@article{455972,
      recid = {455972},
      author = {Puleo, Stephen.},
      title = {The caning : the assault that drove America to Civil War  /},
      publisher = {Westholme,},
      address = {Yardley, PA. :},
      pages = {xvii, 374 p. :},
      year = {2012},
      abstract = {"Early in the afternoon of May 22, 1856, ardent  pro-slavery Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina  strode into the United States Senate Chamber in Washington,  D.C., and began beating renowned anti-slavery Senator  Charles Sumner with a gold-topped walking cane. Brooks  struck again and again -- more than thirty times across  Sumner's head, face, and shoulders -- until his cane  splintered into pieces and the helpless Massachusetts  senator, having nearly wrenched his desk from its fixed  base, lay unconscious and covered in blood. It was a  retaliatory attack. Forty-eight hours earlier, Sumner had  concluded a speech on the Senate floor that had spanned two  days, during which he vilified Southern slave-owners for  violence occurring in Kansas, called Stephen A. Douglas of  Illinois a "noise-some, squat, and nameless animal," and  famously charged Brooks' second cousin, South Carolina  Senator Andrew Butler, as having "a mistress. . . who ugly  to others, is always lovely to him. . . . I mean, the  harlot, Slavery." Brooks not only shattered his cane during  the beating, but also destroyed any pretense of civility  between North and South. One of the most shocking and  provocative events in American history, the caning  convinced each side that the gulf between them was  unbridgeable and that they could no longer discuss their  vast differences of opinion regarding slavery on any  reasonable level. The Caning: The Assault That Drove  America to Civil War tells the incredible story of this  transformative event. While Sumner eventually recovered  after a lengthy convalescence, compromise had suffered a  mortal blow. Moderate voices were drowned out completely;  extremist views accelerated, became intractable, and locked  both sides on a tragic collision course. The caning had an  enormous impact on the events that followed over the next  four years: the meteoric rise of the Republican Party and  Abraham Lincoln; the Dred Scott decision; the increasing  militancy of abolitionists, notably John Brown's actions;  and the secession of the Southern states and the founding  of the Confederacy. As a result of the caning, the country  was pushed, inexorably and unstoppably, to war. Many  factors conspired to cause the Civil War, but it was the  caning that made conflict and disunion unavoidable five  years later."--},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/455972},
}