Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist leader before the Civil War and a powerful foe of conciliation toward states that had seceded after the war, considered his field to be "in morals, not politics." He is best remembered for surviving an attack by Representative Preston Brooks in 1856 during which Brooks beat Sumner with a cane on the Senate floor. Brooks' attack was a sign of the increasing hostility between the North and South in the years leading up to the Civil War.
