How Political Violence Makes Us All Slaves
By Hinton Bowers
Slavery was always a hotly contested and controversial issue going back to the founding of the US republic. It’s detractors claiming, rightly, that it denies not just life, or liberty, or the pursuit of happiness, but all three.
These tensions eventually helped lead to the outbreak of state violence known as the American Civil War, but it was arguably precipitated by a very personal event in the spring of 1856…
Out-spoken abolitionist Charles Sumner, a senator from Massachusetts, had changed his party several times over the issue of slavery. Though abolitionists were generally disliked by the public ‘at large’ for inflaming tensions between the north and the south; on this day, and perhaps unwittingly, Sumner instigated once again for personal liberty. By giving his famous CRIME AGAINST KANSAS speech, he was attempting to block the state-sanctioned expansion of slavery into that territory. Sumner’s speeches were usually fiery and this one was no exception, but then Sumner said something a little different:
“The senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress — who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; — I mean the harlot, slavery.”
Targeting a sponsor of the Kansas pro-slavery bill, Sumner went personal, attacking Andrew Butler, accusing him of both delusion and sexual deviance, this ‘ruffled the feathers’ of many, but as history would record, it was Butlers’ cousin who would take it the most personally… Continue reading “USE YOUR WORDS”
