The timing fell at a moment of building suspense. President Pierce had been discredited. On the eve of their convention the Democrats were uncertain and uneasy. The Republican Party taking shape out of the shards of broken parties was mysterious. Many politically drifting Old Whigs, discontent Democrats, and nativist but antislavery Know Nothings had kept apart from the new organization. With the cracking of Sumner’s skull, the old political order finally and irretrievably shattered. His near killing was the galvanizing event of singular clarity and coherence. “Brooks has knocked the scales from the eyes of the blind, and they now see!” declared E.P. Walton, a newspaper editor in Vermont, who would win a congressional seat as a Republican that year.
“By great odds the most effective deliverance made by any man to advance the Republican Party was made by the bludgeon of Preston S. Brooks,” observed Alexander K. McClure, a Pennsylvania Republican who would be instrumental in the rise of Abraham Lincoln. “I well remember the effect of the assault upon Sumner throughout the North in the campaign of 1856. It caused many scores of thousands of Democrats of natural anti-slavery proclivities to sever their connection with the Democratic Party.”
Sumner’s friend Richard Henry Dana, Jr., wrote him, “When Brooks brought his cane in contact with your head, he completed the circuit of electricity to 30 millions!”
Edward Everett, the most distinguished man of Massachusetts—the former president of Harvard (who had denied Sumner an appointment), governor, and U.S. senator—denounced the attack, but also bemoaned its political benefit to the Republicans. Personification of the old conservative Whiggism, and though not a Know Nothing, he was nonetheless supporting the Know Nothing candidate for president, Millard Fillmore, whom he had served as secretary of state. Everett sadly observed that Brooks’s blows “will do more to strengthen the abolition party than any thing that has yet occurred.” In a reference to his possible opponent, Fillmore privately wrote, “Brooks’ attack on Sumner has done more for Fremont than any 20 of his warmest friends . . . have been able to accomplish.”
The Massachusetts legislature’s resolution had pronounced the assault on Sumner “brutal and cowardly.” On May 27, Wilson echoed those words on the floor of the Senate. “Mr. Sumner was stricken down on this floor by a brutal, murderous, and cowardly assault,” he said. Butler jumped up yelling, “You are a liar!” His language was tantamount to a challenge to a duel. The Congressional Globe reported that the “impulsively uttered words which Senators advised him were not parliamentary, and he subsequently, at the insistence of Senators, requested that the words might be withdrawn.” Brooks stepped into the breach. Two days later he challenged Wilson to a duel. Wilson declined, taking the opportunity to repeat his condemnation. “I characterized, on the floor of the Senate, the assault upon my colleague as ‘brutal, murderous, and cowardly.’ I thought so then. I think so now. . . . I have always regarded dueling as the lingering relic of a barbarous civilization, which the law of the country has branded as crime.” At the National Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue “a few Southern members” considered “the question of making an assault upon him,” which was thwarted only at the insistence of Congressman James L. Orr of South Carolina, a cooler head. Wilson began carrying a pistol for self-protection.
On June 2 the House Select Committee filed its report after only ten days since its formation. The majority laid out the facts of how the assault was premeditated based on the testimony of witnesses, some of whom may not have been completely transparent or were covering up, though the role of Keitt and Edmundson as accessories to Brooks was established. Brooks was found “guilty” of a “breach of privileges” and his expulsion recommended. The majority further urged the House to “declare its disapprobation of the said act of Henry A. Edmundson and Laurence M. Keitt in regard to the said assault,” the equivalent of a censure. The majority concluded that the attack on Sumner was “an aggravated assault upon the inestimable right of freedom of speech guaranteed by the Constitution. It asserts for physical force a prerogative over governments, constitutions, and laws; and, if carried to its ultimate consequences, must result in anarchy and bring in its train all the evils of a ‘reign of terror.’ ”
The minority report dissented. It declared the House had “no jurisdiction,” and Brooks in any case had not violated any of its privileges. Just as the Senate insisted it had no authority over an act committed by a member of the House, the House Democrats in effect argued that the House had no authority over an act committed in the Senate.
On June 12, Butler took the Senate floor for a two-day-long excoriation of Sumner, “unfit for the art of debate,” “a pander to the prejudices of Massachusetts,” “a flexible conformist invoking the spirit of Theodore Parker as his muse,” and a plagiarist of Demosthenes. Mostly, he emphasized Sumner’s “obscenity.” Twice Butler quoted Sumner’s phrase about “the harlot slavery.” “The language used was licentious,” Butler said. “I dislike to repeat the obscenity of his illustration.” Then Butler repeated it and again apologized: “I beg pardon for repeating it. What in the name of justice and decency could have ever led that man to use such language?” Sumner’s phrase should have barred him from polite company, not least for offending female sensibilities. “How any man, who has not been excluded from society, could use such an illustration on this floor, I know not. I do not see how any man could obtain the consent of his own conscience to rise in the presence of a gallery of ladies and give to slavery the personification of a ‘mistress,’ and say that I loved her because she was a ‘harlot.’ ”
The next day Henry Wilson punctured Butler’s pomposity and presumptuousness. “This is not the first time during this session we have heard this kind of talk about ‘social influence,’ and the necessity of association with gentlemen from the South, in order to have intercourse with the refined and cultivated society of Washington. . . . It is a piney-wood doctrine, a plantation idea.” Wilson reviewed the history of how Butler had demeaned Sumner even “before he ever uttered a word” in the Senate, quoting from Butler’s copious insults, “every expression calculated to wound the sensibilities of an honorable man, and to draw down upon him sneers, obloquy, and hatred, in and out of the Senate.”
Senator Clement Clay, of Alabama, immediately rose to threaten Wilson to a duel unless he withdrew a “personal indignity.” Wilson had previously criticized Clay’s remark that antislavery senators were hypocrites who “assailed them at home,” but in Washington “fawned” on Southern senators “with abject servility.” Wilson declared he meant no “personal insult.” “That is altogether satisfactory,” replied Clay. “If that explanation were not made, I should attempt to vindicate myself from the seeming reproach of the Senator from Massachusetts.” Clay explained that he considered antislavery senators such as Sumner to “have denied to me, and to every Senator sitting upon this floor who owns a slave, all the characteristics of gentlemen. They have imputed to us a crime in exercising that right which belongs to us. . . . They have assailed the integrity of every individual who stands in the relation of master to a slave. Still, these Senators thus denying to us all the moral attributes of gentlemen come here, and, as I said before, seek and court our society. . . . I do maintain that this is duplicity unworthy of gentlemen.”
Congressman Anson Burlingame of Massachusetts took up Sumner’s defense on June 21. “He is the pride of Massachusetts.” Burlingame praised Sumner’s speech for “the classic purity of its language . . . the nobility of its sentiments . . . severe, because it was launched against tyranny.” By contrast, Brooks “had taken an oath to sustain the Constitution, stole into the Senate, that place which had hitherto been held sacred against violence, and smote him as Cain smote his brother.” “That is false,” shouted Keitt. “I will not bandy epithets with the gentleman,” Burlingame replied. “I am responsible for my own language. Doubtless he is responsible for his.” “I am,” Keitt answered. “I shall stand by mine,” said Burlingame, and continued his denunciation of Brooks.
“Call you that chivalry? In what code of honor did you get your authority for that?”
Brooks promptly sent word to Burlingame that he wished to face him in a duel. Seeking to avoid it, Burlingame publicly explained he made a distinction between Brooks personally and his act, which he deprecated. The Boston Courier criticized him for backing down. Burlingame backtracked that he had not retracted anything. Brooks sent another challenge. Congressman Campbell, acting as Burlingame’s second, cutely proposed that they conduct their duel on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls with rifles. Campbell, who was a crack shot, might step in as the second to face Brooks himself. Brooks objected that he could not reach that location “without running the gauntlet of mobs, assassins, prisons and penitentiaries, bailiffs and constables.” So Brooks fought no duel. That fall Burlingame emerged as one of the most popular stump speakers for the Republican campaign around the country.
Brooks faced criminal charges before the District of Columbia court on July 7, accompanied by Butler, Mason, and an entourage of Southern legislators. In his defense he argued that he had not intended to harm Sumner, Sumner hadn’t been hurt anyway, and Brooks was the one who should be commended for his self-sacrificing idealism. “I would like to have inquired of him, in person, as to the degree of his personal injuries,” Brooks said. “It would have gratified me had he been compelled to answer under oath as to the violence of the first blow, which I aver was but a tap, and intended to put him on his guard.” Brooks explained that his true motive was to protect the image of Southern womanhood, his “sister” and “mother,” from a defiler. “. . . where a sister’s dishonor is blotted out with the blood of her destroyer, an intelligent and wholesome public opinion embodied in an intelligence and virtuous jury, always has, and always will, control the law, and popular sentiment will applaud what the books may condemn. . . . And can it be expected—will it be required—that I, with a heart to feel and an arm to strike, shall patiently hear and ignobly submit while my political mother is covered with insult and obloquy, and dishonor?” According to Brooks’s fable, he was shielding imaginary innocent women who might be his sister or mother from the rapacious Sumner. A sympathetic judge fined him $300 and sent him on his way.
Two days later the House debate began consideration of Brooks’s expulsion. Congressman Thomas Clingman, of North Carolina, who had switched from the Whig to the Democratic Party, extolled “the liberty of the cudgel.” John Savage, of Tennessee, declared that Sumner “did not get a lick more than he deserved,” other antislavery House members merited a “good whipping as he deserved,” and in honor of Brooks there should be built “a statue in memory of the gallant deed.”
The House on July 14 voted 121 to 95 for the expulsion of Brooks and censure of Keitt though not Edmundson—short of the two-thirds majority necessary. Brooks asked to address the body. He declared that he knew Sumner would refuse a duel, giving him no choice but to whip him. His choice of weapon proved he hadn’t intended to hurt him, but in explaining his reasoning he exposed how his fear of physical inferiority led him to plan his attack.
If I desired to kill the Senator, why did not I do it? You all admit that I had him in my power. Let me tell the member from New Jersey that it was expressly to avoid taking life that I used an ordinary cane, presented to me by a friend in Baltimore, nearly three months before its application to the “bare head” of the Massachusetts Senator. I went to work very deliberately, as I am charged—and this is admitted,—and speculated somewhat as to whether I should employ a horsewhip or a cowhide; but knowing that the Senator was my superior in strength, it occurred to me that he might wrest it from my hand, and then—for I never attempt any thing I do not perform—I might have been compelled to do that which I would have regretted the balance of my natural life.
Brooks called Congressman Morgan, who had intervened to stop the assault, a “feminine gentleman,” for referring to him as a “villain,” and issued a threat. “He need not be much alarmed; and, if he will ‘hold still’ when I get hold of him, I’ll not hurt him much; and this is all that I can say about that matter here.” Then he resigned his seat with a final flourish assailing “the whole Black Republican crew.” “Mr. Brooks retired amid the applause of the South Gallery, which was filled with ladies and gentlemen,” reported the New York Tribune, “and upon reaching the lobby was embraced and showered with kisses by the ladies. Senators Butler and Mason sat near Brooks during the delivery of his speech and were quite merry over it.”
Since the assault, Keitt’s temper had raged. The New York Times reported that he “beat his washerwoman.” He had bizarrely accused Congressman John Hickman, of Pennsylvania, of casting a vote to print the majority report on the assault on Sumner “for Republican Party purposes” and “sprang suddenly from his seat as if to attack Hickman, but was caught by the coat-tail by [Sampson] Harris, of Alabama. As the coat was strong, Keitt was restrained, and immediately resumed his seat,” according to the Times. “Nobody seems to know why he jumped up, nor why he sat down again. The whole thing is a mystery.”
“Today I speak for South Carolina,” Keitt declared to denounce his censure. He lamented that “the magic circle of sanctity” within the Congress “has been rudely broken, and licentious utterances have echoed along its walls. Within its very ‘holy of holies’ we have seen American legislators, dressed up in the cast-off garments of Fred Douglass . . . lepers of history.” He defied the House gesture against him. “For what? Because I did not turn public informer. Informer against whom? Against my then colleague—against my friend, my bosom friend, and, as the Black Republican journals have charge complicity on my part and a conspiracy . . . And turn informer in favor of whom?” But he confessed, “I knew that my colleague intended to punish the Senator from Massachusetts.” Claiming he had no idea how the attack would unfold, though he had positioned himself strategically in the Senate chamber, he said, “Had I anticipated that act of justice there, I should have been still nearer the scene of action than I was.” And he, too, resigned, from Congress.
Three weeks later, on August 1, after special elections in their districts, running without opposition, Brooks and Keitt were returned to the House by the voters where they took the oath of office, and claimed complete vindication. “For inflicting merited punishment, the entire South has applauded and commended me, and placed me in the position of representative,” Brooks said.
On his thirty-seventh birthday, August 5, Brooks received a hero’s welcome back in Washington at an intimate dinner, “a pleasant party of his friends”: Senator Andrew Butler; Secretary of War Jefferson Davis; General Joseph Lane (one of Brooks’s seconds in his abortive duel with Burlingame), the delegate from the Oregon Territory; Congressmen John Quitman of Mississippi, Thomas Bocock of Virginia (another of Brooks’s seconds), Thomas Clingman of North Carolina—and Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. At the dinner’s close, Quitman presented Brooks with “a beautiful cane,” from the citizens of Holmes County, Mississippi, inscribed: “For caning that vile abolitionist and foul-mouthed slanderer, Sumner, of Massachusetts, in the Senate Chamber, on the 22d of May last.”
Brooks went on a tour of testimonial dinners in South Carolina, which inspired him to mimic fire-eating rhetoric, though he had been a Unionist. “I have been a disunionist since the time I could think,” he said. “The Constitution of the United States should be torn to fragments and a Southern Constitution formed in which every State should be a slave state.” At a rally at Columbia, on August 29, he declared that in the event the Republicans should win the presidency “the people of the South should rise in their might, march to Washington, and seize the archives and the treasury of the government. We should anticipate them, and force them to attack us.”
Brooks had overnight become an iconic figure of Southern Rights, celebrated as its warrior and martyr. Jefferson Davis spoke for the power center in Washington in writing him on the occasion of one of the dinners honoring him in South Carolina. “I have only to express to you
my sympathy with the feeling which prompts the sons of Carolina to welcome the return of a brother who has been the subject of vilification, misrepresentation, and persecution, because he resented a libelous assault upon the reputation of their mother.”
Throughout his life, Brooks had sought the laurels of honor. Achieving the status he wished for beyond his dreams, he wilted. Within months after the Sumner incident he could not restrain himself from issuing repeated challenges to duels. Under the glare of attention, he was gripped with depression and drank. He felt that his projected image was fraudulent. He had become a slave to his myth. “I have lost my individuality [and] am regarded to a great extent as the exponent of the South against which Black republicanism is warring in my person,” he wrote a friend. He confided to James Orr “he was tired of the new role he had chosen, and heartsick of being the recognized representative of bullies, the recipient of their ostentatious gifts and officious testimonials of admiration and regard.”
Brooks caught a cold that suddenly developed into something more serious. Keitt and Orr stood helplessly at his bedside on January 2, 1857, watching him gasp for breath. “Air! Orr, air!” he cried. In a “violent heaving of the chest and lung . . . [his] head dropped back in death from suffocation.” He received a state funeral. Crowds viewed his open coffin lying in the Capitol. Effusive eulogies were delivered to an assemblage of members of the Congress, the cabinet, the Supreme Court, President Franklin Pierce, and President-elect James Buchanan.
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