EXPLICIT DANGER: America Has Been Here Before, Right Before the Civil War

It was the Democrats then too.

American History’s Stark Warning Against Tolerating Political Violence

By: Forrest Nabors, The Federalist, September 18, 2025

In the days since Charlie Kirk’s murder, many have expressed incredulity about the condition of the country. Our circumstances may be unique but the movements of political societies follow clear patterns. We have been deeply polarized before and the cause, now and then, is the same. Disagreement about the fundamental type of country we believe that we should be is what divides us.

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In May, 1856 Charles Sumner of Massachusetts took to the floor of the U.S. Senate to denounce the use of force and fraud to plant slavery and its inevitable offspring, oligarchy, in the territory of Kansas. Southern statesmen who composed the inter-state oligarchy in the slave states sought to admit Kansas with slavery into the Union, expanding their power.

Since at least 1854 Sumner was among a few who had recognized that the fight over slavery had taken on a new character. Not only did the fate of slavery depend on the outcome of that fight, but also the future form of American government – whether all America would be republican, as the Founders intended and as the northern states were, or whether America would be converted to an oligarchy, the prevalent form of government in the South.

Sumner’s “Crime Against Kansas” speech was long, direct, and forceful. A few days later, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina entered the Senate chamber with his lieutenants, Representatives Laurence Keitt of South Carolina and Henry Edmundson of Virginia, and commenced caning Sumner, who was sitting, his legs locked beneath his desk.

While Sumner could not defend himself from the blows, Keitt (brandishing a pistol) and Edmundson stood by, Antifa-like, and prevented anyone from coming to Sumner’s aid. Brooks beat Sumner over the head nearly to death and left him unconscious in a pool of blood. Southern newspapers, the mainstream media at the time, praised the attack and blamed Sumner’s words for bringing the violence upon himself. Supporters of Brooks feted him in person and mailed him new canes and congratulatory letters.

Ironically, the violence and the approving response to the violence verified exactly what Sumner claimed at the beginning of his speech. Everyone could feel that the country was polarized down to its core. But why? Sumner contrasted ordinary and extraordinary politics, ordinary and extraordinary political disagreements. Statesmen representing the country were not merely debating whether a number on a tariff schedule should be 5 or 10 percent.

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Continued….