In February 2020, social media users posted about an infamous 164-year-old episode in the history of the U.S ... some users also highlighted the Brooks-Sumner affair as a riposte to claims ...

Charles Sumner's speech and the reactions of Sen. Andrew Butler and Rep. Preston Brooks. Military history professor Harry Laver discusses the impact of Sen. Charles Sumner's speech and the ...

On this day, May 22, in 1856, Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Sen. Charles Sumner with a cane in the hall of the United States Senate for a speech Sumner had made attacking Southerner ...

Sumner had grown up committed to fighting for his cause and had even helped found the Free Soil Party that was dedicated to stopping the spread of slavery. Brooks had a history of violence ...

Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina beats abolitionist Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in the Senate chamber in 1856 in a lithograph by J.L. Magee. (New-York Historical Society/Getty Images ...

When Charles Sumner ... vilified Brooks. The attack incited hundreds of “indignation meetings” across the North—the 19th-century equivalent of Internet hashtag outrage. With a history ...

Preston Brooks bludgeoned Sen. Charles Sumner unconscious ... dramatic and deeply ominous moments in the Senate’s entire history.” Northerners could scarcely believe the news, and the newly ...

On this day in 1856, Sen. Charles Sumner (R-Mass.), a fierce foe of slavery, suffered major injuries when he was assaulted on the Senate floor by Rep. Preston Brooks (D-S.C.). Two days earlier ...