The historians Morison, Commager and Leuchtenburg write that Sumner’s speech “contained some unpalatable truths, much that was neither truthful nor in good taste, and some disgraceful political invective against Senator Andrew Butler (D) of South Carolina.”
During the course of his speech, Sumner criticized two fellow U.S. senators, Andrew Pickens Butler and Stephen A. Douglas, D-Illinois. Both were principle authors of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.
That act organized the region into two territories, Kansas and Nebraska, and adopted the rule of “popular sovereignty,” which left the people of each territory to decide whether it should enter the Union as a slave or free state.
That latter provision repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which barred slavery in the territories north of 36ยบ 30’. The anti-slavery forces regarded the Missouri Compromise as settled law, and its repeal as betrayal.
Sumner began by claiming that the goal of the slave-holding South was to extend slavery throughout the free states.
“But the wickedness which I now begin to expose is immeasurably aggravated by the motive which prompted it. ... It is the rape of a virgin Territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of Slavery; and it may be clearly traced to a depraved longing for a new slave State, the hideous offspring of such a crime, in the hope of adding to the power of slavery in the National Government. ... When the whole world, alike Christian and Turk, is rising up to condemn this wrong, ... here in our Republic, ... FORCE ... has been openly employed in compelling Kansas to this pollution, and all for the sake of political power.”
Sumner excoriated Butler, saying,
“The senator from South Carolina has ... chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and 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. ... Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this senator. The frenzy of Don Quixote in behalf of his wench Dulcinea ... is all surpassed.
“The asserted rights of slavery ... are cloaked by a fantastic claim of equality. If the slave States cannot enjoy ... full power in the national Territories to compel fellow men to unpaid toil, to separate husband and wife, and to sell little children at the auction block — then ... the chivalric senator will conduct the State of South Carolina out of the Union! Heroic knight! Exalted senator! A Second Moses come for a second exodus! “
Sumner accused Butler of labeling abolitionists as fanatics when, in fact, he and his fellow Southerners in their embrace of the crime of slavery were the true fanatics.
Sen. Douglas, shocked by Sumner’s words, turned to a colleague and said, “this damn fool Sumner is going to get himself shot by some other damn fool.”
Abolitionists understood Sumner’s remarks as attacking Butler’s position on the immorality of slavery. But Rep. Preston Brooks construed Sumner’s remarks as a personal attack upon his cousin.
Three days later, as Sumner sat at his desk in the nearly empty Senate chamber, Brooks assailed Sumner with a gold-headed cane, nearly beating him to death.
The episode exposed the growing polarization in America. Abolitionists viewed Sumner as a martyr; the South hailed Brooks as a hero.
The Cincinnati Gazette wrote, “The South cannot tolerate free speech anywhere, and would stifle it in Washington with the bludgeon and the bowie-knife, as they are now trying to stifle it in Kansas by massacre, rapine, and murder.”
The New York Evening Post asked, “Has it come to this, that we must speak with bated breath in the presence of our Southern masters? ... Are we to be chastised as they chastise their slaves? Are we too, slaves, slaves for life, a target for their brutal blows, when we do not comport ourselves to please them?”
The Richmond Enquirer expressed the Southern view that Sumner should be caned “every morning,” praising the attack as “good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequences” and denouncing “these vulgar abolitionists in the Senate” who “have been suffered to run too long without collars. They must be lashed into submission.”
Sumner and the abolitionists were right. Slavery was an unconscionable moral wrong. The South was right. The Constitution had been born of a compromise without which there would have been no Union — a compromise that left to each state whether it would be slave or free.
The voices of “righteousness” on each side became more shrill, until they were drowned out by roar of muskets and cannons.
Posted: QCOline.com November, 8, 2018
Copyright 2018, John Donald O'Shea
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