On the 22d day of May, when the Senate and the House had clothed themselves in mourning for a brother fallen in the battle of life in the distant State of Missouri, the senator from Massachusetts sat in the silence of the Senate chamber engaged in the employments appertaining to his office, when a member of the House, who had taken an oath to sustain the Constitution, stole into the Senate, that place which had hitherto been held sacred against violence, and smote him as Cain smote his brother.2
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the assault took place,—some of the Republican members, including Campbell, being reluctant, on account of personal relations, to press a censure against him.1 The House passed the resolution censuring Keitt by a vote of one hundred and six to ninety-six.
He made a long speech, defending South Carolina and assailing Massachusetts,—speaking of the latter State as ‘hypocritically nestling the rank and sensuous African to her bosom.’
He justified all that Brooks or himself had done.
‘My colleague,’ he said, ‘redressed a wrong to his blood and his State, and he did it in a fair and manly way.’
Like Brooks, he then went through the comedy of a resignation in order to secure a vote of approval from his constituents.
Both were back again in their seats a few weeks later, re-elected each by a unanimous vote.
In the interval between the report of the committee and the debate in the House, Burlingame of Massachusetts made a speech, June 21, on the slavery question, and devoted the latter part of it to Brooks's assault.
He was in the Senate while Sumner was speaking, and now paid a tribute to the style and sentiments of his speech, ranking it with the masterpieces of American eloquence.
He defended it as parliamentary in all respects, and justified its severity as called for by the provocation which had been given in epithets applied to the senator and his State.
Then, after a warm tribute to his early career and to his character, he proceeded—
1 Cullen made the point in Edmundson's defence that as Brooks had said to Edmundson he should make the assault if Sumner did not apologize, Edmundson had a right to assume that an apology would, on being asked for, be given. (Congressional Globe, App. p. 1054.) Edmundson's complicity with the assault is critically reviewed in the New York Tribune, June 6. He received on this occasion better treatment than he deserved. On January 18 he had in the House approached Giddings with threatening gestures and words. (Ante, p. 427 note.) Nearly four years afterwards (Feb. 10, 1860), in the Capitol grounds, near the spot where Brooks had conferred with him, he struck with a cane at the head of John Hickman, a member from Pennsylvania, because the latter in a speech in Washington (not in Congress) ‘had slandered his State.’ He was stopped in the assault by three Southern men,—Breckinridge (Vice-President), Keitt, the accomplice of Brooks, and Clingman, now a senator, who had defended Brooks.
2 The scene is described in the New York Independent, June 26.
Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.
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