Preston Smith Brooks
U. S. House of Representatives, South Carolina, 1853-1856; 1856-1857
Born: August 5, 1819, Edgefield District, South Carolina.
Died: January 27, 1857, Washington, D. C.
- Attended the common schools.
- South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina), Columbia, South Carolina, graduate, 1839.
- Studied law, was admitted to the bar, 1845, and commenced law practice in Edgefield, South Carolina.
- Member of the South Carolina State House of Representatives, 1844.
- Served in the Mexican War as Captain in the Palmetto Regiment, South Carolina Volunteers.
- Elected as a South Carolina State Rights Democrat to the Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth U. S. Congresses, serving from March 4, 1853 - July 15, 1856.
- He resigned July 15, 1856, even though the attempt to expel him for his assault upon Charles Sumner on May 22, 1856, had failed through lack of the necessary two-thirds vote.
- Re-elected from South Carolina to the Thirty-fourth U. S. Congress to fill the vacancy caused by his own resignation, serving from August 1, 1856, until his death.
Buried: Willow Brook Cemetery, Edgefield, South Carolina.
(Source: U.S. Congress. House. Biographical Directory Of The American Congress 1774-1949, 85th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doc. 607 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950), pp. 759-2057.)