Bleeding+Sumner

Charles Sumner was a Massachussetts senator who denounced what he called "The Crime Against Kansas" (Bloody Kansas). He believed there was a conspiracy in the South to make Kansas a slave state, and delivered a speech that included personal attacks against several Southern senators.   One of these was Andrew Butler, whose nephew Preston Brooks attacked Sumner two days later in the Senate chamber. Brooks beat Sumner with a cane, so thoroughly that the cane broke. Sumner, though he did not die, took years to recover from his injuries and became a martyr in the North.