On May 22, 1856, the U.S. Senate chamber became the scene of one of the most shocking acts of political violence in American history. Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina, enraged by Senator Charles Sumner’s blistering anti-slavery speech, strode into the chamber and beat Sumner unconscious with a gold-topped gutta-percha cane as the senator sat trapped at his desk.
Sumner’s offense? Calling out the brutality of slavery — and naming Brooks’s own kinsman in the process.
Brooks struck so savagely that his cane shattered across Sumner’s skull. Instead of facing universal condemnation, he returned home to Southern adoration, where supporters mailed him hundreds of replacement canes, some engraved with messages like “Hit him again.”