Jerks in History

[L Verge]

(11-27-2013 02:45 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  I've never heard anyone say that Brooks was worse than Brown. However, I know of one major difference. I could find a number of northern newspaper editorials and northern citizens who criticized what Brown did. I would love for someone to show me a southern editorial or letter from someone who criticized Brooks.

Best
Rob

Here you go, Rob. http://history.furman.edu/benson/docs/sumenu.htm See Secession Era Editorial Project - section on Sumner:

Louisville, KY Journal on May 24, May 28, and June 5, 1856, denouncing Brooks
Wilmington, NC Daily Herald on May 26, 1856, denouncing Brooks in paragraphs 4 and 5.
Nashville, TN Republican Banner and Nashville Whig on May 27, 1856, denouncing Brooks.

We have also failed to mention that Brooks was censured in Congress as well as being placed under $500 bond. He was also tried in a civil court and fined $300.

[Rob Wick]

Given that the Louisville Journal was an anti-slavery paper, their stance is not surprising.

As for the Wilmington paper, their main point can be summarized by this comment. "As was expected, the affair has been a perfect Godsend to the Abolitionists, and they evidently intend to make the most of it." Their "denouncing" of Brooks was their view that he should have attacked Sumner outside of the Senate chamber. "Mr. Brooks should have sought a different time and place for his meeting with Sumner. But, to attack him in the Senate Chamber and chastise him, while the latter was unprepared and in a defenceless position, was unjustifiable. Granting that the prevocation was sufficient, he has yet given a good handle for the Northern people to seize, in denunciation of his course, and deprived the South of the opportunity of justification."

As for the Nashville papers, their name says it all.

All three were affiliated with the American Party, or the Know Nothings as they were better known. According to Anthony Gene Carey in "Too Southern to Be Americans: Proslavery Politics and the Failure of the Know-Nothing Party in Georgia, 1854–1856" in Civil War History (1995) 41: 22–40, the American party in the South "was composed chiefly of ex-Whigs looking for a vehicle to fight the dominant Democratic Party and worried about both the pro-slavery extremism of the Democrats and the emergence of the anti-slavery Republican party in the North. In the South as a whole the American Party was strongest among former Unionist Whigs. States-rightist Whigs shunned it, enabling the Democrats to win most of the South. Whigs supported the American Party because of their desire to defeat the Democrats, their unionist sentiment, their anti-immigrant attitudes, and the Know-Nothing neutrality on the slavery issue."

So while they certainly are Southern in name, their politics were obviously anti-Brooks.

Best
Rob

[L Verge]

(11-27-2013 07:31 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  Given that the Louisville Journal was an anti-slavery paper, their stance is not surprising.

As for the Wilmington paper, their main point can be summarized by this comment. "As was expected, the affair has been a perfect Godsend to the Abolitionists, and they evidently intend to make the most of it." Their "denouncing" of Brooks was their view that he should have attacked Sumner outside of the Senate chamber. "Mr. Brooks should have sought a different time and place for his meeting with Sumner. But, to attack him in the Senate Chamber and chastise him, while the latter was unprepared and in a defenceless position, was unjustifiable. Granting that the prevocation was sufficient, he has yet given a good handle for the Northern people to seize, in denunciation of his course, and deprived the South of the opportunity of justification."

As for the Nashville papers, their name says it all.

All three were affiliated with the American Party, or the Know Nothings as they were better known. According to Anthony Gene Carey in "Too Southern to Be Americans: Proslavery Politics and the Failure of the Know-Nothing Party in Georgia, 1854–1856" in Civil War History (1995) 41: 22–40, the American party in the South "was composed chiefly of ex-Whigs looking for a vehicle to fight the dominant Democratic Party and worried about both the pro-slavery extremism of the Democrats and the emergence of the anti-slavery Republican party in the North. In the South as a whole the American Party was strongest among former Unionist Whigs. States-rightist Whigs shunned it, enabling the Democrats to win most of the South. Whigs supported the American Party because of their desire to defeat the Democrats, their unionist sentiment, their anti-immigrant attitudes, and the Know-Nothing neutrality on the slavery issue."

So while they certainly are Southern in name, their politics were obviously anti-Brooks.

Best
Rob

You asked for newspapers that spoke against the action of Brooks, and that is exactly what I gave you. Don't try to confuse the issue by spouting political leanings of the day.

[Rob Wick]

I'm not confusing the issue. I'm clarifying it, which is what historians do.

Best
Rob

[J. Beckert]

(11-27-2013 04:36 PM)Linda Anderson Wrote:  Here's "the rest of the story" at least as far as concerns Preston Brooks.

"One of the most bitter critics of the attack was Sumner's fellow New Englander, Representative Anson Burlingame (Republican-Massachusetts). When Burlingame denounced Brooks as a coward on the floor of the House, Brooks challenged him to a duel, and Burlingame accepted the challenge. Burlingame, as the challenged party, specified rifles as the weapons, and to get around American anti-dueling laws he named the Navy Yard on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls as the site. Brooks, reportedly dismayed by both Burlingame's unexpectedly enthusiastic acceptance and his reputation as a crack shot, neglected to show up, instead citing unspecified risks to his safety if he was to cross "hostile country" (the Northern states) to reach Canada. He was subsequently mocked as a coward by Northerners for the rest of his life.[23]"

Burlingame's selection of the dueling site, which I believe he was entitled to under the "rules" of a duel, is ridiculous. The monotony of train travel in 1865 is detailed in this thread. (The caning was 9 years earlier)

http://rogerjnorton.com/LincolnDiscussio...age-3.html

Brooks stated he couldn't arrive there without "without running the gauntlet of mobs and assassins, prisons and penitentiaries, bailiffs and constables." - and he was right. He most likely would have been killed before he even got close. It was very unreasonable and maybe even a little grandstanding by Burlingame. It's also been stated that Sumner milked his wounds for publicity for the Abolitionist cause. A Senate witness stated he was hit 3 times before the cane broke. Lincoln himself, in a letter to Lyman Trumbull, stated "The outrage upon Sumner and the occurrances in Kansas", "have helped us vastly". The woodcut of the incident also has a sectional spin.



"The print depicts a brutal senseless act, with leering faces in the crowd. A faceless barbarian (South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks, Democrat) mercilessly beats a gentle quill-wielding martyr (Senator Charles Sumner, Republican, Massachusetts), his blood dripping off the cane. Southern character is mocked, as if Mr. Brooks' actions represent a typical Southern predilection to violence; it caricatures every Southerner as a slave-beating overseer. The press of the country was no less adept at spin and hyperbole in 1856 than it is today."

[L Verge]

(11-27-2013 08:06 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  I'm not confusing the issue. I'm clarifying it, which is what historians do.

Best
Rob

That is what good historians do. Others just spin issues to suit their own beliefs and motives. I have been exposed to one too many of those in my years.

[Rob Wick]

Whatever.

Best
Rob

[Craig Hipkins]

I do agree with Joe and Laurie on a few of the points. Like Joe said it is a matter of perspective. It is also hard to sit here in the early 21st century and judge how people lived nearly two centuries in the past. Because we are all human we all have opinions and dogma that we have formed mainly through our experiences in life. We all try to be objective, but often times we are subjective. We cannot help it because it is in our nature. I believe that history can teach us a lot about ourselves.

I was raised in Senator Sumner's home state of Massachusetts. I can recall having it ingrained in my head by an influential history teacher in grade school that the caning was a brutal and savage attack on a man's dignity. At the same time I can remember that the John Brown raid was merely glossed over. There was no praise for what Brown did, but at the same time he wasn't castigated as a villain. I am sure that if I had gone to school in the south these sentiments would have been much different. I am curious to hear what others remember being taught about these two historic episodes.

Craig

[J. Beckert]

(11-27-2013 10:04 PM)Craig Hipkins Wrote:  It is also hard to sit here in the early 21st century and judge how people lived nearly two centuries in the past. Because we are all human we all have opinions and dogma that we have formed mainly through our experiences in life. We all try to be objective, but often times we are subjective. We cannot help it because it is in our nature. I believe that history can teach us a lot about ourselves.

I think you summed that up rather well, Craig. We can't judge people from another century with our views and mores. The country has greatly evovled and changed. It's not fair, but some folks lean so far to one side, it seems they just can't let some things go. And that distorts the entire study. If people in the Civil War era had the same mores and opinions we do in the 21st. century, this whole thing would be rather boring.

[Linda Anderson]

Here's the opinion of two contemporaries of Sumner: Moorfield Storey and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Quite apart from any opinion on whether Brooks was a hero or a coward, I don't think he intended to galvanize the North by caning Sumner.

"The real effect of slavery, its brutalizing influence on master as well as slave, the essential barbarism of the system, and the danger to the liberty of free citizens which its continuance and extension involved, were brought home to men as by a flash of lightning. Those, who had been slow to read the lesson on the plains of Kansas, had their eyes opened by the strokes of Brooks. It is doubtful in his whole life that Sumner ever struck a blow for slavery as that which, through him, it received through Brooks. From that moment, on both sides of the Atlantic, the real spirit of "Southern chivalry" was revealed. Quotations might be multiplied, but the feeling and resolve of the North are perhaps epitomized best in the entry that Emerson made in his journal: 'Sumner's attack is of no importance...it is only a leaf of the tree. It is not Sumner who must be avenged but the tree must be cut down.'"

Charles Sumner by Moorfield Storey.

[My Name Is Kate]

(11-28-2013 12:23 AM)Linda Anderson Wrote:  "The real effect of slavery, its brutalizing influence on master as well as slave, the essential barbarism of the system, and the danger to the liberty of free citizens which its continuance and extension involved, were brought home to men as by a flash of lightning.

That is what worried people more than anything, IMO. If there was no chance that the brutality would ever extend beyond the slaves, most people probably would have been more tolerant of slavery (except there were political reasons for wanting to get rid of it too.) In the end, the dominant concern was not so much for the slaves as for themselves (there are always exceptions, of course).

[BettyO]

Quote:We can't judge people from another century with our views and mores.

I certainly agree -- this is more than correct. The past was a different world - their world; and I think historians and others should respect that thought. Like Laurie said - we need to weigh the evidence and take it into consideration. One can't put 20th and 21st Century words, deeds and thoughts into the minds of 19th Century Victorian people.

[Rob Wick]

In an article in the October 1949 Partisan Review, the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., wrote an article called "The Causes of the Civil War: A Note on Historical Sentimentalism" which was a refutation of James G. Randall and Avery Craven and their "revisionist" views on the war. Schlesinger writes the following:

"An acceptance of the fact of moral responsibility does not license the historian to roam through the past ladling out individual praise and blame: such an attitude would ignore the fact that all individuals, including historians, are trapped in a web of circumstance which curtails their moral possibilities. But it does mean that there are certain essential issues on which it is necessary for the historian to have a position if he is to understand the great conflicts of history. These great conflicts are relatively few because there are few enough historical phenomena which we can confidently identify as evil. The essential issues appear, moreover, not in pure and absolute form, but incomplete and imperfect, compromised by the deep complexity of history. Their proponents may often be neurotics and fanatics, like the abolitionists. They may attain a social importance only when a configuration of non-moral factors--economics, political, social, military--permit them to do so.

Yet neither the nature of the context nor the pretensions of the proponents alter the character of the issue. And human slavery is certainly one of the few issues of whose evil we can be sure. It is not just 'a very ancient labor system'; it is also a betrayal of the basic values of our Christian and democratic tradition. No historian can understand the circumstances which led to its abolition until he writes about it in its fundamental moral context." (pg. 979)

Best
Rob

[Rsmyth]

Kate, Linda, I agree...the act probably did not have the effect Brooks intended. It helped galvanize anti-slavery sentiment in the north. Agree or dissagree with John Brown's actions, as Frederick Douglass said "he was the spark that lit the fuse."

[Gene C]

(11-28-2013 08:58 AM)Rob Wick Wrote:  In an article in the October 1949 Partisan Review, the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., wrote an article called "The Causes of the Civil War: A Note on Historical Sentimentalism" which was a refutation of James G. Randall and Avery Craven and their "revisionist" views on the war. Schlesinger writes the following:

"An acceptance of the fact of moral responsibility does not license the historian to roam through the past ladling out individual praise and blame: such an attitude would ignore the fact that all individuals, including historians, are trapped in a web of circumstance which curtails their moral possibilities.

Considering he wrote this not long after the end of WWII and during the increasing tensions with Russia, not sure what he means, especially his last phrase..."trapped in a web of circumstance which curtails their moral possibilities ".

I'll play philosopher for a minute and say he's wrong, this is when your moral possibilities are at their greatest, but the web of circumstances increases the challenge to make the right moral decision. But that's life and how you grow into a better person.