Posted on 05/22/2016 9:49:44 AM PDT by ak267
On May 22, 1856, in the United States Congress, Representative Preston Brooks attacked Senator Charles Sumner with a walking cane in retaliation for a speech given by Sumner two days earlier. The beating nearly killed Sumner and it drew a sharply polarized response from the American public on the subject of the expansion of slavery in the United States. It has been considered symbolic of the "breakdown of reasoned discourse"[1] that eventually led to the American Civil War.
(Excerpt) Read more at en.wikipedia.org ...
You can surmise that from this:
Historian William Gienapp has concluded that Brooks' "assault was of critical importance in transforming the struggling Republican party into a major political force."
Me too, what a disappointment :(
Shortsightedness of the southerners?
You are aware, aren’t you, that the northerners levied onerous tariffs on the south? Ninety percent of the money coming into the federal government was taken from the south.
Perhaps we can agree that the northerners were short sighted as well?
While he was the recipient of the caning, I do not believe he deserves true victim status. He had insulted a fellow senator, insinuating that he had a slave mistress, and ridiculing him for his inability to speak clearly(the senator in question had suffered a stroke). As the offended senator in question was in no shape to defend his own honour, his cousin took matters into his own hands.
The speech provoking the caning, not the caning itself, marks an end to civil discourse.
See my post 24. The beating was well-deserved.
Some things never change do they?
And yes I thought the same thing when I first read it...
I learned while living in PA, Don’t get between Chucky Cheese and a camera, he will run you over!!!
“Evidently Senators were exempt from assault and battery charges.”
He was charged, found guilty, paid a fine.
Ah. An offense to “honor”
Basically the same reason Trayvon Martin attacked George Zimmerman.
Just a fine?
I can think of some Congress-critters I’d like to cane!
Might be worth it!
I tend(repeat tend) to agree. The anti slavery crowd was the beginning of today’s MOB. one view of the American Civil War being the destruction, by the mob, of the closest America ever came to developing a nobility. The Civil War was egalitarianism run amok. That is one view of a complex series of events leading from the founding to the attempted rupture.
The nation was almost fully funded by tariffs. I have my doubts about the 90% and suspect you simply made that figure up on the spot. And there was no tariff on the south, it affected all states.
But the goal of the tariff was to protect industry growing in the north.
But tariffs were not the cause of the war. As much as you want to pretend, it all came down to slavery. Even the tariff you lament. It was more important to protect honest business than slave dependent industries.
If the southern agri-economy was not slave based, people might have thought it was worthy of protection.
“He had insulted a fellow senator, insinuating that he had a slave mistress, and ridiculing him for his inability to speak clearly(the senator in question had suffered a stroke). “
He did nothing of the sort. It was an easily understood metaphor, except to a moron;
“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”
And he also did not ridicule his speech impediment. The actual words;
“[He] “touches nothing which he does not disfigure with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes of fact. He cannot open his mouth, but out there flies a blunder”
A blunder of principle or fact. Again, very clear.
As for slave mistress allegations, they did happen. Butler the southerner accused Sumner of supporting abolition so he could have interracial marriage.
SO yeah, he was an innocent victim. The fact is, he entered things into argument that could not be refuted with rhetoric, so the duller one had to attack.
He had no other tools.
And to his credit, although it was a safe bet, after conviction, he resigned and on his own stood for a special election. He was returned back to office.
A visual depiction of “Argumentum ad Baculum? An appeal to force is not always unjustified.
“The anti slavery crowd was the beginning of today’s MOB. one view of the American Civil War being the destruction, by the mob, of the closest America ever came to developing a nobility”
In that one sentence, people working to stop slavery were a mob. And the mob destroyed a budding American “nobility”, and that’s bad. And the nobility had a right to enslave people as they saw fit?
Yes, I suppose that is “one view”.
Im very pleased that we do not have a nobility per se. And I wish we would have never imported a single slave.
Excellent point.
Can’t win the argument?
Bash the other guy’s brains in.
Works every time.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.