and statesmanship of this defense are
possible only to one bent on making Brown a hero at any cost.

The natural result of the Pottawatomie "executions,"--in which John
Brown's complicity was for a time concealed--was a series of
retaliations on both sides, and a state of affairs far more anarchic
than Kansas had known before. This lasted through the summer of 1856.
The general impression on the country was to strengthen the opposition
to the usurpation of the Territorial Legislature, and to the
administration which sustained it. In September there came a crisis.
Another and graver attack on Lawrence was threatened, and this time a
vigorous resistance was probable. But a new and able governor, John W.
Geary of Pennsylvania, had been dispatched by President Pierce, with
imperative instructions to pacify the Territory, as a pressing political
necessity. Geary met Robinson--the treason prisoners had already been
released--and as the two men had been near each other in the California
troubles and thus had the advantage of a mutual acquaintance, an
understanding was soon reached; Geary called off the dogs of war, and a
time of quiet followed.

CHAPTER XIV

"FREMONT AND FREEDOM"

The Congress of 1855-6, divided between an administration Senate and an
opposition House, accomplished little but talk. One chapter of this talk
had a notable sequel. Charles Sumner, in an elaborate and powerful
oration in the Senate, denounced slavery, "the sum of all villainies,"
and bitterly satirized one of its prominent defenders, Senator Butler of
South Carolina. He compared Butler to Don Quixote, enamored of slavery
as was the knight of his Dulcinea, and unconscious that instead of a
peerless lady she was but a wanton. The response to the speech was made
by a nephew of Senator Butler and member of the House, Preston S. Brooks
of South Carolina. He entered the Senate chamber during a recess,
accompanied and guarded by a friend and fellow member, Lawrence Keitt;
approached Sumner as he sat writing at his desk, and without words
felled him to the ground with a heavy cane, and beat him about the head
till he was insensible. Sumner, a man of fine physique, was for a long
time an invalid from the assault, and was unable for years to resume his
place in the Senate.

It was not so much the individual act of Brooks as its treatment by his
party and section that gave the deepest significance to the deed and
produced the most lasting effec