Buchanan Tries His Hand 357Sumner and rained blows on his head with
a cane until Sumner fell, unconscious and
bloody, to the floor. “I... gave him about
30 first-rate stripes,” Brooks later boasted.
“Towards the last he bellowed like a calf. I
wore my cane out completely but saved
the head which is gold.” The physical
damage suffered by Sumner was not life-
threatening, but the incident so affected
him psychologically that he was unable to
return to his seat in Congress until 1859.
Both sides made much of this dis-
graceful incident. When the House cen-
sured him, Brooks resigned, returned to
his home district, and was triumphantly
reelected. A number of well-wishers sent
him souvenir canes. Northerners viewed
the affair as illustrating the brutalizing
effect of slavery on southern whites and
made a hero of Sumner.Buchanan Tries His Hand
Such was the atmosphere surrounding the
1856 presidential election. The Republican party now
dominated much of the North. It nominated John C.
Frémont, “the Pathfinder,” one of the heroes of the
conquest of California during the war with Mexico.
Frémont fit the Whig tradition of presidential candi-
dates: a popular military man with almost no political
experience. Unlike Taylor and Scott, however, he was
articulate on the issue of slavery in the territories.
Although citizens of diverse interests had joined the
party, Republicans expressed their objectives in one
simple slogan: “Free soil, free speech, and Frémont.”
The Democrats cast aside the ineffectual Pierce,
but they did not dare nominate Douglas because he
had raised such a storm in the North. They settled on
James Buchanan, chiefly because he had been out of
the country serving as minister to Great Britain during
the long debate over Kansas! The American party
nominated former president Millard Fillmore, a choice
the remnants of the Whigs endorsed. Walt Whitman
had been an ardent Democrat. But the party’s stand
on slavery in the territories disgusted him. In 1856 he
wrote a poem, “The 18th Presidency,” denouncing
both Buchanan and Fillmore:
Two galvanized old men, close on
the summons to depart this life... relics and proofs of the little
political bargains...
Source: Walt Whitman “The 18th Presidency.”
In the campaign, the Democrats concentrated on
denouncing the Republicans as a sectional party that
threatened to destroy the Union. On this issue they
In this cartoon Charles Sumner of Massachusetts is caned on the floor of the Senate by
Preston Brooks of South Carolina.
Source: J. L. Magee, Southern Chivalry-Argument Versus Clubs, 1856. Lithograph. Weitenkampf
Collection #745, Prints Collection: Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs,
The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.
assassination, called him a “filthy reptile” and a
“leper.” He was impervious to such hostility. In the
spring of 1856 he loosed a dreadful blast titled “The
Crime Against Kansas.” Characterizing administra-
tion policy as tyrannical, imbecilic, absurd, and infa-
mous, he demanded that Kansas be admitted to the
Union at once as a free state. Then he began a long
and intemperate attack on both Douglas and the
elderly Senator Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina,
who was not present to defend himself.
Sumner described Butler as a “Don Quixote” who
had taken “the harlot, slavery” as his mistress, and he
spoke scornfully of “the loose expectoration” of
Butler’s speech. This was an inexcusable reference to
the uncontrollable drooling to which the elderly sena-
tor was subject. While he was still talking, Douglas,
who shrugged off most political name-calling as part
of the game, was heard to mutter, “That damn fool
will get himself killed by some other damn fool.”
Such a “fool” quickly materialized in the person of
Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina, a
nephew of Senator Butler. Since Butler was absent
from Washington, Brooks, who was probably as men-
tally unbalanced as Sumner, assumed the responsibility
of defending his kinsman’s honor. A southern roman-
tic par excellence, he decided that caning Sumner
would reflect his contempt more effectively than chal-
lenging him to a duel. Two days after the speech,
Brooks entered the Senate as it adjourned. Sumner
remained at his desk writing. Waiting until a talkative
woman in the lobby had left so that she would be
spared the sight of violence, Brooks then walked up to