Representative Preston Smith Brooks - Contact Information

Preston Smith Brooks (August 5, 1819 – January 27, 1857) was an American slaver, politician, and member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina, serving as a Democrat from 1853 until his resignation in July 1856 and again from August 1856 until his death. He is most remembered for his May 22, 1856, attack upon abolitionist and Republican Senator Charles Sumner, whom he beat nearly to death with a cane on the floor of the United States Senate in retaliation for an anti-slavery speech in which Sumner verbally insulted Brooks’s first cousin once removed, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler. The assault, which left Sumner incapacitated for years, became one of the most notorious acts of legislative violence in American history and contributed significantly to the rising sectional tensions that preceded the Civil War.

Brooks was born in Edgefield County, South Carolina, on August 5, 1819, the son of Whitfield Brooks and Mary Parsons Carroll Brooks. Of English descent, his great-great-grandfather John Brooks was the first member of the family to settle in the Americas, arriving in the Province of North Carolina from England in the early eighteenth century. Raised in the slaveholding planter society of the South Carolina upcountry, Brooks grew up in a culture that strongly defended slavery as the foundation of its social and economic order. This environment shaped his later political views and his fierce commitment to the defense of slavery and Southern honor.

Brooks attended South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina), where he pursued a classical education but developed a reputation for volatility. Shortly before graduation he was expelled for threatening local police officers with firearms. After leaving college, he studied law, attained admission to the bar, and practiced in Edgefield. In addition to his legal practice, he owned a plantation located in Cambridge, between Edgefield and Ninety-Six, where he held enslaved people and participated directly in the slave-based plantation economy. In 1840 he fought a duel with future Texas Senator Louis T. Wigfall and was shot in the hip, an injury that forced him to use a walking cane for the rest of his life—an object that would later become infamous in the attack on Sumner. He was formally admitted to the bar in 1845.

In his personal life, Brooks married twice within the Means family. His first wife was Caroline Harper Means (1820–1843). They had one child, Whitfield D. Brooks, who was born and died in 1843, and Brooks was widowed upon Caroline’s death that same year. His second wife was Martha Caroline Means (1826–1901), his first wife’s cousin. They had three children: Caroline Harper Brooks (1849–1924), Rosa Brooks (1849–1933), and Preston Smith Brooks (1854–1928). Martha outlived her husband by many decades, surviving into the early twentieth century.

Brooks entered public life as a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1844, aligning himself with the state’s pro-slavery Democratic leadership. During the Mexican–American War he served as captain of Company D of the Palmetto Regiment of South Carolina volunteers. South Carolina in the Mexican War notes the service of both Brooks and 4th Corporal Carey Wentworth Styles—who later founded The Atlanta Constitution—in Company D, known as the “Old 96 Boys” of the Edgefield District. His military service enhanced his standing among South Carolina Democrats and reinforced his image as a defender of Southern interests. After the war he returned to his law practice and plantation management while remaining active in state politics.

In 1853 Brooks was elected as a Democrat to the 33rd United States Congress from South Carolina and was reelected to the 34th Congress. Like his fellow South Carolina representatives and senators, he took an extreme pro-slavery position, asserting that the enslavement of Black people by whites was right and proper, and that any attack on or restriction of slavery was an attack on the rights and social structure of the South. During his service, national controversy over slavery in the Kansas Territory intensified, particularly over whether Kansas would be admitted as a free or slave state. Brooks supported actions by pro-slavery men from Missouri to make Kansas a slave territory. In March 1856 he wrote that “The fate of the South is to be decided with the Kansas issue. If Kansas becomes a hireling [i.e., free] state, slave property will decline to half its present value in Missouri … [and] abolitionism will become the prevailing sentiment. So with Arkansas; so with upper Texas.” His views placed him firmly among the most ardent congressional defenders of slavery on the eve of the Civil War.

The crisis that defined Brooks’s national reputation arose from the escalating conflict over Kansas. On May 20, 1856, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts delivered his famous speech “The Crime Against Kansas,” denouncing the pro-slavery forces in the territory and attacking leading Southern politicians, including Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina, Brooks’s first cousin once removed. Sumner compared Butler to Don Quixote for embracing a prostitute—slavery—as his mistress, declaring that Butler “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.” Sumner’s speech was intentionally inflammatory, employing sexual imagery common in abolitionist rhetoric that accused slaveholders of maintaining slavery to facilitate sexual exploitation of enslaved women. Southerners regarded such language as a grave personal and sectional insult. Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, who was also criticized in the speech, remarked to a colleague while Sumner was speaking that “this damn fool [Sumner] is going to get himself shot by some other damn fool.”

Brooks initially considered challenging Sumner to a duel and consulted Representative Laurence M. Keitt, a fellow South Carolina Democrat, on dueling etiquette. Keitt advised that dueling was reserved for gentlemen of equal social standing and that Sumner, in his view, was no gentleman, likening him to a drunkard because of his coarse and insulting language toward Butler. On this advice, Brooks decided instead to “punish” Sumner with a public beating. On May 22, 1856, two days after the speech, Brooks entered the Senate chamber accompanied by Keitt and Representative Henry A. Edmundson of Virginia, who himself had a history of legislative violence, including a 1854 arrest by the House Sergeant at Arms for attempting to attack Representative Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio during a heated debate. Brooks approached Sumner as he sat at his desk writing, saying, “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 rise, Brooks struck him repeatedly on the head with his cane, made of thick gutta-percha with a gold head. Sumner, trapped under his heavy desk, which was bolted to the floor, struggled to free himself as Brooks continued to rain blows upon him. In his efforts to escape, Sumner wrenched the desk from the floor, but by then he was blinded by his own blood. He staggered up the aisle before collapsing unconscious. Senator John J. Crittenden, Representative Ambrose Murray of New York, and others tried to intervene but were blocked by Keitt, who brandished a pistol and shouted for onlookers to stand back. Brooks continued beating Sumner until his cane broke, then quietly left the chamber with Keitt and Edmundson. Brooks himself required medical attention because he had struck himself above the right eye with one of his backswings.

Brooks’s beating seriously injured Sumner, who suffered severe head trauma and injuries consistent with what would now be recognized as traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. Sumner was unable to return to the Senate for three years and endured chronic pain and debilitation for the rest of his life. The Massachusetts Legislature reelected Sumner in 1856 and deliberately left his seat vacant during his absence “as a reminder of Southern brutality.” The national reaction to Brooks’s attack was sharply divided along regional lines. In Congress, members in both houses began to arm themselves on the floor, fearing further violence. Brooks never apologized for the assault. In a speech to the House of Representatives announcing his resignation on June 14, 1856, he insisted that he had behaved honorably and condemned any effort to censure or punish him. He claimed that he “meant no disrespect to the Senate of the United States” and that he had not intended to kill Sumner, stating that if that had been his aim he would have used a different weapon.

In the South, Brooks was widely celebrated. Many Southerners regarded his attack on Sumner as legitimate and socially justifiable defense of Southern honor. South Carolinians sent him dozens of replacement canes, one inscribed “Good job” and another “Hit him again.” The Richmond Enquirer praised the assault, writing, “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.” The Jefferson Literary and Debating Society of the University of Virginia sent Brooks a new gold-headed cane to replace the one broken over Sumner’s head, and Southern lawmakers fashioned rings from the fragments of the original cane, wearing them on neck chains as symbols of solidarity with Brooks. In contrast, Northerners, including many who had previously criticized Sumner’s harsh rhetoric, were almost universally shocked and outraged. Anti-slavery advocates cited the caning as proof that the slaveholding South had abandoned reasoned debate and turned to violence. The widely circulated political cartoon “Argument versus Clubs” by John L. Magee captured Northern sentiment by depicting the South’s vaunted chivalry as having degenerated into brute force. American Party Congressman Anson Burlingame of Massachusetts further humiliated Brooks in the public eye by provoking him into issuing a duel challenge, then accepting and naming rifles and the Navy Yards at Niagara Falls, Canada, as the weapons and location to evade U.S. anti-dueling laws. Faced with Burlingame’s reputation as a crack shot and the prospect of traveling through “hostile” Northern territory, Brooks withdrew, citing vague concerns for his safety.

Brooks was tried in a District of Columbia court for the attack on Sumner. He was convicted of assault and fined $300 but was not incarcerated, a sentence that many in the North considered inadequate. In the House of Representatives, a motion to expel him failed to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority, though he was formally censured by many in the Northern press and public opinion. On July 15, 1856, he resigned his seat, declaring that he wished to give his constituents an opportunity to ratify or condemn his conduct. Voters in his district overwhelmingly approved of his actions, returning him to office in the special election held on August 1, 1856. He was subsequently reelected to a full term in November 1856, scheduled to begin on March 4, 1857. Historian Stephen Puleo later observed that “The caning had an enormous impact on the events that followed over the next four years. … As a result of the caning, the country was pushed, inexorably and unstoppably, to civil war,” underscoring the broader political significance of Brooks’s assault.

Brooks did not live to take his new seat. He died unexpectedly in Washington, D.C., from a violent attack of croup on January 27, 1857, just weeks before the start of the new congressional term. The official telegram announcing his death reported that “He died a horrid death, and suffered intensely. He endeavored to tear his own throat open to get breath.” Despite terrible weather, thousands came to the Capitol to attend his memorial services. His body was then transported back to Edgefield, South Carolina, where another large crowd participated in funeral ceremonies before his burial. In the years following his death, several Southern communities honored him by adopting his name: the city of Brooksville, Florida—created from the merger of the towns of Melendez and Pierceville—and Brooks County, Georgia, were both named for him, as was present-day Big Bend, West Virginia, which was formerly known as Brooksville, Virginia. All of these namings occurred shortly after his caning of Sumner, reflecting the esteem in which he was held by many white Southerners of his era. In modern popular culture, Preston Brooks was portrayed by Johnny Knoxville in the 2014 “Charleston” episode of the television series Drunk History, with Patton Oswalt playing Charles Sumner and Seth Weitberg narrating the story, a reminder of the enduring notoriety of his violent act in American historical memory.