Esclavage

1856 · réf. List3745 — Cape May New Jersey 1856. Folded sheet with letter on three of four pages measuring 8 ½ x 7 ¼ inches. Fine condition. In May 1856 Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts delivered his incendiary "Crime Against Kansas" speech condemning slavery's expansion into the territories and attacking the architects of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Three days later Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina entered the Senate chamber and brutally assaulted him with a cane inflicting injuries severe enough to remove Sumner from public life for years. The attack became one of the defining symbolic episodes of the sectional crisis before the Civil War. Northern newspapers followed his condition closely and his empty Senate seat itself became a political emblem. Written from Cape May only two months after the attack while Sumner remained under physician supervision and uncertain whether full recovery would come quickly-or at all-Sumner writes here to a political ally in Massachusetts describing his physical and mental state: "My dear Sir "Pray do not think of any public reception for me. Let me come home to dear Massachusetts as I always have come quietly & at the proper time do what I can for the cause. This is best. Another reason for this course is the uncertain state of my health. I am still very feeble with such recurring ups & downs that my complete restoration seems sometimes far distant. My physician tells me I cannot be strong before September & then only by entire absence from all excitement. Perhaps not then. "Think of these things; & let us all join to stir Massachusetts in the good work forgetting men & remembering only the cause. "Ever sincerely yours Charles Sumner "P.S. From here I go to the mountains; but my address will be with Rev. Wm. H. Furness Phila. to Hon. J. Z. Goodrich" The letter gives a personal insight into the fallout of one of the most dramatic and violent political events of the antebellum sectional crisis. Sumner would return to politics three years later and the event would galvanize both Southern sympathizers to Brooks who sent him canes as tokens of gratitude and the Northern anti-slavery cause which considered Sumner a martyr. We find two other examples of letters by Sumner discussing the aftermath of the attack in all historical auction records.