The Caning

by Stephen Puleo

  More foreboding, in Dr. Brown-Séquard's view, was that Sumner “could not make use of his brain at all. He could not read a newspaper, could not write a letter.” Indeed, the physician wrote, Sumner was “in a frightful state as regards the activity of the mind, as every effort there was most painful to him.” Sumner felt at times “as if his head would burst; there seemed to be some great force within pushing the pieces away from one another.”

  Brown-Séquard immediately recommended “active treatment” to cure Sumner—in the words of one account, “the application of a system of counter-irritants in order to reach the malady in the cerebral system and in the spine.” In lay terms, Dr. Brown-Séquard planned to burn Charles Sumner.

  Over a two-week period in June 1858, Brown-Séquard would subject Sumner to “fire” treatments that would take the senator to the limits of his physical endurance. Without anesthetic—Sumner believed the treatments would be more effective that way—Brown-Séquard six times applied a flaming compress, or “moxa,” usually made of rolled cotton wool, to Sumner's bare skin, burning Sumner up and down his back and neck, tracing the length of his spinal cord. Brown-Séquard told Sumner that the treatment—nonsense by modern standards, but considered advanced for the time (though the doctor did have contemporaneous critics)—was necessary to offset the injury his spine had suffered from the nature of Brooks's caning. When a blow is struck atop the head, especially when the victim is seated, Brown-Séquard explained to Sumner, “the shock follows the spinal column until it reaches what is termed the point of resistance. Here the shock stops, and at this point there arises the germ of future trouble.” Brown-Séquard likened the sequence of events to trying to drive a nail into hard wood; the blow does not necessarily bend the head of the nail, but the weakest point along the shaft. Sumner's skull protected his brain, but the beating had injured two points along his spinal cord; an upper irritation affected Sumner's brain function, a lower irritation “caused the pain which gave the appearance of paralysis” in the legs.

  Fire treatments, Brown-Séquard said, would reduce excess fluid in the brain and spinal cord, thus easing the pressure on Sumner's back. While the treatments would be intensely painful, the doctor warned that without them, Sumner would remain “a permanent invalid, always subject to a sudden and serious relapse.” Sumner instantly took a liking to Brown-Séquard, who gave him “such confidence” that “I put myself at once in his hands.”

  Brown-Séquard's warning that the fire treatments and their aftermath would cause distress was no exaggeration. Sumner suffered unspeakable pain during his six treatments, each of which lasted between five and seven minutes. “Fire is a torment when it is on your bare skin, & also still more, if possible, in its consequences,” he wrote to Howe. “I have been tormented by blisters at every gradation of inflammation and suppuration. What is life on such terms?” He added: “I walk with pain; lie down with pain; rise with pain.” To Parker he said the fire left him with a “cross of blisters and inflammations.”

  Expressing pride that “the Dr. has never before applied the fire without chloroform” to anesthetize the pain, Sumner refrained from crying out during these excruciating treatments, instead “constraining all expressions of pain,” and concentrating on the great martyrs of history such as St. Lawrence and Prometheus, “and also of many others in the list of fire-suffering,” including British Protestant leader John Rogers, who was burned at the stake. Brown-Séquard was impressed with Sumner's resolve. “I have never seen a man bearing with such fortitude as Mr. Sumner has shown, the extremely violent pain of this kind of burning,” he marveled at the time. Years later, the doctor told a news reporter that he had subjected Sumner “to the martyrdom of the greatest suffering that can be inflicted on modern man.”

  The aftermath of the burnings was almost as painful as the fire itself. After the initial six fire treatments, Brown-Séquard allowed Sumner several weeks of respite from the painful procedure, but in the ninety-degree temperatures of Paris that summer, Sumner found little relief. The open, suppurating wounds kept him in agony. “For five weeks, I have not been able to lie on my back or to turn over in my bed,” he wrote to Longfellow in mid-July, adding that the fire had driven the pain into one of his legs, which he described as “sadly disabled.” Sumner was disoriented, dispirited, and uncomfortable. One day in July, he admitted to Howe: “My plans are all disordered. This evening—in an hour—my doctor comes again—perhaps to burn me. But it is still unsettled how long this treatment will continue.”

  Later in the summer, Sumner left Paris and traveled to Aixen-Savoie to try the famous mineral baths, a marked contrast to the violent fire treatments. “The quiet of my present retreat and my incognito is a luxury,” he wrote to Charles Francis Adams in September 1858. “[The] treatment which I pursue is in entire contrast with those dismal experiences in Paris.” Sumner enjoyed the “hot and cold douches” that were applied to his bath, though they exhausted him; still, despite spending anywhere from four to six hours in bed after his baths, he found time each day to “ramble in this beautiful country.”

  Back home, there were some in Boston who believed Sumner should resign; citizens were growing increasingly impatient with the length of his convalescence. Unwilling to resign, unable to return to his duties, Sumner in November 1858 sought to short-circuit the calls for his resignation by issuing a public statement from Brown-Séquard and other consulting physicians on the state of his health. They agreed that Sumner “was still suffering from the injuries he received more than two-and-a-half years ago.” They also considered it “unadvisable for him to return to his public duties during the present winter,” but they assured the Massachusetts public that they had “great confidence that he would surely recover.”

  Sumner himself wrote in November that he “wish[ed] that I could say that I am well.” While he had made positive gains, while he could now endure “a certain amount of fatigue without provoking bad symptoms,” his pain was not entirely gone—not from Brooks's cane and not from Brown-Séquard's fire treatments. “I cannot express my disappointment & mortification that I find myself still halting about with a broken back,” he lamented.

  Sumner's literal trial by fire made for good newspaper copy back in the United States and rekindled North-South debate about just how much the senator was suffering.

  Northern, primarily Republican, papers carried detailed accounts of Dr. Brown-Séquard's fire treatments in an attempt to accomplish several things: stave off Northern voices that suggested Sumner resign (how could they be so heartless while he endured such pain?), put the lie once and for all to the Southern theory that he was shamming (why would anyone subject themselves to such excruciating treatments under false pretenses?), and create what amounted to a second martyrdom for Sumner as a way to remind the country of the long-term and barbaric effects of the caning. The Paris correspondent for the New York Tribune, who acknowledged that Sumner's “morale is sound,” also reminded his readers on July 9: “Now, fire is fire, and the quality of it is to burn, as sure as the ‘property of rain is to wet.’” At the same time, that Sumner endured the fire treatments without a chloroform anesthetic was a tribute to his fortitude, the “wonderful recuperative powers of his constitution” coupled with his “vigor of will.”

  Southern papers did not focus so much on the “shamming” issue any longer, but simply questioned the veracity of the reports about Sumner's health. Southerners had developed a pattern of criticism of this nature against the North since the caning—that deception was part and parcel of the North's modus operandi and that the South should trust neither words nor motives of Northerners, particularly Republicans. The Charleston Courier questioned whether Dr. Brown-Séquard's fire treatments even occurred. “[They] are only known through the reports of anonymous and irresponsible correspondents,” the paper noted. Echoing other reports, the Courier also expressed its disdain for Sumner's tendency to make the condition of his health a matter of public record. “The creature…could not deny h
imself the pleasure of parading his simulated sores and sorrows,” the editor said.

  Surely, the paper opined, even if Sumner had been injured, he certainly had regained his health by now; how else could one explain his lengthy “excursion” across Europe? The stories of his “terrible” fire treatments at the hands of Dr. Brown-Séquard, “so eloquently detailed,” were exaggerated by reporters and correspondents to offset the numerous reports of the “entertainment” Sumner enjoyed while on his lengthy European stay.

  The South's reaction does beg the question: If Sumner was not shamming, and there is no evidence to suggest he was, what was the nature of his malady? Why did it take him so long to get well? The answers involve a combination of physical and mental ailments that plagued Sumner following the caning.

  Physically, Sumner almost certainly suffered brain trauma, perhaps swelling, when Preston Brooks beat him over and over again with his cane, as well as an infection from his scalp wounds. It also seems indisputable that he sustained a serious shock and at least a temporary injury to his spinal cord.

  But these alone do not account for the fact that Sumner was debilitated for so long. The stress, headaches, and mental anguish that he complained of throughout his absence from the Senate indicates a form of psychosomatic infirmity; Sumner's biographer, David Donald, likens the affliction to what modern physicians label as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Sumner suffered his worst pain when he turned his attention to work matters, or when he visited (or got close to) Washington, D.C., and sat in the Senate chamber where he was attacked. He relapsed more than once in Washington and his condition improved after he left the city. He was able to tour Europe—hike mountains, swim lakes, walk cities—for long periods with few if any symptoms, yet he often suffered severe headaches after a single day back in the Senate chamber.

  Sumner's friends refused to authorize an autopsy after his death in 1874, so the extent of the physical damage to his brain and spinal cord could never be determined. But, in the words of David Donald, “it is clear that the Brooks assault produced psychic wounds that lingered long after the physical injuries had disappeared.”

  While Sumner's fire treatments did nothing to improve his health, the pain he endured convinced him once again of his martyrdom status and the ultimate righteousness of his cause. Simply put, Sumner's suffering in Europe redoubled his commitment to the antislavery cause in America. “In my solitary days and sleepless nights, I have ample time to meditate on the brutality of Slavery, and the heartlessness of man,” he wrote to Parker from Paris. While he despaired of his condition, he reminded himself that slaves suffered far worse every day.

  He was influenced and buoyed by the antislavery sentiments he experienced throughout his European travels. Regardless of the country he visited, whether he toured galleries or museums, dined with royalty or intellectuals, attended lectures or exhibits, many of his contacts expressed astonishment that the Southern slave power held such authoritative sway in the United States, or that slavery was allowed to exist in a nation that professed liberty and equality. “This anomaly makes it impossible for the liberals of Europe to cite our example,” he wrote. Instead, Sumner explained to Salmon Chase, slavery “degrades us in the family of nations and prevents our example from acting as it should…. Liberty everywhere suffers through us.” Europeans scoffed at the American notion that “all men are created equal.”

  Sumner vowed that he would get better, would return to Washington and reclaim his Senate seat, and would continue his passionate antislavery fight with renewed tenacity. During his fire treatments, he distracted himself from the pain and drew strength from pondering how he would deal with slave-owners when he returned to Washington. “If health ever returns I will repay to slavery and the whole crew of its supporters every wound, burn…ache, pain trouble, grief which I have suffered,” he promised Howe. “That vow is registered.”

  Sumner finally began to feel better late in 1858, and in March of the next year, he wrote with some trepidation to Howe: “Many gloomy hours I have passed and much pain I have endured. But I believe this is past.” In April 1859, he felt well enough to visit Italy, where he toured much of the country, and over the summer spent three wonderful weeks in Rome, a city he loved. From Turin on May 18, he wrote: “I am satisfied that I have completely turned the corner. I can walk and do many things which I could not do 6 weeks ago.”

  He returned to Paris in June 1859, where he paused and reflected on his entire ordeal in a long letter to Theodore Parker. While expressing optimism that “my days without hope have passed,” Sumner did seize upon his martyr's status and offered a piteous assessment of his recuperative efforts since the caning: “I have suffered so much, where I never took a step without an ache, a strain, or a smart.” It was hard for Sumner to believe that he had experienced the passing of “3 years…as an invalid,” years wasted thanks to, in his mind, the insensible, inexplicable, and unprovoked attack by Preston Brooks.

  He had experienced firsthand the violence and barbarism he had so long publicly deplored among slave-owners. But now he felt that his pain and suffering were behind him. To Longfellow he promised: “In the autumn expect me back well—my long suffering ended—and ready for action.” On November 5, 1859, nearly two-and-a-half years after the caning, Charles Sumner sailed from Liverpool bound for the United States, longing to return home and join the fight once again. During his absence, he had missed a great deal, most of it related in some way to the caning and the environment it had created.

  * * *

  Charles Sumner had been on his first post-caning visit to Europe and was just beginning a whirlwind tour of the French provinces when America learned of the death of Andrew P. Butler, esteemed United States senator from South Carolina.

  Butler died on May 25, 1857, six months shy of his sixty-first birthday, and just over a year after Charles Sumner had made him the object of derision and insults in “The Crime Against Kansas” speech. Surrounded by friends and loved ones, Butler died peacefully at his Stonelands residence in Edgefield, where he had been born in 1796 to a father who fought in the Revolutionary War and a mother “of great strength of mind and unusual force of character.” One South Carolina congressman said later that Butler's “last visions of earth were of those scenes most endeared to him by the memories of his past life.”

  For Edgefieldians and South Carolinians, Butler's death was a particularly bitter blow, in some ways even more devastating than Preston Brooks's demise four months earlier. Both sons of Edgefield were deeply mourned, and both deaths were viewed as harbingers of severe and unpleasant changes ahead for the South. But Brooks's remarkable popularity and heroism emanated from one gripping, flash-flood event; much, though certainly not all, of the sympathy he evoked stemmed from the suddenness of his death at such a young age, and the symbolic nature of what he and the caning represented to Southern values and ideals. Butler's death was perceived differently. He had developed a deep reservoir of genuine affection and good will over more than two decades of serving constituents. A graduate of South Carolina College and a lawyer, Butler had been named by the South Carolina legislature to a seat on the state's Supreme Court in 1833, and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1846, joining the legendary Calhoun as South Carolina's representatives in the upper chamber.

  The caning had elevated Preston Brooks to larger-than-life status, placing him upon a pedestal for the pride his actions engendered across the South and the protection the caning provided for the entire Southern way of life. Butler was beloved simply for his strength of character, his intellect, his congeniality, and his long-time distinguished service to his constituents in the Palmetto State.

  It was the warmth of his personality and his sharp mind, coupled with the fact that his political ascendancy occurred during a less incendiary time, which also endeared Butler to many Northerners. Ironically, Butler and Charles Sumner became fast friends when the Massachusetts legislature sent Sumner to Washington in 1851, mainly because they shared so
many common pursuits. Both men deeply respected the law and loved art and literature. Both enjoyed intellectual rigor and often made classical allusions and references in their speeches and other public utterances. Both senators relished conversation and debate. Both possessed a deep, rich passion for their positions and articulated their points of view with eloquence.

  But during the heat of the slavery debate, from around the time of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, their friendship deteriorated rapidly. The camaraderie Butler and Sumner may once have shared thanks to their common ability to recite Shakespeare, quote Cicero, or appreciate Renaissance art simply was not enough to heal the deep fissure that slavery had gashed across their relationship, their states, and their sections. Ironically, again, it was their respect for the Constitution that fueled their deep and opposite beliefs: Butler embraced the long-cherished Southern view that the Constitution guaranteed slave-holding property rights; Sumner believed slavery was a violation of the spirit of equality espoused in the Declaration of Independence, which the Constitution was created to codify and protect.

  In 1856, Sumner's Kansas speech and Preston Brooks's retaliatory attack on Sumner had—rapidly, finally, and after two years of erosion—washed away any common ground Sumner and Butler might have shared.

  Congress was not in session when Butler died, so the remarks of lawmakers were not entered into the record until December 1857, when they returned to Washington. Sumner was back in his seat briefly when Butler was eulogized, but offered no comments. In fact, the glowing words spoken by senators and representatives likely contributed to the “pain and exhaustion” Sumner felt while in the Senate chamber. While he did not speak or write about his reactions to the tributes to Butler, he must have grimaced to hear colleagues refer to Butler as “generous, kind, and forgiving,” to portray his motives as “always right,” to describe his soul as “full of authentic fire,” and to declare that “you could almost hear the beatings of his heart in the tones of his voice.”