Southern Honor and the Brooks-Sumner Affair Dallas Hanbury (Dr
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Southern Honor and the Brooks-Sumner Affair Dallas Hanbury (Dr. Ruth Truss) History, University of Montevallo In May 1856, a young Representative from South Carolina walked into the Senate chamber in search of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. Finding Sumner seated at his desk, Preston Brooks beat the senator unconscious. This Brooks-Sumner Affair was one of many incidents associated with “Bleeding Kansas,” often viewed by historians as one of the crucial stepping stones of the 1850s toward secession. In studying the coming of secession and Civil War, political events provide a key element to understanding the division that arose between sections of the United States. From the Compromise of 1850, to the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, to the 1857 Dred Scott decision, and finally to the 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry by John Brown, events propelled the pace of the developing chasm in politics as well as other areas of life. The Kansas-Nebraska Act and the associated acts of violence were especially important in drawing the lines that would eventually result in the fracturing of American life. This incident known as the Brooks -- Sumner Affair, can be viewed in light of the culture of the American South by the mid -- 1850s. This culture was one that was both unique and complex, emphasizing independence, an economy based on agriculture, and society that valued personal honor. Thus, to Southerners, Preston Brooks’s response to Charles Sumner’s speech was warranted and understood. Historian James McPherson argues that by the mid-1850s it was not the South that was unique, but rather the North. In his collection of essays Drawn With the Sword, McPherson contends that the agriculturally based South was like the majority of the world economies at the time and further contends that the American North was an anomaly in its aggressive push to industrialize.1Although the majority of the world was agricultural, the South’s culture was further complicated by the issue of slavery. The complexities of slavery affected every aspect of Southern life; including honor. As one South Carolinian said: “We are an agricultural people, pursuing our own system, and working out our own destiny, breeding up women and men with some other purpose than to make them vulgar, fanatical, cheating Yankees.”2 Preston Brooks was a product of this culture, steeped in the ideas and ideals of honor, tradition, and the expectations of a Southern gentleman. The agrarian South in the 1850s was being threatened with the winds of change, which Southerners such as Preston Brooks saw -- whether consciously or not -- as a threat to their way of life. Indeed, McPherson writes in “Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism”: “A good many historians insist not only that a unique south did exist before the Civil War, but also that its sense of being under siege was an underlying cause of secession.”3 In Southern culture, a gentleman would not hesitate to defend honor. If one was attacked or threatened, the culture accepted the premise that a vigorous defense was both necessary and expected. As a result, the lashing out at Sumner was a response to this state of siege. Hopes of lifting the Northern siege of Southern slavery and Southern economic interests came in the initial form of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Kansas-Nebraska Act would repeal the Missouri Compromise, which stated that slavery would not be allowed to expand past the parallel of 36; 30; and instead would allow popular sovereignty to decide the slave issue in 1James McPherson, Drawn With the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 22. 2Scrapbook kept by Mrs. Brooks. South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia. 3McPherson, 5. Kansas; Nebraska would be a free territory. By ensuring that Nebraska would not support slavery, Douglas was cementing his plans to have a northern route for a transcontinental railroad. Popular sovereignty can be blamed for igniting the violence in Kansas, for by allowing slavery to be supported or not by the people of Kansas the situation quickly escalated into violence between pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups within the territory. Pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions were attacking each other as both sides sought to gain control of the government of Kansas and thereby settle the slave question within the territory. In fact, the violence reached the point that “Bloody Kansas” became the moniker for the issue. Sumner’s speech “The Crime Against Kansas” was intended to show support for the anti-slavery position in the territory of Kansas. Pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the territory were attacking each other as both sides sought to gain control of the government of Kansas and thereby settle the slave question within the territory. The speech, however, added nothing to the debate over Kansas; it instead was an attack on prominent Democratic leaders, including Stephen Douglas and Andrew Butler. As McPherson says: “Language had become an instrument of division, not unity.”4 However, the speech did unite all in temporary agreement that it was crude and that it violated a sense of decorum; even anti-slavery supporters condemned the tone and content of the speech. The long term political impact of Bleeding Kansas was a key element in this crucial decade prior to the coming of the war. Brooks’s attack on Sumner, two years before the Freeport Doctrine, was not lost on Southerners in 1858 who felt that the Freeport Doctrine was a reminder that it was indeed North against South, even within the Democratic Party; hence, Stephen 4 McPherson, 9-11. Douglas was deprived of Southern votes which allowed Lincoln to win the Presidency. One only has to examine the vote totals of the 1860 Presidential election to realize the effect of the Freeport Doctrine, and to a lesser extent the fracturing of the Democratic Party beginning in 1856. Electoral College Popular Vote Republicans: 180 1,866,000 Southern Democrats: 72 849,800 Constitutional Union Party: 39 589,000 Democratic Party: 12 1,377,000 The results indicate that Stephen Douglas in attempting self-preservation on the question of slavery in the territories was deprived of electoral votes. Looking at the popular vote, Douglas must have realized the enormity of the political mistake he had made in supporting the idea of popular sovereignty, for he would have garnered more electoral votes if the South had not rejected the Freeport Doctrine. Sumner was a member of the new Republican Party. Although his speech deemed ill- judged by his peers, the speech did not appear to hurt the fledgling party in the 1856 presidential election. The Republicans put forth as their candidate John C. Fremont who carried eleven states. The argument might be made that Sumner’s speech hurt the Republican Party in the Southern states. But this argument is unfounded, as a political party with checking the expansion of slavery as one of its platforms would have garnered little support in the South. The true value of Sumner’s speech came later, as the national Democratic Party experienced division in reaction to the assault on Sumner, the issue of Kansas, and the larger question of the expansion of slavery. A prime example of such a split is seen on the lower level of national politics, as the Democratic Party from state to state was divided on the Kansas conflict. The Alabama Democratic Party voiced their opinion in the form of a resolution at their convention in 1856: That we sympathize with the friends of the slavery cause in Kansas, in their manly efforts to maintain their rights, and the rights and interests of the Southern people, and that we rejoice at their recent victories over the paid adventurers and jesuitical[sic] hordes of Northern abolitionism; that the deep interest felt and taken by the people of Missouri in the settlement of Kansas, and the decision of the slavery question in it, is both natural and proper, and that it is their right and duty to extend to their Southern brethren in that territory every legitimate and honorable sympathy and support.5 As the Democratic Party began to split along sectional lines, the larger effect of the conflict in Kansas on national politics is seen in the assertion that the Freeport Doctrine, set forth by Democratic leader Stephen Douglas, may have cost the Democrats the presidency in 1860. The Freeport Doctrine put forth by Douglas in 1858, was that the question of slavery in the territories be taken out of the hands of Congress and decided upon by the people of the territories.6 Widely published, the Freeport Doctrine cemented Southerners’ mistrust of all things Northern, including Stephen Douglas. As McPherson further notes in “Southern Exceptionalism”:“On the subject of slavery....the North and South....are not only two Peoples, but they are rival, hostile Peoples.”7 5Democratic and Anti-Know-Nothing State Convention of Alabama. January 8th and 9th 1856, Montgomery Alabama. Page six, Resolution 1.3. Alabama State Archives, Montgomery Alabama. 6Clark E. Carr, Stephen A. Douglas: His Life, Public Services, Speeches, and Patriotism. (Chicago: A. C. McClure, 1909), 55. 7McPherson, 16. It is to be noted that this excerpt from “Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism” was originally published in the Charleston Mercury in 1858. The Charleston Mercury was notorious for being radical. For further inquiry regarding the Charleston Mercury see George Rable’s The Confederate Republic. The actual committing of the assault itself provides an immense amount of information regarding social customs of the day, the political divisions of the country, and excellent quotes by some of the most prominent politicians of the 1850s. Having been present during Sumner’s speech, Stephen Douglas remarked: “That damn fool will get himself killed by another damn fool” 8 One un-named Tennessee Congressman noted regarding Sumner and his speech: “Mr.