1856: The Caning of Charles Sumner
Big Idea
Conflict over the morality of slavery led to outbreaks of violence in the U.S. capitol and eventually to the Civil War. Abolitionists continued to highlight the disparities between White rhetoric around freedom and the legal statutes denying this freedom to Black Americans.
Vehement Opposition
Senator Charles Sumner
Image Source: Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division
The conflict over slavery reached its zenith during a Senate debate in May 1856. The people in the territory of Kansas had held a Constitutional convention, created a state constitution, voted for that constitution, and then applied for acceptance into the United States as a newly formed free state. Pro-slavery Senators pushed back against this admission because it would have given two more Senate seats to anti-slavery advocates.
Senator Charles Sumner vehemently opposed the attempts by the Southern Senators to block Kansas’ entry. He felt to go against Kansas’ request to enter as a free state would be to undermine the validity of the constitutional process and the voting box - since that is the process they used to come to the conclusion that they wished to enter the Union as a free state.
He gave a speech, “Crime Against Kansas,” that lasted two days and when printed came to a total of 106 pages. His speech exemplified how the debate over slavery pushed leaders of the United States to clarify and define what they meant when they claimed to be representatives of a democratic republic.
“Sir, speaking in an age of light and in a land of constitutional liberty, where the safegaurds of elections are justly placed among the highest triumphs of civilization, I fearlessly assert that the wrongs of much abused Sicily, thus memorable in history, were small by the side of the wrongs of Kansas, where the very shrines of popular institutions, more sacred than any heathen altar, have been desecrated; where the ballot-box, more precious than any work in ivory or marble, from the cunning hand of art, has been plundered; and where the cry ‘I am an American citizen’ has been interposed in vain against outrage of every kind, even upon life itself…
It is the rape of a virgin Territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of Slavery; and it may be clearly traced to a depraved longing for a new slave State, the hideous offspring of such a crime in the hope of adding to the power of Slavery in the National Government.” (Sumner, 1856, 5).
A staunch anti-slavery advocate, Sumner’s rhetoric represented the tensions existing in Congress as Northern statesmen became more convinced of the immorality of slavery.
The Caning of Charles Sumner, 1856
Image Source: United States Senate.
Three days later, a representative related to one of the senators Sumner had verbally called out in his speech came into the Senate chamber and beat Sumner ruthlessly. As a Southern statesmen, he felt that the ideas shared by Sumner and other Northerners threatened Southern manhood and economic livelihood. What has become known as the “Caning of Charles Sumner” stands as a vivid demonstration of the dramatic crises the country was facing over slavery’s role in America’s political and economic systems. (Senate.gov, and Sinha, 2003, p. 235-236)
The caning brought into clear focus the shifting views of masculinity and democracy as a result of the ongoing debates around the enslavement of African Americans. Northern representatives became increasingly uncomfortable with what they perceived to be “barbaric” attacks on “the very fabric of American democracy” as represented in the caning of the senator (Sinha, 2003, p. 235). Southerners were aghast that men such as Sumner were arguing that ideal of democracy were applicable to African Americans (p. 235).
Appealing to a Vision of Freedom
Smartly pointing out the inconsistencies that had been in existence since the nation’s founding, Black and White abolitionists rooted their arguments in the vision of a democratic and free nation applying to all.
Throughout these growing tensions, “African-American abolitionists sought to redefine the public discourse on democracy in antebellum America by arguing that racial discrimination and slavery were contrary to American notions of natural rights and representative democracy” (Sinha, p. 236).
Writing about this event, historian Manisha Sinha (2003) argued that, “[p]ublic discussions of the event reveal how the concepts of freedom, democracy, and citizenship were not static but constantly contested. Commentators, North and South, evoked ideas about race and gender to challenge or police the boundaries of republic citizenship and political participation.” (p. 235).
“[T]he true significance of slavery... lay in the ultimate relation of slaves to democracy.””
Students
Want to learn more? Listen to scholar Christy Coleman discuss how slavery’s economic impact led to the Civil War.
Video from Learning for Justice.
Your Turn
How did Black men and women develop our country’s understanding of democracy and how it should be applied?
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U.S. Senate information on the caning.
Information from the U.S. Constitution Center.
Read about Kansas’ role in the Underground Railroad
Read:
Sinha, M. (2003). The Caning of Charles Sumner: Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War. Journal of the Early Republic, 23 (2), 233–262. https://doi.org/10.2307/3125037
Tameez, Z. (2024). Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation. Henry Holt & Co.
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Various, “Southern Newspapers Praise the Attack on Charles Sumner,” SHEC: Resources for Teachers, accessed February 2, 2025, https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1548.
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Read about the unrest in St. Louis leading up to the Civil War.
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Blackett, R. (1983). Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860. Louisiana State University Press.
Du Bois, W.E.B. (1935). Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880. New York.
Quarles, B. F. (1974). Allies for Freedom: Blacks on John Brown. Oxford University Press.