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Preston Smith Brooks (August 5, 1819 – January 27, 1857) was an American slaveowner, politician, and member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina, serving from 1853 until his resignation in July 1856 and again from August 1856 until his death.
Among the most polarizing figures individuals in the decade before the American Civil War, Congressman Preston Smith Brooks took it upon himself to defend the slaveholding south through word and action. Brooks was born into a prominent family in Edgefield, South Carolina on August 5, 1819.
The caning of Charles Sumner, or the Brooks–Sumner Affair, occurred on May 22, 1856, in the United States Senate chamber, when Representative Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina, used a walking cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist Republican from Massachusetts.
Southern Congressman Preston Brooks savagely beats Northern Senator Charles Sumner in the halls of Congress as tensions rise over the expansion of slavery.
Preston Brooks of South Carolina caned Sumner, beating him bloody in the U.S. Senate chamber. Sumner was severely injured, and Brooks was hailed as a hero in the South. The violent incident intensified the split in America as it moved toward the Civil War.
In 1856, Representative Preston Brooks, a Democrat from South Carolina, attacked Senator Charles Sumner, a Republican from Massachusetts, with a walking cane. The event became known as the Caning of Charles Sumner, and widely believed to be one of the events that lead to the American Civil War.
Brooks is best known for his assault on U.S. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in May 1856. Following the eruption of violence on the Kansas frontier, Sumner delivered a speech unusually harsh by the Senate’s standards.
South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks brutally attacked Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner after Sumner’s 1856 speech denouncing slavery. Brooks reached Sumner’s desk, where the Senator was writing, head down, unaware of his presence.
Preston Brooks beats Charles Sumner with a cane. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was an avowed Abolitionist and leader of the Republican Party. After the sack of Lawrence, on May 21, 1856, he gave a bitter speech in the Senate called " The Crime Against Kansas."
But at a few minutes before one pm, the quiet murmur of voices within the Senate chamber was suddenly disrupted by the sounds of violent struggle as a South Carolina Representative named Preston Brooks approached the desk of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner where he raised a gutta-percha walking cane and began pummeling the unsuspecting Sumn...