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Lii.

A speech so bold and unsparing in its utterances, so thorough and fundamental in its logic, in which things were called by their right names, and which applied the tests of Republican and Christian principles so severely to the vexed question, while, at the same time, it administered to some of the haughty and dogmatic leaders that severe rebuke their insolence deserved, could not fail, in the excited state of the public mind, to produce a profound impression. Men whose course had been subjected to this terrible arraignment were excited to madness; and summary vengeance was agreed upon as the only remedy that would meet the exigency of the hour.

Preston S. Brooks, a Representative from South Carolina, either volunteered or was selected as the agent for its infliction. After the adjournment of the Senate on the 22d of May, Mr. Sumner remained at his desk engaged in writing. While so engaged, Brooks, whom he did not know, approached him and said: ‘I have read your speech twice over, carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine.’ While these words were passing from his lips he commenced a series of blows with a bludgeon upon the Senator's head, by which the latter was stunned, disabled and smitten down, bleeding and insensible, on the floor of the chamber. From that floor he was taken by friends, borne to the ante-room, where his wounds were dressed, and then he was carried by Mr. Wilson, assisted by Captain Darling, door-keeper of the House, faint and bleeding, to his lodgings.

This cowardly and audacious assault deeply moved the public mind, [249] not only at Washington, but throughout the country, though the personal participants therein, the criminal and his victim, were very much lost sight of in the moral and political significance of the act. For the moment Sumner and Brooks were regarded mainly as representative men, exponents of the two civilizations which divided the country, while the scenes on the 22d of May on the floor of the Senate were looked upon as typical of what was being enacted on the wider theatre of the nation. Mr. Sumner, though confessedly the superior of his assailant in stature and physical strength, sitting and cramped beneath his writing desk, over which he was bending, with pen in hand, taken unawares and at disadvantage, and his assailant raining blows upon his unprotected head, fairly represented freedom and slavery as they stood at that time confronting each other. Freedom, though intrinsically stronger than its antagonist, was yet practically weaker. So hampered by the compromises of the Constitution, by the legislation of two generations, by proscription and prescription, and by the overpowering advantage which actual possession gave to slavery, it had been obliged to succumb to its imperious antagonist, besides suffering infinite damage thereby. This blow at free speech, and personal safety as well, like a flash of lightning in a dark and stormy night, revealed by its lurid glare the grim facts of the situation, and the people, for good reason, trembled as they gazed apprehensively into the immediate and more remote future.

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