As Representative Preston Brooks, gold-headed cane in hand, approached an unsuspecting Senator Charles Sumner on Thursday, May 22, 1856, the Southerner was thankful that the waiting was finally over.
During his lifetime, Brooks had been seriously wounded in a duel, contracted and recovered from typhoid fever, lost a brother in action during the Mexican War, buried his first wife, and watched his three-year-old daughter die from illness in 1851—yet in some ways, the days and hours after Charles Sumner's speech were the longest of his life.
He had been contemplating action against Sumner since Tuesday, even before the Massachusetts senator had concluded his offensive oration. Brooks was in the Senate chamber to hear Sumner's Monday tirade against Senator Butler, and while he was not present for the conclusion of Sumner's speech, he had heard plenty from his colleagues about the disparaging and insulting language the arrogant Massachusetts lawmaker again had used to describe Butler and South Carolina.
On Wednesday morning, he met his friend Representative Henry Edmundson of Virginia and told him that he planned to punish Sumner—“to relieve Butler and avenge the insult to my state”—unless the Senator apologized for his utterances. He asked Edmundson to wait with him to witness, but “take no part in,” the confrontation. “Sumner may have friends with him, and I want a friend of mine to be with me to do me justice,” Brooks explained. He told Edmundson that “it was time for Southern men to stop this coarse abuse used by the Abolitionists against the Southern people and States.” He believed that Sumner deliberately provoked Butler and South Carolina, and Brooks would “not feel that he was representing his State properly if he permitted such things to be said.”
Brooks and Edmundson had sat on a bench in the blistering heat near the walkway leading from Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol and awaited Sumner's arrival. Edmundson reminded Brooks of persistent rumors that Sumner had armed himself in anticipation of an attack and asked Brooks what preparations he had made for such an occurrence. Brooks replied simply: “I have nothing but my cane.” After fifteen minutes of waiting and no sign of Sumner, Brooks and Edmundson concluded that either they had missed their quarry or that Sumner was not going to show. Much to Brooks's frustration and dismay, the two Southern congressmen made their way to the House chamber.
The same afternoon, Wednesday, Brooks had an opportunity to read the text of Sumner's speech, which stoked his rage anew. That evening, he told his close allies from South Carolina, Representatives Lawrence M. Keitt and James L. Orr, that he planned to “disgrace” Sumner with a “flagellation,” though he stated neither the time nor the place. Angry that Sumner had escaped his wrath that day, smoldering from the senator's repeated insults, Brooks barely slept and awakened early Thursday morning. Again, he carried his wooden gutta-percha cane and again he met Edmundson at the western end of the Capitol, which provided him with a wide view of the approach Sumner was likely to take. He planned to assault Sumner there if the senator walked to work; if he came by carriage, Brooks planned to cut through the Capitol grounds, run up a series of stairs, and intercept Sumner behind the building where the carriages stopped. Edmundson advised him against this course of action, arguing that Brooks would become fatigued climbing so many stairs and would thus be physically incapable of overpowering the larger, stronger Sumner.
Perhaps Brooks agreed with Edmundson's logic, perhaps he felt Sumner had eluded him again. In any case, he and Edmundson walked toward the Capitol, and Edmundson recalled later their conversation “was in relation to other matters.”
But when they arrived at the door entering into the rotunda, Brooks abruptly headed toward the Senate chamber. Edmundson turned toward the House, but shortly thereafter, once the House adjourned, “casually” made his way to the Senate—both houses of Congress had planned to adjourn early to mourn the recent death of a representative from Missouri, and the House broke session first. Edmundson said he wanted to hear the remaining Senate eulogies for the Missouri congressman, but he also admitted that he expected an “interview” to take place between Brooks and Sumner, and “perhaps that influenced me in remaining longer in and near the Senate Chamber than I otherwise should have done.”
The Senate adjourned at 12:45 P.M.
On the day he would unknowingly alter the course of American history, Brooks squirmed in his seat and silently cursed the attractive woman who stood chatting a few feet from him. Agitated and sleep-deprived, Brooks was out of patience. He needed the woman to leave—now. He could hardly carry out his mission to avenge his kin and his region in the presence of a lady. It would violate the code of honor he lived by as a Southern gentleman. He had already tried, but failed, to get the sergeant-at-arms to remove the woman.
So Brooks waited, seething. He sat in the back row of the Senate chamber with Edmundson. Earlier, they had encountered Keitt, who had also made his way from the House to the Senate chamber. Sensing trouble ahead, Edmundson had proposed that they all leave the chamber, but Keitt said: “No, I cannot leave till Brooks does.” Keitt now stood nearby.
Although the Senate had just adjourned, a few senators milled about. Brooks paid them no notice. His eyes were fixed on Sumner, whom Brooks regarded as one of the most arrogant boors he had ever come across—and one of the most dangerous threats to the future of the South.
Brooks knew from the conversation around him that Sumner was signing copies of “The Crime Against Kansas,” a speech that Brooks viewed as a crime in itself. Sumner, whom Brooks and his Southern colleagues considered the most radical of the Boston antislavery leaders, had delivered his usual fanatical tirade against slavery, but this time he had gone too far. Not satisfied with merely focusing on the issue, Sumner had resorted to vicious personal attacks on Brooks's second cousin, an insult compounded by Senator Andrew Butler's absence from the chamber and inability to offer his own defense.
Worse, the reason for Butler's absence was that he was home recovering from a stroke that had paralyzed a portion of his face and hindered his ability to speak; shockingly, Sumner had used his speech to mock Butler's affliction, too. Sumner had also insulted Brooks's home state, and by extension, the people of South Carolina—and added a blistering, unprovoked attack against the Southern way of life.
The crime against Kansas? No, Brooks believed the real crime was Sumner's attack against Brooks's family and his beloved home state. Sumner had crossed a line, and Brooks would make him pay—as soon as the woman vacated the Senate chamber. “She's pretty,” Brooks said to Edmundson, “but I wish she'd leave.”
Restless and anxious, Brooks rose and he and Edmundson walked out of the main chamber and into the adjoining vestibule. Keitt, meanwhile, stood near the clerk's desk at the rear of the chamber. Brooks had been in the Senate chamber for an hour now. He considered sending a note to Sumner asking the Massachusetts senator to meet him outside, but Edmundson convinced him that Sumner would simply invite Brooks to come to his desk.
Finally, the woman finished her conversation, turned, and walked directly past Brooks and Edmundson and out the Senate chamber door. Brooks waited another moment, his eyes boring into Sumner, who seemed oblivious to anything except the speech copies he was signing. It came as no surprise to Brooks that Sumner was completely absorbed in his own duties; his ego was well known across the Washington political establishment. Justice demanded that he be brought down a peg.
Brooks glanced at Edmundson, nodded, and began walking toward Sumner with his usual pronounced limp, the result of an old bullet wound that Brooks had sustained during a duel in 1840. In his hand, Brooks carried the gold-headed gutta-percha cane that he often leaned on for support, though today he needed the cane for another reason. Brooks made his way up the aisle toward Sumner, later saying he did so “under the highest sense of duty.” He stepped closer. Sumner still had his head bent toward his desk, writing feverishly.
Clutching his cane, Brooks reached Sumner's desk where the Senator sat behind a large pile of documents, “writing very rapidly, with his head very close to the desk” completely unaware of Brooks's presence. Sumner's chair was drawn up close and his long legs were entirely under the desk.
“Mr. Sumner…” Brooks began.
Sumner did not stand, but raised his head to identify his visitor.
Brooks tightened his grip on the cane.
Later, another South Carolina congressman would say that Preston Brooks felt a “high and holy obligation” to step forward and avenge the insults Sumner directed toward his kin and his state. Anything less would have humiliated Brooks—as a man, a slave-owner, a proud South Carolinian, and a passionate advocate for the Southern way of life.
Brooks saw no alternative; years of adhering to the twin Southern virtues of honor and order demanded retaliation against Sumner.