Disunion Feed

"The speech of Mr. Sumner was exceedingly insulting towards some gentlemen who sit with him upon the Senate floor. [...] When Mr. Sumner compares Senator Butler of South Carolina and Senator Douglas of Illinois to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, assimilating one to the character of a crazy man and the other to that of a fool, he takes a ground which Massachusetts, in her dignity and her ability, never presented before."

The civility-discourse pivot in its purest form, from Sumner's own state the day after: opens by calling the attack 'unmanly' and 'brutal,' then turns to indicting Sumner's rhetoric. Closes: 'a different man takes his place, with only the memory of an insulting speech and a broken head.' Fragments joined with [...].

Read it in the original — Furman Secession Era Editorials transcription ↗

"Whatever reprobation may be visited on Mr. Brooks, and whatever opinions may be entertained in regard to the subject of debate, gentlemen everywhere will admit that Sumner's general tone was neither parliamentary nor gentlemanly; neither were his particular applications. [...] we yet, with great submission, would suggest that those who provoke attacks of this violent description are not without great blame [...] In short, those who play at bowls must expect rubbers!"

The most explicit Northern-Democrat 'he provoked it' statement found — the title frames the caning as an exchange, and the closing proverb makes provocation the operative cause. The same paper accuses Douglass of bankrolling Harpers Ferry three years later, in the other feed. The Furman transcription duplicates one clause (dittography), removed as obvious garble; fragments joined with [...].

Read it in the original — Furman Secession Era Editorials transcription ↗