THE ATTACK UPON MR. SUMNER.Boston, Massachusetts, Courier [Whig](23 May 1856)
The telegraph gives us an account of an unmanly personal attack by a
Representative of South Carolina upon Senator Sumner of Massachusetts,
while our Senator was sitting at his desk, after the body to which he was
attached had adjourned. We do not know that we have the whole story of the
incident, but the fact as mentioned is, that Mr. Sumner was
writing at his desk, after the closing of the Senate session, and was
brutally assaulted by a South Carolina member of the House. There is no
excuse for brutalism -- there is no excuse for the man who assaults another
at disadvantage anywhere, and the Senators of the United States will
without doubt take care of their privileges and prerogatives.
But we have a word to say about the manner in which this Kansas debate
has been carried on in the Senate. Members have shifted the time of the
pronouncement of their speeches as it has suited their convenience. The
speech of Mr. Sumner was exceedingly insulting towards some
gentlemen who sit with him upon the Senate floor. It was not in consonance
with the sort of arguments which people expect to hear from U.
s. Senators upon a grave question. They do not want flowery
adjectives or far-fetched allusions to, or illustrations from Greece and
Rome, to give them an opinion as to how they shall act with regard to a
practical question which is now before them. When Mr. Sumner
compares Senator Butler of South Carolina and Senator Douglas of Illinois
to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, assimilating one to the character of a
crazy man and the other to that of a fool, he takes a ground which
Massachusetts, in her dignity and her ability, never presented before. In
the great debate between Webster and Hayne, in which Massachusetts came
out best, beyond all comparison, no such allusions were made. The Senator
of Massachusetts of that day descended to no low blackguardism. In the
strength of his faith and in the force of his ability he presented
Massachusetts before the Senate of the United States in such a manner that
men bowed down and worshipped her. "There," said he, "is Boston and
Concord, and Lexington and Bunker Hill." "I employ no scavengers," said he
again, in answer to the taunts of the Senator from South Carolina, who had
produced against him the rakings and scrapings of all which political
venom could bring out from the cesspool of party politics. Mr.
Webster came out of that controversy with South Carolina with the
admiration of every man in the country. The time has changed -- a
different man takes his place, with only the memory of an insulting speech
and a broken head.
We offer no palliation for the brutal assault which was made upon
Mr. Sumner by a Representative from South Carolina. It is a
well understood axiom and rule of the United States Congress, that no
member shall be allowed to be held responsible for words spoken in debate.
The member from South Carolina transgressed every rule of honor which
should animate or restrain one gentleman in his connections with another,
in his ruffian assault upon Mr. Sumner. There is no chivalry
in a brute. There is no manliness in a scoundrel. If Mr.
Brooks is a nephew to Senator Butler, as it is said that he is, the
Senator has only cause to regret that his blood runs through such ignoble
veins.
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