Fayetteville (NC) Observer, “Brooks and Sumner,” December 6, 1860

BROOKS AND SUMNER. – It may be doubted if the country will for many years feel the last of the evils resulting from the attack of Brooks upon Sumner in the Senate chamber. One of those effects, of a notable character, is stated in a late Boston Traveller, vis: that a bill to repeal the Massachusetts “personal liberty bill” was before the Legislature of that State and had passed one branch by a majority of 15 votes, when the news of Brooks’s assault arrived and produced such indignation that the bill to repeal was rejected. But for that attack, Massachusetts would have repealed the offensive and unconstitutional law, (as she ought to have done in spite of it,) and probably the other States would have followed her example, and the country might never have arrived at that deplorable statute of enmity that now exists. We have no doubt, also, that Lincoln’s election is directly traceable to that assault, for it alone made half a million of Republicans – so a friend at the North assured us last Summer.