Thread by @rebecca_fachner

Charles Sumner thread!!
This thread is inspired by a picture from the terror attack on the US Capitol on Wed. I’m not going to copy or otherwise link to the picture b/c I find it offensive but it involves a protestor standing with a confederate flag in front of Sumner’s portrait

Sumner was Boston born and raised to a very liberal family and grew up committed to racially integrated schools and prison reform among much else. Above all he was a passionate abolitionist. He was a celebrated orator and considered a radical even in liberal MA

Before the 17th amendment, senators were not directly elected, but appointed by their state legislatures. MA, newly dominated by democrats, elected Sumner by a 1 vote majority to replace Daniel Webster in 1851.

Sumner’s most famous moment comes in 1856 in the midst of the political crisis over ‘Bleeding Kansas’ over the legality of extending slavery into Kansas territory, something Sumner was adamantly opposed to doing.

In a speech that took place over 2 days, May 19 and 20 (speeches could run several hours in those days and our boy could TALK), Sumner denounces slavery in the most vehement terms, castigating any who sought its spread.

Sumner also took the opportunity to name names. He specifically called out the authors of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Stephen Douglas of IL and Andrew Butler of SC. Douglas was 2 years away from his famous debates with that other most important IL politician, Abraham Lincoln

Sumner reserved the most vitriol for Butler, however. He charged that Butler ‘had chosen a mistress’ who was ‘polluted’ to everyone else but always ‘chaste’ to him. And that the mistress was ‘the harlot, slavery’

Let that sexual imagery sink in for a sec.

This was incendiary stuff. The sexual imagery is not an accident, it was very much part and parcel of the way abolitionists spoke about slavery and slave holders. It was designed to shock, and to draw attention to the manifold evils of slavery.

Listening to the speech, Stephen Douglas even muttered to a colleague that Sumner was a ‘damn fool’ who was going to get shot by ‘some other damn fool’

Turns out, Douglas was only partly right.

The now maligned and aggrieved Senator Butler had a cousin, Preston Brooks who was in the House, also representing South Carolina. Brooks took extreme offense to both the insult to his cousin, and to his state, and immediately wanted to challenge Sumner to a duel

Brooks was persuaded by his fellow SC Rep Lawrence Keitt that dueling was a recourse for gentlemen and that Sumner was no gentleman and therefore unworthy of a duel, which has extreme Rocky III vibes to me

As Sumner was not deemed a gentleman, and indeed Brooks determined him no better than a drunkard, Brooks decided the only option was to ‘punish’ Sumner with a public beating.

2 days later, Brooks grabbed his cane and made his way to the Senate floor

Brooks confronted a seated Sumner, and as Sumner started to stand up, Brooks began to hit him with the cane. Sumner attempted to escape but the heavy desk was bolted to the floor and he was trapped. Eventually Sumner, half blind with his own blood, tore the desk from its bolts.

Sumner tried to stagger away, but fell unconscious as Brooks continued to savagely beat him, even while Sumner was unresponsive and covered in blood.
And, let’s not forget, this is on the FLOOR OF THE UNITED STATES SENATE!

At this moment, you’re probably wondering: why didn’t someone help Sumner? Weren’t there other Senators around?

Yes, yes there were. Several, in fact.

They were held back at gunpoint by Lawrence Keitt, Brooks’ accomplice.

Brooks continued to beat Sumner, while Keitt held all help at bay, until the cane broke, and then the assailants quietly left the Chamber, completely unmolested. Brooks even required medical attention after hitting himself with a backswing.

Reaction was swift and typically divided. The South embraced Brooks and his assault made him famous. Supporters immediately sent him new canes, since he broke his old one. An attempt to censure him failed the House. Brooks was convicted and fined in DC court (not jailed!)

Brooks resigned his seat and was immediately (beginning of August!) returned by his constituents in a special election. A few months later he unexpectedly and unrelatedly fell ill and died in Jan 1857.

Sumner was beaten within an inch of his life, literally. His recuperation was lengthy and in some ways he would never fully recover. He suffered headaches and what we would now call PTSD for the rest of his life.

Sumner was too ill to campaign for re-election that fall, but the MA legislature reappointed him anyway, and his empty desk (unlike the House, Senators did then and do now have assigned desks in the chamber) served as a powerful reminder of Sumner’s ordeal.

Sumner finally returned to the Senate 3 years later, having become a martyr to the abolitionist cause and continued to champion the cause during and after the Civil War, advocating for, among other things, the 13th amendment to the constitution.

Sumner served in the senate until his death in 1874, and became only the 2nd Senator (after Henry Clay) and 4th person over all to lie in state in the Capitol.

Brooks had, and still has, counties and towns throughout the South named for him.

All of this is to say: the picture of Sumner with a confederate flag next to his face was the exact antithesis of everything he spent his life and his blood opposing.