today from the account chamber at the old state house to share with you one of our treasures from the revolutionary spaces collection. this item is a cane, which is described as the cane with which representative front to s brooks assaulted charge sumner in april 2nd, 1856. this is a key part and one of the most violent events in american congressional history. to give you a little background. may 19th and 20th of 1856, charles sumner -- who was a united states senator from the massachusetts, gave a very lengthy speech criticizing slavery. he particularly chastised some of the senators who supported that institution. including andrew butler, of south carolina. he also, basically, condemned the entire state of south carolina. even though andrew butler was not present during senator sunder speech, a distant relative -- representative preston brooks of south carolina was angered by what he perceived as a verbal attack on both his relative, and his home state. on may 22nd, two days later, brooks waited for sumner, until he was alone in the senate chamber. he then enter the chamber with the cane. this is brooks's cane, which he had to use because of a limp from an injury 15 years earlier. after confronting sumner, he accused him of libelous comments. he began to viciously beat him over the head with this cain. he was so furious that he actually broke the cane over sumner's had. so, after the attack, the largest piece of the chain, with the cap, was retrieved by congressman, henry edmonton. who later presented it to the virginia governor, henry wise. the cane was originally made of got a protection. which is a hard latex which was made from a malaysian tree. it was a fairly common material in the 19th century. kind of a predecessor to modern plastic. henry wise, because the king was broken, had it repaired and replaced a lot of the broken got approach up with ebony would. the goal cap is original. and then wise and abusing mccain himself for many years. be wise family eventually gave it to a family friend. lawyer, ernest bigelow, who then presented to the boston historical society in 1821. and i've been part of the collection ever since. >> laurie, thank you so much for sharing about the cain! do you know how it came into the revelation area spaces collection? >> the wise, henry family -- have been gifted the cane. after the event, he ended up using the cane for many years. it was passed down to some of his family members who then gave it to a family friend ernest bigelow. he was one who donated to be bostonians a society. one of the organizations, the revolutionary space predecessor they're. we've had it in the collection since he donated it in 1821. >> lori, it was on display for a while, right? on display in the state house? >> and i think it's actually been on display more than once. probably a few times over the years. and has been in the collection for about 100 years. >> wow! it is a crazy, odd, saying. i would share with everyone in conversation in dialogue, i studied this incident in school. it is such a mythologized incident. we learned that it was a chair leg that brooks had ripped off and beaten sumner with. when i learned that it was a cane and we had it in our collection i thought, oh my gosh. what an amazing artifact to bring into dialect and share with everyone. it is an idea that we are still dealing with as americans today. the reality a very heated environment that we are living in. lori, thank you so much! if you just saw, lloyd won't be able to join us because she is at the culinary but if you have questions for the amazing laurie ericsson please email public programs that relational spaces. org. i'll make sure laura gets all the questions you have about the cane. we hope that we can see you all in the space where lori is in the council chamber -- whenever you are in boston. laurie thank you so much. >> with that i want to bring on the one day only the rock star professor casey johnson. who is going to take this as an inspiration. and give us an amazing someone are about legislative violence and the united states and using the cane and inspiration. casey, the stage is yours. >> thank you. my thanks to lauren for setting this up. the sumner caning this is not an artistic rendition. it is without a doubt being most famous of the attacks on congress. sadly, this is a topic, violence against members in congress that is something that has been long-standing. something will try to do tonight is to go through it relatively quickly. to hit some of the high points -- what probably was a first instance of violence on the floor of congress occurred in the 17 90s. after a fight against -- captured here on the screen again artistically between matthew lion i jeffersonian congressman from vermont he is holding in his hands tongs from the fireplace that heeded the then house of representatives chamber. he is attacking roger griswold who is a federalist congressman from connecticut who had initiated confrontation trying to be lion over the hand. this is an era of congressional history in which the capital was almost entirely a isolated environment. members would never take the families. very few lobbyist live there. personal grudges, especially between members of different parties, were hardly uncommon during the early period of american history. lyon had some colorful history as a whole. he fought during the revolutionary war, in the new york form of theater. he mustered out of the continental army under some controversy. he became a fairly wealthy entrepreneur in early statehood, vermont was elected to congress as and affiliate of the jeffersonian party. the modern-day version of this is the democratic party. shortly after his fight with griswold he carried his opposition more broadly. criticizing the john adams administration during the undeclared naval war with france. he was brought up on charges under the sedition act and spent the election of 1798 in jail, from which he was reelected in remote. he didn't write -- 1800 he eventually moved to kentucky. he started the second political career there. but it's elected to congress from kentucky. it's for the career came to a conclusion then in the war of 1812. he was anti-war in kentucky the war of 1812 was very popular in kentucky. he moved from there to arkansas and very narrowly missed being elected territorial delegate and pre-statehood arkansas before he passed away in 1822. belie and griswold battle kind of set the stage for a more personal stick era of violence in congress which colonnade id in 1838 with the first a member of congress ever shooting and killing another member. this was a duel between william graves, a whip congressman from kentucky, and jonathan silly, a democratic congressman from maine. so they had insulted him in a newspaper -- on the floor of the house. they newspaper editor wrote silly a challenge to a dual. silly declined. the editor reached out to graves to challenge silly to a dual. shot him and killed him. the response to this episode of legislative violence, unlike the line griswold fight which passed into the lower but is a change in federal law congress passed the laws not only allowing dueling in the district of columbia making a crime to initiate in -- who perhaps fought in a another pot of the country. the line battle in the 17 90s and the grave duel in the 1830s are similar. obviously they had different endings. similar in they reflect a male dominated society in which there was a willingness to fight. in some cases, kill. more for personalist acknowledges than for anything ideological. this changes during the path to the civil war there's a wonderful book on this topic by the historian, julian friedman. -- freeman went back to there is a wonderful book on this topic. freedom and went back to contemporary legal accounts and discovered dozens of episodes of legislative violence member on member during the late 1830s, 1840s, 18 50s in the run up to the civil war. think of what is going on more broadly in american history during this period. we have struggles, into regional struggles over slavery. we have significant aspects of party alignment and realignment, the demise of the whig party, congressman graves his former party. it's replacement, party. its replacement, initially, by this nativist party called the know nothing party. eventually by the republican party in the late 18 50s. the spreading of the slavery issue, more broadly, onto the national scale with the dred scott division of 1857 where the supreme court and one of its three most infamous decisions holding that, under the constitution, slaves should be considered as property. there for, do not have standing to bring a lawsuit. it is in this environment that we have this wave of legislative violence in the 40s and 50s. friedman argues, i think convincingly, that the pre-civil war violence different from this earlier period violence in which, even though there was a sort of personal stick battle that essentially this was a regional controversy between southern congressman and northern congressman. between southern senators and northern congressman. i use it deliberately as the -- war mail. also doing this period because martial violence -- greater characteristics of the antebellum southern politics and the southern members tended to have something of an advantage. this process really began with this provision in the history of the house called the gag rule. it dated from 1836 to 1834. it is part of an early sign of a skirmish between the region on the issue of slavery. the backdrop to this is basically a smaller -- in the 1830s their biggest via transformation in american society in terms of attitudes towards slavery. and the revolutionary period it's certainly continued lots of southern -- james madison, george washington, somewhat embarrassed by the causes of slavery in a working and the something that perhaps slavery will go away. beginning in the 1830s and the 1840s there was a new attitude towards slavery. a redefinition by some southern officeholders arguing that slavery was a positive good that benefited american society, indeed that it benefited black slaves, an extraordinary changeu of approach. in the north where abolitionism had a surge in the revolutionary period and -- an there is a small sign of abolitionist political activism which became much more prominent in the 1850s. another side of this comes from john quincy adams, the only president to subsequently serve in boston. adams along with a handful of other members of -- the best number of probably joshua getting.'s a way again later ever publican congressman from ohio. they began to think of ways to challenge this idea of slavery as a positive good. working in concert with abolitionists movements, they came up with the idea of encouraging these movements to present petitions which is, of course, something that is guaranteed by the constitution to congress. the petitions could then be debated on the floor of congress. those debates then could be sent far and wide through the congressional frank which literally it was members of congress signing the document so it could be mailed for free. they sent these to the south. basically, this is a propaganda effort designed to spread abolitionist ideas into the south in a region that had become very hostile to the concept of freedom. southern members responded to this by coming up with the gag rule which changed internal congressional procedures to automatically refer slavery related petitions to house committee that would then simply dispose of them. there would never be any florida bait. there will never be anything to print. the idea was to circumvent debate about slavery. when adams, getting's, and a handful of other abolitionists synthesized -- attempted to challenge this, there were threats of violence carried against them although there were no physical acts. this idea of a willingness to threatened violence, i think it's a useful backdrop to the caning of charles sumner. that is the most famous of these episodes. it is hardly unique. as we heard from laura, this is an attempted murder on the floor of the senate. sumner was an affiliate of the abolitionist cause, a strong supporter of anti slavery activism. he was also a difficult man with which to deal. he didn't have a lot of friends in congress. his attack was seen as a violation of congressional decorum, that he had attacked center butler from south carolina but have not alerted him previously to the idea that he was going to criticize him on the senate floor. that is what enraged preston brooks. you would think, we would hope that the brooks caning of sumner would have triggered a reevaluation of the concept of congressional violence. it did not work out that way. brooks resigned his seat, return to south carolina and was overwhelmingly reelected by his constituents. sumner did not return to the senate for two and a half years, recovering both from the physical violence but also from what we would now call ptsd, although that concept was not in use at the time. violence and threats of violence continued in the run up to the civil war. the most famous of these episodes, certainly the most widespread of them, occurred in 1857. the issue before congress was a decision by president james buchanan who was a northerner, a democrat from pennsylvania, but a sympathizer with the south to present to congress a constitution which had been approved by slaveholders through she cannery. it's been approved by slaveholders in kansas requesting that kansas join a union as a slave state. the backdrop to this was in 1854 congress had enacted a law called the kansas nebraska act which had repealed the missouri compromise and had said that slavery would be possible in the kansas and nebraska territories through a concept called popular sovereignty. basically, when these territories wanted to join the union has a state, the citizens of the territory could vote whether or not they wanted to legalize slavery. all kinds of slaveholders from missouri flock to kansas trying to make kansas a slave state. lots of abolitionists especially from ohio flock to kansas hoping to make kansas on abolition state. the pro slavery kansas constitution come before the house. it was a bitter debate. it quickly became clear that the pro slavery side did not have a majority on the floor. as part of this political realignment i mentioned earlier, the northern wing of the democratic party collapses after the passage of the kansas nebraska act. by 1857, the majority of the house is at the very least suspicious of the idea of slavery spreading into the territory. add into the fact that everyone seemed to understand that the vote was to legalize slavery in kansas. it was not fair. the debate, however, is dragging on. it gets to 10:00. he keeps moving on. 11:00, midnight, eventually to two a.m.. the man on the left will later be speaker of the house of representatives for the first two years of the civil war. he was formerly a free soil democrat from pennsylvania, free soil advocates were people who did not necessarily call for the immediate abolition of slavery but who did argue that the federal government should prohibit slavery in any territory in the u.s.. the assumption here is that if slavery could not expand into the territories it ultimately would die. roe was being difficult procedurally with southerners who were attempting to adjourn the session in hopes that perhaps the northerners would return the next day and they could get the pro slavery constitution through. eventually, he starts to exchange words with the man on the right, lawrence keith, who was a pro slavery democratic congressman from south carolina. you will note that connection here with preston brooks, south carolina had a reputation which was well deserved in the run up to the civil war as sending the most ardently and aggressively pro slavery members to the house. eventually, one thing led to another and the two men started to throw punches at each other on the floor of the house. at that point, everything starts going down. this document here that i have on the left of tscreen is from a publication called the congressional globe. until 1873, this was a bound volume that came out every year. it described events that occurred on the floor of both houses of congress. the global would hire reporters who would summarize what all mbers would say. as you can see, this is how it is summarized at the time. at this moment, a violent personal altercation commenced in the aisle to the right of the speaker's chair between mr. keitt and mr. grow. in an instant, the house was in the greatest possible confusion. members in every part of the hall, the estimate here, by the way, was 50 to 60 members. they rushed over to the scene of the conflict. several members seemed to participate in it. we could drop the seemed to -- this was a mass brawl on the floor of the house of representatives. the speaker, congressional globe tells us, made loud and repeated calls to order and required the members to be arrested. the department screamed out they were under arrest. the members continue to fight. at that point, the sergeant of arms moved on to the house floor with the mace of the house. it's quite an imposing looking item that i have here on the screen on the right. they attempted to stop the fight. according to the globe, eventually, this succeeded in bringing order. as it turns out, it did not actually -- the sergeant of arms traveling around the floor with a makes that led to the fight. instead, it was an incident involving this man, william barksdale, a democratic congressman from tennessee. he was a participant in the fight. an anti slavery member seems to have swung at barksdale and missed, trying to punch him in the face, but did manage to wipe off his hairpiece. barksdale, you can see from this early photograph, somewhat of -- barksdale was scrambling around the floor trying to pick up his hairpiece and put it back on. he put it back on in the wrong direction at which point another reporter was covering the event and indicated that members on both sides of the aisle broke out into laughter and it was the mockery of barksdale rather than the speaker and the sergeant of arms with the mace which led to the ending of this house brawl. barksdale, by the way, eventually would fight for the confederacy. he resigned from congress when tennessee leaves the union. he would fight for the confederacy during the civil war. he perished at gettysburg. it really is a frightening period in american history. richard baker is a former historian of the senate. he has argued that the caning of sumner should be seen, correctly, i think, as an assault on american democracy, that the chambers, the house and senate chambers are designed both for speaking and for listening, sort of a tradition, roman-style debate. an environment in which physical violence could be a response to the speech that undermines the nature of american democracy as a whole. the art of physical violence expands after the civil war in the house to what i think is the first political assassination in congressional history. it involved this man, james hines, a republican congressman from arkansas. hinds was elected in 1866. he served for less than one term. his election came when arkansas was readmitted to the union during the period of reconstruction after the civil war. like many northerners who moved south following the civil war, hines was an advocate of abolition. in 1868, he starts to go around the state to campaign for ulysses s grant who is the republican nominee for president. he and a companion get lost after one campaign event. they go to the local sheriff's office. the sheriff purports to give them directions. the sheriff is actually a member of the ku klux klan. he shoe tines in the back and killed him. hines is not t