OFF THE FRONT PORCH: Violence Whenever Is Still Violence

The body of Preston Smith Brooks lies in the village cemetery in Edgefield under a towering stone obelisk that dwarfs almost every other surrounding gravestone.

A stately palmetto tree and the great seal of South Carolina are carved into the granite at Brooks’s final resting place. The engraving commemorates his election to the state legislature, his service in the Mexican War, and finally his election to Congress in 1853. A Confederate flag waves in the wind a few feet away.

Around town, there are still those who tell – with a gleam in their eye – the tale of that day in May 1856 when U.S. Representative Preston S. Brooks stalked into the U.S. Senate chambers and bludgeoned Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane. Sumner, an opponent of slavery, had spoken against Kansas being admitted to the Union as a “slave state.”

In his “Crime Against Kansas” speech, Sumner had specifically called out South Carolina Senator Andrew Pickens Butler and leveled personal insults at him. Rep. Brooks felt he had to defend the honor of his fellow Edgefield native, who was not present in the Senate to defend himself.

Brooks’s attack with his metal-tipped cane bloodied Sumner and left him unconscious on the Senate floor. Brooks emerged from a censure resolution unscathed, resigned and returned to Edgefield heralded as Southern hero. He was re-elected and returned to serve in Congress until his death in 1857.

Today, almost 170 years after Brooks’s brutal act of violence, some old-guard Edgefield folks still hold Preston Brooks in high esteem for this act of “chivalry” and “Southern honor.” Not too many years ago, someone suggested writing and staging a musical revue wherein a singing and dancing Preston Brooks performed a lively “Cane Cane” routine.

Edgefield County’s History Of Gunplay

Preston Brooks had a cane with him that fateful day in May 1856 because he was injured 14 years earlier in a duel with Louis T. Wigfall, who had engaged in an argument with young Preston’s father, Whitfield Brooks. Theirs, of course, was not the lone example of the Code Duello that was so prevalent among landowners and other “Southern gentlemen” of the mid-1800s.

Another famed and revered figure in Edgefield history is George McDuffie, whose name is among those painted on the “Home Of Ten Governors” mural. McDuffie fought several duels in the 1820s with Major General William Cumming. McDuffie spent the rest of his days with a bullet from one of those duels lodged in his back.

The culture of duels to settle matters of “honor” at that time was so commonplace that former South Carolina Governor John Lyde Wilson even published a primer on dueling entitled “The Code of Honor.” The guidebook was based on his personal experiences with duels and posited that dueling “would be persisted in as long as a manly independence, and a lofty personal pride in all that dignifies and enables the human character, shall continue to exist.”

In other words, men will continue to point guns at each other as long as their fragile egos get bruised by something someone said or did that hurt their feelings.

Beyond the caning of fellow lawmakers and duels on the Square, other notorious acts of violence have embedded themselves into the legend and lore of Edgefield County.

Few are as ubiquitous as the story of the “Devil in Petticoats,” Becky Cotton. The beautiful Becky is said to have murdered her abusive husband, John Cotton, with an axe and then dumped his lifeless body into Slade Lake.

The tale of Becky Cotton was immortalized in the writings of Mason Locke Weems, aka Parson Weems, the storyteller also credited with crafting the legend of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree. Becky’s frightful story has so captured the imagination of many longtime Edgefieldians that it is told with relish by both proper historians and professional walking tour guides, and a stage vignette or two and short films have been produced recounting the murder.

Let’s Not Romanticize Violence Anymore

More recently, there are those who raise a playful eyebrow and smile ever-so-slightly but knowingly when they recount the story of Sue Logue. Logue became the first woman executed in South Carolina’s electric chair for her role in a 1941 murder at Timmerman’s store near Edgefield.

Much of the lore surrounding that crime almost always circles back to the question of whether Logue was once a lover of the legendary Strom Thurmond, who is known almost as much for his appreciation for female company and sexual prowess as his legislative public service in Washington.

These various acts of violence across Edgefield County history, from the earliest days of the Republic to the rough-and-tumble pre-war 1940s, are told and retold by many local storytellers in an almost-romanticized tone. In sharp contrast, in August 2025, a gunfight among feuding groups on Walnut Street and Rosa Hill Drive was met in and around the community with fear and outrage and was described as a “senseless” act of “street justice mentality” by Sheriff Jody Rowland when he announced the arrest of eight suspects.

And the Sheriff was not wrong, of course. Any act of violence is inherently “senseless” and should be met with a cry for justice and for a better way of resolving conflict. We as a culture need to find less deadly methods for handling our differences, and violence against others is never a viable alternative, no matter what’s at stake.

Still, if in our supposed 21st century enlightenment we condemn modern-day acts of street violence in our neighborhoods and villages (as we should), we must also take extra care not to continue to romanticize acts of violence that have occurred over the course of our shared history. Realistically, how different are the Code Duello actions of Preston Brooks and George McDuffie from the gang activity that breached the peace last month?

Will historians and storytellers a hundred years hence tell the tale of the shootout on Walnut Street with the same enthusiasm and relish as they recount the duels on the Square in the 1840s? Not likely. The combatants in the gunplay last month were not considered to be “proper gentlemen” engaged in a “formal affair” on the public Square, dressed in their Sunday best and brandishing their Granddaddy’s gun to defend their “honor” (i.e., misplaced and misguided machismo).

In reality, violence is violence period – whether it unfolded 175 years ago or last weekend. To my fellow storytellers everywhere, I beg of you: let’s please start calling it such and stop making legends of violent men and women who have committed such crimes, even in the name of so-called “honor.”

As the old saying goes, those who refuse to learn from the mistakes of the past are destined to repeat them. Let’s leave all the duels, formal or otherwise, where they belong — in the past.