Disunion Feed

Richmond Daily Whig @RichmondWhig · Richmond, Va.

The daily and hourly reports concerning the condition of Sumner are all very strange and funny. They lead us to believe the Abolition wretch, with his Abolition physicians as accomplices, is playing possum. We never believed Sumner was hurt enough to take to his bed at all.

Original passage & context
"The daily and hourly reports from Washington concerning the condition of Sumner, are all very strange and funny, and lead us to believe that the Abolition wretch, with his Abolition physicians as accomplices in the trick, is playing possum. [...] Now, for our part, we never have believed that Sumner was sufficiently hurt to make it necessary for him to take to his bed at all."

The injury-denial genre: Sumner as malingering fraud, his doctors as accomplices. (Sumner did not return to the Senate for three years.) The Whig's famous 'A glorious deed!' line could not be located in any fetchable primary this pass and is not used. Fragments joined with [...].

Provincial Freeman @ProvincialFreeman · Chatham, Canada West

If the issue must come, we say let it come. If Southern insolence and bullyism can invade our legislative halls to find victims among American Senators, it is time they learn there is a North that will be mighty, powerful and united. It is time the South's sceptre was broken.

Original passage & context
"If the issue must come, we say let it come. If Southern insolence and bullyism is so rampant as to invade the sacred precints of our legislative halls, to find victims among American Senators to appease its fury, it is time that they should learn that there is a North that will be mighty, powerful and united, if it is not now. For years the South has reigned in Washington, with absolute sway. [...] It is time that its sceptre was broken and its domination destroyed."

Mary Ann Shadd Cary's paper — the first newspaper in North America edited by a Black woman — nine days after the caning. Transcribed letter-for-letter from the Canadiana page scans (no OCR layer exists); the paper's own spellings 'precints' and 'bullyism' preserved. The same article pairs the caning with Kansas: Southerners 'trying to play the same high-handed game in Washington... which they have been playing upon a poor, weak territory struggling into existence in the West.'

Where this sits

Both of these were printed on May 31, 1856, inside the caning of Charles Sumner — 19 posts, each linked to its primary source.

How this was made