<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> The Caning of Charles Sumner, or the Brooks--Sumner Affair, occurred on May 22, 1856, in the United States Senate when Representative Preston Brooks (D - SC) attacked Senator Charles Sumner (R - MA), an abolitionist, with a walking cane in retaliation for a speech given by Sumner two days earlier in which he fiercely criticized slaveholders including a relative of Brooks . The beating nearly killed Sumner and it drew a sharply polarized response from the American public on the subject of the expansion of slavery in the United States . It has been considered symbolic of the "breakdown of reasoned discourse" that eventually led to the American Civil War . </P> <Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Crime against Kansas </Td> </Tr> </Table>

Who beat someone with a cane in congress