By implying he might shoot you if you tried to step in and stop a man from being beaten by a thug. That’s called aiding and abetting nowadays and it’s a felony. Actually under current law you might be able to charge him with assault as well, they charge accomplices with murder even when they didn’t pull the trigger.
“Dueling was a sport for gentlemen.”
Aaron Burr wasn’t a gentleman. Some slave-loving thug who assaults people isn’t a gentleman either and shouldn’t be compared to the President.
Assault is a crime. Anyone can claim “oh he’s an a-hole I’m gonna kick his butt”. You can’t have that on the floor of the damn Congress. Duels had rules, that was the point, to settle the dispute in a civilized way (as civilized as any fight) rather than through criminal assault. One’s opinion (and it’s always an opinion, I gave mine) on whether one’s foe is a gentleman or not is irrelevant.
I 100% believe Brooks should have been expelled, not cool. I can understand why you might think Sumter was a jerk though I don’t agree, but I can’t believe how far you are going excusing Brooks. He could have friggin killed him. Head trauma is real *ss stuff, Sumter wasn’t being a big baby. You can’t have dudes caning fellow members of Congress no matter what they say. I might love it if Ted Cruz took a baseball bat to Al Franken and put him in traction but that’s not cool man.
I’m getting in late on this one, but I’ll give my two-cents’ worth. Sen. Sumner saying that Sen. Butler had an “ugly mistress,” and then explainin his metaphor that the “mistress” was slavery, and describing the evils of the institution, was perfectly legitimate, not a personal attack upon a fellow senator, and not a violation of (the future) Rule XIX. Butler was openly and proudly supportive of the “peculiar institution” of slavery, and it was not defamatory for Sumner to point it out and explain what it implied any more than it would have been defamatory for Sen. Warren to claim that Sen. Sessions was prejudiced against blacks had Sessions been openly and proudly racist (had Coretta Scott King’s letter not told lies about Sessions then Warren’s reading it wouldn’t have violated Rule XIX).
But there was one thing about Sumner’s speech that was out of line and absolutely a violation of decorum, and something for which he deserved some form of punishment (albeit not getting caned half to death by a William Zanzinger wannabe): Sumner mocked the way that Butler spoke, not merely his accent, but his slurring after he had suffered a stroke. The Senate definitely should have reprimanded Sumner for having done so.
That being said, Brooks’s actions were absolutely out of proportion for the offense taken and Brooks should have been (i) expelled from the Senate and (ii) prosecuted for felony assault and battery and attempted murder. And the Senator that kept back those attempting to stop the assault of a man helplessly trapped under a desk also should have been reprimanded by the Senate and prosecuted criminally. The Speech and Debate Clause protecs things said in Congress, not attempted murder.
As I said, Keitt wasn’t going to shoot anyone. He and Edmundson were there to prevent any interference. Brooks was not attempting to murder Sumner, either. An attempt to charge him with such would’ve been absurd. Had he borrowed Keitt’s pistol (or used his own) and shot him down, that would’ve been attempted murder (as Brooks said himself, if he was going to kill him, he’d not have used his cane).
I found more troubling that of MA Congressman Anson Burlingame wanting to avenge the beating by murdering Brooks (taking advantage of the fact that Burlingame was an excellent shot), and he wanted to do so on foreign soil in Canada. Brooks did not accept such a challenge, because it was obvious this was an attempt to murder.