It’s easy to think the partisanship in Congress could not be worse, but it has been in the past. As vicious as some of the rhetoric can get, at least we have not had any physical altercations, yet. On May 22, 1856, the rhetoric went far beyond jawing.
On May 19 and 20, 1856, Sen. Charles Sumner gave a speech against slavery. It almost got him killed. Sumner was a leading abolitionist. His speech was against the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In the speech, he compared slavery to prostitution. And he threw in some jibes against Sen. Andrew Butler of S.C. He made fun of Butler’s speech problems after his recent stroke. (Earlier, Butler had made sexual references linking Sumner to black women.) Stephen Douglas upon hearing Sumner’s speech said: “That damned fool will get himself killed by some other damned fool.” Two days later, Butler’s cousin Sen. Preston Brooks approached Sumner in the nearly deserted Senate chamber. Sumner was seated at his desk when Brooks began pummeling him with his metal-tipped cane. He needed the cane due to a dueling injury. (He had planned to challenge Sumner to a duel, but a friend convinced him that Sumner was not a gentleman.) Brooks hit Sumner numerous times, even after the cane broke. Other senators attempted to intervene, but Sen. Laurence Keitl kept them back with a pistol. Sumner was left unconscious, battered, and bleeding. He was unable to return to the Senate for three years. Brooks avoided expulsion, but resigned and was reelected. Both men became heroes to their section of the country. Brooks received hundreds of canes. The cane, which had shattered, had parts made into rings that pro-slavery Senators wore on neck chains.
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/this-day-in-1856-a-near-murder-on-the-u-s-senate-floor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner
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