Charles Sumner Receives a Stroke of Good Luck

Ironically, the caning that Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner received from South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks on May 22, 1856 may well have been the best stroke of good luck that Sumner ever received, rescuing his senatorial career and ultimately transforming him into one of the most powerful men in the country.

Sumner was first elected to the United States Senate by the Massachusetts legislature in 1851 as the result of an unstable and transitory coalition between Democrats and Free Soilers. No party at the time had a majority in the state. At the beginning of 1851, Massachusetts Free Soilers - heretofore primarily a group with more connections to the Whigs than to the Democrats in Massachusetts - struck a deal with the Democrats:

With Free Soil backing, the Democrats would elect their candidate for governor, George S. Boutwell, the lieutenant governor, the speaker and other officers of the [state] House of Representatives, a majority of the governor's counsel; in addition they would receive the short-term United States senatorship, the few remaining weeks of [Daniel] Webster's term which [Robert C.] Winthrop was filling.

The quid pro quo included the other Senate seat, which would go to Sumner:

The Free Soilers would get the presidency of the state senate, the remaining members of the governor's council, and the six-year United States senatorship, commencing March 4 [1851]. On January 7 [1851], a Free Soil caucus, by a vote of eighty-four to one, nominated Sumner senator, and the following day the Democrats, with only six dissenting votes, accepted him.

But even with this deal, Sumner's election was a close-run thing. In the legislative voting, a large majority of the Whigs unenthusiastically but steadfastly supported Winthrop. More important, a faction within the Democratic Party, led by Caleb Cushing and former governor Marcus Morton, "objected to sending 'a red-hot Abolitionist, . . . like a firebrand, for six years, into the senate chamber of the United States.'" Although Sumner was tantalizingly close, he was a few votes short.

The legislature remained deadlocked for over three and a half months (from early January to late April 1851). Ultimately, Sumner was elected "with a majority of precisely one" vote:

On April 24 [1851] the legislature reassembled in an atmosphere of great tension. On the twenty-fifth ballot there were again two more votes than there were representatives present [there had been prior irregularities]. After much wrangling, the house adopted a Whig proposal that on future ballots each member must cast his vote in a sealed envelope, so that it would be impossible for these extra ballots to be slipped in. Shortly after noon, the twenty-sixth ballot was taken. This time Sumner received 193 of the 385 votes cast, a majority of precisely one, and was declared elected.

Having been elected by a paper-thin majority, Sumner soon saw the coalition that elected him fall apart, for both internal and external reasons. In the 1852 and 1853 elections, the coalition was defeated by the Whigs, the second "time so decisively that the plan for Free Soil-Democratic fusion in Massachusetts was finally abandoned." The Whigs, in charge of the state government, elected Edward Everett to the other senate seat.

Then in 1854 the Know-Nothing tidal wave hit Massachusetts. Democrats, Whigs, Free Soilers and the new Anti-Nebraska proto-party alike were swept away in the deluge. The Know-Nothings emerged with the governorship, an overwhelming majority in the state legislature, and the U.S. Senate seat not held by Sumner:

[Former Conscience Whig and Free Soiler Henry] Wilson . . . had thrown his strength behind Henry J. Gardner, the Know-nothing candidate for governor. In return he secured a pledge that, if successful, the Know-nothings would elect him to the Senate as Sumner's colleague. Gardner received an unprecedented majority of nearly 33,000 votes, and the new legislature consisted of one Whig, one Democrat, one Republican - and 377 Know-nothings.

Although the Know-Nothing tide ebbed somewhat in 1855, the Know-Nothings remained firmly in charge of the state. "In 1855, as in the previous year, the new [Republican] party made a poor showing in the polls, and Gardner, combining nativism and Whiggery, was re-elected."

In short, by the end of 1855 - and the Congressional session beginning December 1855 was the last in which Sumner had a chance to make an impact before he would be up for reelection in early 1857 - Sumner's political base had disappeared. For all the latent anti-slavery sentiment in Massachusetts, the old coalition had fallen apart and there was no sign that the new anti-Nebraska coalition would gel anytime soon. Many former Whigs detested him and Democrats felt no loyalty for him. Governor Gardner was eying the Senate seat and "plot[ting] to stage a premature election of [Sumner's] successor." Sumner looked like a political goner.

"Providentially, a burning issue came to hand" that saved Sumner from likely defeat. At the beginning of January 1856 Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which gave Sumner the opening to deliver his The Crime Against Kansas speech on May 19 and 20, 1856. Two days later, on Thursday May 22, 1856, South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks administered his famous caning of Sumner - and created a "senator for life":

Sumner's friends used Massachusetts indignation over the assault to bolster his shaky political prospects. The news of the attack reached Boston just in time to give Sumner's supporters a face-saving victory over Governor Gardner, who was trying to emasculate the personal liberty law Sumner had helped draft. By astute management Republicans forced through the legislature resolutions not merely condemning Brooks's actions, but endorsing "Mr. Sumner's manliness and courage in his earnest and fearless declaration of free principles, and his defence of human rights and free territory." [Future wartime Republican governor] John A. Andrew almost gave the game away when he blurted out at the Faneuil Hall rally that in order to secure "liberty of speech - nay, liberty itself," Sumner must be re-elected, for Republicans were unobtrusively working toward precisely that end. "Providence itself seems to be on the side of the republican party," [Sumner's estranged former law partner George S.] Hilliard lamented. "Sumner is not merely their champion but their martyr, and his election for the next six years is now certain." A New Yorker, more prescient, declared that Sumner "is made by this act, senator for life."

After that, Sumner's reelection was almost a foregone conclusion. When the new state legislature met in January 1857,

the Republicans in the [state] House of Representatives forced a vote on January 9, even before Governor Gardner [who had once again been reeelected] could send in his inaugural message, which they feared might contain distracting proposals. Out of the 345 votes cast, Sumner received all but twelve. Four days later, against protests over their unseemly haste, Republicans in the [state] Senate adopted a rule for viva-voce voting on the senatorial election, and, as public opinion could thus be brought to bear upon each member, Sumner received the unanimous vote of the upper house.

In his book Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (from which all quotes in this post are taken), Prof. David Herbert Donald sums up Sumner's stroke of good luck:

Candidate of a minority party, [Sumner] was first chosen to the Senate through the devious workings of a political coalition. At nearly any point during his first five years in office, had he been up for re-election, he would almost certainly have been defeated. Then Preston Brooks's attack gave him his second term in the Senate and thereby assured him seniority and prestige within the Republican party. Never chosen by direct popular vote for any office, Sumner, by 1861, nevertheless had become one of the most powerful men in the United States.

Why Did Preston Brooks Have That Cane?

For some reason (or no reason, I suppose), it never occurred to me that Preston Brooks actually needed that cane he brought with him when he entered the Senate chamber in 1856. If you had asked me, I would probably have said that it was either an affectation - more of a walking stick than a cane - or Brooks had brought it specifically to assault Charles Sumner.

Well, you learn something new every day. According to Shearer Davis Bowman, Brooks used a cane because of an old dueling injury - an injury inflicted by none other than our friend Louis Trezevant Wigfall.

In the early 1840s, on an island in the Savannah River, Wigfall and Preston Brooks had engaged in a duel. Wigfall took a bullet in the thigh but shot Brooks through the hip. Brooks used a cane for the rest of his life, pressing the walking stick in 1856 as a weapon with which to beat Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate.

About the illustration, entitled Democratic Platform Illustrated (1856):

Another attack on the 1856 Democratic platform as pro-South and proslavery. The Buchanan-Breckenridge ticket is reviled on the basis of recent developments occurring during the outgoing Pierce administration. In the center of the picture is a flagstaff bearing an American flag inscribed "Buchanan & Breckenridge. Modern Democracy." To its base are chained two slaves (right)--a man and a woman. The woman kneels before an overseer with a whip and pistol in his pocket, and asks, "Is this Democracy?" The overseer declares, "We will subdue you." In the background one of Cuba's coastal towns burns and is fired upon by a ship. The scene probably refers to expressed Democratic ambitions to annex Cuba for the expansion of American slave territory. The phrase "A due regard for our just rights in the Gulf of Mexico" appears above the burning town. A similar scene of conflagration, "Squatter sovereignty demonstrated," appears in the left background. Here a settlement in Kansas burns and its inhabitants are driven away by armed marauders. Reference is to atrocities committed in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of May 1854, which was endorsed by the Democratic platform. The act provided for dividing the Nebraska territory into two parts, each later to be admitted into the Union as either slave or free, as decided in each case by popular (or "squatter") sovereignty. The measure ushered in a bloody struggle between proslavery and antislavery settlers over control of Kansas. The antislavery town of Lawrence, Kansas, was invaded and sacked by a proslavery posse on May 21, 1856. In the left foreground is Preston S. Brooks's May 22 attack on Charles Sumner in Congress. (See "Arguments of the Chivalry," no. 1856-1.)

Preston Brooks In the News!

It turns out that Mitch McConnell has a pretty dry sense of humor, and a pretty good sense of history. From his email today (emphasis added):

The plain language of the Senate precedent, the manual that governs Senate procedure, is that unanimous consent of all members was required before the Senator from Vermont could withdraw his amendment while it was being read.

Earlier today, the majority somehow convinced the parliamentarian to break with the long standing precedent and practice of the Senate in the reading of the bill.

Senate procedure states clearly, and I quote: under Rule 15, paragraph 1, and Senate precedents, an amendment shall be read by the clerk before it is up for consideration or before the same shall be debated unless a request to waive the reading is granted.

It goes on to state that, quote, "the reading of which may not be dispensed with, except by unanimous consent, and if the request is denied, the amendment must be read and further interruptions are not in order."

You may have heard that the majority cites an example in 1992 where the chair made a mistake and allowed something similar to happen. But one mistake does not a precedent make.

For example, there is precedent for a Senator being beaten with a cane here in the Senate. If mistakes were the rule, the caning of Senators would be in order. Fortunately for all of us, it is not.

It’s now clear the majority is willing to do anything to jam through a 2000-page bill before the American people or any of us has had a chance to read it—including changing the rules in the middle of the game.

To which Glenn Reynolds adds, "I dunno, the caning of Senators is looking better and better . . . ."

To which I add, "There's also a precedent for brandishing firearms on the Senate floor."

About the illustration:

A dramatic portrayal, clearly biased toward the northern point of view, of an incident in Congress which inflamed sectional passions in 1856. The artist recreates the May 22 attack and severe beating of Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner by Representative Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina. Brooks's actions were provoked by Sumner's insulting public remarks against his cousin, Senator Andrew Pickens Butler, and against Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas, delivered in the Senate two days earlier. The print shows an enraged Brooks (right) standing over the seated Sumner in the Senate chamber, about to land on him a heavy blow of his cane. The unsuspecting Sumner sits writing at his desk. At left is another group. Brooks's fellow South Carolinian Representative Lawrence M. Keitt stands in the center, raising his own cane menacingly to stay possible intervention by the other legislators present. Clearly no help for Sumner is forthcoming. Behind Keitt's back, concealed in his left hand, Keitt holds a pistol. In the foreground are Georgia senator Robert Toombs (far left) and Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas (hands in pockets) looking vindicated by the event. Behind them elderly Kentucky senator John J. Crittenden is restrained by a fifth, unidentified man. Above the scene is a quote from Henry Ward Beecher's May 31 speech at a Sumner rally in New York, where he proclaimed, "The symbol of the North is the pen; the symbol of the South is the bludgeon." David Tatham attributes the print to the Bufford shop, and suggests that the Library's copy of the print, the only known example, may have been a trial impression, and that the print may not actually have been released. The attribution to Homer was first made by Milton Kaplan.

The Head of Preston Brooks's Cane

I’ve really enjoyed looking around the website devoted to Isaac Bassett and his unpublished recollections concerning his sixty-four years of service in the Senate (1831-1895). Here’s another account that grabbed my attention.

Although the Senate was not in session when Rep. Preston Brooks attacked Senator Charles Sumner, Bassett was in the Senate chamber when Brooks entered on May 22, 1856. As a result, Bassett was an eyewitness to ensuing events:

I witness[ed] the attack on Senator Sumner by Mr. Brooks of South Carolina in 1856. Sumner was sitting in his seat, addressing the speech to his constituents when Mr. Brooks approached him from the front aisle (this was on the 22 of May) and said, “I have come over from the House to chastise you for the remarks that you made. I have read your speech, it is a libel on South Carolina and against my relative Senator Butler.” At the same time raising his cane, and struck him three time [sic] on the head. Mr. Sumner arose from his seat and made an effort to take hold of Mr. Brooks, but the last blow brought him to the floor. It was all done in a minute. As soon as he fell Senator Cass, myself and Arthur Gorman and several lifted him up, and we led him out to the Reception Room of the Senate. I got towels and a basin of water. Washed his head. He walked back down to the front door of the Capitol, got a hack, and went to his lodgings. In the meantime, Brooks and his friends, Mr. Edmundson of Virginia and Mr. Keitt of South Carolina, returned to the House. The cane that Mr. Brooks used was broken in small pieces. I have a piece now in my possession. It was a gutta percha cane an inch thick, the cane broke into fragments. It was the speech that Mr. Sumner delivered on the 19 and 20 of May that caused Mr. Brooks to cane him.

Mr. St. John, one of the employees of the Senate, was picking up the loose paper from the floor and picked up the head of Mr. Brooks’ cane. Mr. Douglas then being in the Senate asked him for it. He gave it to him. What Mr. Douglas done with it I never knew.

All of which raises the question: What did Senator Douglas do with the head of Preston Brooks’s cane?

About the illustration:

A dramatic portrayal, clearly biased toward the northern point of view, of an incident in Congress which inflamed sectional passions in 1856. The artist recreates the May 22 attack and severe beating of Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner by Representative Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina. Brooks's actions were provoked by Sumner's insulting public remarks against his cousin, Senator Andrew Pickens Butler, and against Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas, delivered in the Senate two days earlier. The print shows an enraged Brooks (right) standing over the seated Sumner in the Senate chamber, about to land on him a heavy blow of his cane. The unsuspecting Sumner sits writing at his desk. At left is another group. Brooks's fellow South Carolinian Representative Lawrence M. Keitt stands in the center, raising his own cane menacingly to stay possible intervention by the other legislators present. Clearly no help for Sumner is forthcoming. Behind Keitt's back, concealed in his left hand, Keitt holds a pistol. In the foreground are Georgia senator Robert Toombs (far left) and Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas (hands in pockets) looking vindicated by the event. Behind them elderly Kentucky senator John J. Crittenden is restrained by a fifth, unidentified man. Above the scene is a quote from Henry Ward Beecher's May 31 speech at a Sumner rally in New York, where he proclaimed, "The symbol of the North is the pen; the symbol of the South is the bludgeon." David Tatham attributes the print to the Bufford shop, and suggests that the Library's copy of the print, the only known example, may have been a trial impression, and that the print may not actually have been released. The attribution to [Winslow] Homer was first made by Milton Kaplan.

Louise Wigfall Meets Gone With the Wind

Did you know that Texas politician Louis T. Wigfall was responsible for the caning of Charles Sumner?

South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks was carrying that cane as a result of injuries received years earlier in a duel with Wigfall. Here is an account of the duel as related by Wigfall's daughter, Louise Wigfall Wright:

Preston Brooks, of South Carolina, whose attack on Sumner is known to the world, had fought a duel with my father in 1841, in which they were both wounded. Preston Brooks was shot through the hip, and my father through both thighs. The latter was twenty-three years old and Preston Brooks twenty- two at the time. My father's second was John Laurens Manning, afterward Governor of South Carolina, and the second of Preston Brooks was Pierce M. Butler, afterward also Governor of the State. My father had been in several affairs of honor before this; but never fought another duel after his marriage. He seldom mentioned the subject, but when asked for his opinion would state with an earnestness of conviction, as refreshing as it was real, that he was a firm believer in the code duello as a factor in the improvement of both the morals and the manners of a community! He held that it engendered courtesy of speech and demeanor - had a most restraining tendency on the errant fancy, and as a preservative of the domestic relations was without an equal.

Mrs. Wright's memoir, by the way, is a wonder to behold, and well worth reading. Written at the beginning of the last century, it is a classic of Lost Cause literature. If you're hesitating, take a look first at this fine New York Times review from 1905, which captures nicely how Mrs. Wright combines the charming with the utterly grotesque.