Violence in Kansas spilled over into the Congress itself. On May 22 1856, the day after the sack of Lawrence and two days before Brown's Pottawatomie Massacre, a sudden flash of savagery on the Senate floor electrified the whole country. Just two days earlier Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts had finished an inflammatory speech in which he described the treatment of Kansas as 'the rape of a virgin territory,' and blamed it on the South's 'depraved …showed first 75 words of 389 total…

…showed last 75 words of 389 total…so great that 'Almost overnight the entire complexion of the Presidential campaign was transformed'. Here was clear evidence of the tyrannical Slave Power at work, using brute force to silence free speech. Brooks was also to become a martyr, but for pro-slavery Southerners. When he was censured and fined $300 for the assault, Southern Congressmen ensured he was not expelled from Congress. Brooks resigned anyway, and was triumphantly re-elected. His admirers showered him with new canes.