A cartoon by J.L. Magee depicts the May 22, 1856, beating of Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner by South Carolina congressman Preston Smith Brooks in the hall of the Senate. Brooks was retaliating for a speech Sumner had delivered on the Senate floor three days earlier in which he castigated President Franklin Pierce along with assorted Southern politicians (including Brooks' cousin, South Carolina Sen. Andrew Butler) for their support of pro-slavery violence in Kansas. Brooks beat Sumner unconscious and continued the pummelling until his cane broke. Sumner survived, but took three years to recover from the attack. A vote to expel Brooks from the House failed, and he denied that he had been trying to kill Sumner. He voluntarily resigned his seat, but died of croup before he could vacate the office. The attack made him a hero across the South. His constituents sent him dozens of canes to replace the one he had broken.

Of the assault, the Richmond Enquirer wrote, “We consider the act good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequences. These vulgar abolitionists in the Senate must be lashed into submission.”