entrance to the Capitol grounds to
encounter Mr. Sumner, but without meeting him.

[Sidenote] 1856.

On the 22d of May, two days after the speech, Brooks entered the
Senate Chamber on the same errand. The session had been short, and
after adjournment Sumner remained at his desk, engaged in writing. The
sessions were at that time held in the old Senate Chamber, now
occupied by the Supreme Court. The seats were arranged in semicircles,
with a railing to separate them from a narrow lobby or open space next
the wall; a broad aisle ran from the main door to the desk of the
presiding officer. Mr. Sumner's seat was in the outside row next to
the railing, at the second desk to the right from the entrance and the
main aisle. Occupied with his work, Mr. Sumner did not notice Mr.
Brooks, sitting across the aisle to his left, and where in
conversation with a friend he was manifesting his impatience that a
lady seated near Mr. Sumner did not take her departure from the
chamber. Almost at that moment she arose and went out; quickly
afterwards Brooks got up and advanced to the front of Sumner's desk.
The act attracted the attention of Brooks's friend; he was astonished,
amid the bitterness of party feeling, to see a South Carolina
Representative talk to a Massachusetts Senator. His astonishment was
quickly corrected. Leaning upon the desk and addressing Sumner with a
rapid sentence or two, to the effect that he had read his speech, that
it was a libel upon his absent relative, and that he had come to
punish him for it, Brooks began striking him on the head with a
gutta-percha walking-cane, of the ordinary length and about an inch in
diameter.

Surprised, blinded and stunned by the blows, Sumner's first instinct
was to grapple with his assailant. This effort, however, was futile;
the desk was between them, and being by his sitting posture partially
under it, Sumner was prevented from rising fully to his feet until he
had by main strength, in his struggles, wrenched it from its
fastenings on the floor. In his attempt to follow Brooks they became
turned, and from between the desks moved out into the main aisle. By
this time, through the repetition of the heavy blows and loss of
blood, Sumner became unconscious. Brooks, seizing him by the
coat-collar, continued his murderous attack till Sumner, reeling in
utter helplessness, sank upon the floor beside the desk nearest the
aisle, one row nearer the center of the chamber than his own