Page 342 - American Stories, A History of the United States

14

the Sectional Crisis

1846–1861

Brooks Assaults Sumner
in Congress
O n May 22, 1856,

Representative Preston Brooks
of South Carolina walked onto
the floor of the Senate with
a rattan cane in his hand.
Charles Sumner, the antislavery senator from
Massachusetts who had recently given a
fiery oration condemning the South for
plotting to extend slavery to the Kansas
Territory, was seated at his desk. What
was worse, the speech had insulted
Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina,
Brooks’s kinsman. When he reached
Sumner, Brooks beat him over the head
with the cane. Stunned, Sumner made
a desperate effort to rise and ripped his
bolted desk from the floor. He then col-
lapsed under a torrent of blows as the
cane shattered in Brooks’s hand.
Sumner was so badly injured that
he did not return to the Senate for three
years. But Massachusetts reelected him in
1857 and kept his seat vacant as a reproach
to southern brutality and “barbarism.”

Le A rning O B j e C T i v e S

14.1 14.2 14.3

How did How did the How did the
territorial two-party institution Dubious support After his constituents learned of Preston Brooks’s
caning of Senator Sumner, they sent Brooks a gold-handled cowhide whip to
expansion system of slavery use on other antislavery advocates.
intensify the change go beyond
conflict over during this political and
slavery? p. 311 period? p. 316 economic
debates?
p. 322

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