Senator Charles Sumner caned on Senate floor by Rep. Preston Brooks in 1856

The "Crime Against Kansas" Speech

On May 19 and 20, 1856, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts delivered his famous "Crime Against Kansas" speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate. The printed version ran 95 pages, but Sumner—a brilliant scholar, writer, and Harvard-trained lawyer—delivered the entire speech from memory.

The speech was a rhetorical and provocative tour de force. Sumner attacked Southerners and their Northern "doughface" allies for:

• The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which repealed the Compromise of 1820's ban on slavery in territories north and west of Missouri
• The ongoing violence designed to force slavery on the Kansas Territory

The act was sponsored by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, who claimed he did not care if slavery was voted "up or down." (Douglas's wife owned approximately 100 slaves on a Mississippi plantation.)

Personal Attacks on Pro-Slavery Senators

Sumner's speech was a biting, sarcastic, and penetrating attack on pro-slavery senators intent on spreading slavery into the West. It included deeply personal attacks.

Attack on Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina

Comparing Butler to Don Quixote, Sumner declared that the slavery stalwart:

"believes himself a chivalrous knight with sentiments of honor and courage" who had "chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean the harlot Slavery."

The context made this even sharper: Rumors abounded that Butler had fathered children with his own slave. Sumner further asserted that Butler:

"touches nothing which he does not disfigure with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes of fact. He cannot open his mouth, but out there flies a blunder."

Butler had recently suffered a stroke, impairing his speech. The invective was thus deeply personal, combining innuendos about his slave mistress with attacks on his physical condition.

Attack on Senator Stephen Douglas

Sumner compared Douglas to Don Quixote's faithful servant, calling him:

"the squire of Slavery, its very Sancho Panza, ready to do all its humiliating offices."

The Attack

On May 22, 1856, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina—a cousin of Senator Butler—quietly slipped into the Senate chamber after adjournment. He carried a heavy metal-tipped cane.

Sumner was writing letters at a desk that folded over the head of the occupant, trapping him in his chair. Brooks snuck up behind Sumner and, after briefly shouting at him, began beating him with the cane. He only stopped when the cane broke.

Sumner managed to stand during the attack but then fell to the floor, bleeding profusely. While Brooks beat Sumner from behind, another southern representative waved a cane, threatening anyone who interfered.

Aftermath

Sumner eventually returned to the Senate, but only after three years of recovery from what today would be diagnosed as traumatic brain injury. During this period, the Massachusetts legislature re-elected him to the Senate. (This predates the direct election of senators, which began in 1913.) For the rest of his life, Sumner was plagued by the injuries he sustained.

The Man Behind the Cane

The Man Behind the Cane: Preston Brooks, Political Violence, and the Road to the Civil War by Paul Quigley (Oxford University Press, 244 pp.) examines this pivotal moment.

The caning of Sumner was a dramatic moment on the road to the Civil War:

• For Northerners, it illustrated the violence and intolerance of the slave South.
• Brooks ambushed Sumner from behind to defend the honor of his cousin, his state, and slaveholders.

According to Quigley's important, elegantly written, and carefully researched book, Brooks was afraid to challenge Sumner "face-to-face" because he feared Sumner might win a fair fight. At the time:

• Sumner was 45, Brooks was 36
• Both were tall and in good health

But Brooks—who became known as "the bully"—was taking no chances with the trim and athletic Sumner. He believed the sneak attack was appropriate because Sumner's insults had to be avenged.

Broader Significance

The sneak attack "proved" to Northerners (and many in Europe) that slaveowners like Brooks were inherently violent, dangerous, and uncivilized. The attack also illustrated the chasm between southern white slave-owning culture and the rest of the nation.

Slaveowners like Butler lobbed personal and nasty insults at Northerners, including innuendos about the bachelor Sumner's sexuality. But when Northerners responded in kind—as Sumner had—they were challenged to duels, threatened with violence, and, in Sumner's case, nearly killed. Neither Brooks nor his cousin Butler had the rhetorical skills to match Sumner's oratory.