Preston Brooks - After The Attack

After The Attack

The national reaction to Brooks' attack was sharply divided along regional lines. Senators began carrying concealed knives and revolvers into the Senate chamber to protect themselves.

Brooks was widely cheered across the South, particularly in his home state of South Carolina. There his attack on Sumner was seen as a legitimate and socially justifiable act, upholding the honor of his family (and the South as a whole) in the face of intolerable insults from a social inferior (and the North as a whole). South Carolinians sent Brooks dozens of brand new canes, with one bearing the phrase, "Good job". The Richmond Enquirer crowed: "We consider the act good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequences. These vulgar abolitionists in the Senate must be lashed into submission." The University of Virginia's Jefferson Literary and Debating Society sent a new gold-headed cane to replace Brooks' broken one.

A motion to expel Brooks from the House of Representatives failed, but Brooks resigned his seat anyway on 15 July. Brooks claimed that he "meant no disrespect to the Senate of the United States" by attacking Sumner, and also that he had not intended to kill Sumner, or he would have used a different weapon.

Brooks was tried in a District of Columbia court for the attack. He was convicted of assault but received no prison sentence, only a fine of $300.

He was quickly returned to office in a special election on 1 August, and elected to a new term of office later in 1856. But he died from croup in January 1857, before the new term began. He was buried in Edgefield, South Carolina.

Brooks' accomplice, Representative Keitt, in 1858 attacked and attempted to choke Representative Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania (Republican) for calling him a "negro driver".

In contrast, Northerners, even moderates previously opposed to Sumner's extreme abolitionist invective, were universally shocked and disgusted by Brooks' violence. Anti-slavery men cited it as evidence that the South had lost interest in national debate and now relied on "the bludgeon, the revolver, and the bowie-knife" to display their feelings and silence their opponents. J. L. Magee's political cartoon famously expressed the general Northern sentiment that the South's vaunted chivalry had degenerated into "Argument versus Clubs".

One of the most bitter critics of the attack was Sumner's fellow New Englander, Representative Anson Burlingame (Republican-Massachusetts). When Burlingame denounced Brooks as a coward on the floor of the House, Brooks challenged him to a duel, and Burlingame accepted the challenge. Burlingame, as the challenged party, specified rifles as the weapons, and to get around American anti-dueling laws he named the Navy Yard on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls as the site. Brooks, reportedly dismayed by both Burlingame's unexpectedly enthusiastic acceptance and his reputation as a crack shot, neglected to show up, instead citing unspecified risks to his safety if he was to cross "hostile country" (the Northern states) to reach Canada. He was subsequently mocked as a coward by Northerners for the rest of his life.