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in promoting a pro-slavery emigration to Kansas under Buford.1 He was now thirty-six years of age, and was described as a person exceeding six feet in height, of large frame, erect and military carriage, with black hair and sparkling eyes, juvenile in face and negligent in dress.2 Of courage Brooks had given no proof.
During the Mexican War, he raised a company of volunteers, but did no fighting.
He went to Vera Cruz, but being taken ill returned home; and when he had recovered he rejoined his company in Mexico after the capture of the city.3
Brooks's relation to Butler, the senator, was remote, being neither that of son, brother, or even nephew; and he was only the son of Butler's cousin,4—a consanguinity so distant as according to common ideas not to call for volunteer enlistment in a personal issue between Butler and another.
He was sometimes called Butler's nephew, but his defenders generally spoke of him as ‘a near kinsman,’ prudently abstaining from defining the degree.
Brooks was present for only a short time while Sumner was speaking on the first day, and not at all on the second day;5 and he is said to have complained of the speech on the first day to Senator Hunter,6 and it is probable that at this time he was meditating an assault.
Sumner during the first day (Monday) made no reflections on South Carolina; and all he said of Butler on that day, besides a strict reply to his charges against the North, was his comparison of Butler with Don Quixote, ‘a chivalrous knight, as he believed himself,’ devoted to his mistress, ‘the harlot slavery,’ ascribing to Butler
1 W. S. Thayer in the New York Evening Post, May 23.
2 W. S. Thayer in the New York Evening Post, May 23, Aug. 2, 1856; Jan. 30, 1857. Toombs's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1356. Toombs testified that he was an inch taller than Sumner. At his death he required a coffin six feet and four inches in length, and he was described by the undertaker as ‘the largest framed and largest man who ever died in Washington.’ New York Evening Post, Jan. 29, 1857. A portrait of Brooks is given in Nicolay and Hay's ‘Life of Lincoln,’ Century Magazine, June, 1887, p. 206.
3 Butler said in a speech in June, 1856 (Congressional Globe, App. p. 631) that a sword was awarded Brooks for service in the Mexican War; but this is not stated in the eulogies on him at the time of his decease. If it is true, it proves little, as swords and titles were cheaply won in that war.
4 Whitfield Brooks, father of Preston S., and Butler were cousins. O'Neall's ‘Bench and Bar of South Carolina,’ vol. i. p. 198; vol. II. p. 473.
5 Brooks's statement, July 12, interrupting Hall. Congressional Globe, App. p. 886. Brooks then said that the most objectionable part of the speech was the part delivered on the second day; but he had not heard or read it.
Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.
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