The Speech
On May 19, 1856, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner rose on the Senate floor and delivered a speech titled "The Crime Against Kansas" — a blistering two-day oration attacking the pro-slavery violence then tearing apart the Kansas Territory [1]. The speech ran over five hours across two sessions, filling 112 printed pages. Sumner had spent months preparing it, memorizing long passages so he could deliver them with theatrical force, locking eyes with his targets as he spoke [4].
Sumner named names. He singled out Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina, mocking his speech impediment (caused by a stroke) and comparing his devotion to slavery to a man "who has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows... the harlot, slavery" [2]. He described Butler as a man who "touches nothing which he does not disfigure with error" and accused him of spewing "the loose expectoration of his speech" — a cruel and deliberate reference to Butler's tendency to drool when he talked, a consequence of his paralysis [1]. He also attacked Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, architect of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, calling him a "noise-some, squat, and nameless animal" and comparing him to Don Quixote's squire Sancho Panza, faithfully serving the slave power [2].
The language was deliberately provocative. Sumner was an abolitionist firebrand who believed the slave-holding South was a moral abomination. He drew on classical rhetoric, citing Roman history and European philosophy, constructing elaborate metaphors that cast slaveholders as medieval tyrants and rapists. He wanted to provoke outrage. He succeeded beyond his imagination.
Douglas, listening from the back of the chamber, reportedly muttered to a colleague: "That damn fool will get himself killed by some other damn fool" [3].
The Attack
Two days later, on May 22, 1856, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina — Andrew Butler's first cousin once removed — entered the Senate chamber after the day's session had adjourned. Brooks had initially considered challenging Sumner to a duel but decided that Sumner, as a social inferior who lacked the honor of a gentleman, did not deserve the dignity of a formal challenge [2]. Under the code of the antebellum South, a social inferior was not dueled — he was horsewhipped, or caned, like a dog.
Brooks found Sumner alone at his desk, writing letters and franking copies of his speech for distribution. The chamber was mostly empty; a few senators lingered in scattered seats. Brooks approached from behind, accompanied by Representative Lawrence Keitt of South Carolina and Representative Henry Edmundson of Virginia, who positioned themselves nearby [1].
Brooks addressed Sumner directly: "Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine" [1]. Without waiting for a response, Brooks raised his gutta-percha cane — a walking stick about an inch thick, with a hollow core and a gold head weighing several ounces — and brought it down on Sumner's head with full force.
The first blow stunned Sumner instantly. Brooks struck again and again, raining blows on Sumner's head and face. Sumner, blinded by the blood streaming into his eyes, tried to rise but his legs were trapped beneath his desk, which was bolted to the floor by an iron plate and heavy screws [3]. In his desperate struggle to stand, Sumner wrenched the entire desk from the floor, ripping the bolts from the wood. He staggered into the aisle, arms raised blindly to protect himself, and collapsed face-down on the floor.
Brooks did not stop. He continued to beat the prone, semiconscious senator until his cane shattered into pieces. By his own later account, Brooks delivered "about 30" blows in the span of roughly one minute [2]. Several southern senators watched without intervening. Keitt brandished a pistol and shouted at anyone who moved toward the melee: "Let them be!" [2]. Representative Ambrose Murray of New York and Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky eventually reached Sumner and dragged him away, but only after Brooks had exhausted himself.
Sumner was carried from the chamber covered in blood, his coat soaked through, his scalp split open in multiple places down to the bone. Clumps of his hair and fragments of the cane lay scattered across the Senate floor [3].
The Injuries
The beating left Sumner with severe lacerations to the skull — two cuts extended to the bone, each several inches long [1]. He suffered traumatic brain injury, massive blood loss, and what modern physicians retrospectively believe was post-traumatic stress disorder. In the immediate aftermath, his wounds were stitched, but infection set in quickly. He developed fevers and was bedridden for weeks.
Sumner attempted to return to his duties several times in the following months, but each attempt ended in collapse. He experienced debilitating headaches, difficulty concentrating, and intense pain whenever he tried to sit upright for extended periods [4]. His doctors diagnosed his condition as a deep injury to the nervous system that went far beyond the visible wounds.
In 1857, Sumner traveled to Europe seeking treatment. In Paris, he was examined by Dr. Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, a pioneering neurologist, who prescribed a brutal regimen of "fire cupping" — applying red-hot metal cups to his bare spine to create deep burns, theoretically stimulating the damaged nerves [1]. The treatment left Sumner with permanent scars across his back. Its medical value was negligible, but the pain was excruciating, and Sumner endured multiple sessions over several months.
He was unable to return to his Senate seat for over three years — from May 1856 until June 1860. Massachusetts deliberately left his chair empty during his entire absence, refusing to appoint a replacement. The empty desk became a visible, daily symbol of southern violence against free speech. Every time a senator glanced at the vacant seat, he was reminded of what had happened there. The empty chair became one of the most powerful rallying points for the nascent Republican Party [4].
Southern Reaction
The reaction in the slave-holding states was celebratory, and the enthusiasm was not subtle. Preston Brooks became an instant hero across the South. Admirers mailed him dozens of replacement canes — many inscribed with mottoes like "Hit him again," "Use knock-down arguments," and "Good job" [2]. One cane, sent from Charleston, bore the inscription "To the Hon. P.S. Brooks, for his chastisement of the lying, thieving Sumner." The Richmond Enquirer editorialized that Sumner had received "good and sufficient" punishment and that "these vulgar abolitionists in the Senate must be lashed into submission" [3]. Southern newspapers debated only whether Brooks should have used a horsewhip instead, which some argued would have been more appropriate for a man of Sumner's low character.
The South Carolina legislature passed a resolution praising Brooks for his defense of the state's honor. The Columbia South Carolinian declared that Brooks had "stood forth so nobly in defense of... the honor of South Carolinians" [2]. He resigned his House seat to allow his constituents to pass judgment — and was immediately re-elected with near-unanimity, receiving every vote cast except six [3].
The southern reaction revealed something that horrified moderates on both sides: a large portion of the slaveholding class genuinely believed that physical violence was an appropriate response to political speech they found offensive. The codes of honor that governed southern society — the same codes that sanctioned dueling and demanded "satisfaction" for insults — had been imported directly into the halls of Congress [4].
Northern Reaction
In the free states, the attack was received as proof that the slave power would resort to physical violence to silence opposition. "Bleeding Sumner" joined "Bleeding Kansas" as twin rallying cries, evidence that the South intended to spread slavery by force — not just across the territories, but into the very chambers of democratic government [1].
Mass meetings were held across New England and the Midwest. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, a crowd of several thousand gathered to denounce the attack. In Cleveland, Ohio, protesters burned Brooks in effigy. Newspapers across the North ran lurid illustrations of the beating, depicting Sumner as a helpless victim and Brooks as a savage brute [3]. The poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem titled "Le Marais du Cygne" connecting the attack to the broader violence in Kansas. Ralph Waldo Emerson told an audience in Concord that the beating proved "the downright brutal extermination of all opponents is the only kind of political argument which the slaveholders understand" [4].
The Republican Party — barely two years old — gained thousands of new members in the weeks following the attack. The caning became a centerpiece of John C. Frémont's 1856 presidential campaign as the first Republican nominee, with campaign materials featuring images of Sumner's battered body alongside scenes of bloodshed in Kansas [1]. Though Frémont lost to James Buchanan, the Republicans carried eleven northern states and established themselves as a viable national party — a transformation accelerated directly by the outrage over Sumner's beating.
The attack radicalized moderate northerners who had previously sought compromise. If a sitting senator could be beaten unconscious for giving a speech — in the Senate chamber itself — what protection did anyone have? The incident convinced many that the conflict over slavery could no longer be resolved through politics. It pushed the Overton window: positions once considered radical, like immediate abolition, began to seem merely practical [4].
The Broader Context: Kansas in Flames
The caning was not an isolated act of violence but rather one eruption in a cascade that convulsed the nation throughout 1856. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had opened the Kansas Territory to "popular sovereignty" — letting settlers vote on whether to permit slavery. Both sides flooded the territory with partisans. Pro-slavery "Border Ruffians" from Missouri crossed into Kansas by the thousands to stuff ballot boxes and intimidate free-state settlers. Free-state organizations in New England shipped rifles to Kansas emigrants, packed in crates labeled "books" — the weapons became known as "Beecher's Bibles" after the abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher, who had helped fund them [3].
By early 1856, Kansas had two rival governments — a pro-slavery legislature in Lecompton and a free-state legislature in Topeka — each claiming legitimacy. Armed bands roamed the countryside. On May 21, 1856 — the day before Brooks attacked Sumner — a pro-slavery militia of roughly 800 men sacked the free-state town of Lawrence, Kansas. They destroyed two newspaper offices (the Herald of Freedom and the Kansas Free State), burned the Free State Hotel to the ground, looted private homes, and threw printing presses into the Kansas River [1]. One person was killed. The "Sack of Lawrence" was reported across the nation as an act of war by the slave power.
Two days after Brooks attacked Sumner, the abolitionist John Brown — who had been living in the Osawatomie settlement — led a retaliatory massacre at Pottawatomie Creek. On the night of May 24, Brown and a small band of followers dragged five pro-slavery settlers from their homes and hacked them to death with broadswords [3]. Brown believed he was acting as the instrument of God's justice. The killings ignited a guerrilla war across eastern Kansas that continued through 1856 and 1857, claiming over 55 lives and displacing hundreds of families.
Three acts of bloodshed in three days — Lawrence sacked, Sumner beaten, Pottawatomie massacred — crystallized the crisis. The violence was no longer theoretical. It was no longer confined to distant territories. It had entered the United States Senate itself.
Brooks's Fate
A House committee investigated the caning but lacked the two-thirds majority needed to expel Brooks, as southern representatives voted as a bloc to protect him [1]. Brooks was fined $300 — roughly equivalent to $10,000 today — and censured but faced no criminal prosecution. He resigned his seat in July 1856 to seek vindication from his constituents, and they returned him to office overwhelmingly in the August special election.
Brooks returned to Congress but did not serve long. On January 27, 1857 — less than eight months after the caning — he died suddenly of acute croup (a severe inflammation of the larynx and trachea) at age 37 in Washington, D.C. [2]. His death was unexpected; he had shown no signs of serious illness in the preceding weeks. Some abolitionists openly declared it divine retribution. Frederick Douglass's newspaper noted the death with grim satisfaction. The seat Brooks vacated was filled without controversy, and his name faded from public discussion — while Sumner's only grew louder.
Sumner's Recovery and Return
Sumner finally returned to the Senate on June 4, 1860 — more than four years after the attack. His first major speech back, "The Barbarism of Slavery," was another four-hour indictment of the slave system, even more ferocious than "The Crime Against Kansas" [4]. He was no longer the same man. Friends noted that his once-jovial demeanor had hardened into something colder and more relentless. The beating had not silenced him; it had radicalized him further.
During the Civil War and Reconstruction, Sumner became one of the most powerful voices in the Senate. He chaired the Foreign Relations Committee and was instrumental in preventing European recognition of the Confederacy. After the war, he championed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations — though the Supreme Court later struck it down [1]. He fought for land redistribution to freed slaves, voting rights for Black men, and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.
Sumner served in the Senate until his death on March 11, 1874, at age 63. His health had never fully recovered from the beating eighteen years earlier. He suffered chronic pain, recurring headaches, and episodes of what his contemporaries described as nervous collapse. On his deathbed, he reportedly told a visitor: "Don't let the civil rights bill fail" [4].
Legacy
The caning of Charles Sumner is often cited by historians as a point of no return in the escalation toward civil war [4]. It demonstrated that the political system could not contain the slavery conflict — that violence had entered the legislative chambers themselves. It radicalized both sides: the North became more committed to confrontation, and the South became more convinced that force was the appropriate response to abolitionist criticism.
The incident also exposed a fundamental asymmetry in how the two sections understood democracy itself. For the North, the attack was an assault on free speech and representative government. For the South, it was a legitimate defense of honor against slander. These two worldviews could not coexist within the same political system, and within five years of the caning, they no longer tried [3].
The original cane — the pieces of it, at least — is now in the collection of the Old State House Museum in Boston. The gold head was never recovered. The desk Sumner ripped from the floor was repaired, re-bolted, and remained in the Senate chamber for decades, its scars hidden beneath fresh varnish [1].
Sources
- United States Senate — *The Caning of Senator Charles Sumner*. Link
- Smithsonian National Museum of American History — *Brooks-Sumner Affair*. Link
- Library of Congress — *Bleeding Kansas and the Caning of Sumner*. Link
- National Archives — *Records of the 34th Congress: Brooks-Sumner Investigation*. Link