*I’m pinging LS to this discussion, as he is a historian. I don’t know his take on this particular incident, but I thought he might find it of interest.
I’ve made my point several times on this over a long period, that my stance wasn’t either pro-Southern or pro-Northern, but anti-hypocrisy. I find slavery abhorrent and wish it had been outlawed (or at the very least, phased out) in the Declaration of Independence or U.S. Constitution. I had no intention of even discussing slavery when it came to this particular episode, since slavery is the way it has been spun by liberal historians, when the facts of the matter AS IT OCCURRED are something else entirely. This was a point of personal honor, something too many people don’t understand today. You had people fighting duels that were in high positions of power over this, the “issues” discussed had little to do with it.
My main beef here is that how I was taught about this incident and how it continues to be described is in the terms of some heroic man with a halo thundering in righteous fury about the evil institution and some troglodytic caveman burst into the Senate and struck down this Messiah-like figure. It’s about as big a load of bull$hit as they come. I’m not the only person who came to the conclusion that Sumner was no heroic figure...
Sumner’s own biographer, David Donald summed him up as follows:
“Distrusted by friends and allies, and reciprocating their distrust, a man of “ostentatious culture,” “unvarnished egotism,” and “’a specimen of prolonged and morbid juvenility,’” Sumner combined a passionate conviction in his own moral purity with a command of nineteenth-century “rhetorical flourishes” and a “remarkable talent for rationalization.” Stumbling “into politics largely by accident,” elevated to the United States Senate largely by chance, willing to indulge in “Jacksonian demagoguery” for the sake of political expediency, Sumner became a bitter and potent agitator of sectional conflict. Carving out a reputation as the South’s most hated foe and the Negro’s bravest friend, he inflamed sectional differences, advanced his personal fortunes, and helped bring about national tragedy.”
That is a helluva indictment of this individual, who at the time of his slanderous tirade was all of 45 years old and not even a full 6 years in Washington, DC. I submit that Sumner knew precisely what he was doing and was expecting to provoke a response (and I believe that initially he was expecting a challenge to fight a duel — for which he not only would NOT fight, but for which he would get someone else to fight on his behalf, in keeping with his character of cowardice). To Senator Andrew Pickens Butler’s credit, he himself knew that Sumner was a mere blowhard and was apparently even content to let the incident pass, and not give Sumner’s spectacle any mind at all. That certainly speaks volumes to Butler’s character and sense of tolerance.
I’ll add in conclusion as well that absent types like Sumner (whom I will add post-war by 1872 was supporting the Democrat candidate for President, Horace Greeley, and he lost a great deal of his power and died less than a year and a half after the election) we might’ve gone a long way into finding a moderate solution to have averted war and bloodshed (well worth noting, too, that Sumner, once he got his great war, he himself didn’t go charging off to serve — indeed, he never put on the uniform once. Contrast that with Congressman Laurence Keitt who was with Preston Brooks during the incident with Sumner, who unapologetically put on the uniform and died for his cause. Brooks would have as well had he not died before the war).
I’ll throw in one last point as well where it comes to North vs. South, something I’ve also mentioned before, that being always the claim of Northern moral superiority, which after spending some time paying closer scrutiny to that didn’t quite pass the smell test. While Northerners were quite content to click their tongues at the savagery of the South and their proliferating of this peculiar institution, they were always quite willing to tell the South what they should do with themselves and with Blacks, but when it came time for them to do something themselves, the message was loud and clear: keep those Africans south of the Mason-Dixon line. Indeed, confronted with the prospect of gargantuan numbers of freed slaves migrating North to live amongst the more “tolerant Whites” would’ve provoked a response of terror by these morally superior folks the likes of which would never have been seen before (the NYC Draft Riots would’ve looked like a Sunday picnic).
Again, this is not to claim Southerners as morally superior, either (having that peculiar institution go on as long as it did, let alone Jim Crow, is testament to that), only that it is very easy for people far removed from a problem or situation to sit in moral judgment over others when they themselves don’t have to face said problems or situations close-up (or outright refusing to face the situation or washing their hands of it entirely). Look at the state of Oregon, which to this day has a very small Black population (like its New England counterparts), and that wasn’t by accident, the “enlightened, morally superior” folks there saw to it that Free Blacks were barred from moving there. Anyway, you get my point here.
2) On the moral superiority, or non-superiority, of the North, you are right. Obviously, many of the northern merchants made a lot of money by SHIPPING slaves; and certainly 90% of the talk about emancipation envisioned blacks turned loose in the South or Africa, NOT the North. If and when it appeared that free blacks might resettle in the north, a great deal of emancipation ensued. The dynamic was encapsulated in the subsequent comment by comedian Dick Gregory that in the South, whites didn't care how close you got as long as you didn't get too big, and in the North, whites didn't care how big you got, as long as you didn't get too close.
That said, I strongly disagree that there was any solution to slavery other than war. I refer everyone to James Huston's book, Calculating the Value of the Union, which shows that the overriding, unavoidable issue was property value in slaves. Either slaves were property or they were people, and as Lincoln said, you couldn't have it both ways. By 1860, southern value in slave property exceeded all northern railroad and textile values combined! What the territorial issue threatened to do was to reintroduce slavery into the free North, and this was precisely the wording of John C. Calhoun earlier on the territorial issues. In fact, Calhoun took the logical, very modern PC-approach to slavery, saying "if" it was legal, then even to attack it in speech or in print constituted a violation of southern "civil rights" and there had to be a gag on ALL criticism of slavery (can you say "homosexuality?"). So if property is property in Alabama, it must also be property in Ohio, and if a person is a person in Ohio, then he must be a person in Alabama. The inevitable clash of this simple proposition was apparent to Lincoln and every slaveholder in the Union, as well as most of the free men.
The Civil War was not about slavery in the territories, but the ultimate, inevitable reintroduction of slavery into free states or the equally disastrous emancipation of slaves by law in slave states. Either way, you would have a nation either all slave or all free, but not a house divided.