Oh What a Week (May 19-May 25, 1856)

One of the memorable songs of the 1960s was Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction." That passionate piece, written by P.J. Sloan in 1965, a piece which foresaw in many ways the fraying of American society in the late-1960s, has a memorable line:

"You can leave here for four days in space,
but when you return it's the same old place..."

Well, had you left America and then returned after a week in May 1856, you might just have walked in on a different country. What was deeply problematic on May 18 became irreversibly hopeless by May 25. The concatenation of events in this week confirms my view of history, as well as human biography: that occasionally there are not simply signal events of significance but events of such clustering and power that life, not simply of an individual, but of an entire people, may be redefined because of that week. Some suggest that 9/11/2001 has done this for America; I think the jury is still out on that one. But the case can be made much more powerfully for this one week in 1856 changing America. This essay merely points out the events, with links to fuller discussion of them. If you can speak with clarity, passion, detail and precision of these events alone, you can get into any doctoral program in American history in America.

Event # 1--May 19-20, Sumner's Speech

In the US Senate chamber, Sen. Charles Sumner of MA launched into a two-day speech (entitled "The Crime Against Kansas," on Mon. May 19-Tues. May 20) in which he not only exocoriated the slave power in general for the shocking events of 1855-early 1856 in Kansas, but where he attacked a especially virulent defender of slavery, US Sen. Andrew Butler, of SC. Likening him to Don Quixote, Sumner said in acid tones:

"Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight--I mean the harlot, slavery. For her his tongue is always profuse in his words. Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this senator. The phrenzy of Don Quixote in behalf of his wench Dulcinea del Toboso is all surpassed....Heroic knight! Exalted senator! A Second Moses come for a second exodus!"

This speech, besmirching Butler's honor, sliced through the Southern veneer of courtesy like a scythe through ripe wheat.

Event # 2-- Wednesday, May 21; The Raid of Lawrence

Before the news of Sumner's speech could possibly have reached Kansas, the town of Lawrence, which already had been threatened with siege and destruction in the "Wakarusa War" of early December 1855, was attacked by pro-slavery forces. The next essay will tell that story in more detail. Suffice it to say that the attackers destroyed two printing presses in town, blew up the Free State Hotel, which they claimed was being used as a fortress or center of the "rebellion" and ransacked many homes in town. This brazen act of vigilantiism, done under the cover of law, fueled so much hatred of the Southern cause and its methods as to convince even "fence-sitting" Northerners that the slave power was not a monolithic entity that needed to be placated or even tolerated but actually needed to be attacked and subdued.

Event # 3--May 22, 1856

We switch back to Washington, DC. On this date US Congressman Preston Brooks of SC beat Charles Sumner to a pulp with his gutta-percha cane as Sumner was at his Senate desk. Brooks was Butler's nephew and was retaliating in the way you were supposed to retaliate in the South for an attack on your honor or of the honor of someone you loved. Sumner was substantially "out of action" for three years after the attack but, as in most such attacks, the one beaten up is actually the long-term winner. While Preston Brooks might have felt a surge of power as he pummeled the helpless Sumner into unconsciousness, that power was evanescent. Even though many new gutta-percha canes arrived in the mail for Brooks (he broke his while caning Sumner), nothing could defend him against the repulsion that was felt throughout the North as well as, increasingly, among the "undecideds" regarding the rightness of the Southern cause. Desperate acts spawn reactions that tend to expose the futility of the desperate people. So, Sumner became a martyr, but Brooks, even though he escaped a censure resolution, resigned from the House and was re-elected in the Fall but died in January 1857, before his 40th birthday. Maybe his "croup," from which he died was a built guilt- or regret-induced. Sumner went on to an illustrious Senate career until his death in 1875.

Event # 4--May 24-25, 1856

My first reaction, before narrating this event, was "phew," at least Friday (May 23) was peaceful. But then, when my mind returned to the horror of the week, I saw that one day without a disaster didn't mean that the day, too, wasn't a disaster. We just don't have a signal atrocity to point to which occurred on that day. But,on the evening of May 24-morning of May 25, the intrepid John Brown first came to national attention. He, who had failed at almost everything to which he put his hand in the preceding 55 years of his life, now would do something to make himself a household word: he and his sons killed five peacefully-living pro-slavery Kansas men near Pottawattomie Creek, south of today's Kansas City.

Brown had been in Lawrence with his sons on May 21 to see the terror and destruction wrought by the pro-slavery men on Lawrence. Until the massacre led by Brown three days later, the pro-slavery forces always seemed to have the upper hand. They seemingly passed laws, killed free-staters, and detained free-staters without provocation and with total immunity. Brown was incensed by this situation and decided, in this massacre, to "right the balance" a bit. On the night of the 24th (Sat) and early morning of the 25th (Sun), Brown, four of his sons, a son-in-law and a few others (it sounds like Fred Phelps' anti-gay Church in contemporary Kansas, doesn't it?) killed five pro-slavery men. A more detailed account is here.

Conclusion

When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in Jan. 49 BCE, defying the Senate's requirement that he lay down his arms, he was reported to have said, "alea iacta est," ("the die is cast"). The same could be said for the events of May 19-25, 1856 in Kansas. Though some may tend to see them only as further links in a chain that led ultimately to the Civil War, I prefer to see them as a events so visible, brutal and out of the norm that the country simply couldn't deal with them and restore a regular course to life. Like watching from the air the inevitable crash of two locomotives on the same track, so one could say that watching the events of this week in 1856 so gave a "visual" twist to the slavery issue that no one could then forget it. Bleeding Kansas had washed over to the rest of the nation.

Let's now return to a few more essays about Kansas, beginning with the destruction of the Free State Hotel on Wed. May 21, 1856.

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