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"It is with unfeigned regret I find in the report that what I had intended only as a redress of a personal wrong had been construed into or must necessarily be held as a breech of privilege of the Senate. [...] I had read attentively and carefully the speech delivered in the Senate on the 19th and 20th instant by the Senator from Massachusetts, and found therein language which I regarded as unjustly reflecting, not only upon the history and character of South Carolina, but also upon a friend and a relative."

Brooks in his own words, framing a near-fatal beating as mere 'redress of a personal wrong'; the Mercury's editors call the letter 'written in an admirable spirit.' Period spelling 'breech' preserved in the excerpt. Fragments joined with [...].

Read it in the original — Charleston Mercury, June 6, 1856 (Furman transcription) ↗

"The South certainly has become generally convinced that it is by hard blows, and not by loud blustering and insulting denunciation, that the sectional quarrel is to be settled. We need not say that this has been our opinion for the last twenty years."

The fire-eater organ generalizing one caning into doctrine — violence, not debate, settles the sectional quarrel — and claiming twenty years' priority on the idea. Verified as the Mercury's own voice, not its quotation of a Northern paper.

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