University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Afro-American Studies Faculty Publication Series Afro-American Studies 2003 The ac ning of Charles Sumner: Slavery, race, and ideology in the age of the Civil War M Sinha
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/afroam_faculty_pubs Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Sinha, M, "The caning of Charles Sumner: Slavery, race, and ideology in the age of the Civil War" (2003). Journal of the Early Republic. 21. 10.2307/3125037 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Afro-American Studies at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Afro-American Studies Faculty Publication Series by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE CANING OF CHARLES SUMNER: SLAVERY, RACE, AND IDEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF THE CIVIL WAR Manisha Sinha On May 22, 1856, Preston Smith Brooks, a South Carolinian congressman, assaulted a seated Charles Sumner, antislavery senator from Massachusetts, in the Senate chamber. Brooks rained blows on Sumner's head and shoulders with his cane while Representative Laurence M. Keitt, a secessionist colleague from South Carolina, kept others at bay. Brooks later described the caning in a letter to his brother, "I struck him with my cane and gave him about 30 first rate stripes with a gutta perch cane.... Every lick went where I intended. For about the first five of six licks he offered to make fight but I plied him so rapidly that he did not touch me.