He did not go to Washington for the fall session, but remained at Longfellow's home, attempting to clear his head and regain his strength. Longfellow noted in his diary on November 2: “Sumner…looks well in the face, but is feeble, and walks with an uncertain step.” And again on November 14, he noted that, while Sumner rode “horseback every forenoon, and [took] a walk in the afternoon,” Longfellow feared his friend had “a long and weary road before him.”
Sumner spent the weeks after the election reading and corresponding with friends and colleagues, often from bed. “I am a convalescent invalid,” he wrote in December, adding unhappily that his doctors believed he was months from a “complete recovery.” Dejected and lonely, he took great solace from the kindness of friends. A verse from abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier made the fragile Sumner's “pulse beat quick and my eyes moisten with tears.” At the same time, he confided to Whittier, he could not bear the thought that he might “survive with impaired powers, or with a perpetual disability.”
A disheartened Sumner, who was scheduled to stand for reelection to the U.S. Senate in the Massachusetts legislature in January 1857, even considered resigning his seat for health reasons, but again, his friends and fellow Republicans opposed this move on political grounds. Although the presidential campaign was over, they believed Sumner's vacant chair served as a powerful symbol that would enable them to continue to recruit new members into the party. John A. Andrew, who would soon become governor of Massachusetts and was never one for nuance, unambiguously summed up the point when he wrote to Sumner in December: “Sit in your seat if you can. If you can't let it be vacant.”
While Sumner desperately desired to speak on the issues of the day, he was discouraged by his physicians from doing so; his doctors ordered him to “take my seat and be quiet.” On one hand, perhaps this was a blessing, Sumner said, because had he spoken his heart, he feared being shot by Southern slave sympathizers. Yet his inability to return to work had drained him of energy and left him dispirited. “My chief sorrow,” he admitted to Whittier, “has been that I have been shut out from the field of action…. I long to speak and liberate my soul.”
As Christmas of 1856 drew near, both Charles Sumner and Preston Brooks, like the rest of America, wrestled with deep discouragement and, during the season of peace and goodwill, found neither.
TWENTY
THE MOST POPULAR MAN IN MASSACHUSETTS
The State House in Boston hummed with anticipation when lawmakers gathered on January 9, 1857, to reelect Charles Sumner, a testament to how much had changed in six years.
When Sumner was first chosen to serve in the United States Senate by the Massachusetts legislature in April 1851, his election was marred by acrimony and controversy. Sumner, then an arrogant, radical, self-centered, if principled, political novice, emerged as an unlikely compromise candidate only after a grueling political process—he was finally elected by a single-vote majority on the twenty-sixth ballot. Some lawmakers were satisfied, others were outraged, but none was ebullient. The general consensus, even among many of his supporters, was that Sumner might make a passable senator, but would never come close to filling the giant shoes of his predecessor, Daniel Webster. And for members of the Boston business community, Sumner's election elicited glowering disapproval on good days and uncensored cursing on bad ones.
The caning had changed everything. Sumner was still the uncompromising abolitionist, still the imperious egotist who sneered at lesser intellects and ridiculed political opponents, still the implacable narcissist who felt it his birthright to secure a revered place in the pantheon of great statesmen.
The caning had also transformed him into a symbol—of unrepentant Southern violence and barbarism aimed at destroying free speech, and of Northern solidarity aimed at counteracting Southern aggression and preserving the Union. This time, when Charles Sumner finally agreed to stand for reelection, even as he struggled to get well, lawmakers drew on a reservoir of deep affection for their wounded senator, rallying around him with a near-religious fervor fueled by his martyrdom, and borne of sectional pride and a sense of mission that transcended partisan politics and petty agendas.
Massachusetts abolitionist Lydia Maria Child typified the Northern adoration for Sumner when she wrote to him in early January begging that he send her a lock of his hair. “I do want a few hairs from your head, and if you will grant me that favor, I will not expose you to similar requests by telling of it,” she wrote, adding that Sumner could simply place his hair in a plain envelope and mail it to her. “It is no childish whim, I assure you,” she added. “You can form no adequate idea of the affectionate reverence with which I regard everything connected with you.” Child admitted that, upon meeting Sumner earlier, she had wanted to simply ask if she could clip a lock of his hair, “but that noble head, which had suffered martyrdom for Freedom, seemed too sacred for me to touch.” She assured Sumner that “God and good angels” guarded him when he ventured among slaveholding “barbarians,” who, in their “best state, are utterly incapable of appreciating a nature like yours.” Though more measured and less beatific in its description, the New York Times nonetheless confirmed that Child's overall affection for Sumner had infused the general population: “We need not, in view of recent events, point out the change which has taken place in the public sentiments of Massachusetts. It is not too much to say that Mr. Sumner is at this moment the most popular man in the state.” Prior to the caning, the newspaper's observation and the level of support for Sumner would have been unimaginable; in January 1857, it was, perhaps, inevitable.
The Massachusetts House of Representatives made Sumner's reelection its first order of business in the new year, even before receiving the governor's inaugural message (which lawmakers feared might spark arguments that would distract them from selecting Sumner). Without debate or suspense, the clerk called the roll and when he had finished, Charles Sumner had received an astounding 333 of the 345 votes cast; the 12 other votes were divided across nine other candidates. Sumner's victory in the House was fast and overwhelming, and was met with thunderous applause.
Four days later, the Massachusetts Senate met and unanimously cast their votes for Sumner. He would begin his second six-year term in the United States Senate when the new session began on March 4.
Massachusetts officials and newspapers recognized the dramatically altered political landscape that propelled Sumner to a second term. The Boston Atlas noted that his election was virtually unanimous and occurred only three days into the legislative term, contrasted with his razor-thin victory in 1851, a full 114 days into the term. Six years earlier, votes were cast in a sealed envelope, while in this latest election “every member [spoke] aloud his vote.” Six years earlier, Sumner was part of a Free-Soil Party that drew about 26,500 votes in the previous election; in 1857 Sumner was part of a Republican Party that drew more than 108,000 votes in the previous election, about two-thirds of the entire vote. And finally, whereas only two or three others shared his political sympathies in the U.S. Senate after his first election, Sumner was going back to a Congress in which Republicans had a majority in the House and 25 percent of the Senate.
All of this, the New York Times said, bestowed upon Sumner “a crown of honor which may well assuage the hope deferred of a tardy convalescence.” His friends congratulated him for his victory as well, recognizing that the overwhelming consensus of the Massachusetts legislature was virtually without parallel in the nation's history, especially in the midst of deep political upheaval. “No one can say now that you have not a constituency behind you,” wrote Richard Henry Dana. “Where is there a senator who holds such a tenure? The day has come we have all hoped and labored for—the day of something like unanimity in New England.” Seward commended Sumner on his “majestic success” and said it made him proud of Massachusetts and the abolitionist cause. J. C. Weilling wrote from Washington that Massachusetts “has honored herself again…and shown due homage to herself and you…by investing y
ou with the senatorial robe.” George Baker congratulated Sumner on his “triumphant reelection” and added: “Nothing but the election of a Republican President could give me greater pleasure.” Sumner's Senate colleague Henry Wilson said that Sumner's acclamation by the state legislature “is an illustration of the progress of our cause in our country…. How hopeful it is!” But Wilson also cautioned against Sumner returning to Washington “unless you are well…. Take time and get well before you take your seat.”
Indeed, just days after his resounding victory, Sumner confided in a letter to Abraham Lincoln's law partner, William Henry Herndon, that his “prostration has been great… I am still obliged to take to my bed at the beginning of the evening.” If at all possible, Sumner said, “My hope is to reach Washington before the [current] session closes.”
As Sumner said in his acceptance of the senatorship after he was reelected, he wanted to return to Washington as quickly as possible to perform his duty and live up to the trust the people of Massachusetts had placed in him. His near-unanimous reelection was a sign that the people of Massachusetts had forgotten their “ancient party hates” and instead had at last come together “in fraternal support of a sacred cause.” Thus, Sumner said, regardless of his personal suffering, his home state expected him to ensure that, whatever else happened, “freedom shall prevail. I cannot neglect this injunction.”
If the overwhelming election of Sumner offered evidence that Boston and Massachusetts had become antislavery hotbeds, other activities also illustrated the fact.
On January 15, abolitionists and other antislavery factions gathered at a convention in Worcester, about fifty miles west of Boston, to consider “the practicability, probability, and expediency of a separation between the Free and Slave States.” The so-called Disunion Convention was the brainchild of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who had recently returned from Kansas territory and hoped to unite both violent and nonviolent abolitionists in an effort to dissolve the union and create a slave-free nation from among the Northern and Western states. The thirty-three-year-old Higginson was energized by his quest, saying he felt younger now than when he was “eighteen or twenty, and I doubt if I shall ever feel any older.” Higginson admitted that he was so consumed by the separation plan that, while trimming his tree over the Christmas holiday, he thought about “[writing] letters to Kansas and dissolving the Union.”
The Worcester convention was a sign of just how fractured North-South—or, more accurately, free-slave—relations were after the events of a tumultuous 1856. Higginson and his fellow zealous Massachusetts abolitionists no longer talked of voting or political negotiations as a way to end slavery. “Disunion,” he wrote, “is our only hope.”
And while Higginson's views, the Disunion Convention, and Sumner's overwhelming reelection provided public confirmation of the changing sentiments sweeping across Massachusetts, it was a series of secret January conspiratorial meetings occurring in shadowy Boston offices and parlors that provided an equally ominous harbinger of the nation's future.
John Brown was in town seeking weapons and money—as much as $30,000—in the short term for the defense of Kansas against continued attacks from Missouri, but also laying the groundwork for his long-held personal dream, a planned invasion of the South to wipe out slavery forever. Brown envisioned a force of well-trained guerrillas, made up of his most rabid freedom-fighters, who would conduct lightning-quick strikes against plantations to free slaves and help them escape to the North.
While the Massachusetts legislature was fully endorsing Charles Sumner, Brown skulked from one clandestine Boston meeting to another seeking support. Still a hunted criminal in the West for the murders in Kansas, Brown was viewed by Massachusetts abolitionists and intellectuals as a symbol of the self-reliant and unjustly persecuted antislavery crusader; they either overlooked or were unfazed by the deadly violence Brown and his band perpetrated in Pottawatomie. Departing Kansas in the fall, Brown dodged federal authorities through Nebraska and Iowa, before finally arriving on safe ground in Ohio, where Governor Joshua Giddings presented him with a letter of introduction to potential contributors. Brown then stopped in New York to consult with antislavery philanthropist (and Sumner correspondent) Gerrit Smith, before arriving in Boston in early January.
His first stop was the office of Franklin B. Sanborn on School Street. The secretary of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee, Sanborn was impressed by the “tall, slender, and commanding figure” in his presence. Brown possessed a “military bearing” and at the same time expressed a religious fervor that surrounded him with the unique aura of “the soldier and the deacon,” Sanborn wrote. So impressed was Sanborn that he quickly introduced Brown to Higginson and another of Boston's militant abolitionists, Theodore Parker, who invited him to a private reception to meet William Lloyd Garrison (Brown preferred the disunion politics of Higginson and Parker, who, unlike Garrison, did not object to violence to achieve their ends). From there, he also met Boston abolitionists Amos Lawrence (of the New England Emigrant Aid Society), George Luther Stearns (who raised the $48,000 for supplies to Kansas), and Sumner's dear friend Samuel Gridley Howe.
These contacts would open the door for Brown's weapons-gathering efforts and fundraising activities that would, in a few short years, lead to his raid on the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Stearns, Smith, Higginson, Howe, Parker, and Sanborn would become known as the mysterious “Secret Six” who financed the raid (Frederick Douglass, who knew about the scheme, was actually the seventh). Higginson, particularly, supported Brown's violent brand of abolitionism wrapped in the cloak of religious extremism, describing Brown's Kansas activities as “beginning with prayers every morning, [he] then sallies forth…wherever duty or danger calls…swallows a Missourian whole, and says grace after the meal.”
By mid-January, after several successful meetings and assurances of support for his crusading antislavery army, Brown was ready to leave Boston and continue his fundraising efforts in New York. But he had one more stop to make.
Reformer and Unitarian minister James Freeman Clarke remembered the January night vividly. He had stopped by Charles Sumner's Hancock Street home to visit, where he found Sumner resting in an easy chair and talking with three other guests. Sumner introduced Clarke to one of the men, whom he identified as “John Brown of Osawatomie.” Clarke then listened as Sumner and Brown talked about Preston Brooks and his savage assault.
Sumner said to Brown: “The coat I had on at the time is hanging in that closet. Its collar is stiff with blood. You can see it, if you please, Captain.” Clarke recounted the scene that followed. Brown arose, went to the closet, slowly opened the door, and carefully took down the coat. He then stared at it for several minutes “with the reverence with which a Roman Catholic regards the relics of a saint.” There was no doubt in Clarke's mind that Sumner's bloody coat had a profound impact on Brown. “It may be the sight of that garment caused him to feel a still deeper abhorrence of slavery,” Clarke wrote, “and to take a stronger resolution of attacking it in its strongholds.”
And there was also no doubt that the coat reminded Brown—as well as Sumner and Clarke—of the righteousness of their cause. Staring at the coat, Brown likely shared Clarke's reverential conclusion that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
TWENTY-ONE
THE FIRST CASUALTY
Of all the stunning news that surrounded the Brooks-Sumner affair, beginning with the attack itself and its aftermath—John Brown's gruesome murders in Kansas, the vitriolic debate in Congress, the reactions of citizens North and South, Sumner's lengthy convalescence, the Southern accusations of shamming, the explosive growth of the Republican Party, Brooks's dramatic expulsion hearing and trial, his later resignation and unanimous reelection, the impressive showing by Frémont and the Republicans in November, Sumner's near-unanimous reelection in early January—of all of these, none startled the nation more than the dramatic telegraphic news from Washington on th
e morning of January 28, 1857.
Preston Brooks was dead.
The thirty-seven-year-old congressman had died in agony the previous evening in his quarters at Brown's Hotel in Washington, D.C. While a howling blizzard and frigid temperatures paralyzed the nation's capital outside, several of Brooks's colleagues, including Lawrence Keitt and James L. Orr, watched helplessly at their friend's bedside as Brooks clawed at his throat and struggled in vain to breathe. Two other friends and three doctors were with Brooks as well, including Dr. Cornelius Boyle, who, ironically, had first treated Charles Sumner after the caning and later announced that Sumner had suffered only a “flesh wound.”
His friends were stunned at the downturn in Brooks's condition. Five days earlier he had developed a sore throat and then a severe cold, and had taken to his bed on January 25. By late afternoon of the twenty-seventh, Boyle felt that the South Carolina congressman had passed any crisis and was, indeed, on the road to recovery. In a letter to Brooks's wife, James Orr said: “We thought he was decidedly better. I remained with him near half an hour, talking most of the time and admonishing him not to talk, but to listen.” Orr later withdrew to the parlor of Brooks's quarters, and “I never for an instant supposed he was in any danger.” Brooks's friend and predecessor in Congress, John McQueen, told his son that Brooks's death was “as unexpected as it could be, until but a few moments before he died.” Keitt concurred saying later that Brooks's demise was “so swiftly fatal…that not even [his] medical advisers believed him to be in danger,” until moments before his death. “Science availed not; skill availed not; delicate assiduous attention availed not,” Keitt lamented.
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