An Unarguably Provocative Presentation

Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner made an effective presentation on the floor (literally, when it was over) to the United States Senate in May 1856. In my pathetic and ultimately failed postulations as a PhD candidate in American History in 1979, my view was that his speech, and the reaction to it, represented the point of no return in the American rush to the greatest bloodbath in our history.

In his “Crime Against Kansas” pitch, Sumner ridiculed the “aristocracy” of the South and mocked what he viewed (accurately) as the two chief defenders of the migration of that “peculiar institution” to Kansas (also known as “bleeding Kansas” because of the visceral and understandable violence over the slavery issue). One of the senators Sumner mocked was Stephen Douglas of Illinois, who was quite famous at the time; the other was Sen. Andrew Butler of South Carolina.