Last week Weber State University hosted the annual Society for Military History Conference at the Eccles Conference Center in Ogden, Utah. An old classmate of mine from the University of Delaware, Dr. John Hosler, was one of the historians presenting papers at the conference.John is currently a professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore. His specialty, I suppose, is Medieval Europe, and he has focused mainly on England (correct me if I'm wrong, John).
I was not able to attend the conference, but I got through two more exam of my own this weekend. John's stay was enjoyable, and we had interesting discussions on many topics.
We ended up discussing the attack of Senator Charles Sumner by Senator Preston Brooks. For those unfamiliar with the story, look it up in Wikipedia - it's a bit too much for right here. I did want to clarify a few things I told John, though, that I had apparently misremembered.
The cane used by Brooks was not a heavy-duty cardboard type that I remembered from a Civil War history class I had nine years ago. According to the Wikipedia article, it was made of gutta-percha wood, and Sumner did suffer at least enough injury to cause serious bleeding and unconsciousness.
Left unclear was the story I remember about Sumner wearing bandages in public years after the attack. Sumner did spend three years away from the Senate recuperating, which seems a long time even for a head wound. I remember hearing that he wore bandages at public appearances during this whole time, but I can not substantiate it. Anyway, even if the story is not ridiculous, I can still laugh at the absurdity of it. (Which puts me in a different camp than some). Can any of my readers find humor in the crimes and tragedies of the past, or is my sense of humor too macbre?
2 comments:
Sumner did continue to be a hero of the abolitionist side, and was a prominent Republican in 1860. Did the caning help his career? Strangely enough, it probably did.
I am not as sure what happened to Brooks, he seems like the type who should have ended up a frontier general for the Confederacy... Is that a reasonable guess?
And as for the macabre humor of history- certainly bitter and sarcastic humor about their subject was popular among Drexel University history professors (e.g. Robert Zaller and Nunzio Pernicone) when I was there. I also remember a Solvay High School history teacher who told great stories, and was fond of pointing out the wackiness of various assassinations, crimes and trials from American history. He would have made a great college professor, really.
Well, Preston Brooks would have made a great adjutant for the likes of Braxton Bragg or John Bell Hood, but he passed in 1857 due to a respiratory illness called the croup (thanks to Wikipedia).
Yes, I do miss lectures from Zaller and Pernicone. One line of Zaller's that I'll never forget came after describing the Battle of Trafalgar, in which the British sunk 2/3 of the French fleet without losing a single ship. He simply stated: "That, folks, is a win."
Pernicone comes to mind for stating that Italy's biggest struggles came because it was a "second-rate power trying to play the big-power game."
Post a Comment