When Righteousness Gave Way to Cannon Fire

In May 1856, Sen. Charles Sumner, a Republican and abolitionist from Massachusetts, delivered an impassioned speech in the U.S. Senate, entitled “The Crime Against Kansas.” It denounced Southern efforts to bring Kansas into the Union as a slave state.

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That latter provision repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which barred slavery in the territories north of 36º 30’.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

Nation Cannot Afford Return to the "Blood Feud"

We have a judicial system in America. It was fashioned and put in place by men conversant with Greek, Roman, Germanic and Canon law -- men who preferred the English common law to the Inquisition. Men who made a deliberate choice that the jury system was the best system developed over 2,500 years to safeguard the liberties of the individual.

Now a segment of our society claims to have no faith in our system of justice and resorts to mob rule.

The mobs in Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere are still furious. They refuse to accept grand jury refusals to indict police officers in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. The protesters instead have made up their own minds that the officers acted without justification and that the grand juries involved were corrupt.

Some demand that Attorney General Eric Holder and his U.S. Justice Department intervene and prosecute the officers involved for Civil Rights violations  -- even if the evidence indicates no racial motivation. Other “peaceful protesters” -- in the course of their “peaceful” protests --  have burgled, looted and burned the business properties of their entirely innocent neighbors in Ferguson. Still others have cluttered the streets of New York, chanting “What do we want? Dead cops!”

Here is a summary of the evidence the grand jury heard the Brown case (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown):

“Wilson’s DNA ... was found on Brown’s left palm. Brown’s DNA was found on the left thigh of Wilson’s pants, on the [officer’s] gun, and on the inside driver’s door handle of Wilson’s police SUV, the result of Brown’s blood spilled staining Wilson’s pants and the door handle. ...

“Documents released after the grand jury proceedings show that Wilson washed blood from his hands and checked his own gun into an evidence bag. ...

“Dr. Michael Graham, the St. Louis medical examiner, said blood was found on Wilson’s gun and inside the car, and tissue from Brown was found on the exterior of the driver’s side of Wilson’s vehicle, both of which were consistent with a struggle at that location.

“According to Judy Melinek, a San Franciscan pathologist, the official autopsy, which stated Brown’s hand had foreign matter consistent with a gun discharge on it, supported Wilson’s testimony that Brown was reaching for the weapon, or indicating the gun was inches away from Brown’s hand when it went off.

Three autopsies were performed on Brown’s body, with all three noting that Brown had been shot at least six times, including twice in the head, with no shots in his back.”

Imagine if police officers reacted the same way. Recently two New York City policemen were murdered, while sitting in their squad cars. Assume that their murderer, rather than committing suicide, had been arrested, tried and found not guilty. Would the N.Y. police have been justified in looting and burning neighborhood  businesses? Would you approve their marching and chanting, “What do we want? Dead criminals!”

A day doesn’t go by when a policeman isn’t required to break up a bar fight. And while the police are rarely killed dealing with drunks, the officers are frequently hurt. Often seriously. In most cases the assailant is arrested, charged with aggravated battery and prosecuted. But what happens when the police believe the defendant deserves prison time, and the judge imposes probation? The injured officer and his coworkers may not feel that “justice” was done. But they certainly don’t burn down neighborhoods, loot buildings and call for the killing of the thug who got probation.

In America, believe it or not, you do not have a constitutional right to loot liquor stores. You do not have a right to burn businesses because you perceive that you have been the victim of past injustice.

In Greece, 2,500 years ago, the Greek playwright Aeschyluis wrote tragedies. His play “The Eumenides,” deals with two very different systems of justice. The Goddess Athena has brought to the city of Athens a new system of criminal justice.

Under her new system the defendant’s guilt or innocence is determined by a jury of 12. Orestes, who has killed his mother because she had murdered his father, flees to Athens to escape the revenge of the “Furies.”

The Furies (aka, “The Erinyes”) --— the more ancient gods -- pursue Orestes to Athens. Under their more ancient law, the Furies, demand “blood for blood;” Orestes, the matricide, must pay for his mother’s blood with his own. When the jury splits, six for conviction, and six for acquittal, and when Athena herself breaks the deadlock, casting the deciding vote for acquittal, the Furies are outraged, and rage:

“Gods of the younger generation, you have ridden down the laws of the elder time, torn them out of my hands. I, disinherited, suffering, heavy with anger shall let loose on the land the vindictive poison dripping deadly out of my heart upon the ground; this from itself shall breed cancer.”

Our justice system is not perfect. Nothing human is. But it’s the best Americans have been able to devise. As Justice  Oliver Wendell Holmes states in “The Common Law,” “The earliest forms of legal procedure were grounded in vengeance. ... Roman Law started from the blood feud .... German law began that way.”

Justice Holmes states that Roman and Germanic law sought an alternative, the “composition”  -- that is, “damages” -- paid to buy-off the blood feud.

America has a choice. It can seek justice within our system of justice, or it can return to the vengeance of the blood feud --  the vengeance  of the Furies.

But recall: our system provides not only criminal remedies, but civil remedies for money damages, as well. The next of kin of Brown and Garner can sue for wrongful death and seek money damages. And if they do, they only have to prove that it is more likely than not that the officers involved used excessive force. If the physical evidence and witnesses do indeed support their claims, winning should be easy.

If not, then their only remedy appears to be to ignore the facts and howl for vengeance.

Posted: Saturday, January 10, 2015 12:00 am
By John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015 John Donald O'Shea