From the moment
Kansas became the next part of the fighting against slavery, it almost
immediately became a battleground, figuratively in Washington, literally in the
territory itself. In May of 1854 the territory contained about 800 white
settlers; by the start of 1855, that number was more than eight thousand. The settlers
were divided between nearby Missourians, New Englanders who’d emigrated and Midwesterners
and underneath all of the struggles was the issue of slavery. With the majority
of new settlers either from Missouri or other slave-holding states the battle very
quickly became inflamed by pro-slavery west Missourians who were determined to
make sure Kansas never became a free state.
President Pierce’s
handpicked territorial governor Andrew Reeder arrived on October 7th
and scheduled a census for a non-voting delegate to Congress and the
territorial legislator. On November 29th non-resident Missouri’s crossed over the
border to ensure that J.W. Whitfield – an associate of David Rice Atchison, one
of the F Street Mess – became ‘the winner’ of that election.
These frauds mixed
with increased violence were exponentially increased in the lead up to the
March 1855 election. In a territory that had 2905 eligible voters according to
the census, more than 6307 cast ballots, with nearly 90 percent of them
pro-slavery.
Reeder would
eventually leave Kansas and placed the debacle before the President and the
American people. In a speech he said: “Kansas has been invaded, conquered,
subjugated by an armed force from beyond her borders. He would visit with
Pierce multiple times, calling for federal action to undo the fiasco and redeem
the idea of popular sovereignty. Pierce did nothing save for chiding Reeder on
the pointedness of his speech.
When he returned
the new legislature made it clear it had every intention of neutralizing his
authority and taking control of the government of the territory. Critical to
this was a string of laws determined to suppress any activity of open
expression reflecting sentiment of anti-slavery. The death penalty was imposed
for any citizen who helped a slave escape bondage. Harboring a fugitive slave
would earn ten years in prison. Even to argue that slavery wasn’t legal in
Kansas carried two years in hard labor. All of this was passed over the governor’s
vetoes.
With the entire
nation now glued to all that was happening in Kansas the President did nothing
to help his appointee. By June he would fire him outright leading Reeder to
join with the territory’s anti-slavery forces led by many prominent New Englanders.
By September they would draft a constitution in Topeka and fashioned a new
constitution that would outlaw slavery after July 4, 1857. When it was ratified
– mainly because pro-slavery men ignored the vote – it was sent to Washington.
Meanwhile in Leavenworth, pro-slavery forces ratified a Constitution of their
own. Kansas was l divided against itself.
Pierce could see
that bloodshed was nearly inevitable and chose to do what he did so often in
the face of conflict: nothing. He did nothing in January of 1856 as gunfire was
exchanged after a two day confrontation which led to men being wounded and
prisoners being taken in Leavenworth. He did nothing as hatchet attacks led to
woundings and death of a free-state settler. But when anti-slavery forces won the
election in Topeka, he did do something. He issued a message saying considered
the pro-slavery government duly constituted and the Topeka entity illegitimate,
arguing the anti-slavery forces were of ‘revolutionary character’ and would
become ‘treasonable insurrection if they chose to resist. Two weeks later, he
put federal troops at the disposal of the pro-slavery forces and argued for
Congress to enact legislation empowering this new government.
The free-state
men, now labeled as traitors, expected to be arrested as such. They didn’t
initially engage in violence but they weren’t willing to shrink from it either.
Their decision to not accept the territorial government had them labeled as
traitors.
Having set this
fire in the first place Stephen Douglas made no effort to dampen the flames. He
crafted a bill in the Senate on March 17th that endorsed Pierce’s
decision that the mess in Kansas was the fault of anti-slavery agitators from
the North.
On March 5th
Andrew Pickens Butler rose on the Senate floor to deliver his version of Kansas’s
events, defending among others Atchison and Pierce.
“I have known
General Atchison long and well” he said, hailed his friends behavior in
defusing the tension in December as noble. “Without his involvement, the houses
of settlement would have been burnt and its highways drenched with blood.” (He
ignored the fact that Atchison had later avowed he would never again seek
piece. He lamented the turmoil particularly because it was destroying prospects
for the territory to evolve naturally based on climate and geography “with many
white men and few negroes – with labor capable of being usefully and profitably
employed – a community of farmers, using labor as they thought proper.” Again this
vision ignored what was actually happening in the state.
In the Senate
Sumner heard this speech. The events in Kansas had ignited a simmering anger
that was increasingly leading him against Butler. Their friendship had been
cooling for years and now he considered him his political enemy. He was
determined to write his own ‘elaborate speech’ on Kansas and the issue of slavery.
On May 19th
one of the most significant weeks in the struggle towards the Civil War would
play out in Washington and Kansas. It started in Washington when Sumner on the
Senate floor to deliver what would be a two-day speech titled: “The Crime Against
Kansas”. It would run nearly 112 pages in print form and he would memorize in
its entirely to ensure its commanding delivery. The Senate galleries were
jammed with spectators waiting to listen.
The crime against
Kansas was:
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.”
The only way to avert
a horrible war – a fratricidal, patricidal war – was to admit Kansas as a free
state. He targeted Douglas, James Mason and Butler and while Butler wasn’t
there and unable defend himself, he took the bulk of the malice:
“The senator
from South Carolina…believes himself a chivalrous knight with sentiments of
honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his
vows and who though ugly to others, is always lovely to him – I mean the harlot,
slavery. For her his tongue is always profuse in words. 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.”
On the next day
Sumner went beyond the rules of decorum, mocking the paralysis in Butler’s lip
that led to his spitting when he talked as part of the loose expectoration of
his oratory. Worse still, he argued that if South Carolina’s entire history was
wiped out, civilization would lose less then it had gained through the two-year
effort of Kansas to create a state without slavery.
Pacing at the
back of his chamber Douglas said, “That damn fool is going to get himself killed
by some other damn fool,” in remarks that would soon take the note of prophecy.
Even those who
might have been inclined to be Sumner’s supporters would have been
horrified by his abandonment of decorum
and clothing his arguments in the garb of fighting words, while seemingly oblivious
to the implications of his remarks. And indeed someone who had heard the
insults of Butler did take personally – for good reason
Preston Brooks was
distantly related to Pickens Butler and greatly considered him a statesman. Even
before he was elected to Congress he’d already shown a display of a hot temper,
getting into fistfight in college that would get him expelled and fighting a duel
with a former classmate in his 20s in which both men lived but sustained gunshot
wounds. He’d been elected to Congress in March 1853 and while he identified
with the moderate faction of his colleague James Orr, he believed firmly in the
principle of chattel slavery and white supremacy. Sumner’s remarks infuriated him
as an attack on his state and his cousin. Identifying with the ‘honor code of
the South’, he determined he couldn’t challenge Sumner to a duel because they
were for gentlemen and Sumner wasn’t one; second Sumer would have to be
horsewhipped or beaten with a cane for his insolence; third Butler wasn’t in
Washington to administer the punishment (and was too old to do so anyway)
fourth Brooks would have to do so himself.
On May 21st,
the day after Sumner concluded his remarks Brooks waited an hour and a half on
the capitol grounds in hopes of intercepting Sumner. No opportunity presented
himself. He would have to wait for another opportunity. On May 22nd,
he again waited outside the capitol and missed Sumner. This time he made his
way to the Senate floor where Sumner was at his desk. He waited first until the
daily adjournment then another hour as Sumner busied himself with paperwork.
Waiting for the women to depart he approached the Senator with a cane suited
for violence.
Then Brooks
approached Sumner’s desk and stood over him. “Mr. Sumner,” he said, “I have
read your speech with as much impartiality as was possible and I feel it my
duty to tell you that you have libeled my state and slandered a relative who is
aged and absent and I am come to punish you for it. Even as he spoke he
delivered his first blow, then several in rapid succession.
Brooks would
deliver more than 30 blows, splintering his cane into three pieces. Two New
York congressmen rushed over to stop him but fellow South Carolina
representative Lawrence Keitt stood guard, brandishing his own cane before on of
them managed to pull Brooks away. Barely conscious and bleeding profusely,
Sumner was taking to an anteroom and placed on the sofa where a local doctor
stitched up his wounds. His colleague Henry Wilson rushed to the Senate to get
his colleague into a carriage and back to his lodgings for rest. “I could not
believe such a thing was possible,” Sumner mused as he dropped off to sleep.
The aftermath of
what followed reflected the ominous reality of American politics in a way that
would not be seen until this era: the country was so divided over slavery it
couldn’t agree even on the proper attitude towards a heinous crime in the
Senate chamber. Brooks actions were glorified in the South and excoriated in
the South. But in Kansas far worse things were unfolding, mostly at the hands
of a man from Connecticut named John
Brown.
At 56 Brown had failed
at multiple businesses, gone bankrupt repeated, had a history of embezzlement and
was nevertheless certain that he was a man of God, picked by destiny to soar
about the laws of man. Even the most generous contemporaries view Brown as a radical
and delusional. He would have been dismissed by the world then and now were it
not for the fact that his delusion put him on the right side of certain people –
he believed slavery was a moral evil.
In 1855 five of
his sons with their families had set out for Kansas in search of opportunity
and a chance to demonstrate their passion for antislavery. The father soon
followed with supplies and weapons, his sense of certainty, ego and impatience.
He was there in May of 1856 when the territory’s chief judge set a grand jury
to issue indictments for all free-state officials who had committed ‘constructive
treason’ by resisting state laws that led to the sacking of Lawrence. He
thought the politicians who were trying to raise an anti-slavery government
were ‘broken down politicians’ who displayed ‘more talk than action’ By that
point he and his family were known as being vocally belligerent towards the
cause of anti-slavery, disrupted court-proceedings in hopes of getting arrested
for the purpose of busting them out of jail, in order to accelerate the fight.
Brown was determined to bring about
retribution.
On May 23rd,
upon hearing the news of Sumner’s attacking the men went crazy. Brown was
determined for an act of vengeance against the pro-slavery forces. That night
he and his band arrived at the cabin of James Doyle seized him and two of his sons, took them
outside, hacked them up and shot them. They did the same to two other men and
their families. Then the men having
completed their work before daybreak, washed their hands and sabers in a local
creek and went back to work. Many of the party, including Brown’s own sons,
later felt remorse for their actions. John Brown himself felt none. When one of
his sons called it a wicked act, he replied: “God is my judge. It was
absolutely necessary as a measure of self-defense, and for the defense of the
others.”
Those who might
want to concern Brown ‘a freedom fighter’ would do well to note his utter lack
of mercy and the blood he would shed in the actions that would follow. As we
shall see in a later article the most charitable definition of Brown’s actions
later on was that he was considered a useful tool for certain anti-slavery
forces who wanted to use violence against a cause they found wicked – but didn’t
want to get their own hands stained with blood as a result. One of William
Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist colleagues would say in a letter: “such villainy
can not be successfully palliated or excused.” Garrison was sure that in the short
and long-term he would be a blot on the cause.
In the next
article I will deal with the 1856 election and how it was a watershed in
American politics.
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