The _Sun_ saw that Douglas’s repeal of the Missouri Compromise was a smashing blow delivered by a Northern Democrat to the Democracy of the North; but the sectional hatred was not revealed in all its intensity until 1856, when Representative Preston S. Brooks, of South Carolina, made his murderous attack on Senator Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, in the Senate Chamber. This and its immediate consequences were well covered by the _Sun_, not only through its Associated Press despatches, but also in special correspondence from its Washington representative, “Hermit.” It had a report nearly a column long of Sumner’s speech, “The Crime Against Kansas,” which caused Brooks to assault the great opponent of slavery. That year was also the year of the first national convention of the Republican party, conceived by the Abolitionists, the Free Soilers, and the Know-nothings, and born in 1854. The _Sun_ had a special reporter at Philadelphia to tell of the nomination of John C. Frémont, but the paper supported Buchanan. Its readers were of a class naturally Democratic, and although the paper was not a party organ, and had no liking for slavery or Secession, the new party was too new, perhaps too much colored with Know-nothingism, to warrant a change of policy. On the subject of the Dred Scott decision, written by Chief Justice Taney and handed down two days after Buchanan’s inauguration, the _Sun_ was blunt: We believe that the State of New York can confer citizenship on men of whatever race, and that its citizens are entitled, by the Constitution, to be treated in Missouri as citizens of New York State. To treat them otherwise is to discredit our State sovereignty. John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry was found worthy of a column in the _Sun_, but space was cramped that morning, for four columns had to be given to a report of the New York firemen’s parade. The firemen read the _Sun_. But Mr. Beach sent a special man to report Brown’s trial at Charlestown, Virginia. The editorial columns echoed the sense of the correspondence--that the old man was not having a fair show. Besides, the _Sun_ believed that Brown was insane and belonged in a madhouse rather than on the gallows. It printed a five-thousand-word sermon by Henry Ward Beecher on Brown’s raid. Beecher and the Beaches were very friendly, and there is still in Beecher’s famous Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, a pulpit made of wood brought from the Mount of Olives by Moses S. Beach. When John Brown was hanged, December 2, 1859, the _Sun_ remarked: The chivalry of the Old Dominion will breathe easier now.... But, while Brown cannot be regarded as a common murderer, it is only the wild extravagance of fanatical zeal that will attempt to elevate him to the rank of a martyr.