The Caning of Charles Sumner: Preston Brooks' 1856 Attack in the Senate

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In May 1856, with Bleeding Kansas in full swing after the Kansas-Nebraska Act replaced fixed lines with popular sovereignty, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner delivered a two day speech he had largely memorized, running over a hundred pages. He targeted the act's authors, Stephen Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina, mocking the speech impediment Butler had after a stroke and describing slavery as Butler's chosen mistress. Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina, Butler's relative, first considered a duel, but after consulting Representative Laurence Keitt on the code duello he decided Sumner was no gentleman and deserved a beating instead.

On May 22, 1856, Brooks entered the Senate chamber with Keitt and Henry Edmundson, waited for the women in the gallery to leave, and struck Sumner at his desk with a gutta-percha cane topped with gold. Pinned by the bolted desk, Sumner tore it from the floor, staggered blindly up the aisle, and was beaten until the cane shattered and he fell unconscious. He was absent for three years, and Massachusetts left his seat empty. Brooks paid a $300 fine, survived an expulsion vote, resigned, and was reelected before dying of croup. Sumner returned in 1859.

Keitt drew a pistol and waved a cane to keep senators from reaching Sumner.
Southern supporters mailed Brooks hundreds of replacement canes, one inscribed Hit him again.
Northerners held mass rallies and printed more than a million copies of Sumner's speech.
Republicans campaigned on Bleeding Kansas and Bleeding Sumner, and groups like the Wide Awakes followed.
The attack and Brooks' light punishment helped push John Brown toward violence in Kansas and later Harpers Ferry.

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