The Caning of Senator Charles Sumner - Essay Example

In the background, there are vague figures of men seemingly in animated discussion and others are presented as passive onlookers two men appear to be smiling and others are looking on with blank, unrevealing expressions (Danzer, De Alva, Krieger, Wilson, and Woloch). 

His assailant is dressed in white and appears to wear a black cape and the onlookers in the background appear to also be wearing primarily white or light colors. The black cape appears to symbolize evil of the sort that is associated with villains. The senator’s black suit as he is reposed in a defenseless position suggests sadness and in many ways superiority. Superiority is also expressed in the quill and papers that Senator has. These items may also be seen as weapons of intellect and reasoning, the factors that provoked Senator Sumner’s caning.

Moreover, the quill and paper are juxtaposed against the cane wielded by the attacker and therefore representing the savagery and backward thinking of the attacker and the coercive slavery that he wanted to defend. . The North was anti-slavery and the South was anti-abolitionist. While the attack emanated from Sumner’s speech in favor of abolishing slavery and asked if Kansas would be admitted into the union as a free state or a slave state, there were conflicts in the streets of Kansas over the issue of slavery.

For the Northern Republicans, the senate was a place of free speech and a place where cooler heads should prevail. The fact that a Democratic member of Congress seized the opportunity to attack a Northerner representing an opposite view meant that the savagery of slavery was the method by which the South wanted to govern (Finkelman and Kennon). If the Southern senators thought that they had beaten Sumner into submission, they were mistaken. Although Sumner had been beaten nearly to death and took a leave of absence, once he returned to the Senate he continued to speak out against slavery and advocated for its abolition.

He became a radical senator to the extent that he argued for the immediate emancipation of the slaves. This only served to sustain the divide between the Southerners and the Northerners as Senator Sumner had demonstrated a resolve not to compromise on the issue of slavery. The beating had outraged Sumner’s colleagues they would take a rather protective stance and while advising him to mind the words he used in his speeches, he insisted on using harsh and sarcastic words to demean the institution of slavery.

Thus the beating only empowered and supported Sumner’s stance against slavery and ensured that the civil war would be the only way to resolve the differences and tensions brewing in the Union and on the floor of the Senate ( Finkelman and Kennon).