EIGHTEEN
THE EMPTY CHAIR
Throughout the summer and fall of 1856, Charles Sumner's continued struggles to regain his health, combined with Preston Brooks's overwhelming celebrity in the South, provided antislavery Republicans with a perfect scenario as the November election approached.
From the beginning, Republicans linked the caning with the crisis in Kansas. One day after the caning, Nathaniel Clover wrote to Sumner: “The crisis has come. Your blood in the Senate Chamber mingles with the blood of the helpless dweller in the jungle of Kansas.” The “Bleeding Kansas–Bleeding Sumner” theme became a critical part of the Republicans' campaign platform for 1856. In Indianapolis, for example, Republicans organized a parade complete with floats that dramatized the assault on Sumner and the Southern brutality in Kansas. For the North to witness “one of its best men butchered in Congress,” one supporter wrote to Sumner, offered an opportunity to see the aggression of the slave power in action. “Had it not been for your poor head, the Kansas outrage would not have been felt at the North.”
Republican strategists took full advantage of popular indignation across the North, distributing more than one million copies of Sumner's “The Crime Against Kansas” as a thirty-two-page pamphlet. They delivered speeches, deploring the fact that Southern Democrats were using the caning as a rallying cry, even as Republicans adopted the exact same strategy. They condemned celebrations across the South that lionized Brooks. One wealthy lead-pipe manufacturer in Boston, a conservative who had little in common with abolitionists, was inspired by the assault on Sumner and put all his energies and his considerable funds into making Kansas a free state. Historian Allen Nevins recounted that in five months, George L. Stearns raised $48,000 for the Massachusetts State Kansas Association, while his wife collected between $10,000 and $30,000 in clothing and supplies.
Brooks's attack and the Southern response to it were also seen by Northerners as a frontal assault on their section after years of the South's back-room political machinations and manipulation in its efforts to protect and perpetuate slavery. “We all or nearly all felt that we had been personally maltreated and insulted,” one Boston man wrote to Sumner.
This perceived attack on the entire North provided the momentum behind the biggest benefit Republicans enjoyed from the caning: the flood of moderate and even conservative Northerners who joined the party. Most of these people had no great sympathy for the abolitionist cause, and even objected to the outright abolition of slavery; many Northern businessmen worried about severe economic repercussions if the flow of cotton and other products from the South was disrupted. Yet, no reasonable Northerner could condone either Brooks's action or Southern support of it; most Northerners, regardless of their political persuasion, viewed the caning as a violent trampling of free-speech rights. One Boston businessman said that Brooks's assault “proves to me a lower civilization [in the South] than I would ever before believe,” adding that he had previously and unwisely ignored abolitionists' insistence that this was the case.
The caning offered Republicans the opportunity to attack the South without attacking slavery, thereby making an argument that was far more palatable to moderates. In essence, the Republican argument became: If the caning has unified the South, must not the North also unify to protect its interests and its constitutional rights? One Northern Democrat who joined the Republican Party after the caning did not support the abolitionist cause and continued to believe that blacks were inferior to whites, but he could no longer tolerate Southern brutality, as exemplified by the caning, to make the proslavery case. “Had the slave power been less insolently aggressive, I would have been content to see it extend…but when it seeks to extend its sway by fire & sword… I am ready to say hold enough!” To a long-time Democratic associate, he added: “Reserve no place for me. I shall not come back.”
Historian William Gienapp points out that Democrats were alarmed by the intensity of anti-Southern feeling they observed in the North. One Illinois Democrat informed the party's presidential candidate, James Buchanan, that “there is a terrible rancor in the public mind against the people and the institutions of the south—a rancor utterly uncontrollable and I do not know but it is bound to be perpetual.” In fact, Gienapp notes, conservatives were most aroused by the assault and were vehement in their denunciations of the South.
The South's reaction to the caning fueled the rancor and played right into Republican hands. Had Southerners repudiated Brooks's actions, or even remained silent, Northern Republicans would have been left with a single isolated incident that could have been attributable to one congressman who lost his temper. But the South's overwhelming approval fundamentally altered the dynamic—the congressional debate over the caning, the expulsion vote along sectional and party lines, the multitude of pro-Brooks celebrations across the South, and Brooks's over-whelming reelection all stunned Northerners. These events provided demonstrable and indisputable evidence that the South endorsed this brutality, and thus the entire South was tarred by Brooks's action.
Republicans portrayed Brooks as every Southerner, and Sumner and the North as every Southerners' victim. Each time a news account depicted Southerners rising to Brooks's defense, Republicans reinforced the image of Southerners, slave-owners in particular, as brutal and violent, and Southern society as backward and barbaric. In the opinion of the New York Times, the caning confirmed the impression that the South “will stop at no extremity of violence in order to subdue the people of the Free States and force them into a tame subserviency of its own domination.”
Throughout the summer, conservatives begged Southern congressmen not to publicly endorse Brooks's action, but Southern support of the caning continued to be a gift to Republicans. One prominent Southern banker, doing business in New York City, warned Howell Cobb, the leading Southern member of the House investigating committee, that Brooks's assault could not be justified, and that any attempt by the South to condone it “will prove disastrous in the extreme.” Another New York conservative explained: “It was not the act itself (horrible as it was) that excited me, but the tone of the Southern Press, & the approbation, apparently, of the whole Southern people.”
Indeed, well-known and staunch conservatives, who often despised the fanaticism of abolitionists, had completely altered their views after the caning and the Southern response. George Templeton Strong, a New York City lawyer, had as early as 1855 denounced the Republicans as a threat to the Union. But after Sumner's beating, he wrote: “I hold the anti-slavery agitators wrong in principle and mischievous in policy. But the reckless, insolent brutality of our Southern aristocrats may drive me into abolitionism yet.” Indeed, after the Republicans nominated Frémont, Strong announced that he planned to vote for the Republican ticket. “I belong to the insurgent plebians of the North arming against a two-penny South Carolina aristocracy,” he wrote.
Strong's conversion was repeated again and again by Northerners who simply could not stomach the violence endemic to Brooks's attack. A New York Democrat warned Stephen Douglas that the caning was doing the party “vast injury,” and added: “You can scarcely imagine how much steam they [Republicans] are getting up on the subject.” One Northern Democratic observer believed the caning would cost the Democratic Party 200,000 votes in the fall election; other key Democrats thought that the losses would be even greater.
Millard Fillmore, who was running for the presidency as a member of the American Party (a combination of Whigs and Know-Nothings) against Democrat Buchanan and Republican Frémont, saw his chances for victory dwindle as these moderate and conservative Democrats switched to Republicans. Fillmore desperately needed these voters—he portrayed himself as a middle-ground candidate for those who did not sympathize with the proslavery Buchanan, but were also wary of the ardently anti-slavery Republicans.
But the caning so altered the landscape that the middle ground was shrinking rapidly, and Fillmore recognized it: “Brooks's attack upon Sumner has done more for Frémont tha
n any 20 of his warmest friends [in the] North have been able to accomplish,” he said. “If Frémont is elected, he will owe his election entirely to the troubles in Kansas, and the martyrdom of Sumner.” He added grumpily: “The Republicans ought to pension Brooks for life.”
The single most important symbol that bolstered the Republican cause during the summer and fall of 1856 was not the deep wellspring of Southern support for Preston Brooks, nor was it Brooks's unanimous reelection to Congress following his dramatic resignation, though these were clearly beneficial to the Republicans' efforts to draw moderates and conservatives to the party.
The most visible, understandable, and emotionally charged symbol that benefited Republicans was Charles Sumner's vacant chair in the United States Senate chamber. Sumner's continued ill health and his prolonged absence from the Senate—more than five months as the November elections approached—enabled Republicans to keep the caning issue front and center. They recognized how deeply the caning had touched Northern sensibilities; Sumner's well-chronicled, highly publicized, and as-yet unsuccessful efforts to regain his health and resume his duties only heightened the caning's already powerful impact across the North. As one of Sumner's friends assured him in early October, the caning “has sunk deep in many minds, whom political tracts and politicians never reach.” Republicans inherently understood this, fully grasping that the caning, in the words of a Boston minister, raised to new heights “the greatest moral struggle of our Age and Country in the contest between American Freedom and American Despotism.”
For this reason, Republicans were in no hurry for Sumner to return to his duties. Perhaps the greatest irony during the early months of Sumner's convalescence was the senator's earnest struggle to get well even as his political allies viewed his absence as far more advantageous to the future of the Republican Party. When Sumner wrote to Wendell Phillips and said he longed again “for my place in the Senate, where I was struck down,” Phillips replied: “Your empty chair can make a more fervent appeal than even you.” Each time Sumner's doctors ordered bed rest and forbade public appearances, Republican strategists applauded. While Sumner lamented how “very hard [it was] to be…shut out not only from the duties of life, but also from the world & its society,” Republican leaders believed Sumner's continued absence from the public square offered them their best chance for success. A wounded Sumner was far more politically beneficial to Republicans than a fully recovered Sumner could ever be.
At some level, Sumner may have appreciated the symbolic value of his vacant chair to the Northern Republican cause, but his writings reflected the opposite sentiment. Sumner continued to despair at his inability to speak publicly and return to work. Though he wanted to stump for Republican candidates, Sumner's physicians prohibited such strenuous activity. “Never before could I exert so much influence by speaking,” he wrote in October, “and now nearly five months have been consumed—a large slice of human life—and I have been compelled to silence.”
Even in his reclusiveness, though, Sumner resumed his passionate writing, focusing mainly on the dire situation in Kansas. He urged Republicans to work hard for Frémont's election and the utter defeat of Buchanan, lest the nation surrender “complete control of the National Government” to “347,000 slave-masters” who sought to form a “dominant Oligarchy.” He pressed the Republicans of Rhode Island to “rise up as one man” and insist that Kansas be admitted as a free state. He contributed one hundred dollars to the New York Tribune's fundraising effort for the “relief and liberation of Kansas.” He urged the Young Men of Massachusetts to rally for the protection of liberty in Kansas, and for the “overthrow of the oligarchical Tyranny which now degrades our Republic.” He implored New York Republicans to speak out and fight against the “countless atrocities” in Kansas, which Southerners saw as a “stepping stone to the enslavement of the whole country.” Sumner urged them not to hesitate. “Freedom requires [your] vote. Is not this cause worth living for? Is not this cause worth dying for?”
But even here, Republicans were grateful that Sumner's writings would only reach individuals or small groups that were the recipients of his private letters. His insistence on making Kansas the center of the debate ran contrary to the Republican campaign strategy as the November election drew near; political operatives wanted the focus on Sumner himself, his ongoing debilitating condition and the brutal attack that left him an invalid. As historian David Donald noted, by stressing the Brooks assault, Republicans believed Northern differences of opinion could be minimized, and the “instincts, passions, and sense of liberty of the free states [could be] roused against the enormous pretensions and villainous acts of the South.”
His vacant chair in the Senate rendered Sumner despondent and Republican managers buoyant and hopeful for November. Months earlier, a presidential victory seemed unattainable for the fledgling party; now, with the caning and all its repercussions the top-of-mind issue in the North, a Frémont win looked more than possible. “I long to do something,” Charles Sumner wrote in mid-October, but Republicans knew another Sumner observation in the same letter was the key to their November aspirations: “My only chance of cure is repose.” The Republicans' hope was the Democrats' fear: that a silent, still recovering Sumner would elicit maximum sympathy among Northern voters.
* * *
More than one thousand men on horseback marched in columns, accompanying a procession of nearly twenty carriages, the whole assemblage stretching for more than a half mile along downtown Boston's Washington Street. Thousands of spectators lined the street, the men cheering and brandishing their hats wildly, the women tossing bouquets, and hundreds of residents leaned out the windows of their homes, shouting and waving handkerchiefs madly; all of these Bostonians showered praise upon the haggard and pale man who sat in an open carriage drawn by six magnificent gray horses.
After nearly a year, Charles Sumner had returned home. And on an overcast but unseasonably warm Monday afternoon in November, his fellow citizens of his beloved city turned out to pay him tribute in a remarkable display of affection and solidarity.
Sumner had arrived a day earlier at his friend Longfellow's house after a tough trip from Philadelphia. Against the advice of doctors and despite entreaties from his friends not to make the long trip—“I beseech you not to come,” Samuel Gridley Howe telegraphed Sumner on October 31, “most certainly not publicly”—Sumner was determined to return to Boston to cast votes for Frémont for president and for Anson Burlingame in his congressional reelection bid.
Early Monday morning, he was driven to the home of Amos Lawrence in Brookline, and from there traveled by coach through the town of Roxbury and to the Boston line, where hundreds of citizens and mounted riders, as well as scores of dignitaries, gathered to greet Sumner. He acknowledged their cheers, but spoke only a few words, his voice weak and lacking its usual sonorous power—only those near the carriage could hear him, and many of those who saw him up-close were over-come with emotion at his pallid condition and lack of vitality. He said his suffering was “not small” but was “little…compared with the suffering of fellow citizens in Kansas.” He felt pride that his wounds had been incurred “in the performance of duty,” and believed that together, the forces of freedom would enjoy a “final triumph.”
Then the procession made its way toward downtown Boston, picking up horsemen along the way, joined by a carriage carrying Boston Mayor Alexander H. Rice. Sumner was over-whelmed by the crowds along the route, overcome by the hundreds of flags, streamers, and banners as his carriage wound through Washington Street, Newton Street, Shawmut Avenue, Dover Street, Tremont Street, Boylston Street, Charles Street, and Beacon Street on its way to the State House. “Massachusetts loves, honors, will sustain and defend her noble Sumner!” announced one banner that was strung high across Newton Street. “Welcome Freedom's Defender!” said another on the side of a building, and plastered across a Dover Street home was another: “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” On a house at the
corner of Shawmut Avenue and Waltham Street was a sign wreathed in black that reminded all of the fateful day in the Senate Chamber: “May 22, 1856.”
Sumner, normally aloof and often icy even with close friends and family, was most touched when his carriage approached the Boston Female Orphan Asylum on Washington Street, where young girls were lined up in front of the building waving handkerchiefs and displaying on a white banner a wreath of evergreen covered with flowers, along with a sign that read: “We weave a wreath for Charles Sumner.” This was the only point along the route where Sumner rose to his feet in gratitude. “The kindness of these orphaned ones so touched his feelings, that he could not help acknowledging it in this way,” one account explained.
And so it continued, with the signs and the banners becoming more frequent and more expressive as Sumner's entourage moved closer to the State House: “No bludgeon can dim the luster of our champion of Freedom” and “Welcome home! The sons and daughters of Massachusetts greet her noblest defender” and “Infants welcome him whose name lives immortal in the hearts of his countrymen.” And from a group of women on a sidewalk: “Massachusetts's most honored son. If the ladies could vote, he would be the next President.”
The turnout, the written sentiments, and the unabashed displays of affection were all amazing—but ironic too. Charles Sumner, who had sought adulation for most of his life but found it frustratingly elusive, was now being showered in it, but his physical condition rendered him unable to enjoy it fully. Charles Sumner, who relished the role of martyr, and often anointed himself when the term did not apply, was now unable to appreciate his newfound status when the label truly was appropriate.
Still, as Sumner approached the State House, the scene must have left him awestruck. One account called it “beyond description.” Between five thousand and seven thousand citizens crowded Beacon and Park streets and the long set of stairs that led to the state capitol building itself; building rooftops were packed with thousands more. The crowd greeted Sumner's arrival with long, sustained cheers, and roared even louder as Sumner and other invited guests ascended the steps of a hastily erected platform.
The Caning Page 20
