Disunion Feed

"This event has startled the whole nation. [...] the surprise has not been that Mr. Sumner was beaten, but our wonder is that half the Northern members have not long since been, not only caned over the head, but branded on their cheeks with red-hot irons, by the Southern members. [...] Hell itself could not produce such a school as this. How could any plant grow, in such a community, except a ruffian or an assassin?"

Douglass's editorial frame is mock-exculpation: Brooks deserves 'great allowance' because slavery's schooling could produce nothing but ruffians — 'the Colonel, no doubt commenced when he was a boy, by beating the negro children... until he beat a Senator.' The editorial runs across two pages of the issue: the first two excerpts are on p. 2, the final one on p. 3. Open scan in LoC's Frederick Douglass Newspapers collection — not paywalled after all. OCR scannos corrected. Fragments joined with [...].

Read it in the original — LoC scan, Frederick Douglass' Paper, June 6, 1856 ↗

"the Senator from Massachusetts sat in the silence of the Senate Chamber, engaged in the employments appertaining to his office, when a member from this House, who had taken an oath to sustain the Constitution, stole into the Senate, that place which had hitherto been held sacred against violence, and smote him as Cain smote his brother. [...] Call you that chivalry? In what code of honor did you get your authority for that?"

Eleven days outside the core May 19-Jun 10 window, disclosed per the arc rule — the closing beat begins here: Keitt shouted 'That is false' from his seat; Brooks answered with a duel challenge; Burlingame accepted and named rifles on the Canadian side of Niagara; Brooks declined to travel north — a refusal that wrecked his cane-won standing. Fragments joined with [...].

Read it in the original — 1856 pamphlet, Internet Archive ↗