American History’s Warning Against Tolerating Political Violence

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.

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.

Kansas was a flashpoint in a more consequential, extraordinary struggle. Each side was contending for a way of life and form of government abhorrent to the other. The general consensus had broken down; the American political regime was seriously destabilized. The oligarchy of the South rejected the basis of American republicanism, natural equality and fundamental liberties, including freedom of speech. The violence and the approval of violence in reaction to Sumner’s claims had proven Sumner’s claims that the southerners were oligarchic in character.

Both Sumner and Kirk advanced their particular causes in the way of American republicanism. They used words; they exercised their freedom of speech to persuade. On the other hand, the attackers and their supporters showed their contempt for free speech in favor of force, and therefore showed that they actively rejected the principles and general consensus that had underpinned the American political regime.

Many examples of their disdain for speech and preference for force may be adduced from both Sumner’s time and ours. In our time, consider this one subtle but meaningful difference in the value placed on dialogue: How many times have we seen man-in-the-street interviewers regularly granted conversations with representatives from the right, but are shunned or physically driven out by the left? That latter side often expresses itself not in words but in violence against citizens and damage to property. Over the decades we have become so inured to these methods that we have resigned ourselves to the fact that one side, the left, has broader de facto rights under the law than the right does.

What should be done? The harder but better path is to double-down on our republican principles, to resist the temptation to respond to force in kind and to pick up right where Charlie Kirk left off, and to speak out.

This is what Charles Sumner did in his first speech in the Senate after three years of recovery from his brutal attack. On the floor of the Senate he announced that he would resume “the discussion precisely where I left it,” and he promised to spare no feelings in saying what needed to be said. Once again, his speech was bold, direct and forceful, using many examples of violence perpetrated by his political opponents to show America the oligarchic character of the South in action.

One risk of speaking this way in troubled times is retaliatory violence. But in seeing the contrasting weapons of republicanism and tyranny at work, Americans on the left hitherto deceived by the character of their company will see the difference. Indeed, in the days after the murder of Charlie Kirk many Americans on the left announced their revulsion at the conduct of their own side. That also occurred before the Civil War. In one retrospective essay, Representative George Julian of Indiana recounted that each outrage of the southern oligarchy precipitated the defection of many Democrats to the Republican Party. The shift in power did not prevent the Civil War but it certainly did change the odds in favor of the Republican Party and the Union cause.

It may well be the case now that the two sides can barely stand each other, as Representative John Sherman of Ohio remembered was the case among his congressional colleagues in the late 1850s. That should not excuse immoderate or irrational language better suited for battlefields than townhalls, and rather argues for stronger self-control and firm command of one’s reason.

Americans are likely watching and listening to each other with greater care now, thinking anew and forming new opinions. How we conduct ourselves and express ourselves in this critical time will shape future events, their outcome, and the judgement of posterity, in our country and in the world at large.

Dr. Forrest A. Nabors is associate professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Alaska Anchorage. His academic writing focuses on the political development of American republicanism. He studied at Claremont McKenna College, the University of Chicago and received a doctorate from the University of Oregon. @ForrestNabors