Caning of Charles Sumner

Date: May 22, 1856 • Location: Washington, United States

Senator Charles Sumner (pictured) was assaulted by Representative Preston Brooks in the United States Senate chamber in retaliation for a speech in which Sumner fiercely criticized slaveholders.

Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.