Why was sumner caned

Featured Resources for National History Day Document Category Hearings and Investigations. Date State or Territory South Carolina. Series Records of Early Select Committees, compiled — Congress 34th — Description The s saw the House bitterly divided over the issue of slavery, which led to one of the more incendiary and violent events in congressional history.

That changed in , when the Whig Party, with whom he identified, nominated Zachary Taylor for president. Taylor was a slaveholding southerner, and Sumner believed the Whigs had thus betrayed their strong base of support from northern abolitionists.

He advocated for a schism and the establishment of a new party. The Free Soilers gathered momentum from disillusioned northerners, and the party rewarded Sumner with an endorsement for United States Senate. He also opposed the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in , which amended prior compromises to allow territories to decide issues for themselves when they applied for statehood. Indeed, the region became a battleground in as forces opposing and supporting slavery clashed for control.

Of course, he has chosen a mistress… who, though ugly to others is always lovely to him, though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight; I mean the harlot Slavery. He followed the strict code of honor common among the plantation elite in the south and had been involved in several duels in the past, but believed that because Sumner had proven himself to not be his equal in status, the Massachusetts senator deserved a more humiliating punishment.

Brooks stalked Sumner for the next two days, hoping to accost him on the Capitol grounds, but the Massachusetts senator unknowingly evaded these challenges.

Determined to correct the offense to his honor, Brooks decided to settle the score inside the Capitol. On May 22 he lingered after an adjourned session while the Senate chamber emptied.

Brooks waited a full hour for a few ladies who were present to depart. Sumner had meanwhile busied himself writing letters and pulled his chair in close to his desk, which was bolted to the floor. Sumner, I have read your speech with great care, and with as much impartiality as I am capable of, and I feel it my duty to say to you that you have published a libel on my State, and uttered a slander upon a relative, who is aged and absent, and I am come to punish you.

Brooks walked with a limp, the effect of a dueling wound he received in , and always carried a cane. He sought to escape but could not pry himself out of the desk. The pro-slavery southerner walked over to Senator Charles Sumner , whacked him in the head with the cane and then proceeded to beat the anti-slavery northerner unconscious.

Afterward, Brooks walked out of the chamber without anyone stopping him. The caning of Charles Sumner is probably the most famous violent attack in Congress, but it is far from the only one. In the three decades leading up to the Civil War , there were more than 70 violent incidents between congressmen, writes Yale history professor Joanne B. It was a time of heightened tensions, especially over slavery —itself a violent institution that would drive the nation to a bloody war. Congressmen during this period commonly carried pistols or bowie knives when they stepped onto the congressional floor.

In fact, by the late s, some constituents actually sent their congressmen guns. Another was the only instance in which a congressman has ever killed another congressman. That murder happened in , when Congress was fiercely divided between the Whigs and the Democrats.

At the time, many members considered an insult against a congressman to be an insult against his entire party.