Hey everyone, thanks for downloading episode number 13 of our Civil War podcast.

My name is Rich.

And I'm Tracy.

Hello y'all.

Welcome to the podcast.

On Thursday, May 22nd, 1856, Democratic Congressman Prestoness Brooks from South Carolina

walked across the chamber of the U.S. Senate toward the unsuspecting Republican Senator

Charles Sumner from Massachusetts.

Clutched him Brooks' hand was a gold-headed walking cane.

The Senate had adjourned a short while earlier, but there were still a few senators scattered

about the chamber.

Senator Saturday's desk had bent downward, signing copies of his The Crime Against Kansas

speech, a two-day oration that he had just concluded 48 hours before.

In that speech, Sumner had pilloried southern slave owners for supporting the violence taking

place in Kansas, and he also launched personal insults against Brooks' cousin, South Carolina

Senator Andrew Butler.

As Brooks marched up to Sumner, what happened next would move America another step closer

to the Civil War, as the dramatic and violent incident in the Senate chamber provided graphic

evidence that the politics of compromise was giving way to the politics of confrontation.

Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts has been described as the least racist man in America

in his day, and certainly by 1856, his position in the Senate and his strong abolitionist opinions

had made Sumner the country's most powerful anti-slavery voice.

...