Posted on 04/25/2007 10:11:37 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
Winston Churchill called him "one of the noblest Americans who ever lived," and Theodore Roosevelt called him "the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth." But has political correctness turned Robert E. Lee into a villain? That will be the question explored by six historians this weekend at a symposium commemorating the bicentennial of the Confederate commander's birth. "We were afraid that Lee would not receive the honors he should get because of the prevailing political correctness," says Brag Bowling, a Richmond resident who helped organize Saturday's event at the Key Bridge Marriott Hotel in Arlington. The symposium will be the largest event of its kind this year honoring Lee, who was born Jan. 19, 1807.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
What amazes me about you gentleman, is that you go on about Brooks being a thug. He probably was. However, you seem to overlook that Sumner made a very inflammatory and insulting speech. Free Speech isn’t without it’s consequences. Brooks was not atypical of most Southerners, but his family was insulted, and I have seen people KILLED in the North for less!
I am not convinced that he meant to do anything other than give the guy a good beating anyway. I think his temper got the best of him.
Here is a “neutral” version of the beating:
On May 22, 1856, Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner with his Gutta-percha wood walking cane in the Senate chamber because of a speech Sumner had made three days previous criticizing President Franklin Pierce and Southerners who sympathized with the pro-slavery violence in Kansas (”Bleeding Kansas”). In particular, Sumner lambasted Brooks’ kinsman, Senator Andrew Butler, who was not in attendance when the speech was read, describing slavery as a harlot, comparing Butler with Don Quixote for embracing it, and mocking Butler for a physical handicap. Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, who was also a subject of abuse 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.” (Jordan et. al The Americans)
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 supposedly coarse language he had used during his speech. Brooks thus decided to attack Sumner with a cane.
Two days after the speech, on the afternoon of May 22, Brooks confronted Sumner as he sat writing at his desk in the almost empty Senate chamber. Brooks was accompanied by Laurence M. Keitt, also of South Carolina, and Henry A. Edmundson of Virginia. 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 on the head 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 bash Sumner until he ripped the desk from the floor. By this time, Sumner was blinded by his own blood, and he staggered up the aisle and collapsed, lapsing into unconsciousness. Brooks continued to beat Sumner until he broke his cane, then quietly left the chamber. Several other senators attempted to help Sumner, but were blocked by Keitt who was holding a pistol and shouting “Let them be!”
South Carolinians sent Brooks dozens of brand new canes to replace the one he had broken. 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.”
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 thought of him as a hero and returned him to Congress. Brooks remained in office until his death from the croup in 1857 and is buried in Edgefield, South Carolina. Sumner was unable to return to duty for more than three years while he recovered. He later became one of the most influential Radical Republicans throughout the conduct of the American Civil War, and on through the early years of Reconstruction.
I didn't say his action wasn't popular with his constituents. In fact, the general applause that Brooks got throughout the south did more to alienate northern public opinion against the slave power than did the beating itself.
Seems Southerners aren’t the only ones that resort to violence.
And if they'd beaten you up, they should have been arrested. But I haven't seen widespread newspaper editorials celebrating the beating of picket line crossers.
I can read Wikipedia too. All that shows is that Brooks did set out to attack an unarmed man and needed Keitt to hold people off with a pistol rather than allow them to come to Sumner’s defense. So all in all it took not one, but two Southern ‘gentleman’, one armed with a pistol and one armed with a club, to beat an older, unarmed man almost to death. So...where does the honor part come in again?
Really? Did they attack them while they were unarmed, too?
I am not convinced that he meant to do anything other than give the guy a good beating anyway. I think his temper got the best of him.
Those hot tempered Southern "gentlemen" did get you into a lot of trouble, didn't they?
But, before entering upon the argument, I must say something of a general character, particularly in response to what has fallen from Senators who have raised themselves to eminence on this floor in championship of human wrongs. I mean the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Butler), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas), who, though unlike as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, yet, like this couple, sally forth together in the same adventure. I regret much to miss the elder Senator from his seat; but the cause, against which he has run a tilt, with such activity of animosity, demands that the opportunity of exposing him should not be lost; and it is for the cause that I speak. The Senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentimcuts of honor and courage. 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. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words. Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this Senator. The frenzy of Don Quixote, in behalf of his wench, Dulcinea del Toboso, is all surpassed. The asserted rights of Slavery, which shock equality of all kinds, are cloaked by a fantastic claim of equality. If the slave States cannot enjoy what, in mockery of the great fathers of the Republic, he misnames equality under the Constitution in other words, the full power in the National Territories to compel fellowmen to unpaid toil, to separate husband and wife, and to sell little children at the auction block then, sir, the chivalric Senator will conduct the State of South Carolina out of the Union! Heroic knight ! Exalted Senator! A second Moses come for a second exodus!But not content with this poor menace, which we have been twice told was " measured," the Senator in the unrestrained chivalry of his nature, has undertaken to apply opprobrious words to those who differ from him on this floor. He calls them "sectional and fanatical;" and opposition to the usurpation in Kansas he denounces as "an uncalculating fanaticism." To be sure these charges lack all grace of originality, and all sentiment of truth; but the adventurous Senator does not hesitate. He is the uncompromising, unblushing representative on this floor of a flagrant sectionalism, which now domineers over the Republic, and yet with a ludicrous ignorance of his own position unable to see himself as others see him—or with an effrontery which even his white head ought not to protect from rebuke, he applies to those here who resist his sectionalism the very epithet which designates himself. The men who strive to bring back the Government to its original policy, when Freedom and not Slavery was sectional, he arraigns as sectional. This will not do. It involves too great a perversion of terms. I tell that Senator that it is to him self, and to the "organization" of which he is the " committed advocate," that this epithet belongs. I now fasten it upon them. For myself, I care little for names; but since the question has been raised here, I affirm that the Republican party of the Union is in no just sense sectional, but, more than any other party, national; and that it now goes forth to dislodge from the high places of the Government the tyrannical sectionalism of which the Senator from South Carolina is one of the maddest zealots.
Are you really that gutterslime Whiskey papa? Ii is sad that the great state of TN is inhabited by such a self-loathing, lowlife as yourself.
I would like to read ALL of the speech. Isn’t there a part where he makes fun of the Gentleman from S.C.’s infirmity?
It is fairly inflammatory regardless.
I don’t believe “Colonel” is WLAT.....he conducts himself as a gentleman.
I do recall a story of a suburb of NYC where two black gentleman were beaten to death, some years back, just for “walking” THROUGH the area!
Did you just happen to read what the “exalted” Stephen Douglas had to say concerning the speech?
Even a Yankee Senator knew the speech was provacative.
Robert E. Lee was great.
But the right leg that his greatness stood on was named Stonewall Jackson.
And I recall a story from Birmingham where four little girls were blown to pieces, some years back, just for GOING TO SUNDAY SCHOOL!!!
Not that I can find, but I'll admit to just skimming some of it. Maybe you can find it.
Were the perpetrators hailed as heroes throughout the north? Did newspaper editorials celebrate them? Did ladies wear pins representing the weapons they used?
Considering that Sumner lit into Douglas almost as hard as he lit into Butler then I doubt Douglas had much good to say about the speech.
One of the funniest quotes I ever heard addressed to Stephen Douglas was made, I believe, by Salmon Chase. "Douglas," he said addressing both the man's ambitions and his racist attitudes, "No man will ever be president who spells 'Negro' with two g's."
Speaking of Douglas, it’s interesting that as much as Lincoln is reviled as “railroad lawyer,” and the Republicans as champions of the accursed “internal improvements,” it was that good Democrat Douglas who basically invented the railroad land grant system. The whole Kansas-Nebraska ruckus was caused by him angling to get the transcontinental railroad based out of Chicago and needing a bone to toss the south in return for their going along with it.
We all know about that. I am showing that your sainted Yankee population is as hot-headed as people in the South.
It wasn’t 1859. In this day and age, people are more refined.
What you're showing is that your elected representatives down south are no better than common street thugs and criminals up north.
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