What is the brooks-sumner confrontation?

Answer 1

On May 22, 1856, Congressman Preston Brooks severely beat Senator Charles Sumner in the senate chambers.

In May 1856, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts rose to give a speech entitled "The Crime Against Kansas." In it, he gave particular attention to Senator Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina, an outspoken defender of slavery. The South Carolinian was, Sumner claimed, the "Don Quixote" of slavery, having "chosen a mistress .... who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him, though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight ... the harlot slavery."

The pointedly sexual references and the general viciousness of the speech enraged Butler's nephew, Preston Brooks, a member of the House of Representatives from South Carolina. Several days after the speech, Brooks approached Sumner at his desk in the Senate chamber during a recess, raised a heavy cane, and began beating him repeatedly on the head and shoulders. Sumner, trapped in his chair, rose in agony with such strength that he tore the desk from the bolts holding it to the floor. Then he collapsed, bleeding and unconscious. So severe were his injuries that he was unable to return to the Senate for four years. Throughout the North, he became a hero -- a martyr to the barbarism of the South. In the South, Preston Brooks became a hero, too. Censured by the House, he resigned his seat, returned to South Carolina, and stood successfully for reelection.

information from The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People, 6th Edition by Alan Brinkley

Answer 2

US Senator Charles Sumner was a well known Radical Republican form Massachusetts. His verbal assaults on the South and slavery made him famous and were a cause of the viscous attack made on him by Representative Preston Brooks in 1856. Before joining the Republican Party he had been a member of the Free Soil Party . He gained his senate seat due to the support of anti slavery Democrats and Free Soilers in 1851. Sumner was an outspoken supporter of emancipation. He joined the Republican Party after the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. When Abraham Lincoln became US President he urged an emancipation of slaves as quickly as possible. He stood apart from many of his colleagues in that he believed that Blacks should be granted full equality. At the time, this was a minority view.After the Civil War he broke with US President Johnson. Sumner wanted Reconstruction to be run by Congress not the executive branch. He believed that President Johnson's policies were too lenient towards the South. Sumner also voted to convict President Johnson following his impeachment in the House.

There was no shortage of Sumner's enemies to balance those who supported him. He used his position of Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to repeatedly and severely denounce Great Britain's aid to the Confederacy. Senator Sumner also was critical of President US Grant, whom he believed was planning to annex Santo Domingo and use it as a colony for Blacks.

Answer 3

May 19-20, 1856- Congressman Preston Brooks of SC disapproved of Sumner's speech , "The Crime Against Kansas"and attacked him with a walking stick