“It is idle to think of union or peace or truce with Sumner
or Sumner’s friends. Catiline was purity itself, compared to
the Massachusetts Senator, and his friends are no better than
he. They are all (we mean the leading and conspicuous ones)
avowed and active traitors.… Sumner and Sumner’s friends must
be punished and silenced. Government which cannot suppress
such crimes as theirs has failed of its purpose. Either such
wretches must be hung or put in the penitentiary, or the South
should prepare at once to quit the Union. We would not jeopard
the religion and morality of the South to save a Union that had
failed for every useful purpose. Let us tell the North at once,
If you cannot suppress the treasonable action, and silence
the foul, licentious, and infidel propagandism of such men as
Stephen Pearl Andrews, Wendell Phillips, Beecher, Garrison,
Sumner, and their negro and female associates, let us part in
peace.
…
“Your sympathy for Sumner has shaken our confidence in your
capacity for self-government more than all your past history,
full of evil portents as that has been. He had just avowed
his complicity in designs far more diabolical than those of
Catiline or Cethegus,--nay, transcending in iniquity all that
the genius of a Milton has attributed to his fallen angels.
We are not surprised that he should be hailed as hero and
saint, for his proposed war on everything sacred and divine, by
that Pandemonium where the blasphemous Garrison, and Parker,
and Andrews, with their runaway negroes and masculine women,
congregate.”
The _Richmond Enquirer_ again spoke, June 12th:
“In the main, the press of the South applaud the conduct of
Mr. Brooks, without condition or limitation. Our approbation,
at least, is entire and unreserved. We consider the act
good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in
consequence. The vulgar Abolitionists in the Senate are getting
above themselves. They have been humored until they forget
their position. They have grown saucy, and dare to be impudent
to gentlemen! Now, they are a low, mean, scurvy set, with some
little book-learning, but as utterly devoid of spirit or honor
as a pack of curs. Intrenched behind ‘privilege,’ they fancy
they can slander the South and insult its representatives with
impunity. The truth is, they have been suffered to run too long
without collars. They must be lashed into submission. Sumner,
in particular, ought to have nine-and-thirty early every
morning. He is a great strapping fellow, and could stand the
cowhide beautifully. Brooks frightened him, and at the first
blow of the cane he bellowed like a bull-calf. There is the
blackguard Wilson, an ignorant Natick cobbler, swaggering in
excess of muscle, and absolutely dying for a beating. Will not
somebody take him in hand? Hale is another huge, red-faced,
sweating scoundrel, whom some gentleman should kick and cuff
until he abates something of his impudent talk. These men are
perpetually abusing the people and representatives of the
South, for tyrants, robbers, ruffians, adulterers, and what
not. Shall we stand it?
…
“Mr. Brooks has initiated this salutary discipline, and he
deserves applause for the bold, judicious manner in which he
chastised the scamp Sumner. It was a proper act, done at the
proper time, and in the proper place.”
In a Democratic procession at Washington, one of the party banners had
this inscription:--
“SUMNER AND KANSAS: LET THEM BLEED.”
Texts like these might be multiplied; but here are more than enough to
exhibit the brutal spirit of Slavery, and the extent of its sympathy
with the assault. This head may be properly closed by the words of the
_Charleston Standard_ on the death of Mr. Brooks.
“Within the last year his name has transcended the limits
of tongues and nations. What will be the verdict of posterity
upon him will depend upon the question of power between the
North and South. If the North shall triumph, if the South shall
be gradually ground under, if Slavery shall be smuggled out
of sight, and decent people shall be ashamed to own it, he
will be condemned and execrated; but if the South shall stand
firm in her integrity, if Slavery shall not fall before its
antagonist, but shall stand, as it is capable of standing, _the
great central institution of the land for all other interests
to climb upon_, and shall give law to opinion, as it shall
give regulation to Liberty, then his memory will be loved and
venerated; _he will be recognized as one of the first who
struck for the vindication of the South_; and as, like those
who seized the tea in Boston Harbor, he had no other warrant of
authority than that afforded _by his own brave heart_, he will
only the more certainly be placed among the heroes and patriots
of his country.”
Here is a plain and most interesting recognition of the assault as
belonging to the glories of Slavery, while the author is one of its
heroes.