The Newberry herald and news. (Newberry, S.C.) 1884-1903, 1902-06-13
To Editor of The Times Democrat

at all times strictly accurate. 1t is
lucid and able, he has won friends
at the south since the surrender, be
cause he has been brave enough to
be just to her people, but be, too,
was bitter partisan before the war,
and views the occurrences of that
period from the partisan standpoint.
grow weary of hearing history
writers referring to Brooks blud-
geon and brutality in connection
with the Gaming of Charles Sum-
ner in the vacant United States
Senate chamber in 1855. Pres
ton S. Brooks, the South Car.
olina congressman, was no brute,
neither wss the delicate gutta percha
walking cane with which he stained
the famous ''bloody shirt" with
stripes across the back and shoulders
of the Massachusetts,. senator a
"bludgeon," as Col. Mcclure calls
it. It was but a substitute for the
cowhide used in those chivalric days
by brave men on those willing to
wound, but afraid to strike. The
south owes it to Preston S Brooks
gallant name and fame to rescue it
from the stigma of ''brnte and bully"
! knew him we'll, as the highest type
of refined and hereditarily courtly
South Carolina gentleman, and the
worlds civilization furnishes none
higher. I grew to manhood almost
under the shadow of his ancestral
home.
His youngest brother, c. pit. J.
Hampton Brooks, who distinguished
himself at Petersburg and at other
southern bsttlefields, as my beloved
companion and schoolfellow about
the date of the incident in question.
During tho PAST summer, in the viii
lage cemetery of my boyhood's home,
at Edge6eld, fingered long at the
early made grave of my honored
boyhood friends, Hon. Preston S.
Brooks, and that of his other patriotic
brother, Whitfield Butten Brooks,
killed, ss his, monument recites, at
the battle of Cherubusco, with the
simple inquiry on his dying, boyish
lips, "Have.I done my duty?" to re-.
ceive the benedietion of his comman
der. "You are an honor to yourself,
your family and your country"
Preston S. Brooks was true t! pc
cf southern manhood Of his day
az Charles Summer was q counter
part of the lettered New England
statesmen of the same period. New
England, from which slavery in all
its abhorrent It's WAS unlosded
on the south, did more to fos'er sec
tional hatred by its abuse of the
south and it's peculiar institutions"
than all other sections of the union.
It's writer's aud speakers called it
''Infaming the northern minds" F"
and it inhamed.
The writer was educated in part
at New England college just be-
fore the war trcke out, and observed
this infsm1ng business on the part
of the New England schoolboys
towards those Of the south; it matter
ed not that the southern boys would
sometimes thrash hale a dozen OF
them in day, it did not deter their
insult and derision of southern people
and their institutions.
Southern literary societies were or
ganized at Yale, Cambridge and
Princeton to avoid this sectional fric.
tion even among schoolboys OF that
period. We never had trouble with
New York nor Western students-it
all came from New Engiand-tha'
immemOrial hot bed of cant and
fanaticism the legitimate inherl
tanca of the Paritau and roundheads
who 80 largely popnls'ed that section
of the colonies, and who we're as dis
tinct from the Cavaliers aud Hugne
nots, whose blood fDweo 80 freely
through the Southern veins as were
Preston S. Brooks aud Charles Sum
ner.
Of course, there were marked OK