Preston S. Brooks, US Congress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Brooks

Preston Smith Brooks (August 5, 1819 – January 27, 1857) was a Democratic Congressman from South Carolina during the period just prior to the US Civil War. He attended the common schools and was graduated from South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina) at Columbia in 1839; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1845 and commenced practice in Edgefield, S.C.; was a member of the State house of representatives in 1844; served in the Mexican War as Captain in the Palmetto Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers, an infantry regiment. It suffered heavy losses and was known for the first American colors over Mexico City, when it raised its regimental flag

Brooks is primarily remembered for severely beating Senator Charles Sumner with a metal-tipped gutta-percha cane on the floor of the United States Senate. Brooks' attack, assisted by fellow Southerner Rep Laurence Keitt, was delivered as revenge (or "punishment", in Brooks' words) in response to a virulent abolitionist speech by Sumner in which he mocked Brooks' relative, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, and likened Southern slaveholders to pimps. Sumner, who was known for his scathing abolitionist speeches, was severely injured by the attack. After being tried for his role in the assault, Brooks was fined $300 and received no prison sentence. Brooks and Keitt were both overwhelmingly re-elected by their South Carolina constituents.

Brooks' act and the polarizing national reaction to it to are frequently cited as a major factor in the acceleration of tensions leading up to the US Civil War.

Early life

Born in Roseland, Edgefield County, South Carolina, he was the son of Whitfield and Mary Parsons-Carroll Brooks. Brooks attended South Carolina College (now known as the University of South Carolina) but was expelled just before graduation for threatening local police officers with firearms. In 1840 Brooks fought a duel with future Texas Senator Louis T. Wigfall and was shot in the hip, forcing him to use a walking cane for the rest of his life. He was admitted to the Bar in 1845. Brooks served in the Mexican-American War with the Palmetto Regiment.

Family

First marriage: Caroline Harper Means (1820–1843). Brooks was widowed upon her death. Children: Whitfield D. Brooks (1843–1843).

Second marriage: Martha Caroline Means (1826–?). Children: Caroline Harper Brooks (1849–1924), Rosa Brooks (1850–?), Preston Smith Brooks (1854–?).

Political career

He was a member of the South Carolina State house of representatives in 1844. Brooks was elected to the 33rd United States Congress in 1853. Brooks was officially associated with the Democratic Party.

In March 1856, Brooks wrote: "The fate of the South is to be decided with the Kansas issue. If Kansas becomes a hireling [i.e. free] State, slave property will decline to half its present value in Missouri ... [and] abolitionism will become the prevailing sentiment. So with Arkansas; so with upper Texas."

Sumner assault

On May 22, 1856, Brooks beat Senator Sumner with his heavy walking cane in the Senate chamber. The cause was a speech Sumner had made two days before about the Kansas issue in which he had unleashed his invective against, among others, a relative of Brooks, Senator Andrew Butler. Butler was not in attendance when the speech was given. In it Sumner compared Butler with Don Quixote for embracing a prostitute (slavery) as his mistress, saying Butler "believes himself a chivalrous knight."

"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; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight. I mean the harlot Slavery."

Sumner also mocked Butler for a physical handicap. Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, who was also a subject of criticism during the speech, suggested to a colleague while Sumner was orating that "this damn fool [Sumner] is going to get himself shot by some other damn fool." Hoffer (2010) says, "It is also important to note the sexual imagery that recurred throughout the oration, which was neither accidental nor without precedent. Abolitionists routinely accused slaveholders of maintaining slavery so that they could engage in forcible sexual relations with their slaves."

At first intending to challenge Sumner to a duel, Brooks consulted with fellow South Carolina Rep. Laurence M. Keitt on dueling etiquette. Keitt instructed him that dueling was for gentlemen of equal social standing, and suggested that Sumner occupied a lower social status comparable to a drunkard due to the coarse language he had used during his speech in which he insulted Butler and called Douglas "a noisome, squat, and nameless animal". Brooks thus decided to "punish" Sumner with a cane.

On the afternoon of May 22, Brooks confronted Sumner as he sat writing letters at his desk in the almost empty Senate chamber. Brooks was accompanied by Keitt and US House Rep. Henry A. Edmundson of Virginia, a personal friend with his own history of legislative violence, having been arrested by the House Sergeant at Arms after attempting to attack Rep. Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio during a tense debate on the House floor in May 1854. Brooks said, "Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine." As Sumner began to stand up, Brooks began beating Sumner with his thick gutta-percha cane with a gold head. Sumner was trapped under the heavy desk (which was bolted to the floor), but Brooks continued to strike Sumner until the latter wrenched the desk from the floor in an attempt to escape. By this time, Sumner was blinded by his own blood, and he staggered up the aisle and collapsed, lapsing into unconsciousness. Several other senators attempted to help Sumner, but were blocked by Keitt, who was brandishing a pistol and shouting "Let them be!" Brooks continued to beat Sumner until he broke his cane, then quietly left the chamber with Keitt and Edmunson.

Sumner was unable to return to his Senate duties for more than three years while he recovered, and suffered chronic pain and debilitation for the rest of his life.

After the attack

The national reaction to Brooks' attack was bitterly divided along regional lines. Never before in US history had a sitting Congressman attacked a colleague, much less on the actual Senate floor, and Senators began carrying concealed knives and revolvers into the Senate chamber to protect themselves. Northerners, even moderates previously opposed to Sumner's extreme abolitionist invective, were universally shocked and disgusted to see a US Congressman bludgeon a defenseless colleague into bloody unconsciousness on the floor of the national legislature, citing it as evidence that the South had lost interest in national debate and begun relying 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".

In contrast, Brooks was widely cheered across the South, particularly in his home state of South Carolina, where his attack on Sumner was seen as a legitimate and socially justifiable act, upholding the honor of his family name (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 gold-headed cane to replace Brooks' broken one.

Brooks survived an expulsion vote in the House but resigned his seat, claiming both that he "meant no disrespect to the Senate of the United States" by attacking Sumner and that he did not intend to kill him, for he would have used a different weapon if he had. His constituents returned him to Congress. However, Brooks' attack on Sumner was regarded in the North as the act of a cowardly barbarian. One of the most bitter critics of the attack was Sumner's fellow New Englander, Congressman Anson Burlingame. 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) in order to reach Canada. He was subsequently mocked as a coward by Northern press and Senators for the rest of his life. Brooks remained in office until his death from the croup in 1857. He was buried in Edgefield, South Carolina.

Brooks' fellow South Carolinan, Sen. Laurence Keitt, who assisted him during the assault on Sumner, would later initiate another incident of legislative violence on the Senate floor in 1858 when he attacked and attempted to choke Sen. Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania for calling him a "negro driver". Keitt would later die fighting for the Confederacy at the Battle of Cold Harbor in 1864.

Legacy

The city of Brooksville, Florida (previously known as Melendez), and Brooks County, Georgia, are named in Brooks' honor.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=2874&ref=wvr

Preston Smith Brooks was an American politician and Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina, serving from 1853 until his resignation in July 1856 and again from August 1856 until his death.

Brooks, a Democrat, was a strong advocate of slavery and states' rights. He is primarily remembered for his May 22, 1856, attack upon abolitionist and Republican Senator Charles Sumner, whom he beat nearly to death; Brooks beat Sumner with a cane on the floor of the United States Senate in retaliation for an anti-slavery speech in which Sumner verbally attacked Brooks' second cousin, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler. Brooks' action received "widespread adoration in South Carolina and other Southern states" — the city of Brooksville, Florida named itself for him immediately afterwards — and abhorred in the North. An attempt to oust him from the House of Representatives failed, and he received only token punishment in his criminal trial. He resigned his seat in July 1856 to give his constituents the opportunity to ratify his conduct in a special election, which they did by electing him in August to fill the vacancy created by his resignation. He was re-elected to a full term in November 1856, but died in January 1857, five weeks before the new term began in March.

Sumner was seriously injured by Brooks' beating, and was unable to resume his seat in the Senate for three years, though eventually he recovered and resumed his Senate career.

Brooks' act and the polarizing national reaction to it are frequently cited as a major factor in the rising tensions leading up to the American Civil War.

Born in Roseland, Edgefield County, South Carolina, he was the son of Whitfield and Mary Parsons-Carroll Brooks. Brooks attended South Carolina College (now known as the University of South Carolina), but was expelled just before graduation for threatening local police officers with firearms. After leaving college, he studied law, attained admission to the bar, and practiced in Edgefield. Brooks also owned a plantation located in Cambridge, between Edgefield and Ninety-Sox. In 1840, Brooks fought a duel with future Texas Senator Louis T. Wigfall, and was shot in the hip, forcing him to use a walking cane for the rest of his life. He was admitted to the Bar in 1845. Brooks served in the Mexican–American War with the Palmetto Regiment.

First marriage Caroline Harper Means (1820–1843). Brooks was widowed upon her death.

Children: Whitfield D. Brooks (1843–1843). Second marriage Martha Caroline Means (April 8, 1826 – March 23, 1901).[9][10]

Children Caroline Harper Brooks (1849–1924), Rosa Brooks (1849–1933), Preston Smith Brooks (1854–1928).

Political career He was a member of the South Carolina state House of Representatives in 1844. Brooks was elected to the 33rd United States Congress in 1853 as a Democrat. Like his fellow South Carolina Representatives and Senators, Brooks took an extreme pro-slavery position, asserting that the enslavement of black people by whites was right and proper, that any attack or restriction on slavery was an attack on the rights and the social structure of the South.

During Brooks' service as Representative, there was great controversy over slavery in Kansas Territory and whether Kansas would be admitted as a free or slave state. He supported actions by pro-slavery men from Missouri to make Kansas a slave territory. (See Bleeding Kansas.) In March 1856, Brooks wrote: "The fate of the South is to be decided with the Kansas issue. If Kansas becomes a hireling [i.e. free] State, slave property will decline to half its present value in Missouri ... [and] abolitionism will become the prevailing sentiment. So with Arkansas; so with upper Texas."

On May 20, 1856, Senator Charles Sumner made a speech denouncing "The Crime Against Kansas" and the Southern leaders whom he regarded as complicit, including Senator Andrew Butler. Sumner compared Butler with Don Quixote for embracing a prostitute (slavery) as his mistress, saying Butler "believes himself a chivalrous knight".

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; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight. I mean the harlot Slavery.

Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, who was also a subject of criticism during the speech, suggested to a colleague while Sumner was orating that "this damn fool [Sumner] is going to get himself shot by some other damn fool."

Sumner's language was intentionally inflammatory; Southerners often claimed that abolition would lead to intermarriage and miscegenation, arguing that abolitionists opposed slavery because they wanted to have sex with and marry black women. Abolitionists reversed the argument by accusing southerners of loving slavery so they could have slave mistresses at their disposal. As Hoffer (2010) says, "It is also important to note the sexual imagery that recurred throughout the oration, which was neither accidental nor without precedent. Abolitionists routinely accused slaveholders of maintaining slavery so that they could engage in forcible sexual relations with their slaves."

Brooks thought of challenging Sumner to a duel. He consulted with Representative Laurence M. Keitt (also a South Carolina Democrat) on dueling etiquette. Keitt said that dueling was for gentlemen of equal social standing. In his view, Sumner was no gentleman; no better than a drunkard, due to his supposedly coarse and insulting language toward Butler. Brooks then decided to "punish" Sumner with a public beating.

On May 22, two days after Sumner's speech, Brooks entered the Senate chamber in company with Keitt. Also with him was Representative Henry A. Edmundson (Democrat-Virginia), a personal friend with his own history of legislative violence. (Edmundson had been arrested by the House Sergeant at Arms after attempting to attack Representative Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio during a tense debate on the House floor in May 1854).

J.L. Magee's famous political cartoon of the attack on Sumner Brooks confronted Sumner, who was seated at his desk, writing letters. He said, "Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine." As Sumner began to stand up, Brooks hit Sumner over the head several times with his cane, made of thick gutta-percha with a gold head. Sumner was trapped under the heavy desk (which was bolted to the floor), but Brooks continued to strike Sumner until Sumner wrenched the desk from the floor in an attempt to escape. By this time, Sumner was blinded by his own blood. He staggered up the aisle and collapsed unconscious. Senator John J. Crittenden, Representative Ambrose Murray, and others attempted to restrain Brooks before he killed Sumner, but were blocked by Keitt, who brandished a pistol and shouted at the onlookers to leave Brooks and Sumner alone. Brooks continued beating Sumner until the cane broke, then quietly left the chamber with Keitt and Edmundson. Brooks required medical attention before leaving the Capitol, because he had hit himself above his right eye with one of his backswings.

Sumner suffered head trauma that would cause him chronic pain and symptoms consistent with what would now be called traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, and spent three years convalescing before returning to his Senate seat. He suffered chronic pain and debilitation for the rest of his life.

After the attack The national reaction to Brooks' attack was sharply divided along regional lines. In Congress, members in both houses armed themselves when they ventured onto the floor.

Brooks was widely cheered across the South, where 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 new canes, with one bearing the phrase, "Good job". The Richmond Enquirer wrote: "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. Another cane was inscribed "Hit him again". Southern lawmakers made rings out of the original cane's remains, which they wore on neck chains to show their solidarity with Brooks.

Congressman Anson Burlingame publicly humiliated Brooks in retaliation by goading Brooks into challenging him to a duel, accepting, then watching Brooks back out. Brooks challenged Burlingame to duel, stating he would gladly face him "in any Yankee mudsill of his choosing". Burlingame, a well-known marksman, eagerly accepted, choosing rifles as the weapons and the Navy Yards in the border town of Niagara Falls, Canada, as the location (in order to circumvent the U.S. ban on dueling). Brooks, reportedly dismayed by both Burlingame's unexpectedly enthusiastic acceptance and his reputation as a crack shot, refused to show up, instead citing unspecified risks to his safety if he was to cross "hostile country" (the Northern states) in order to reach Canada.

In the House, a motion to expel Brooks failed, but Brooks resigned his seat anyway on July 15. 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 and was fined $300, though he was not incarcerated.

He was quickly returned to office in a special election on August 1, and elected to a new term of office in November 1856.

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".

Brooks died unexpectedly from a violent bout of croup in January 1857, a few weeks before the March 4 start of the new congressional term. He was buried in Edgefield, South Carolina. The official telegram announcing his death stated "He died a horrid death, and suffered intensely. He endeavored to tear his own throat open to get breath." Despite terrible weather, thousands went to the Capitol to attend memorial services. After his body was transported back to Edgefield, another large crowd took part in funeral ceremonies before he was buried.

The city of Brooksville, Florida (previously known as Melendez), and Brooks County, Georgia, are named in Brooks' honor. They were named shortly after his caning of Sumner.

GEDCOM Note

<p>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p><p> </p><p>BROOKS, Preston Smith, a Representative from South Carolina; born in Edgefield District, S.C., August 5, 1819; attended the common schools and was graduated from South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina) at Columbia in 1839; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1845 and commenced practice in Edgefield, S.C.; member of the State house of representatives in 1844; served in the Mexican War as captain in the Palmetto Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers; elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth Congresses and served from March 4, 1853, until July 15, 1856, when he resigned even though the attempt to expel him for his assault upon Charles Sumner on May 22, 1856, had failed through lack of the necessary two-thirds vote; chairman, Committee on Expenditures in the Department of State (Thirty-fourth Congress); reelected to the Thirty-fourth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by his own resignation and served from August 1, 1856, until his death in Washington, D.C., January 27, 1857; had been reelected to the Thirty-fifth Congress; interment in Willow Brook Cemetery, Edgefield, S.C. </p><p> </p><p>Bibliography</p><p> </p>DAB; U.S. Congress. House Select Committee on Assault upon Senator Sumner. Thirty-fourth Congress, report no. 182.Washington, 1856.

GEDCOM Source

HARTWELL TRAYLOR TRAYLOR Web Site MyHeritage family tree Family site: TRAYLOR Web Site Family tree: 355702041-2 Smart Matching 355702041-2 MH:S500002 https://www.myheritage.com/person-1509059_499434171_499434171/prest... 3 Added by confirming a Smart Match