The Charleston Press on the Death of Preston S. Brooks.
From the Charleston Mercury.
Mr. BROOKS was, emphatically, a gentleman, and had just entered upon a career that promised usefulness and credit to those whom he represented. Those acquainted with him in private life, knew him as gentle and winning in manners, frank, social, and, in fact, possessed of every quality to command respect and to attract regard. His public life is before the people; and the unanimous vote by which he was reelected to Congress, shows the confidence which his constituents had in his integrity, his ability, and his patriotism.
From the Charleston Standard.
It is hardly possible that Col. BROOKS can receive at the hands of any party in the country the measure of impartial justice. The North will find it agreeable to perpetuate the memory of a political brigand. There are those at the South so incensed at the North, they may have accepted the character of an outlaw, and have liked him all the better for it, but both will have been unjust. He was born about 1820. His earliest political perceptions were quickened by the incidents of the contest in this State when the Tariff act had been passed, in contravention, as was asserted, of the equal rights of the South, and when the soldiers of the General Government had been sent to enforce it, and a repugnance to that party at the North which backed the General Government in this course, was the initial element of his political character.
The life of Col. BROOKS, excepting only that one occasion in the Senate Chamber of the United States when his perception of the responsibility of representatives who traduce a State was exemplified upon the person of Mr. SUMNER, has been uneventful.
Within the last year his name has transcended the limits of tongues and nations. What will be the verdict of posterity upon him will depend upon the question of power between the North and South. If the North shall triumph—if the South shall be gradually ground under—if Slavery shall be smuggled out of sigh, and decent people shall be ashamed to own it—he will be condemned and execrated; but, if the South shall stand firm in her integrity—if Slavery shall not fall before its antagonist, but shall stand, as it is capable of standing, the great central institution of the land for all other interests to climb upon, and shall give law to opinion, as it shall give regulation to liberty, then his memory will be loved and venerated; he will be recognized as one of the first who struck for the vindication of the South; and, as like those who seized the tea in Boston Harbor, he had no other warrant of authority than that afforded by his own brave heart, he will only the more certainly be placed among the heroes and patriots of his country.
