Gentlemen everywhere will admit Sumner's tone was neither parliamentary nor gentlemanly. We regret and condemn the mode of redress adopted — yet those who provoke attacks of this violent description are not without great blame. Those who play at bowls must expect rubbers.
Original passage & context
"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 ↗