Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [120]
IN EARLY 1856, Lincoln decided that Illinois should follow New York and Ohio in organizing the various anti-Nebraska elements into the new Republican Party. Through his efforts, the call went out for an anti-Nebraska state convention to be held on May 29, 1856. Lincoln proceeded carefully in the weeks leading to the convention, recognizing the complexities of reconciling the disparate opponents of the Nebraska bill into a unified party. Despite the success of Weed and Chase in their respective states, Lincoln worried that the convention call would attract only the more radical elements of the coalition, providing too narrow a base for a viable new party.
Dramatic events in Kansas helped rally support for Lincoln’s cause. A guerrilla war had broken out between Northern emigrants desiring to make Kansas a free state under the “popular sovereignty” provision of the Nebraska Act, and so-called “border ruffians,” who crossed the river from Missouri and cast illicit votes to make Kansas a slave state. During the debate over the Nebraska Act, Seward had told the slave states that the North would “engage in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory to the side which is stronger in numbers as it is in right.” In the South, the Charleston Mercury responded: “When the North presents a sectional issue, and tenders battle upon it, she must meet it, or abide all the consequences of a victory easily won, by a remorseless and eager foe.” As the violence spiraled, “Bleeding Kansas” became a new rallying cry for the antislavery forces. Kansas was not merely a contest between settlers but a war between North and South.
Moderate antislavery sentiment was further aroused when shocking news from Washington reached Illinois the week before the convention. On the Senate floor, South Carolina’s Preston Brooks had savagely bludgeoned Charles Sumner in return for Sumner’s incendiary antislavery speech. Sumner had begun unremarkably enough, presenting familiar arguments, laced with literary and historical references, against admitting Kansas as a slave state. The mood of the Senate chamber instantly shifted, however, when Sumner launched into a vituperative attack directed particularly against two of his fellow senators, Stephen Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina. He likened Butler to the aging, feeble Don Quixote, who imagined himself “a chivalrous knight,” sentimentally devoted to his beloved “harlot, Slavery…who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him.” Riding forth by Butler’s side, Douglas was “the squire of Slavery, its very Sancho Panza, ready to do all its humiliating offices.”
In the days before delivering the speech, Sumner had read a draft to Frances Seward. She strongly advised him to remove the personal attacks, including a reference to Butler’s slight paralysis that slurred his speech. In this instance Sumner did not heed her advice; when he finished speaking, Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan characterized the speech as “the most un-American and unpatriotic that ever grated on the ears of the members of this high body—as I hope never to hear again here or elsewhere.”
Two days later, Butler’s young cousin Congressman Preston Brooks entered the Senate chamber armed with a heavy cane. Walking up to Sumner, who was writing at his desk, Brooks reportedly said, “You have libelled South Carolina and my relative, and I have come to punish you.” Before Sumner could speak, Brooks brought the cane down upon his head, cudgeling him repeatedly as Sumner futilely tried to rise from his desk. Covered with blood, Sumner fell unconscious and was carried from the floor.
News of the brutal assault, which left Sumner with severe injuries to his brain and spinal cord and kept him out of the Senate