The Caning of Charles Sumner, or the Brooks–Sumner Affair, occurred on May 22, 1856, in the United States Senate chamber. Representative Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina, used a walking cane to attack Senator Sumner. The beating nearly killed Sumner and it contributed significantly to the country’s polarization over the issue of slavery. It has been considered symbolic of the \”breakdown of reasoned discourse\” and the use of violence that eventually led to the Civil War.
About Caning of Charles Sumner in brief
The Caning of Charles Sumner, or the Brooks–Sumner Affair, occurred on May 22, 1856, in the United States Senate chamber. Representative Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina, used a walking cane to attack Senator Sumner. The beating nearly killed Sumner and it contributed significantly to the country’s polarization over the issue of slavery. It has been considered symbolic of the \”breakdown of reasoned discourse\” and the use of violence that eventually led to the Civil War. In 1856 Sumner denounced the Kansas–Nebraska Act in his \”Crime against Kansas\” speech, delivered on May 19 and May 20. The long speech argued for the immediate admission of Kansas as a free state and went on to denounce the political arm of the slave owners. According to Manisha Sinha, Sumner had been ridiculed and insulted by both Douglas and Butler for his opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law and the Kansas-Ne Nebraska Act. Butler crudely race-baiting Sumner by making sexual allusions to black women, like many slaveholders who accused abolitionists of promoting interracial marriage. Abolitionists routinely accused slaveholders of maintaining slavery so that they could engage in forcible sexual relations with their slaves. Sumner was alluding that Butler was Don Quixote and slavery was his Dulcinea. He mocked Butler’s speaking ability, which had been impeded by a recent stroke: 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. He was no better than a drunkard, due to the supposedly coarse language he had used during his speech. Brooks said that he concluded that sinceSumner was no gentleman, he did not merit honorable treatment; to Keitt and Brooks, it was more appropriate to humiliate Sumner with a cane in a public setting. Brooks beat Sumner severely on the head before he could reach his feet, using a thick gold-percha cane with a gold head. As Sumner began to stand up, Brooks calmly announced in a low voice, ‘I have no longer lost sight of the gold of the head of Sumner!’ Sumner lost no sight of his head so immediately that he could no longer immediately stand up. He fell to the floor and was taken to a nearby hospital where he was treated for severe head injuries. He died on May 23, 1858. Brooks was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1856 and served until 1859. He is now the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which is responsible for funding the federal government’s defense of the Civil Rights Act of 1858 and the National Defense Act of 1861. He also served as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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This page is based on the article Caning of Charles Sumner published in Wikipedia (as of Jan. 11, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
