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THE ASSAULT ON MR. SUMNER.Boston, Massachusetts, Atlas [Republican](24 May 1856)
The outrage in the Senate, on Thursday last is
without a parallel in the legislative history of the
country. Nothing has heretofore seemed so bold, so
bad, so alarming. There have been affrays, more or
less serious, in the House, for the House is a popular,
and therefore, a tumultuous body; there have been
rencounters in the streets, for the streets are arenas in
which any assassin may display his prowess; but
never before has the sanctity of the Senate Chamber
been violated; never before has an intruder ventured
to carry into those privileged precincts his private
hostilities; never before has a Senator been struck
down in his seat, and stretched, by the hand of a lawless
bully, prostrate, bleeding, and insensible upon
the floor. The wrong is full of public importance;
and we almost forget the private injury of Mr. Sumner
in the broad temerity of the insult which has been
offered to the country, to Massachusetts, to the Senate.
This first act of violence may pass into a
precedent; what a single creature has done today, a hundred,
equally barbarous, may attempt tomorrow;
until a band of alien censors may crowd the galleries,
and the lobbies, and even the floor of the
Senate, and by the persuasive arguments of the
bludgeon, the bowie knife, and the revolver, effectually
refute and silence any member who may dare to
utter, with some thing of force and freedom, his
personal convictions. The privileges which we have
fondly supposed were conferred with the Senatorial
dignity; the right to characterize public measures and
public men, with no responsibility, save to God and
to conscience; the freedom of debate, without which
its forms are a mere mockery -- these will all disappear;
and in their place we shall have the government of a
self-constituted and revolutionary tribunal, overawing
the Senate, as the Jacobins of Paris overawed the
National Assembly of France, as the soldiers of
Cromwell intimidated the Parliament of Great Britain.
Shall we have, did we say? We have it already.
There is freedom of speech in Washington, but it is
only for the champions of slavery. There is freedom
of the press, but only of the press which extenuates
or defends political wrongs. Twice already the South,
failed in the arguments of reason, has resorted to the
argument of folly. Driven from every position, constantly
refuted in its reasoning, met and repulsed
when it has resorted to invective, by an invective
more vigorous than its own, at first astonished and
then crazed by the changing and bolder tone of
Northern man, the South has taken to expedients
with which long use has made it familiar, and in
which years of daily practice have given it a
nefarious skill. Thank God, we know little of these
resources in New England! We have our differences,
but they are differences controlled by decency. We
have our controversies, but we do not permit their
warmth to betray us into brutality; we do not think
it necessary to shoot, to slash, or to stun the man with
whom we may differ upon political points. The
controversial ethics of the South are of another
character, and they find their most repulsive illustration
in the event of Thursday.
The barbarian who assaulted Mr. Sumner, and who
sought in the head of his bludgeon for an argument
which he could not find in his own, complained that
South Carolina have been insulted by the Senator
from Massachusetts, and that his venerable uncle had
been spoken of in disrespectful terms! If every State,
the public policy of which is assailed in the Senate,
had been entitled to send to Washington a physical
champion, we should long ago have despatched thither
our brauniest athlete. If every nephew, whose uncle
provokes criticism by public acts, is to rush into
the Senate, the champion of his kinsman, we shall
have a nepotism established quite unauthorized by the
Constitution! The South complains of hard words, of
plain speech, of licentious language! Have its members
then been accustomed to bridle their tongues, to
control their tempers, to moderate their ire, to abstain
from personalities? What indeed have we had from
that quarter, save one long stream of vituperation, one
endless rain of fish-wife rhetoric, one continuous blast
of feverish denunciation and passionate threat? Let
the world judge between us. We have borne and
forborne. We have been patient until patience has
become ignominious. There are wrongs which no
man of spirit will suffer tamely; there are topics
which it is impossible to discuss with coldness; there
are injuries which must lend fire to language, and
arouse the temper of the most stolid. Mr. Sumner's
speech is before the country and it is for the country
to decide whether it does or does not justify
the violence with which it has been met. Our
Senator comments freely upon the character of the Kansas
bill, upon the apologies which have been made for it,
in Congress, upon the readiness of the Administration
to promote the schemes of its supporters,
upon the unparalleled injuries which have been
inflicted upon the unfortunate people of Kansas.
Others have spoken upon the same topics
with equal plainness, although not perhaps
with equal ability. Mr. Sumner is singularly well
sustain in all his positions, in his opinions of the
bill, and in his estimate of Douglas and Butler, by
the mind and heart, not only of his constituents, but
of the whole North. The time had come for plain
and unmistakable language, and it has been uttered.
There are those who profess to believe that Northern
rhetoric should always be emasculated, and that
Northern members should always take care to speak
humbly and with "bated breath." They complain
with nervous fastidiousness that Mr. Sumner was
provoking. So were Mr. Burke and Mr. Sheridan,
when in immoderate language they exposed the wrongs
of India and the crimes of Hastings; so was Patrick
Henry, when he plead against the parsons; so was
Tristram Burges, when he silenced Randolph of
Roanoke; so was Mr. Webster, when, in the most
remarkable oration of modern times, he launched the
lightning of his overwhelming invective, while every
fibre of his great frame was full of indignation and
reproach. Smooth speeches will answer for smooth
times; but there is a species of oratory, classic since
the days of Demosthenes, employed without a scruple
upon fit occasions, in all deliberative assemblies,
perfectly well recognized, and sometimes absolutely
necessary. Who will say that Kansas, and Atchison,
and Douglas together, were not enough to inspire
and justify a new Philippic?
But we care not what Mr. Sumner said, nor in
what behalf he was pleading. We know him only
as the Senator of Massachusetts; we remember only
that the commonwealth has been outraged. Had
the Senator of any other State been subjected to a like
indignity, we might have found words in which to
express our abhorrence of the crime; but now we
can only say, that every constituent of Mr. Sumner
ought to feel that the injury is his own, and that it is
for him to expect redress. A high-minded Senate,
would vindicate its trampled dignity; a respectable
House of Representatives would drive the wrong-doer
from its benches; in a society unpolluted by
barbarism, the assaulter of an unarmed man, would
find himself the object of general contempt. We
can hardly hope that such a retribution will visit the
offender; but Massachusetts, in other and better
times, would have had a right confidently to anticipate
the expulsion of Preston Brooks from the house of
Representatives. We leave it to others to decide how
far it may be fit and proper for her officially to
express her sense of this indignity. For our own part,
we think she can rely upon the generosity and the justice
of her sister states, that an outrage so indefensible
will meet with a fitting rebuke from the people, if not
from the representatives of the people. And if in
this age of civilization, brute force is to control the
government of the country, striking down our
senators, silencing debate, and leaving us only the name
of Freedom, there are remedies with which
Massachusetts has found it necessary to meet similar
exigencies in the past, which she will not hesitate to
employ in the future.
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