CHAPTER 8
Gentlemen, you are entering a serious undertaking, and the ground should be well surveyed before the first step is taken.
—FRANKLIN PIERCE
Pierce ~ Fillmore ~ Buchanan ~ Van Buren ~ Tyler ~ Lincoln
Jane Pierce was in a state of mourning that would last throughout her time as first lady, while her husband was forced to soldier on with preparations to assume the presidency. His predecessor welcomed him upon his arrival in Washington, and the two took a cruise together on the Potomac. The Compromise of 1850 was considered by its supporters “a final settlement” of the problems that had so formidably threatened the Union just two years earlier. No president of the era had passed to his successor such a favorable state of affairs. Secure in this, Fillmore was trying to figure out his future. “It is a national disgrace,” he would later tell a reporter, “after having occupied the highest position in the country, that our Presidents should be cast adrift, and perhaps be compelled to keep a corner grocery for subsistence. We elect a man to the presidency, expect him to be honest, to give up a lucrative profession, perhaps, and after we have done with him we let him go into seclusion and perhaps poverty.”
Franklin Pierce, at forty-eight the youngest president yet, delivered his inaugural address without notes, a first. The high hopes for the administration were at odds with the darkness in the White House. The staterooms were draped in black, and Jane Pierce wore a black veil on her infrequent excursions.
On March 30, the cabinet meeting was suspended by news of the death of Abigail Fillmore. Pierce, who had known his share of suffering since that fateful train ride, wrote Fillmore with his condolences. The temporary suspension of business also gave Pierce the chance to write James Buchanan a letter “already so long deferred,” offering him the position of minister to England.
Pierce invited him to the White House, where Buchanan showed up “determined to decline.” After dinner they retired to the library, where Pierce said, “You know very well that we have several important questions to settle with England and it is my intention that you shall settle them all in London. The country expects and requires your services as a minister to London. You have had no competitor for this place, and when I presented your name to the cabinet they were unanimous. I think that under these circumstances I have a right to ask you to accept the mission.”
Buchanan then pointed out that “In all your appointments for Pennsylvania, you have not yet selected a single individual for any office for which I recommended him . . . if I were now to accept the mission to London, they might with justice say that I had appropriated the lion’s share to myself, and selfishly received it as an equivalent for their disappointment. I could not and would not place myself in this position.”
“I can assure you,” Pierce replied, “if you accept the mission, Pennsylvania shall not receive one appointment more or less on that account. I shall consider yours as an appointment for the whole country.”
Could he share that assurance with the public, Buchanan asked?
Pierce said that he would rather it stay private, but that he could reassure his friends of the promise.
Buchanan added that he could not stay for more than two years. Pierce agreed to honor that request, and that if the issues with England could be settled in less time, then Buchanan could apply to return as early as eighteen months.
The new secretary of state, William Marcy, was not someone Buchanan wanted to work for. “He would have succeeded in any other Department of the Government,” Buchanan thought. Buchanan wanted to manage British relations without interference from State. At the time, there were two major questions: one regarding Canadian fisheries, and another over British involvement in Central America. Would Marcy really permit him to handle these on his own?
Pierce said, “with some apparent feeling,” that he would handle Marcy, pledging to write the secretary of state and meet with him before re-conferring with Buchanan.
It was not long before Buchanan asked to be relieved of the mission. He learned that Marcy intended to handle the fishery matter in Washington; Buchanan believed he needed to leverage that issue to win concessions on Central America. Pierce responded that Buchanan’s declining the post at this stage would be embarrassing to him. Buchanan countered that the fishery treaty could be perfected at Washington, but not executed until he could get to London, where he could then hold it until the Central American question could be resolved. Pierce argued that a delay might mean war between Britain and the United States. Buchanan then flatly declined the appointment.
Pierce attempted another tactic. A State Department aide arrived at Wheatland, Buchanan’s Pennsylvania estate, on June 6, with a package containing his commission and instructions as minister as though nothing had ever happened. More written exchanges followed. When Pierce misplaced some of his letters, Buchanan believed that he had succeeded in fending him off. Finally, Buchanan offered to meet him in Philadelphia, where Pierce was scheduled to appear.
Buchanan’s allies urged him to accept. One pointed out that if he declined, people would see it as ducking an important responsibility to the country.
On Sunday, April 10, the Senate adjourned without his name going forward. Buchanan assumed that Marcy had refused the terms he needed and the matter was settled. That evening, Buchanan called on Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, Pierce’s secretary of war. Buchanan pointed out that since Van Buren’s rejection by the Senate in 1832, American envoys were seen as “half a minister” if they, too, lacked Senate approval. Later that same night a messenger found all the straggling senators who were still in Washington, asking them to stay. On Monday, Buchanan received a message at 10:00 a.m. asking him to see the president at once. Back at the White House, Pierce offered to send the nomination to the Senate. If a quorum could not be mustered, he was prepared to let the matter drop. With thirty-three members present, Buchanan was confirmed.
Buchanan soon learned that various Pennsylvanians were being denied consulates by the administration on account of his appointment. On May 19, he again met with Pierce, who promised to enforce his assurances. Buchanan realized quickly that Pierce and his cabinet were actively pursuing re-election. One of the reasons Pierce had been so adamant about Buchanan shipping out was to remove him from the presidential field.
On May 21, Buchanan was at Brown’s Hotel, with Marcy, Davis, and other members of the cabinet. Davis began to joke with Marcy and Buchanan about the next presidential election. Buchanan said to Marcy, “You and I ought to consider ourselves out of the list of candidates. We are both growing old, and it is a melancholy spectacle to see old men struggling in the political arena for the honors and offices of this world, as though it were to be their everlasting abode. Should you perform your duties as Secretary of State to the satisfaction of the country during the present Presidential term, and should I perform my duties in the same manner as Minister to England, we ought both to be content to retire and leave the field to younger men. President Pierce is a young man, and should his administration prove to be advantageous to the country and honorable to himself, as I trust it will, there is no good reason why he should not be re-nominated and re-elected for a second term.” That summer, Pierce met with the last president who had tried to keep the office. Traveling to White Sulphur Springs, Virginia, he conferred with John Tyler, who had been president when Pierce retired from the Senate. Julia remembered “Pierce’s generous extolling language in regard to the President [Tyler], and his conduct of public affairs was received with absolute emotion by some, and with gratification by all.” Pierce would soon find himself in Tyler’s position, confronted with a challenge from Congress that would define his presidency.
Stephen Douglas, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, reported a bill to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska with or without slavery as decided by the people. The area was home to only three white settlers, aside from those who worked for the federal government, but treaties with various Indian tribes had removed the last barrier to significant settlement. Douglas was an exponent of “popular sovereignty,” the idea that territories could decide for themselves whether to be free or slave. But located exclusively above the Missouri Compromise line, Kansas and Nebraska would be free unless a different decision was made at statehood. Or unless Congress repealed the Missouri Compromise.
Slave state senators, who now numbered thirty out of a sixty-two-person body, were opposed, and had succeeded in killing a similar bill the previous session. On January 18, 1853, Kentucky senator Archibald Dixon and Douglas went for a carriage ride. Dixon explained that without a specific law permitting slavery in these non-slave territories, the popular vote would be a foregone conclusion. For popular sovereignty to work, one side—in this case slaveowners—could not be excluded before the vote. “By God, sir, you are right,” Douglas said, “and I will incorporate it in my bill, though I know it will raise a hell of a storm.”
On Sunday, January 22, Douglas and a contingent of southern senators approached Jefferson Davis to obtain an urgent meeting with the president, who observed the sabbath out of respect for his religious first lady. They explained their plan; the two territories would be open to all and would later vote whether to be free or slave, setting aside the Missouri Compromise.
“Gentlemen, you are entering a serious undertaking,” Pierce said, “and the ground should be well surveyed before the first step is taken.” The following day Pierce met with his cabinet. If he resisted the plan, he feared retribution against the rest of his agenda. Meanwhile, settlers were eager to move into the new territories, and the Senate would not permit an organization of these lands that outlawed slavery. By the next day, the administration’s newspaper was reporting that Pierce would be “directly involved” in securing passage of the bill.
The “final settlement” of 1850, which was to end the slavery agitation for all time, had lasted for four years. The Missouri Compromise, adopted thirty-four years earlier, was now targeted for repeal. A week later, Tyler wrote, “I perceive a new storm is about to break out in Congress and the country,” over the territorial question, predicting it would end “in the despoilment of the South . . . These agitations cannot end in good.” He blamed the North for the controversy, arguing that the bill was simply “a recognition of their equality with the other states,” based “on the principle . . . the right of the people of colonies or territories to regulate their own domestic concerns,” something found in the bedrock of the revolution.
“Never have I witnessed a more bitter feeling in Congress,” wrote one reporter. On March 3, after an all-night debate, the Senate voted at 5:00 a.m., 37–14, to pass the Kansas-Nebraska Act. How would the voters react? Pierce’s New Hampshire would hold the first state elections after the Senate vote. The Democratic governor held on with 1,500 votes, down from 5,500 in the previous election, and a majority of the eighty-nine Democrats in the state House were eliminated. Democrats in the US House, especially those from northern states, could see that to vote for Kansas-Nebraska was to risk ending their career.
To push the bill through the House, the Pierce administration announced that federal patronage would be leveraged to the hilt. Pierce’s efforts were enough to win half of the northern Democrats, barely enough to pass the bill, 113–100. Forty-one northern Democrats voted in favor; 42 were opposed. Southern Democrats went for the bill 57–2; southern Whigs, already an endangered species, 12–7. Every single northern Whig opposed the bill, 45 in all.
Into the fire stepped Anthony Burns, a slave from Alexandria, Virginia, who had stowed away aboard a ship bound for Boston. Safe in Massachusetts, Burns sent a letter to his brother. His master traced his location and had him arrested. While his trial was ongoing, a substantial crowd attempted to free him from the jail, killing a deputy marshal in the process. Other marshals successfully dispersed the crowd. President Pierce sent two militia companies of artillery, one company each from the army and marines, to supplement the 120 marshals deputized to secure Burns’s presence. There was no question as to his status, and the judge ordered him returned to Virginia.
On May 30, 1854, Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, proposed by Stephen Douglas nearly five months earlier. According to one historian, “Douglas had converted more men to intransigent freesoil doctrine in two years than” the leaders of the movement “had converted to abolitionism in twenty years.”
For the past five years, since leaving Congress and failing to secure an appointment in the Taylor administration, Abraham Lincoln had returned to Springfield and resumed the practice of law. He would later write that the Kansas-Nebraska Act had “aroused him as he had never been before.” While traveling the judicial circuit with his fellow lawyers and judges, Lincoln discussed slavery, which Judge Dickey argued was protected by the Constitution and therefore could not be interfered with. Lincoln took the position that slavery would have to be made extinct. After dinner, Lincoln and the judge retired for the night, taking their places respectively in the two beds in the room. Wearing his nightshirt, Lincoln continued to press the point. When Dickey awoke, Lincoln was sitting up in bed. “Dickey, I tell you this nation cannot exist half slave and half free,” Lincoln said.
“Oh Lincoln,” said Dickey, “go to sleep!”
Initially taking the stump that year to promote the Whig congressional candidate from his district, Lincoln increasingly found opportunities throughout the state to voice his opposition to Kansas-Nebraska. Douglas, facing withering criticism for his bill, mounted a three-hour defense at Peoria. When he was finished, Lincoln took the stage to make his own argument. Lincoln defended the Missouri Compromise, giving a lengthy history of the acceptance and effectiveness of that measure. He acknowledged the difficulty of the slavery issue, but argued that “no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle—the sheet anchor of American republicanism.” He was not advocating for political equality, he stressed, but he was “arguing against the extension of a bad thing.”
As the summer rolled on, politics throughout the United States realigned along the fault line created by Kansas-Nebraska. Fusion movement conventions were held across the North uniting Whigs, Free Soilers, and Democrats. Many abandoned their existing affiliations for an embryonic new party, the Republicans. But of the upcoming elections, perhaps none would matter more than those in the new territory of Kansas. On the day Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, there were fewer than eight hundred white settlers. Within nine months, there would be more than eight thousand. Kansas was, and should have remained, a testament to American industry; at Fort Leavenworth roughly thirty settlers had picked a site, spent $2,400 to clear 320 acres, and within days had a “sawmill, printing office, stores, hotel, and boarding houses.” Before long, the Kansas experiment would serve as evidence of something far darker about the nation it inhabited. Pierce appointed an inexperienced lawyer named Andrew Reeder as the territorial governor. He arrived at Fort Leavenworth on October 7. By then the state had between fifteen hundred and two thousand adult males.
The New England Emigrant Aid Company, which favored a free Kansas, sent armed settlers to the territory, and they concentrated in and around the town of Lawrence. Capitalized at $200,000 by private subscriptions, it received an additional $1 million from the Massachusetts legislature. Various transportation interests provided discounted fares over rail and steam. Slaveholders, meanwhile, mostly from neighboring Missouri, settled near the towns of Leavenworth and Lecompton.
On November 29, Kansas went to the polls to elect their territorial representative to Congress. Of the 2,871 votes cast, 1,114 were legal. “The whole country was overrun on the day of the election by hordes of ruffians from Missouri,” one witness remembered, “who took entire possession of the polls in almost every district, brow-beat and intimidated the judges, forced their own votes into the ballot-box for [the pro-slavery candidate], and crowded out and drove off all who were suspected of being in favor of any other candidate.” It was an organized effort, with so-called Blue Lodges offering “a free ferry, a dollar a day, and liquor” to vote in Kansas. Over the protests of free state supporters, Governor Reeder allowed the results to stand.
The fall elections elsewhere signaled the birth of a new era in party politics. The Democrats fell from 157 seats in the House to 83. The Republicans, along with other opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, made up 108. Forty-three were members of a secretive party referred to as the “Know Nothings,” who opposed Catholicism and immigration.
Meanwhile, popular sovereignty continued to fail in Kansas. On March 30, 1855, Kansans went to the polls to select their legislature. One report listed eight hundred men a day being ferried across the river from Missouri for three days leading up to the election. The voting was distributed strategically throughout the territory to ensure control of the legislature, and the reach of these illegal votes extended 120 miles into the territory. The results were 5,427 for pro-slavery candidates, 791 for free soil candidates, and 92 votes for others. Despite being badly outnumbered by free state settlers in the territory, the pro-slavery faction had won all but three seats. A census taken a month earlier had recorded just 2,905 legal voters.
Missouri newspaper editors who criticized the obvious fraud found themselves under fire. One had his printing press thrown in the river and was ordered out of the state. Another was put on public trial by a mob who contemplated hanging him, instead setting him adrift on the river. A Leavenworth attorney who complained found himself captured and taken to Missouri, where he was tarred and feathered, and sold at a fake slave auction for a dollar.
Governor Reeder did not turn a blind eye as he had before. He set aside the results in six districts, but this constituted a meaningless percentage of the legislature and of the actual fraud. Incredibly, the pro-slavery element in Kansas condemned Governor Reeder for his actions. Returning to Washington, Reeder asked President Pierce to send a military presence to the territory where he intended to have new elections.
The first territorial legislature of Kansas met in June, moving the capital nearer to Missouri, adopting Missouri’s laws as their own, and restricting officeholding to those in favor of slavery. A criminal statute was enacted; anyone who disagreed with the legal existence of slavery would be sentenced to hard labor for two years. Anyone who assisted a slave or circulated any material that could incite rebellion, a broad definition to be sure, would face the death penalty. Reeder issued vetoes but found them overridden. When the six districts where Reeder had found fraud held their special elections, free state candidates were successful. But the pro-slavery legislature refused to seat them, instead awarding the seats to the candidates who had originally won.
On August 15, Reeder received word that he was being dismissed for ethical violations. He had, in fact, invested money in Kansas land, and had even forced the legislature to convene on property that he owned. But it was his antagonism toward the pro-slavery forces in Kansas that sealed his fate. William Shannon was sent to replace him. A politician from Ohio, Shannon had declined to run for re-election there after his support for Kansas-Nebraska.
In September, shut out from Kansas government after two stolen elections, anti-slavery citizens held a “Free State Convention” in Big Springs. There they decided to hold their own election for territorial representative and to boycott the election scheduled by the legislature. Later that fall the free staters held a constitutional convention in Topeka to establish their own government.
The politics of Kansas then turned to violence. Pro-slavery resident Franklin Coleman had squatted on land abutting his own property, a plot that had been abandoned by others. The original owners sold it to Jacob Branson, a free stater, who attempted to claim his purchase. Arriving, he found an armed Coleman none too ready to let him have it. Branson was awarded the claim by arbitration, but now he had Coleman as a neighbor. Charles Dow later became a tenant of Branson. While running errands in town, he verbally quarreled with one of Coleman’s friends. Passing Coleman on his walk back to the Branson property, Dow ended up with a chest full of buckshot. Coleman claimed self-defense and hastened to Missouri.
On November 26, a militia organized by free state Kansans burned several houses of pro-slavery men and Coleman’s abandoned homestead. The sheriff of Douglas County, Samuel Jones, arrested Branson in bed for “disturbing the peace.” A group of the militia encountered Jones’s posse on the road, removing Branson from his custody and taking him to Lawrence. Jones reported the event to Governor Shannon, who called up the territorial militia. More than two thousand Missourians poured into Kansas in response to the governor’s call, while Lawrence swelled with a similar number of defenders. When one of these defenders, Thomas Barber, left to return to his home, he encountered pro-slavery men and was murdered.
The following day, Governor Shannon traveled to Lawrence, meeting with leaders at the Free State Hotel, where Barber was lying in state. From there he traveled to Franklin to talk to the other side. While negotiations continued, Shannon authorized the free staters of Lawrence to raise a militia, as the Missourians camped outside the town seemed unlikely to disband.
The Illinois legislature had been transformed by the elections of 1854. Only four members would return. Candidates opposed to Kansas-Nebraska had won a majority. Lincoln wrote a friend in the legislature, “I have really got it into my head to be a United States Senator, and if I could have your support my chances would be reasonably good.” Lincoln made a list of every legislator, writing down as much as he knew about their leanings. The status of the parties were greatly confused, but two things were clear; he had a real chance, and it would be a close fought thing.
Shut out of the political process, despite their superior numbers, Kansas’s free state supporters ratified their own constitution, drafted in Topeka, by a margin of 1,731 to 46, with the pro-slavery element boycotting the election. A month later elections were held for state officers. The pro-slavery authorities had outlawed voting for what they considered a renegade government, and polling places were secretly established in homes. At 2:00 a.m.,Stephen Sparks, his son, and his nephew were leaving the polls when a group of pro-slavery men insulted and then fired upon them. His son ran to the polling place to get help. Fifteen or so free staters engaged in a ten-minute firefight with pro-slavery men, with one wounded on each side. The following day, free state supporter Reese Brown was captured and tortured by pro-slavery men, before being dropped on his own doorstep, where he was found by his two-year-old daughter and his wife. “They murdered me like cowards,” he told them as he lay dying.
On January 24, President Pierce issued a special message to Congress about Kansas. He dismissed the stolen elections as garden-variety problems, “prone to exist in all imperfectly organized and newly associated communities.” He condemned the free state movement and promised “to exert the whole power of the Federal Executive to support public order in the territory.” Some two weeks later, he issued a proclamation ordering the free state movement to disperse, warning that their “attempted insurrection . . . will be resisted not only by the employment of the local militia, but also by that of any available forces of the United States.” Pierce had recently told his cabinet that he intended to seek re-election, a decision with which they heartily concurred. With the 2/3 rule in place, his path to re-nomination ran through the South.
While Kansas bled, Pierce plotted re-election, and Lincoln ran for the Senate, Fillmore, Van Buren, and Buchanan were in Europe. The two ex-presidents were treated with great distinction throughout the continent. In London they dined together with Queen Victoria and sat in on the House of Commons. John Bright, Member of Parliament, remarked on this unusual event, saying “I think the House will be of opinion that it is one worth notice—of two of the distinguished men being present listening to the debates in this House who have occupied the position of President of the United States, a position I venture to say, not lower in honor and in dignity than that of any crowned monarch on the surface of the globe.”
Tyler, meanwhile, was content at Sherwood Forest. “If you are half as merry as we are here,” he wrote a family member, “then you are all as merry as I could wish you to be. It is on the morning of Christmas that one realizes the happiness of having a house well filled with children. The children last night hurried to bed at an early hour in order to sleep away the tedious hours which were to elapse before the dawning of day.” Tyler went to their rooms around eleven to find two of them awake, watching for Santa Claus, “complaining of his tardiness.” Tyler told the kids that Santa did not like to be seen, which helped them fall back to sleep.
On February 2, 1856, two months and 133 ballots after they began, the House of Representatives concluded the longest election for Speaker in history. The new House was divided north and south, among party lines old and new, Republican, Democrat, Free Soil, and Know Nothing—all divisions being for and against Kansas-Nebraska, the bill that had obliterated the old system but that had not yet crystallized the new one. The Whig Party, torn apart by the Compromise of 1850 and the electoral disaster of 1852, had all but ceased to exist. Joshua Giddings, the stalwart abolitionist and Free Soil founder, administered the oath to Nathaniel Banks, a Know Nothing opponent of Kansas-Nebraska. “I have attained the highest point of my ambition,” Giddings said. “I am satisfied.”
The clash of the old dynamics against the new would play out in similar fashion in the Illinois Senate election. Lincoln began with 44 votes to 41 for James Shields, a supporter of Kansas-Nebraska. Five members voted for Lyman Trumbull, an anti-Kansas Democrat. These handful of legislators indicated that they “could never vote for a Whig.” As the ballots went on and a pro-Kansas candidate gained steam, Lincoln threw his support to Trumbull, who prevailed. “I regret my defeat moderately,” he wrote, tempered by seeing a senator who reflected his beliefs. But to have been so close and to have had so much support, only to yield to a candidate with little strength because of his obstinate supporters, must have stung. Lincoln, who from his earliest youth believed he was destined for great things, had been frustrated yet again.
As the elections of 1856 continued, the Know Nothing Party was ascendant, believing along with many voters that only they could keep the country together. Avoiding the slavery issue, they demonstrated an increasingly rare strength in all regions of the country, from the North, where they swept House races in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, to the border states, to the Deep South. This movement, in response to increasing concerns over immigration and Catholicism, had grown out of Nativist clubs. Styling themselves “The Order of the Star Spangled Banner,” they took an oath to support native-born American citizens for office, excluding foreigners and Roman Catholics. Members, who knew the secret passwords and handshakes of the organization, pledged to support the candidates endorsed by the Order. Branches grew throughout New York City and eventually up and down the eastern seaboard.
“Nothing has puzzled me more than the Know-nothing party,” Tyler wrote, speaking for many. “The secrecy of its organization is only exceeded by the certainty with which it marches to victory.” Tyler predicted a short life span for the party, and expressed regret to see their hostility toward immigrants gaining popularity. Meeting in February to nominate their presidential candidate, the Know Nothings made a surprise choice: former president Millard Fillmore. Hearing of his nomination in Europe, he returned to the United States to campaign. Fillmore did not share their antipathy for immigrants or Catholics. In fact, he had just met with Pope Pius IX in Rome. But Fillmore saw the Know Nothings as a safe repository for Union sentiment throughout the country.
Back in Kansas, smarting from his failure to arrest Jacob Branson, Sheriff Jones arrived in Lawrence with one deputy to arrest one of Branson’s rescuers. But the lawmen were disarmed and sent on their way. Returning the next day with more men, the sheriff suffered the same result. Several days later, Jones returned with a contingent of US Army personnel and arrested six men, still missing the person he was searching for.
Then, while camping outside of Lawrence, Jones was shot in the back. Though the action was denounced by free state leaders, it was trumpeted by the pro-slavery forces. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, on which Pierce and the Democrats had staked everything, was proving to be a terrible and bloody mistake.
James Buchanan had mightily resisted Pierce’s efforts to send him to London. Ironically, this very thing would bring Buchanan the honor he had coveted for so long. Buchanan, a serious contender in the last three Democratic National Conventions, was untainted by the blood of Kansas. Returning in April, he received a warm welcome in the city of New York. He had left the United States as an old public servant in the last station of life and returned to a welcome consistent with his status as a front-runner for president.
On May 5, the chief justice of Kansas instructed a grand jury to indict the entire free state government. Between five and seven hundred Missourians surrounded Lawrence, and the Topeka governor was arrested on his way out of town. Sheriff Jones arrived with his men and Lawrence’s Committee of Public Safety turned over their weapons. Their peaceful disarmament would come at a cost. Jones responded by setting up four cannon on Massachusetts Street. The Free State Hotel, which had been built to withstand a siege, resisted the cannon fire, and so it was torched to the ground. Newspaper presses were thrown in the river, and houses were looted and burned, including that of the governor.
On May 19, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a leading abolitionist, took the Senate floor. It was ninety degrees inside the chamber, which was filled to capacity. Over two days, he condemned the “Crime against Kansas,” castigating in particular Senators Douglas and Andrew Butler of South Carolina. Shortly after adjournment on May 21, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, Butler’s nephew, crossed the Capitol and found Sumner sitting at his desk, handling correspondence. Fearing a physical confrontation with Sumner, Brooks pounded him on the head with his cane, nearly blinding him, and then continued to strike him repeatedly. Sumner struggled to rise, ripping his desk from the floor, falling forward ten feet and collapsing. One witness attested that Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky was the first to restrain Brooks. It would be fitting, in light of the peacemaking role he would seek in less than four years’ time.
The House censured Brooks, who resigned but was again elected, resuming his seat seven weeks after the attack. Every southern member of Congress, “without conspicuous exception,” defended Brooks, who had beaten a trapped, unarmed man with a cane until it broke, and nearly killed him. Sumner would be incapacitated for three years, but re-elected by the Massachusetts legislature despite his absence.
On May 24, a thousand miles to the west, the Doyle family had retired for the evening in their small home on Potowatomie Creek, Kansas. As midnight approached, the silence of the remote farmhouse was broken by a knock on the door, which was opened by James Doyle, the family patriarch who thought nothing of it. On the other side were men, armed with pistols and knives who forced their way into the house. They removed James and his two oldest sons in front of their weeping mother, who successfully begged them to spare her next oldest son. It must have seemed like forever, though it could not have been long before she heard pistol shots, followed by “moaning, as if a person was dying.” Doyle and his sons were slave catchers, and their killers were led by John Brown, an abolitionist incensed by the news of the sacking of Lawrence and the attack on Sumner. Brown and his party would visit two more homes before sunrise, killing two more pro-slavery Kansans.