Republican Senator Charles Sumner was a staunch abolitionist. He gave a speech in the U.S. Senate on May 20, 1856, to condemn the evil of slavery, along with the execrable Kansas-Nebraska Act. The act sought to expand the Democrat slave-ocracy into a territory seeking statehood. It did not have the desired effect. The predictable results were 'bleeding Kansas,' and John Brown's anti-slave rebellion (1859).
Representative Preston Brooks was a pro-slavery Democrat who objected to Sumner's speech, and intended to vent his anger against Sumner. Two days after the speech, on May 22, Sumner sat writing at his desk in the almost empty Senate chamber. Preston approached and berated him, then blindsided Sumner with the cudgel of his cane. Preston struck him with such furry and frequency that his cane eventually shattered from the blows to Sumner's skull who laid bloody and unconscience on the Senate floor. The attack nearly killed him.
Sumner spent 3 years convalescing from the attack, but never really recovered from traumatic brain injury. Replacement canes were sent to Brooks by those who approved the beat-down of a 'nigger lover.'
Consider this: substitute the term 'nigger lover' with 'pro-life' and does this blind allegience to the defense of barbaric evil look familiar nowadays?
Brooks was later arrested and convicted of the violent assault against Sumner, but was merely fined for the offense. Brooks died the next year from croup - type of respiratory infection.
The Caning of Senator Charles Sumner(R) has been considered symbolic of the "Breakdown of reasoned discourse" that eventually led to the American Civil War. Odd, but in this century Congressmen get gunned down at a baseball field, citizens get violently assaulted for their choice of headwear, administration officials get accosted at their homes, disfavored political opinions are deplatformed in public forums, all while 900,000 unborn babies are murdered every year, yet most people only seem to react with aggravation, or a bit a of outrage, then go back to scrolling through their smart phones.
Quickly after the caning of Senator Sumner, William Cullen Bryant of 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 Cincinnati Gazette said, "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."
From the caning of Sumner to the outbreak of war to free the slaves was less than 4 years. We've allowed the murder of 50 MILLION unborn babies for the last 46 years. Do I advocate war? Heaven forbid. But good grief, what a pathetic shadow of our former selves we've become. How long, Oh Lord, how long will we allow the slaughter of innocents to continue?
Update: TY to WhatFingerNews for the linkage.
