Perley's reminiscences of sixty years in the national metropolis, v. 1-2

by Benjamin Perley Poore

The conservative Senators soon treated Mr. Sumner as a fanatic unfit to associate with them, and they refused him a place on any committee, as "outside of any political organization." This stimulated him in the preparation of a remarkable arraignment of the slave-power, which he called the "crime against Kansas." It was confidentially printed before its delivery that advance copies might be sent to distant cities, and nearly every one permitted to read it, including Mr. William H. Seward, advised Mr. Sumner to tone down its offensive features. But he refused. He was not, as his friend Carl Schurz afterward remarked, "conscious of the stinging force of the language he frequently employed, . . . and he was not unfrequently surprised, greatly surprised, when others found his language offensive." He delivered the speech as it had been written and printed, occupying two days, and he provoked the Southern Senators and their friends beyond measure.

Preston S. Brooks, a tall, fine-looking Representative from South Carolina, who had served gallantly in the Mexican war, was incited to revenge certain phrases used by Mr. Sumner, which he was told reflected upon his uncle, Senator Butler. Entering the Senate Chamber one day after the adjournment, he went up to Mr. Sumner, who sat writing at his desk, with his head down, and dealt him several severe blows in the back of his head with a stout gutta- percha cane as he would have cut at him right and left with a dragoon's broadsword.

Mr. Sumner's long legs were stretched beneath his desk, so that he was pinioned when he tried to rise, and the blood from his wound on his head blinded him. In his struggle he wrenched the desk from the floor, to which it had been screwed, but before he could gain his feet his assailant had gratified his desire to punish him. Several persons had witnessed this murderous assault without interfering, and when Mr. Sumner, stunned and bleeding, was led to a sofa in the anteroom, Mr. Brooks was congratulated on what he had done.

For two years Mr. Sumner was a great sufferer, but the people of Massachusetts, recognizing him as their champion, kept his empty chair in the Senate ready for him to occupy again when he became convalescent. A chivalrous sympathy for him as he endured the cruel treatment prescribed by modern science contributed to his fame, and he became the leading champion of liberty in the impending conflict for freedom. Mr. Seward regarded the situation with a complacent optimism, Mr. Hale good-naturedly joked with the Southern Senators, and Mr. Chase drifted along with the current, all of them adorning but not in any way shaping the tide of events. With Mr. Sumner it was different, for he possessed that root of statesmanship —the power of forethought. Although incapacitated for Senatorial duties, his earnest words, like the blast of a trumpet, echoed through the North, and he was recognized as the martyr-leader of the Republican party. The injury to his nervous system was great, but the effect of Brooks' blows upon the slave-holding system was still more injurious. Before Mr. Sumner had resumed his seat both Senator Butler and Representative Brooks had passed away.

The debate in the House of Representatives on a resolution censuring Mr. Brooks for his murderous attack (followed by his resignation and unanimous re-election) was marked by acrimonious altercations, with threats of personal violence by the excited Southerners, who found themselves on the defensive. Henry Wilson and other Northern Congressmen went about armed with revolvers, and gave notice that while they would not fight duels, they would defend themselves if attacked. Mr. Anson Burlingame, who had come from Michigan to complete his studies at Harvard College, married the daughter of a wealthy Boston merchant, and had been elected to Congress by the Know-Nothings and Abolitionists, accepted a challenge from Mr. Brooks. He selected the Clifton House, on the Canadian shore of Niagara Falls, as the place of meeting, which the friends of Mr. Brooks declared was done that the duel could not take place, as Mr. Brooks could not pass through the Northern States, where he was so universally hated. Mr. Lewis D. Campbell, who was Mr. Burlingame's second, repelled this insinuation, and was confident that his principal "meant business."

During the administration of President Pierce, Congress created the rank of Lieutenant-General, and General Scott received the appointment. He established his head-quarters at Washington, and appeared on several occasions in full uniform riding a spirited charger. Colonel Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, and "Old Chapultepec," as Scott was familiarly called by army officers, did not get along harmoniously, and the President invariably sided with his Secretary of War. Mr. Seward, meanwhile, busily availed himself of the opportunity to alienate General Scott from his Southern friends.

While the Northern and Southern politicians "bit their thumbs" at each other, the followers and the opponents of Senator Douglas in the Democratic ranks became equally hostile, and in some instances belligerent. I was then the associate editor of the Evening Star, a lively local sheet owned and edited by Mr. Douglas Wallach. Walking along Pennsylvania Avenue one afternoon, I saw just before me Mr. Wallach engaged in an excited controversy with an elderly gentleman, who I afterward learned was Mr. "Extra Billy" Smith, an ex-Representative in Congress, who had grown rich by the extra allowances made to him as a mail contractor. Each was calling the other hard names in a loud tone of voice, and as I reached them they clinched, wrestled for a moment, and then Smith threw Wallach heavily to the sidewalk. Sitting on his prostrate foe, Smith began to pummel him, but at the first blow Wallach got one of his antagonist's thumbs into his mouth, where he held it as if it were in a vise. Smith roared, "Let go my thumb! you are eating it to the bone!" Just then up came Mr. Keitt, of South Carolina, and Mr. Bocock, of Virginia, who went to the rescue of Smith, Keitt saying: "This is no way for gentlemen to settle their disputes," as he forced Wallach's jaws apart, to release the "chawed-up" thumb. Wallach was uninjured, but for several weeks he went heavily armed, expecting that Smith would attack him.

One day Mr. McMullen, of Virginia, in advocating the passage of a bill, alluded to some previous remarks of the gentleman from Ohio, not the one (Mr. Giddings) "who bellowed so loudly," he said, "but to his sleek-headed colleague" (Mr. Taylor). Mr. Taylor, who was entering the hall just as this allusion was made to him, replied that the would rather have a sleek head than a blockhead.

Mr. McMullen then said: "I intended nothing personally offensive, which no one ought to have known better than the gentleman himself. I made use of the remark at which the gentleman exhibited an undue degree of excitement to produce a little levity; neither of us ought to complain of our heads. If united, there would not be more brains than enough for one common head."

Senator Jones, of Tennessee, generally called "Lean Jimmy Jones," was the only Democrat who ever tried to meet Mr. John P. Hale with his own weapons—ridicule and sarcasm. One day, after having been worsted in a verbal tilt, Mr. Jones sought revenge by telling a story as illustrating his opponent's adroitness. There was a Kentuckian, he said, whose name was Sam Wilson, who settled on the margin of the Mississippi River. He had to settle upon high lands, near swamps from ten to twenty miles wide. The swamps were filled with wild hogs, which were considered a species of public property that every man had a right to shoot, but they did not have a right thereby to shoot tame ones.