Thread by @MrGoldstein7

The Sumner Caning, the assault that drove America to civil war, was a hoax. 🧵👇

No, that’s not a picture of Charles Sumner. That’s Senator Andrew Butler, the man whose honor was so besmirched that it forced his kinsman Congressman Preston Brooks to beat Senator Charles Sumner with a stick.

An historian says this of Butler:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Bu…
To me he looks more like a well-dressed asylum dweller. I’ll cover the insult to his honor in more detail below. For now let’s review the mainstream story.

By the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, whether Kansas entered the Union as a slave or free state would be determined by a vote of the citizens of the territory.

By the Spring of 1856, both pro- and anti-slavery forces were pushing settlers to move to the territory in order to create a majority for either side. There were skirmishes among the settlers, resulting in “Bleeding Kansas.”

On May 19-20, 1854, Sumner delivered his "Crime against Kansas" speech, in which he insults Senator Butler. On May 22, Brooks armed with his cane goes to the Senate, where Sumner is at his desk signing copies of his speech. The Senate is not in session and the chamber is empty.

Then:

During his attack Brooks is assisted by Congressman Laurence Keitt of South Carolina, who brandishes his own cane to discourage any of the few bystanders from stopping the violence.

Let’s examine the bios of all the participants. Sumner was born in Boston on January 6, 1811. His father, Charles Pinckney Sumner, was a Harvard lawyer who subsequently became Sheriff of Suffolk County (Boston). He was by all accounts a humorless, formal and undemonstrative man.

His mother’s name and occupation sounds Jewish, and contemporary historians thought so as well.

The Donald book has this footnote for the above passage:

Sumner seems to have inherited his parents’ dour dispositions. He did not appear capable of making or understanding jokes. This is an example of his sense of humor:

Sumner went to Harvard College, where he learned and memorized much Latin literature, and then to Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1834.

On the PBS web site’s bio for Sumner we have:
“Born in Boston on January 6, 1811, Sumner graduated from Harvard Law School in 18[33]” an error which I suspect is not accidental, given what we will learn about him.

In 1834 he traveled into the South for the first time:
Nice guy. So it would seem his later anti-slavery stance was more against the concept in the abstract, and not driven by any sort of sympathy for the actual people who suffered.

Also on this trip he visited the Supreme Court.

This may not be significant, but I bring it up because a Key will appear later.

He starts his law practice, partnering (perhaps in more ways than one, as we shall see) with George Stillman Hillard, and on October 13, 1834, tries his first case.

The next three years, during which he is building his practice, are a bit murky. Even his biographer Donald cannot say for sure how much work he was doing; sometimes the practice seems booming, at other times it seems like Sumner is idle. Hillard does most of the work.

This is the pattern with the law practice until Sumner finally departs for the Senate. By the late 1840s Hillard leaves the practice because he can’t get his work done with all the political and business visitors Sumner received. Sounds a bit like a front.

During this period of 1834-37 Sumner built up his connections among the Boston moneyed elites:

In 1837, with his profession not yet firmly established, Sumner leaves on a trip to Europe that lasts for three years. How did he pay for this trip?

Joseph Story was a U.S. Supreme Court justice and Sumner’s mentor at Harvard.

Besides the money, Sumner receives numerous letters of introduction from individual in the fields of law, politics, the arts and business. He claimed his purpose in the trip was to study the French and English legal systems.

The biography describes endless sight-seeing in France, England, Italy, Austria, and Prussia, during which he manages to meet an incredible assortment of powerful people. Here is a snippet of the names he encountered in England:

Further indication of how well he was received in England:

But he wasn’t universally well-received:

He then spent more time in France, in Italy where he supposedly studied art for four months, and in Austria and Prussia, about which only this much is said:

All this does not sound like the reception for a young unknown lawyer from America. A more plausible explanation is that the big families in Boston decided to turn Sumner into an agent of some sort, and this was his inaugural trip to Europe to establish contacts.

There is ample evidence that Sumner was gay. Of course, it doesn’t really matter, but you wonder why they never mention this fact about Sumner.
He was always very awkward around women, and had several very close friendships with men.

There are minor indications with his friend from Harvard and law partner, George Stillman Hillard:

These intimates dubbed themselves “The Five of Clubs” and would meet every Saturday to discuss poetry and the like. Later, Sumner and his friends are involved in a public debate about prison reform. Hillard participates, not well:

But things become much more obvious with his friend Samuel Gridley Howe:

Concerning Howe:

Howe went on to marry Julia Ward, who was eighteen years younger. Julia went on to write “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” perhaps out of frustration from being married to an obvious homosexual.

But “she hid her unhappiness with their marriage, earning the nickname 'the family champagne' from her children.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_War…

Sumner was also very close to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, going back to their days at Harvard.

To Sumner’s dismay Longfellow begins to court Fanny Appleton, the daughter of Boston industrialist Nathan Appleton. In the midst of this:

But it gets much worse:

What?! Sumner went on Longfellow’s honeymoon? Here is poor Fanny:
Sounds like quite the honeymoon, having to listen to your husband’s boyfriend deliver 17th century French funeral orations.

Sumner continues his association with the Longfellows after their marriage:

Sumner remains a bachelor until age 55, when he marries Alice Mason Hooper, a shrew thirty years younger than him:

She carries on some sort of affair with the Prussian diplomat Baron Friedrich von Holstein. Bismarck recalls him, possibly at Sumner’s bidding. The Sumners separate after about a year, and Alice flees to Paris, where:

Sumner never speaks to her again, and the aftermath of the affair proves deeply embarrassing to him:

Yes, most gays are impotent with women. But if Lawrence correctly stated Mrs. Sumner’s position, she complained not so much of Sumner’s total impotence as of his inability “fully” to satisfy “what every matured woman considers a just desire.” [Donald-Rights, chapter VII, sect.7]

Was Sumner also an actor? In many ways, he was, though not a good one. As an orator he would memorize his often exceedingly long speeches (for example, the speech that got him caned is 112 pages when printed, and he delivered it over the course of 5 hours spread across two days).

In his first term in the Senate he did not do much politicking, instead delivering his memorized speeches a few times a year, and then being mostly silent. When speaking he was compelling, with a strong bass voice.

His speeches were often galling to his enemies:

He must have been viewed by many as quite the arrogant bore, speaking in Latin and assuming the average mid-19th-century American politician would understand him. But of course that doesn't mean he deserved to be brutally and illegally assaulted by a colleague.

Preston Brooks was born August 5, 1819, in Edgefield, South Carolina. His paternal grandfather Zachariah Smith Brooks married “up” into the Butler family.

“The Butlers claimed descent from three English Barons: Henry de Bohun (1176– 1220), Saire de Quincy (ca. 1155–1219), and William Malef (d. 1217). [Deitreich,p.20]”

One of Brooks’ cousins was James Butler Bonham, who is said to have died defending the Alamo.

Brooks attended South Carolina College but did not finish, and despite that went on to study law and pass the state bar exam. There is no clear record that Brooks ever tried a case in court. He also kept the family plantation.

Much of the Brooks biography I read was spent covering his duels—or rather his preparation for duels, his reactions to affronts to his or his family’s honor, the elaborate communications leading up to duels, the narrowly averted duels, etc.

At some point I thought the historian was laying it on thick, that he was trying a bit too hard to establish that Brooks was a hothead who loved his honor and his duels.

In any case Brooks is said to have actually fought one duel (on November 11 (11/11), 1840, on Goat Island), where he was shot in the hip, causing him to use a cane for the rest of his life.

Congressman Anson Burlingame goaded him into a duel following the caning incident. This was averted because Burlingame chose as the dueling ground the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, knowing it would be impossible for Brooks to travel through the North to get there.

During the Mexican War, Brooks raised a regiment from his county and led it to Mexico. Once in Mexico his history gets murky. He suffered from the climate and seems to have developed a mysterious illness that sent him home early.

The details are not clear and some witnesses describe him as being on the front lines of the battles at Vera Cruz and Mexico City, while others say he was not present. Which of course means he wasn't there. His younger brother was (allegedly) killed in action.

Whatever he was doing during the war the impression back in Edgefield was that he left the war prematurely due to illness, and didn’t not acquit himself honorably.

Laurence Keitt is another planter/lawyer/congressman from South Carolina. He attended South Carolina College with Brooks. Curiously, at the time of Brooks’ death in 1857, he and Keitt “shared lodgings at Brown’s Hotel” [Deitreich,p.249].

It seems odd that two well-off planters and congressmen would need to live together, but I could find no other evidence that they were gay.

Keitt has the distinction of participating in two famous acts of violence in the halls of Congress. The 1st the caning in 1856, the 2nd in 1858, when he starts a “massive brawl” on the House floor. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_…

Responding to a perceived insult during a heated debate

I’m glad to see slapstick humor is so timeless. Or could it be another case of actors falling out of character and laughing?
That’s Barksdale, worrying someone will jostle his toupee.

Francis Lieber’s part in all this will become clear soon, but for now I will just give background on him.
He was born in Berlin in 1798 or 1800 and says he fought in the Battle of Waterloo.

After that:

So already his bio reads like many of the spooks we’ve seen, with mysterious academic advancement, Jewish Get Out of Jail Free cards, etc.

He left England for America in 1827 because he received an offer to manage a gymnasium and swimming pool in Boston. No, seriously. Lieber the cabana boy.

General Pfuel was the Prussian Minister of War and later Prime Minister of Prussia, so quite the recommendation if you’re looking for a job as a gym manager.

Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (11 August 1778 – 15 October 1852) was a German gymnastics educator and nationalist whose writing is credited with the founding of the German gymnastics (Turner) movement ,

...as well as influencing the German Campaign of 1813, during which a coalition of German states effectively ended the occupation of Napoleon's First French Empire. His admirers know him as Turnvater Jahn, roughly meaning "father of gymnastics" Jahn.

There were many of these “German gymnastics clubs”, or Turnvereins, in America in the 19th century. They combine physical culture and German nationalism, and many of the members fought on the Union side in the Civil War.

Here’s a picture of one club in Milwaukee in 1869: You wonder why so much photo fakery was needed in this simple club photo. And I bet the Five of Clubs would have fit right in.

Later Jahn was claimed to be the spiritual founder of Nazism:

In other words, more gay Jews.

Doubtless the Turners found this terribly unfair, but then stuff like this doesn’t help their case:

That’s 3,000 Turners performing at the Federal Gymnastics Festival in Milwaukee, 1893.

But back to Lieber:
With his mathematics dissertation under his belt and his experience as a gym manager, he was uniquely suited to edit the Encyclopaedia Americana, and after that to become a professor of history and political economy.

He is most famous for the Lieber code, a set of rules of war that was introduced during the Civil War. Although it had some good points, such as forbidding rape and disallowing most killing of prisoners, it was no Geneva Conventions:

But most likely the Code was written as a legal defense for the Emancipation Proclamation, specifically a defense of using emancipated slaves (which the South viewed as stolen property) as soldiers.

The participants in the North and South in the caning incident were all connected via Lieber.
Sumner and Lieber became friends when he first came to Boston:

Lieber would write some of the letters of recommendation that Sumner took with him on his first trip to Europe, presumably those directed to Prussian eminences.

They remained lifelong “friends”, with occasional breaks due to Sumner’s difficult nature. Lieber didn’t help matters because when he lived in the South he kept slaves, two household servants.

What is Lieber’s next position, after the gym and encyclopedia ventures ended? From 1837 – 56 he was a professor at South Carolina College, where Brooks and Keitt were his students.

At the time the college had around 160 student and 6 professors, so definitely they would have known each other. Keitt’s biography confirms the connection:

Also, Brooks, Lieber and Keitt were members of the Euphradian Society, which is billed as a literary society. But I did not find evidence of contact between Brooks or Keitt with Lieber after the college years.

In 1856, perhaps with his mission complete in the South, Lieber left South Carolina College to teach history and political science at Columbia College (now University) in New York. It was while at Columbia that Lieber wrote his Code.

There are many prominent Butlers in Massachusetts, as there are Sumners in South Carolina. For example, there is a Sumner Plantation in South Carolina. (Also a Sumner nuclear plant.) Also remember Gordon Sumner, aka Sting.

So what was the insult against Senator Butler that provoked the caning? In the midst of Sumner’s five hour speech:

Ouch. Them’s fightin’ words.

But a bit later, Sumner appears to make fun of Butler’s speech impediment, brought on by a recent stroke:

That’s a low blow.

Sumner was actually on good terms with Butler initially. When he first arrived in the Senate in 1851:

This is the famous cartoon about the caning:

It makes you think Sumner was overpowered by a larger man, but actually Sumner was bigger and in better shape than Brooks. Sumner was 6’2” (I also saw a claim of 6’4”), with height comparable to Lincoln’s.

Here’s an account of his and Lincoln’s first meeting:

Brooks was apparently 6 feet tall. He wrote to his brother, “Sumner is a very powerful man and weighs 30 pounds more than myself.”[Deitreich,p.134]

He is said to have been worried that if he didn’t surprise Sumner in his attack that Sumner might snatch the cane away and beat him back.
There was also the dueling bullet that he is supposed to have carried in his hip that prevented him from walking without a cane.

Brooks discussed with another accomplice, Virginia Congressman Edmundson, a different plan for the attack where he would meet Sumner outside the Capitol, a plan which would necessitate running up the steps:

What about the cane?

Gutta-percha is a plant whose sap can be made into a thermoplastic latex. It once was used to insulate underwater telegraph cables, as well as to make golfballs. It was replaced for many uses in the 20th century by Bakelite.

So the cane was a hollow, 11-ounce, hard plastic stick.
It is said to have broken into many pieces during the attack, and afterwards the pieces were grabbed as souvenirs. The cane is on display at the Boston Old State House—you know, lest we forget this Southern atrocity.

It makes you think just the head survived, which matches the story told in the text. And yet here’s another picture of the exhibit:
I can’t account for this full cane. It’s probably nothing, they probably reconstructed the missing parts.

The mainstream account says the attack began with “’a slight blow’ with the smaller end of his cane” (so 3/8” of hollow plastic). If this were the case, how incapacitated could Sumner have been? Why didn’t he stop the attack from the weaker Brooks?

The mainstream claims that he was stunned, and forgot how to get out of his chair (he had to slide it backward), and to save himself he ultimately had to rip the desk from the floor with his manly thighs alone.

Sumner was taken to a room off the Senate where Dr. Cornelius Boyle tended to him. He found two “flesh wounds” on his head, each of which required two stiches to close.

The Northern story at the time was that he was beaten to a point near death, and that view has become the official mainstream story.

Despite allegedly nearly killing Sumner, Brooks escaped any serious punishment. He was not even ejected from the House. Does that make sense? If you were a Congressman, North or South, would you want a colleague among you who was capable of murderous assault?

He also escaped legal punishment. His trial for assault took place about two months later. Sumner claimed he was not well enough to testify, and didn’t know when he would be. The trial was presided over by a Judge Crawford, about whom I couldn’t find much information.

But the prosecutor was Philip Barton Key, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

We have seen that name before. He was the son of Francis Scott Key, who was mentioned above. He was murdered three years after this trial.

He probably went into Intelligence. Was Key part of the Brooks trial just as part of his normal duties? Or was he placed there to ensure an outcome?
And what was that outcome?

The assault was on May 22, and by July 8 the judge had wrapped up the legal issues with a fine, and no jail.

Brooks was the most famous and admired person in the South for a time, but it didn’t last for long, because he died within half a year…of the croup. Yes, that relatively harmless (though terrifying to parents) illness that makes your baby bark like a seal, that’s what did him in

Brooks continued to go to Congress, but the illness grew worse.

I think by “ironically” the author intends “coincidentally,” while the correct word he should have used was “appropriately.”

What are the chances that the same doctor who first examined Sumner was the same one who tended to Brooks for his deadly croup? Pretty low, unless he was part of a running project.
And also, Dr. Boyle would become a Confederate spy.

I found this information about Boyle in a book about the Knights of the Golden Circle:

Is it likely that Boyle only took up spying once the War started? Or was he an agent all along?
Although I could find no evidence of Brooks living beyond 1857, his death has all the signs of a fake.

He had been a middling Congressman, and only did anything of importance with the fake Sumner caning. They must have decided he would be more useful thereafter outside of Congress, and moved him to some other project.

In the critical final years leading up to the Civil War, the period of Dred Scott, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown’s raid, etc., what was the leading anti-slavery voice in the Congress doing? He was sightseeing in Europe, according the mainstream story.

Sumner was away from the Senate for nearly three years after the attack. During this time he was said to be recuperating.

Many people at the time, both from the South and the North, thought that he was faking it, and grew tired of his communiques from various health resorts saying he was on the mend but not quite ready to return.

He did return twice to the Senate during this period very briefly, when his masters bid him to. He first returned to Washington in late February, 1857:

During his time away he travels extensively in England, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Prussia, and reacquaints himself with many of the luminaries he met on his first trip to Europe. His reported activities during his trips bely his frail health:

The entire time he was drawing his Senate salary. As a taxpayer, even today I am angry! He claimed that he only started feeling bad when he got near Washington, and modern historians excuse him by saying he had a case of PTSD or somesuch.

At the time he was also receiving cover from some high-ranking people:

A more logical explanation for his travels is that he was an agent when he first traveled to Europe as a young man, and remained an agent during this later trip.

His handlers believed that if he were to remain in the Senate there was nothing he could do that would advance their interests more than the caning

In fact, this was a common view among Republicans at the time, that his empty Senate chair provided better symbolic value than Sumner’s actual presence, and he would be more useful doing their bidding in Europe.
There is a hint of this in his biography:

Here’s a final chuckle from Sumner’s biography:

Even by the mainstream view the caning had huge propaganda value, giving the Republicans half of their 1856 platform: “Bleeding Kansas” and “Bleeding Sumner.” They ran well on that platform and of course went on to win the Presidency in 1860.

But I can’t say what the actual reasons behind this project were. Obviously it created huge divisions in the country, and it continues to do so to this day.

On May 22 the front page of Wikipedia gave the five most important things that happened on that date, and the Sumner Caning was one of them. I wondered why are they still pushing this story? Why 165 years later we should still be thinking about this?

It’s because it was a masterful piece of propaganda at the time that served to perfectly divide the country. And it still works at that level. It’s the same reason we had the Confederate statues outrage a few years ago; that stuff still works to divide people.

I still remember my history teacher, a nice liberal lady, expressing genuine outrage at the caning, especially the detail of the story where Brooks received souvenir replacement canes that bore the text, “Hit Him Again.”

That’s really fine propaganda, if it still provokes an emotional response over a century later.

Whatever was the real cause for the conflict between then Northern and Southern elites in that period, it seems like in 1856 they felt they had to ratchet up the divisions between the ordinary people in the country.

Maybe they figured physical conflict was inevitable, and it was time to start up the war propaganda. The Sumner caning worked beautifully. Many Northerners were genuinely mortified by the attack, and came to view the Southerners as beasts.

But it was just one part of the project,

Yes, totally by chance that occurred the day before the caning.

What about ordinary Southerners, the ones who would be pressed into fighting? Were they goaded into action when their Senator was compared to Don Quixote? I sort of doubt it.

So for them other projects were used, such as the fake Pottawatomie massacre. This one occurred two days after the caning. All these incidents were related and part of the same project to create division.

A professional historian might accuse me of picking some pieces of information and ignoring others in order to push the viewpoint I have chosen. Perhaps. But is that not what the professional historian also does?

Sumner took off just as his career was getting started and took a 3-year trip to Europe, funded by Boston elites, where he meets countless important people.

Donald claims he is there to study European legal systems and to sightsee, while I believe he was being groomed as an agent for the Boston elites. Whose viewpoint makes more sense objectively?

Mainstream history is just another branch of the propaganda machine, perhaps the most potent one because historians seem more educated and trustworthy than, say, TV reporters. But they are cursed to shape their stories to fit the agenda of their masters.

I don’t envy Donald’s task of making any sense of Sumner’s second European trip, where on the one hand he has to present him as recovering glacially from a near-death injury, while at the same time needing to report such nonsense as his vigorous and enthusiastic sightseeing.

I wonder what snippets Donald found among Sumner’s and Lieber’s letters that he chose not to report, because they revealed too much?
What about Donald’s treatment, or non-treatment, of Sumner’s obvious homosexuality? Was he covering for Sumner?

The two volumes of his biography were written in 1960 and 1970, and maybe at the time it wasn’t polite for historians to discuss the sexuality of historical figures.

Maybe for the reader in 1960 that was sufficient to form the correct opinion and they didn’t need to be beaten over the head, whereas today everything needs to be spelled out.

I’m actually surprised that Sumner hasn’t been officially outed, because that would make him a hero for both the anti-racist and LGBTQ agendas.

I wonder if that’s something we can look forward to in the coming years, that the “left” side of the “culture wars” will start outing famous historical figures? Why not?

Here is historian Stephen Puleo, who recently (2013) wrote a book on the caning, addressing a crowd of white-hairs in the Old South Meeting House in Boston. C-SPAN was there to record it.
c-span.org/video/?314884-…

Here are some snippets:

Puleo surely read the Donald biography, since he admits it was the standard work for decades. There the initial contact is describes as a “slight blow.”

But Puleo’s version is a better explanation of how the more powerful Sumner could have been overcome by the smaller Brooks. Unfortunately his version does not match prior history.

Here he is referring to Sumner during his second European sightseeing trip:

So it sounds like in 2013 they decided to push the Sumner story again, and at the same time tighten up some of the worst inconsistencies.

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