On May 19 Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner gave a long speech in the Senate entitled "The Crime Against Kansas", which condemned the Slave Power as the evil force behind the nation's troubles. Sumner said the Southerners had committed a "crime against Kansas", singling out Senator Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina. Sumner famously cast the South Carolinian as having "chosen a mistress ... who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sightI mean the harlot, slavery!" According to Williamjames Hull Hoffer, "It is also important to note the sexual imagery that recurred throughout the oration, which was neither accidental nor without precedent. Abolitionists routinely accused slaveholders of maintaining slavery so that they could engage in forcible sexual relations with their slaves." Three days later, Sumner, working at his desk on the Senate floor, was beaten almost to death by Congressman Preston S. Brooks, Butler's nephew. Sumner took years to recover; he became the martyr to the antislavery cause and said that the episode proved the barbarism of slave society. Brooks was lauded as a hero upholding Southern honor. The episode further polarized North and South, strengthened the new Republican Party, and added a new element of violence on the floor of Congress.