authority over the behavior of its members outside the chamber was irrational, immoral, and unconstitutional. “If your authority goes into the Senate Chamber, even when the Senate is not in session, why should it not go into the ante-rooms and down the steps of the Capitol?” Brooks wondered sarcastically. “Why not pursue me into the Avenue, into the steamboat, to my plantation.” And yet, Brooks argued, that's exactly what his House colleagues had done, and in so doing, his peers had judged him “to posterity as a man unworthy…of a seat in this Hall. And for what?”

  Brooks scoffed at Pennington's assertion—even while he insulted him personally for his girth—that the attack on Sumner had carried with it “an intent to kill.” Nonsense, Brooks declared. “If I desired to kill the Senator, why did I not do it? You all admit that I had him in my power.” Brooks reiterated that it was precisely because he wanted to spare Sumner's life that he chose an “ordinary cane” as his weapon. Otherwise, he might have committed a murderous act that he would have “regretted the balance of my natural life.”

  Disgusted with most House members who voted to expel him, Brooks said he had been pursued with “unparalleled bitterness,” and yet he would not give them the satisfaction of renouncing his actions in any way. “If they are satisfied with the present condition of this affair, I am,” he said. He thanked his friends and especially offered his gratitude to colleagues from non-slave-owning states who voted against his ouster. Even a few of those who voted to expel him likely “have been extorted by an outside pressure at home,” rather than holding the genuine belief that Brooks should be removed against his will from the House. And while he “owed respect” to those who voted against him without resorting to personal attacks, Brooks hoped they would understand that, from this moment forward, “my self-respect requires that I shall pass them as strangers.”

  Preston Brooks knew how the vote would turn out. He knew Republicans would lack the two-thirds majority to expel him, but he was deeply rankled and insulted that a simple majority of members would declare him unfit to serve in the House any longer. He had “long foreseen” the outcome, was “altogether prepared for it,” and as such, had ten days earlier placed a letter announcing his resignation with the governor of South Carolina, “to take effect the very instant that I announce my resignation upon this floor.”

  Defiant and unbowed, Brooks finished his remarks before the House with an expected but still dramatic flourish: “And now, Mr. Speaker, I announce to you and to this House, that I am no longer a member of the Thirty-Fourth Congress.” Brooks strode from the House chamber, and, after being thronged at the doorway by sympathetic Southern women who embraced and kissed him, left the Capitol building.

  Preston Brooks's absence from the House of Representatives was short-lived. On July 28, South Carolina held a special election in Brooks's congressional district to fill the seat he had resigned. Legally eligible to seek reelection, Brooks did so (as did Keitt, who, two days after Brooks, resigned in the wake of his own censure). He urged his loyal constituents to return him to office “with an unanimity which will thunder into the ears of fanaticism the terrors of the storm that is coming upon them.”

  He ran without opposition and remained in Washington in the weeks prior to the election, two factors that would normally depress turnout. Instead, his constituents turned out in huge numbers to show their support—Brooks received nearly eight thousand votes, 30 percent more than his 1854 regular election total.

  On August 1, he returned to the House chamber, approached the rostrum, and Speaker Banks administered to him the oath to support the Constitution of the United States. Three weeks after his dramatic resignation, Congressman Preston Brooks resumed his seat as the representative of South Carolina's Fourth District.

  Even more remarkably, in the regular Congressional election in the fall of 1856, though some of the initial excitement of the caning would subside, Brooks would again run unopposed and carry the day without a single dissenting write-in vote in the entire congressional district. “For inflicting merited punishment, the entire South has applauded and commended me, and placed me in the position as representative,” Brooks would assert.

  Such universal adulation incensed Sumner's supporters, but at the same time, Brooks's meteoric rise to fame in the South provided powerful fuel to stoke the fires of the Republican Party sweeping across the North.

  SEVENTEEN

  SHAMMING ILLNESS

  Abolitionist and women's rights advocate Jane G. Swisshelm was shocked at Charles Sumner's condition when she met with him in late August: “When he rises from his chair, he takes hold of the table,” she wrote. “His gait, at a first glance, appears that of a man of ninety years of age.” He walked like a man “creeping through a darkened chamber under the influence of a paroxysm of nervous headache.”

  The description was part of a long letter Swisshelm wrote that was published by the New York Times on August 23, 1856, an update to readers on Sumner's convalescence. Swisshelm had visited Sumner at the health resort of Dr. Robert M. Jackson, a physician in the town of Cresson, Pennsylvania, high in the Allegheny Mountains, where Sumner had retired for rest, fresh air, and exercise. While Sumner assured Swisshelm that he was improving, she feared the Massachusetts senator was deluding himself by his insistence that he would return to Washington in two weeks. “Ever since his injury, he has been going to be ‘quite well’ in two weeks,” she wrote in her letter, “[yet] sometimes he feels a pressure on the top of his head, and [his injury] appears to hurt him when he walks; but he [still claims he] will be ‘ready to go’ to Washington ‘in two weeks.’” Swisshelm was deeply concerned: “Mr. Sumner crowds everything from my thoughts just now,” she wrote.

  With the exception of brief intervals of improvement, Sumner had suffered badly through most of the summer. In addition to intense pain, he was beset with fear, feebleness, fever, and frustration. From Cape May, New Jersey, he wrote to Samuel Gridley Howe in late July: “I feel as if [I'm] composed of gristle instead of bone, and am very soon wearied by walking, which induces a pressure on the brain.” Frustrated and demoralized by his debilitating condition, Sumner exerted the additional strain on himself for being absent from the Senate “at a moment when more than ever in my life I was able to wield influence and do good. This has been hard to bear.”

  Upon his move to the Alleghenies, Sumner showed initial improvement, writing exuberantly to Ralph Waldo Emerson on August 16: “At last I am physically convalescent. Three times, in this mountain air, I have ridden on ho
rse-back, & I begin to feel returning strength.” Later in the month, he informed Salmon P. Chase that he was becoming stronger and had ridden horses for ten consecutive days. He wondered when his physician would consider it “safe…to make any mental effort.” But then he suffered another setback and Sumner's doctor urged the senator to remain in Cresson for at least another month. Sumner longed to be heard on the issues of the day. “I have felt this divorce from my public duties at this time keenly,” he confided to Chase. Sumner was so dispirited that his injuries had prevented him from speaking his mind during such a crucial period in history that he said he would trade his entire political future for “three weeks of strength” near the close of the congressional session.

  Sumner's friends and fellow Republicans urged the senator to show restraint and patience, and indeed, to rest for the remainder of the session; otherwise they feared a severe relapse and potentially deadly consequences. “You will lose everything if you quit that invigorating mountain air,” wrote the Rev. William H. Furness from a stifling Philadelphia, “and [you] run the hazard of being an invalid for months to come.” Former Boston mayor Josiah Quincy concurred: “I entreat you, my dear friend,” he wrote to Sumner on August 22, “not to think to act on public affairs until your health is firmly restored.”