![Preston Brooks in a dark suit with a with a dark necktie.](/sites/default/files/2021-05/Preston%20Brooks%20640x480.png)
1856 Portrait of politician Preston Brooks. From Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division. Wikimedia Commons.
(1819-1857) Born in Roseland, SC (Edgefield County), Preston Brooks was a Democratic congressman from South Carolina who brutally beat Charles Sumner, a Senator from Massachusetts, in the US Senate chamber.