One utterance in Douglas's reply to Sumner is of special significance in view of what occurred two days later: "Is it his object to provoke some of us to kick him as we would a dog in the street, that he may get sympathy upon the just chastisement?" Two days later Sumner was sitting alone at his desk in the Senate chamber after adjournment when Preston Brooks, a nephew of Senator Butler and a member of the lower House, entered and accosted him with the statement that he had read Sumner's speech twice and that it was a libel on South Carolina and upon a kinsman of his.Thereupon Brooks followed his words by striking Sumner on the head with a cane.Though the Senator was dazed and blinded by the unexpected attack, his assailant rained blow after blow until he had broken the cane and Sumner lay prostrate and bleeding at his feet.Brooks's remarks in the House of Representatives almost a month after the event leave no doubt of his determination to commit murder had he failed to overcome his antagonist with a cane.He had also taken the precaution to have two of his friends ready to prevent any interference before the punishment was completed.Toombs of Georgia witnessed a part of the assault and expressed approval of the act, and everywhere throughout the South, in the public press, in legislative halls, in public meetings, Brooks was hailed as a hero.The resolution for his expulsion introduced in the House received the support of only one vote from south of Mason and Dixon's Line.A large majority favored the resolution, but not the required two-thirds majority.Brooks, however, thought best to resign but was triumphantly returned to his seat with only six votes against him.Nothing was left undone to express Southern gratitude, and he received gifts of canes innumerable as symbols of his valor.
Yet before his death, which occurred in the following January, he confessed to his friend Orr that he was sick of being regarded as the representative of bullies and disgusted at receiving testimonials of their esteem.
With similar unanimity the North condemned and resented the assault that had been made upon Sumner.From party considerations, if for no other reasons, Democrats regretted the event.Republicans saw in the brutal attack and in the manner of its reception in the South another evidence of the irrepressible conflict between slavery and freedom.They were ready to take up the issue so forcibly presented by their fallen leader.A part of the regular order of exercises at public meetings of Republicans was to express sympathy with their wounded champion and with the Kansas people of the pillaged town of Lawrence, and to adopt ways and means to bring to an end the Administration which they held responsible for these outrages.Sumner, though silenced, was eloquent in a new and more effective way.A half million copies of "The Crime against Kansas" were printed and circulated.On the issue thus presented, Northern Democrats became convinced that their defeat at the pending election was certain, and their leaders instituted the change in their program which has been described in a previous chapter.They had made an end of the war in Kansas and drew from their candidate for the Presidency the assurance that just treatment should at last be meted out to harassed Kansas.
Though Sumner's injuries were at first regarded as slight, they eventually proved to be extremely serious.After two attempts to resume his place in the Senate, he found that he was unable to remain; yet when his term expired, he was almost unanimously reelected.Much of his time for three and a half years he spent in Europe.In December, 1859, he seemed sufficiently recovered to resume senatorial duties, but it was not until the following June that he again addressed the Senate.On that occasion he delivered his last great philippic against slavery.The subject under discussion was still the admission of Kansas as a free State, and, as he remarked in his opening sentences, he resumed the discussion precisely where he had left off more than four years before.
Sumner had assumed the task of uttering a final word against slavery as barbarism and a barrier to civilization.He spoke under the impelling power of a conviction in his God-given mission to utilize a great occasion to the full and for a noble end.For this work his whole life had been a preparation.
Accustomed from early youth to spend ten hours a day with books on law, history, and classic literature, he knew as no other man then knew what aid the past could offer to the struggle for freedom.The bludgeon of the would-be assassin had not impaired his memory, and four years of enforced leisure enabled him to fulfill his highest ideals of perfect oratorical form.
Personalities he eliminated from this final address, and blemishes he pruned away.In his earlier speeches he had been limited by the demands of the particular question under discussion, but in "The Barbarism of Slavery" he was free to deal with the general subject, and he utilized incidents in American slavery to demonstrate the general upward trend of history.The orator was sustained by the full consciousness that his utterances were in harmony with the grand sweep of historic truth as well as with the spirit of the present age.
Sumner was not a party man and was at no time in complete harmony with his coworkers.It was always a question whether his speeches had a favorable effect upon the immediate action of Congress;there can, however, be no doubt of the fact that the larger public was edified and influenced.Copies of "The Crime against Kansas" and "The Barbarism of Slavery" were printed and circulated by the million and were eagerly read from beginning to end.They gave final form to the thoughts and utterances of many political leaders both in America and in Europe.More than any other man it was Charles Sumner who, with a wealth of historical learning and great skill in forensic art, put the irrepressible conflict between slavery and freedom in its proper setting in human history.
