Secondary Sources
UNPUBLISHED WORKS
For a compelling overview of the caning, particularly from the Southern sense-of-order perspective, I recommend Joel Harlan Gradin's Ph.D. dissertation, “Losing Control: The Caning of Charles Sumner and the Breakdown of Antebellum Political Culture” (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1991).
I also found helpful another paper that looked at the caning from a Southern perspective entitled: “Preston Brooks in the Verbal and the Visual: Showing Face to Save Face and Avoid Disgrace in the Antebellum South,” an honors thesis for a bachelor's degree in history by Margot Bernstein (Williams College: 2010).
ARTICLES, ESSAYS, AND PERIODICALS
I made use of the following in my research for Sumner, Brooks, and the caning in general:
“Charles Sumner.” United States Magazine, 3 (July–December 1856), 355–358.
Dietrich, Ken. “Ever Able, Manly, Just and Heroic: Preston Smith Brooks and the Myth of Southern Manhood.” Proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Association (2011), 27–38.
Fleming, Thomas. “When Politics was Not Only Nasty… But Dangerous.” American Heritage (Spring 2011), 56–63.
Friefeld, Jacob. “Honor and Blood: Brooks, Sumner, and Conceptions of the Body in Nineteenth-Century America.” Historyroll.com (September 2010), 11 pages.
Gienapp, William E. “The Crime Against Sumner: The Caning of Charles Sumner and the Rise of the Republican Party.” Civil War History (September 1979), 218–245.
Mathis, Robert Neil. “Preston Smith Brooks: The Man and His Image.” South Carolina Historical Magazine (October 1978), 296–310.
Slusser, Daniel Lawrence. “In Defense of Southern Honor: Preston Brooks and the Attack on Charles Sumner.” CalPoly Journal of History, 2 (2010), 98–110.
BOOKS
The finest biography on Sumner is the two-volume work by David Herbert Donald, and I especially consulted the first volume, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), which discusses the caning and Sumner's convalescence in detail. I spent some time with the second volume, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), to understand Sumner's stances during the Civil War and Reconstruction, as well as the magnitude of his death.
I also found extremely helpful the contemporaneous four-volume work by Edward Lillie Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1878–1893), which contained many primary sources (speeches and letters) as well as Pierce's well-written—if overly charitable—narrative.
The definitive Brooks biography has yet to be written, but I consulted several books that contained references to Brooks and provided a flavor for the plantation South of which he was a part. These include: Orville Vernon Burton, In My Father's House Are Many Mansions (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985); Lacy K. Ford, Jr., Origin of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800–1860 (New York: Oxford, 1988); Daniel Walker Hollis's multivolume history of the University of South Carolina, Vol. 1, South Carolina College (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1951), which provided primary source documents related to Brooks's rebellious days as an undergraduate student.
Also, see Alvy King's biography, Louis T. Wigfall: Southern Fire-Eater (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970), which chronicles the feud between the Brooks and Wigfall families; Ernest M. Lander, Reluctant Imperialists: Calhoun, the South Carolinians, and the Mexican War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980); Lorman A. Ratner and Dwight L. Teeter, Jr., Fanatics and Fire-eaters: Newspapers and the Coming of the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), which provided analyses on the power of the press in the 1850s; Charles Grier Sellers, Jr., The Southerner as American (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960); and Steven M. Stowe, Intimacy and Power in the Old South: Ritual in the Lives of the Planters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).
In addition, I found two other books helpful to gain perspective into Preston Brooks's South: (author unnamed) The Story of Edgefield (Edgefield, S.C.: Edgefield County Historical Society, 2010); and a short publication written by Katharine Thompson Allen and edited by Elizabeth Cassidy West, The University of South Carolina Horseshoe: Heart of the Campus (Columbia: Produced by the University of South Carolina Archives, University Libraries, University of South Carolina, undated).
For another short academic treatment of the caning and related issues, plus brief analyses of other major issues of the time, see Williamjames Hull Hoffer's The Caning of Charles Sumner: Honor, Idealism, and the Origins of the Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).
KANSAS AND JOHN BROWN
Primary Sources
As mentioned, scores of Charles Sumner's letters and multiple pages in the Congressional Globe deal with the debate about Kansas and with John Brown—both Brown's murderous ram-page in Kansas and his raid on Harpers Ferry. This section highlights additional sources that focus on Kansas and John Brown.
There is rich and valuable information on the dire situation in territorial Kansas at www.territorialKansasonline.org (accessed frequently), which contains diaries, letters, legislative proceedings, and other primary sources.
In addition, the Assumption College E Pluribus Unum Project, a collection of documents and analyses of three American decades (1770s, 1850s, 1920s) contained some excellent primary sources that help analyze the situation in Kansas. I accessed this collection frequently at www.assumption.edu/ahc/Kansas.
Similarly, there is a fine collection of sources, including affidavits and testimony from the families of John Brown's murder victims in Pottawatomie, at West Virginia's online Archives and History site: www.wvculture.org/history (accessed frequently).
James Henry Hammond's “Cotton Is King” speech before the United States Senate in March 1858, during the discussion on the admission of Kansas, is reprinted in numerous publications and online sites. See www.sewanee.edu/faculty/Willis/Civil_War/documents/HammondCotton.html for the reference I cited (accessed February 6, 7, 2012). Senator Andrew Butler's June 12, 1856, speech on whether Kansas should form its own constitution as it prepared to enter the Union is available at www.hti.umich/edu (accessed frequently).
Senator Stephen Douglas's committee's lengthy report (March 1856) relative to the “Affairs of Kansas” is available in the Congressional Globe (34th Congress, 1st Session).
Secondary Sources
UNPUBLISHED WORKS
For an interesting and well-researched look at the relocation of New Englanders to Kansas Territory, I found helpful Tracee M. Murphy's history master's thesis, “The New England Emigrant Aid Company: Its Impact on Territorial Kansas, 1854–1857” (Youngstown State University, 1999).
ARTICLES, ESSAYS, PERIODICALS
Of the plethora of articles on John Brown and Kansas, I found the following particularly helpful.
Harold, Stanley. “Border Wars.” North & South, 12, January 2011, 22–31.
Horwitz, Tony. “Why John Brown Still Scares Us.” American History, December 2011, 38–45.
Linder, Douglas O. “The Trial of John Brown: A Commentary.” University of Missouri at Kansas City online faculty projects (www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/johnbrown (accessed several times), 2005.
SenGupta, Gunja. “Bleeding Kansas.” Kansas History (Kansas Historical Society), 24, no. 4 (Winter 2001–2002), 318–341.
Stottelmire, Marvin. “John Brown: Madman or Martyr?” Brown Quarterly, 3, no. 3 (Winter 2000) (http://brownboard.org (accessed frequently)
BOOKS
It is important to emphasize that virtually every book that deals with the runup to the Civil War deals with the Kansas issue and with John Brown—I have listed most of these in a later section of this essay.
However, I want to mention two that deal specifically with Brown that I found invaluable: Tony Horwitz's Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Ci
vil War (New York: Henry Holt, 2011), which focuses on Harpers Ferry; and David S. Reynolds's excellent biography, John Brown: Abolitionist (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2005).
In addition, much of the scene in which John Brown meets Charles Sumner and touches his bloody coat in Boston is drawn from James Freeman Clark's “Charles Sumner: His Character and Career,” in Memorial and Biographical Sketches (Boston: Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1878), a near contemporaneous account written just a few years after Sumner's death.
DRED SCOTT, REPUBLICAN PARTY, LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES
Primary Sources
DRED SCOTT
A wonderful digital collection of primary sources in the Dred Scott case is available from Washington University in St. Louis, entitled The Revised Dred Scott Case Collection. The collection contains more than 110 documents and is fully text-searchable. I accessed it frequently at http://digital.wustl.edu/d/dre/index.html.
Charles Sumner refers to Dred Scott frequently in his letters and papers, and discussion of the case also occurs in Congress and is recorded in the Congressional Globe (including the full 1865 debate over whether Congress should have commissioned a bust of Chief Justice Roger Taney upon his death).
In addition, documents related to the case are contained in James Buchanan, 1791–1868, a collection of documents and bibliographic aids, edited by Irving J. Sloan (New York: Oceana Publications, 1968).
For a document that straddles the line between a primary and secondary source, see Samuel Tyler's Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, LL.D. (Baltimore: John Murphy & Co.), an 1872 account that contains numerous primary sources, including letters to and from Taney, bridged by Tyler's narrative.
REPUBLICAN PARTY
For a fine collection of primary sources on the emergence and growth of the Republican Party, see Proceedings of the First Three Republican National Conventions of 1856, 1860, and 1864, including proceedings of the antecedent national convention held at Pittsburg [sic], in February, 1856, as reported by Horace Greeley (Minneapolis: Charles Johnson, 1893).
In addition, an 1856 congressionally commissioned short biography of John Charles Frémont entitled Life of John Charles Frémont (New York: Greeley & McElrath), provided a revealing look into the subject's life, including a collection of speeches and other writings.
Also, for a wide collection of primary sources, opinion pieces, and letters, see the contemporaneous The Republican Scrap Book: containing the platforms, and a choice selection of extracts, setting forth the real questions in issue, the opinions of the candidates, the nature and designs of the slave oligarchy, as shown by their own writers, and the opinions of Clay, Webster, Josiah Quincy, and other patriots, on slavery and its extension (Boston: John P. Jewett & Co., 1856).
I also made frequent use of the University of Pennsylvania's Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image collection entitled: The Crisis of the Union: Causes, Conduct and Consequences of the U.S. Civil War, available at http://sceti.library.upenn.edu/sceti/civilwar/index.cfm
LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES
The best primary sources for the Lincoln-Douglas debates are Paul M. Angle, ed., Created Equal? The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1958, which also contains detailed newspaper accounts of the debate days across Illinois; Harold Holzer, ed., The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete, Unexpurgated Text (New York: Fordham University Press), 2004; and Lincoln's own Lincoln: Speeches, Letters, Miscellaneous Writings, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (New York: Library of America), 1989.
Secondary Sources
ARTICLES, ESSAYS, PERIODICALS
Again, I consulted numerous articles about the Dred Scott case, the growth of the Republican Party, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates. I found the following most helpful:
Denton, Sally. “Frémont Steals California.” American Heritage, 60, no. 4 (Winter 2011), 30–39.
Fehrenbacher, Don E. “The Republican Decision at Chicago.” In Norman A. Graebner, ed., Politics and the Crisis of 1860 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961).
————. “Comment on Why the Republican Party Came to Power.” In George H. Knoles, ed., The Crisis of the Union, 1860–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965).
Gienapp, William. “Formation of the Republican Party.” In L. Sandy Maisel and William G. Shade, eds., Parties and Politics in American History (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994), 59–81.
————. “The Crime Against Sumner: The Caning of Charles Sumner and the Rise of the Republican Party.” Civil War History (September 1979), 218–245. (See above bibliographic reference to this important article under Charles Sumner, Preston Brooks, and the caning).
McPherson, James. “Politics and Judicial Responsibility: Dred Scott v. Sandford.” In Robert P. George, ed., Great Cases in Constitutional Law (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 90–93.
Sunstein, Cass R. “Dred Scott v. Sandford and Its Legacy.” In Robert P. George, ed., Great Cases in Constitutional Law (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000),, 63–89.
BOOKS
I found the following books most helpful for information about Dred Scott, the Republican Party, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
William E. Baringer, Lincoln's Rise to Power (Boston: Little Brown, 1937); Andrew Wallace Crandall, The Early History of the Republican Party, 1854–1856 (Boston: Gorham Press, 1930); Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), an excellent analysis of the major constitutional questions this landmark case sparked; Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); Mark A. Graber, Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2006); and Michael F. Holt, Forging a Majority: The Formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, 1848–1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969).
Also, see Walker Lewis, Without Fear or Favor: A Biography of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), a largely sympathetic work of the man whose career and historical legacy was defined by Dred Scott; Corinne J. Naden and Rose Blue, Dred Scott: Person or Property? (New York: Benchmark Books, 2005); David Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962); and Charles W. Smith, Jr., Roger B. Taney: Jacksonian Jurist (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1936).
ABOLITIONISTS, SECESSION, SLAVERY, AND THE RUN-UP TO THE CIVIL WAR
Primary Sources
Again, these topics are covered in great detail in several of the primary sources I've already cited (Sumner papers, Brooks papers, Congressional Globe, numerous digital collections). The sources included in this section are additional documents that I examined in connection with this topic heading.
The postelection letter (November 9, 1860) from Mississippian R. S. Holt to his brother, Joseph, in which he warns of slaves poisoning their masters in the wake of Lincoln's election, is contained in the Library of Congress's Joseph Holt Papers, a copy of which was included in the Milledge Bonham Papers at the South Caroliniana Library. In addition, Bonham's telegraph from Washington, D.C., to Charleston (December 19, 1860), threatening to meet Northern invaders with “bloody flags,” is also contained in this collection.
Jefferson Davis's October 11, 1858, speech at Faneuil Hall in Boston is available in numerous locations and repositories. I accessed it by way of the fine digital collection at Rice University, The Papers of Jefferson Davis, which I accessed frequently at http://jeffersondavis.rice.edu/.
The Congressional Globe of December 17, 1857, contains a number of lengthy tributes to Senator Andrew Butler upon his death.
For Daniel Webster's famous March 7, 1850, speech on the Fugitive Slave Law, and several responses (including John C. Calhoun's), see the appendix to the Congressional Globe, beginning on page 269. I also referred to two handbills that helped crysta
llize the debate and provide context for Sumner's viscerally negative reaction to Webster. The first, published in May of 1850 by Gideon and Co. in Washington, D.C., was titled Letter from Citizens of Newburyport, Mass., to Mr. Webster in Relation to his Speech Delivered in the Senate of the United States on the 7th of March, 1850, and Mr. Webster's Reply. The second, published in August 1850, also by Gideon and Company, was entitled Correspondence Between Mr. Webster and His New Hampshire Neighbors.
For a comprehensive look at the depth of the opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law in Sumner's hometown of Boston, I found helpful the nineteen-page Massachusetts Senate Report No. 51 (March 24, 1851), titled Joint Special Committee on So Much of the Governor's Address as Relates to Slavery and on Petitions Praying to the Legislators to Instruct Their Senators and to Request Representatives in Congress to Endeavor to Procure a Repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law.
For a powerful overview of the Fugitive Slave Law and the Thomas Sims case from the point of view of Boston abolitionists, see the collection of writings from Thomas Wentworth Higginson, edited by Howard N. Meyer, titled The Magnificent Activist: The Writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1823–1911 (New York: Da Capo Press, 2000). In addition, see Massachusetts Senate Document No. 89, April 9, 1851, for an in-the-moment account of Sims's capture and confinement just days after his arrest.
For more about the abolitionist movement and slavery, I made use of the Frederick Douglass Papers, many of which are online from the Library of Congress at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/doughtm/doughome.html (accessed several times). I also examined the words of Douglass in his three autobiographies: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1849); My Bondage and My Freedom (1855); and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881). In addition, numerous writings, speeches, and illustrations of notable abolitionists and other antislavery champions are available at the Library of Congress's The African-American Mosaic at http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam006.html and at the Massachusetts Historical Society's Images of the Anti-slavery Movement in Massachusetts at http://www.masshist.org/data-base/essay2.cfm?queryID=70. I accessed both sites frequently in my efforts to immerse myself in Charles Sumner's world.
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