bmitted the whole constitution
to popular vote, when it was overwhelmingly rejected. The President and
Senate, however, urged statehood under the Lecompton constitution,
although popular votes in Kansas twice more, April, 1858, and March,
1859, had adopted constitutions prohibiting slavery, the latter being
that of Wyandotte. But the House still stood firm. Kansas was not
admitted to the Union till January 29, 1861, when her chief foes in the
United States Senate had seceded from the Union. She came in with the
Wyandotte constitution and hence as a free State.

It was during the debate upon Kansas affairs in 1856 that Preston S.
Brooks, a member of the House from South Carolina, made his cowardly
attack upon Charles Sumner. Sumner had delivered a powerful speech upon
the crime against Kansas, worded and delivered, naturally but
unfortunately, with some asperity. In this speech he animadverted
severely upon South Carolina and upon Senator Butler from that State.
This gave offence to Brooks, a relative of Butler, and coming into the
Senate Chamber while Sumner was busy writing at his desk, he fell upon
him with a heavy cane, inflicting injuries from which Sumner never
recovered, and which for four years unfitted him for his senatorial
duties. Sumner's colleague, Henry Wilson, in an address to the Senate,
characterized the assault as it deserved. He was challenged by Brooks,
but refused to fight on the ground that duelling was part of the
barbarism which Brooks had shown in caning Sumner. Anson Burlingame,
representative from Massachusetts, who had publicly denounced the
caning, was challenged by Brooks and accepted the challenge, but, as he
named Canada for the place of meeting, Brooks declined to fight him for
the ostensible reason that the state of feeling in the North would
endanger his life upon the journey. A vote to expel Brooks had a
majority in the House, though not the necessary two-thirds. He resigned,
but was at once re-elected by his South Carolina constituency.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
Charles Sumner.

While the fierce Kansas controversy had been raging, the South had grown
cold toward the Douglas doctrine of popular sovereignty, and had
gradually adopted another view based upon Calhoun's teachings. This was
to the effect that Congress, not under Article IV., section iii., clause
2, but merely as the agent of national sovereignty, rightfully
legislates for the Territories in all things, yet, in order