Congressman Horace Mann, September 6, 1850

SEPT. 6.

I had no letter from you last night, nor eke this morning. I am so sure that you never fail, that I always convict the railroads or postmasters, and condemn them.

I had a sad day yesterday. The day before, Mr. Boyd's amendment, giving a Territorial Government to New Mexico, not only without a proviso against slavery, but with an express provision, that, when States are erected, they may be slave States if they wish, was voted down; but yesterday that vote was reconsidered. Then Massachusetts members went for it, although our Legislature, the last of last April, expressed the most decided opinions to the contrary, and although, before this new Administration, in which Mr. Webster takes so conspicuous a part, the whole North, with the exception of a part of the cities, was against it. Mr. E—— has voted steadily and uniformly for slavery. It is getting to be a fixed law, in my mind, to have no faith in men who make money their god. It is amazing into what forms the human mind may be shaped. Here are twenty, perhaps thirty, men from the North in this House, who, before Gen. Taylor's death, would have sworn, like St. Paul, not to eat nor drink until they had voted the proviso, who now, in the face of the world, turn about, defy the instructions of their States, take back their own declarations a thousand times uttered, and vote against it. It is amazing; it is heart-sickening. What shall be done? I know no other way but through the cause in which I have so long worked. May God save our children from being, in their day, the cause of such comments by others!

P.S. It is two o'clock, and the infernal bill has just passed. Dough, if not infinite in quantity, is infinitely soft. The North is again disgracefully beaten, most disgracefully.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 322

Congressman Horace Mann, September 8, 1850

SEPT. 8, 1850.

Texas has not a particle of rightful claim to all the north-western region this bill contends for; but she has passed a law claiming it, and threatens to make war upon the Union if her claim is not allowed. An extra session of her legislature is now in being. Her governor recommends that she should raise and equipmen to march to Santa Fé, and subdue the people there to her control (who are Mexicans, and who hate her); and the legislature is now preparing means to carry, or rather to seem to carry, their threats into execution. Our great Presidency-seekers, Webster, Cass, Clay, &c., wish to succumb to her claims. They cannot afford to offend any party at the South, because they want the votes of the South. The South wants Texas to have all this territory, because Texas is one of the most atrocious proslavery States in the Union; and, if any part of the territory is set off to New Mexico, they say it may eventually be free. Those who think their party will gain something by yielding to this false claim of Texas go for it with their leaders. Texas would not relinquish an inch of it but for money: therefore it is proposed to give her ten millions of dollars to buy her off. It is the most outrageous piece of swindling ever practised. In reality, we give her, by this boundary, a hundred thousand more square miles than she owns, and ten millions of dollars besides. President Taylor meant to maintain the rights of the country; and, if he had lived, we should have tried strength with the miserable braggarts of Texas: but, since his death, the whole policy of the Administration is changed, and with that, owing to their power and patronage, Congress is demoralized, and the bill has passed, and the Territories have governments without any prohibition of slavery. California is admitted as a free State; and that is all the compensation we have.

I am sick at heart, and disgusted at the wickedness of men.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 322-3

Congressman Horace Mann to Samuel Downer, September 10, 1850

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10, 1850.

MY DEAR DOWNER, You see all is gone. The influence of the Administration became all-powerful. E—— voted in committee against the Wilmot Proviso, direct. D—— was swept away. He voted on the first day against the Texas Boundary Bill, when it was alone; and the next day in favor of it, with New Mexico attached. There will be the most vigorous efforts to wheel the Whigs into line. Will they wheel? All motives on the surface will prompt them to do so. Thousands will say, "What can we do better? It is past it cannot be remedied. Abandon the past, and go for the future." This will be the superficial argument; but I mistake if the Whig party has not received a wound from which it will never recover. Good-by!

Ever yours,

HORACE MANN.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 326-7

Congressman Horace Mann, August 18, 1850

AUG. 18, 1850.

. . We are now debating the Civil and Diplomatic Appropriation Bill in the House. It is quite uncertain when any one of the exciting questions will be taken up. On those questions, the old parties are greatly divided; and many members act upon their own judgment, or with reference to the wishes of their constituents at home. There is a party, however, which is determined to support the Administration, without further inquiry. The truth is, the slave-power of the South and the money-power of the North have struck hands. The one threatens the Union: the other yields, professing to be in fear of disunion, but really for the purpose of obtaining the profits of trade and of getting a new tariff. The whole mercantile press of Boston is under the influence of this power. They either come out decidedly, and denounce every thing and everybody that stands in the way of getting more money, at what ever sacrifice of human liberty, like the "Courier," "Advertiser," and "Post," or like the other papers, the "Traveller," the "Mercantile Journal," &c., they maintain silence on the subject while the enemy is at work. The "Courier" is the most spiteful and virulent against me. They cannot reason me down; so they try to ridicule me down. They copy from the "Springfield Republican."

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 315-6

Congressman Horace Mann, August 23, 1850

I stay at home this morning to write to you. I long to be at home; but the time of our departure cannot be seen by any political astronomer. There is a probability that we shall come to some of the exciting questions this week. We are as ready now to meet them as we ever shall be. The great influence of Mr. Webster is brought with full force to bear against all security for freedom in the Territories. His name, his reputation for talent, and, above all, his power of patronage and influence in the Government, tell with prodigious force upon all measures. His going into the cabinet may be the salvation of Mr. Fillmore's administration; but it is even more likely that it will be fatal to the cause of freedom. See what comes of intellect without morality!

We had another furious storm last night. It reminded me of the last, the one in which Sumner's brother and Margaret Fuller were lost; and, when I hear the winds howl and sweep so at night, my mind always goes out to watch along the seashore, and then I cannot but see what the next papers relate of disaster and death. I always had a special horror for a shipwreck. It seems to me the most terrible form of death that is not ignominious. If, however, — and I often have a vivid intellectual perception of this, regarded death as we should, it would cease to be the dreadful spectre that it now is. How much of this, in all after-life, must depend upon education!

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 316-7

Daniel Webster to Millard Fillmore, October 14, 1850

Marshfield, October 14, 1850.

MY DEAR SIR,—Leaving Washington Friday, the 4th, I came that day to Philadelphia, and the next to New York, and staying on Sunday in that city, reached Boston Monday evening, the 7th, feeling tolerably well. Tuesday, the 8th, I was to have gone into State street to meet the people, but did not find myself well enough. The next day, Wednesday, I came down to my house, a good deal sick, and have hardly been out of doors from that day to this. My catarrh has held on uncommonly, and for three or four days last week, I was quite ill with it, so much so, that I called in a physician. Very sensibly, he recommends nothing but rest, patience, and herb teas. It is usual enough for the disease in its last stages to assume the form of a kind of asthmatic cough. This I have had, and hope I am now nearly over it. To-day the weather is cold, the skies bright, and every thing out doors looks well, and I hope to go over the farm. To-morrow the Turkish commissioner and suite are to be here, and I have asked some friends to meet them. It is difficult entertaining a guest, with whom one cannot exchange a word, and whose habits and wants are so unknown. We shall take care to keep all swine's flesh out of his sight; give him beef, poultry, and rice, and let him get on as well as he can, having always coffee in plenty.

Of political occurrences, and the political state of things in New York, and further south, your information is, of course, fuller and fresher than mine. In New England, affairs and opinions stand thus:

All true Whigs are not only satisfied, but gratified with every thing done by you, since the commencement of your administration. Men of property and business feel a degree of confidence and security, which it is certain they did not feel under the late administration. Indeed, I am at a loss to account for that want of confidence which appears to have prevailed. A gentleman of discernment said to me in Boston, that within a week after you had taken the chair, men met together, and, without saying a word, sufficiently manifested to one another, that, in their judgment, a highly important and conservative change had taken place.

The respectable portion of the Democratic party incline to treat the administration with respect.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Yours, always truly,

DAN'L WEBSTER.

SOURCE: Fletcher Webster, Editor, The Private Correspondence of Daniel Webster, Vol. 2, p. 394-5

Robert Jefferson Breckinridge to John J. Crittenden, May 3, 1851

LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY, May 3, 1851.

Hon. J. J. CRITTENDEN.

DEAR SIR,—I regret very much to perceive by your letter of the 21st ultimo that you considered my letter to you of the 12th April wanting in proper respect to you, and prompted by irritation on my part. I retained no copy of that letter; but, assuredly, I know very little of myself if it contained the evidences of either of those states of mind.

For the first time in my life I had condescended to solicit, from any human authority, anything, either for myself or any member of my immediate family, though many hundreds of times I have done what I could for others. It was particularly distressing to me that I had been seduced into such a position by the extreme kindness of an old personal friend (Mr. Duncan), as I explained in my first letter to you, and, by some ridiculous notion, that the present administration might consider itself any ways connected with that of General Taylor, so as to feel disposed to fulfill any expectations it may have raised.

Unless my memory deceives me, my first letter, making the application, intimated to you that I was not sure it was proper in me to write you such a letter, and asked you to excuse the impropriety, if indeed one existed. Such, I remember well, was the state of my mind, and I think I expressed it. The only notice ever taken of that letter, by you, is the allusion to it in your letter before me. What took place in the mean time may be uttered in a sentence, and need not be repeated here.

Under all the painful, and to me altogether unprecedented, circumstances of a very humiliating position, I thought it due to you to express my regret at having implicated you, in any degree, in such an affair by my letter of application to you; and I thought it due to myself to express to you, under such circumstances, my regret at allowing myself, in a moment of parental weakness, to embark in a matter which, in all its progress and its termination, was especially out of keeping with the whole tenor of my life and feelings. If my letter, to which yours of the 21st April is an answer, expresses more or less than these things, it is expressed unhappily and improperly. If, during the progress of the affair, you had judged it necessary or proper to have treated it differently, or had had it in your power to do so, I should not have been more bound to feel obliged by any other or further service than I am now bound to feel obliged, by such as your letter informs me you were good enough to render me, under circumstances which, it is now obvious, must have been embarrassing to you, and which, if I had known, I would have instantly released you from. But all this, as it appears to me, only the more painfully shows how inconsiderate my first application to you was, and how needless it was for my subsequent expression of regret for having made it to be taken in an offensive sense.

The sole object of this letter is to place the whole affair on the footing which, in my opinion, it really occupies.

Certainly I had no right to ask anything of the sort I did ask at your hands. But assuredly having been weak enough to ask it, and having, in the course of events, had full occasion to perceive that weakness, I had the right without offense to express sincere regret for what I had inconsiderately done,—to the needless annoyance of yourself and others, and to the wounding of my own self-esteem.

Permit me, in conclusion, to say that altogether the most painful part of this affair, to me, is that I should have given offense to a man who, for nearly if not quite thirty years, I have been accustomed to regard with feelings of the greatest esteem, admiration, and confidence, and for whom, at any moment during those thirty years, I would have periled everything but my honor to have served him; such a man will know how to appreciate the workings of a nature perhaps oversensitive and overproud, in the midst of unusual and oppressive circumstances. If not, it is better to forget all than lose our own self-respect.

As to Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Conrad, strange as it may seem to you, I would never, under ordinary circumstances, have asked either of them for any favor whatever. I rather considered myself asking you and Mr. Clay and Judge Underwood and Judge Breck and a few other old friends to whom I brought myself to the point—not without great difficulty—of saying what I did. This may seem very absurd to you; perhaps it is so; it is nevertheless the truth; and most certainly I did not suppose that any administration of which yourself and Mr. Clay and Judge Underwood and Judge Breck were avowed, if not confidential, supporters, would, under the entire circumstances of this case, have it in its power to refuse so paltry a boon; and after seeing the published list of successful applicants, from which alone I learned the fate of my application, I saw still less reason to comprehend such a result. As to yourself, three particulars separated your case from that of the other friends I have named: 1st. I loved you most, and relied most on you. 2d. I the most distrusted the propriety of writing to you, on account of your connection with the cabinet. 3d. From you alone I had no word of notice; and for these two last reasons, the more felt that an explanation was demanded of me as due both to you and myself.

If you have had patience to read this letter, it is needless for me to say more than that I still desire to be considered your friend.

R. J. B.

SOURCE: Ann Mary Butler Crittenden Coleman, Editor, The Life of John J. Crittenden: With Selections from His Correspondence and Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 387-9

Senator Salmon P. Chase to Edward S. Hamlin, August 22, 1850

Washington City, August 22, 1850.

My Dear Hamlin, I recd. yours of the 14th this morning. Doubtless you have, also, just recd. my last to you, which answers in part the enquiries you make.

I have no faith at all in this administration. It has pursued the Whig policy of Evasion thus far. The resolute face towards Texas was assumed for the North. The appeal for a settlement of the boundary question, when they well knew that settlement by Congress, except by millions for nothing, was out of the question was for the south. It was as if our Fathers had said to Tripoli, you have no right to hold our fellow citizens in bondage and we will wage war with you if you do, and at the same time had said if you will release half of them we will pay you so many millions & say nothing about the rest. I hate oppression, but I despise truckling. I abhor the doctrines of the extreme South, but I contemn Whig policy. I am not for any union with any body who will not in good faith adopt and uphold the principles of the Buffalo & Columbus platforms. I do not believe the Whigs can adopt them for on other questions than that of Slavery they are democratic. I do not believe the National! democratic party will adopt them; for they hope more from treason to freedom than from union with radical democrats. Let both these gang their gaits. I am for maintaining our independent organization as a Jeffersonian Democratic Party & let who will desert or give back maintaining it firmly.

I hoped that Judge Wood would put such an exposition of the Columbus old Line Antislavery Resolution as would make his election an antislavery democratic triumph. 1 wished to support him. I yet wish to do so. But, at present, I wait for future developments. I look for the action of the Free Dem. Convention held today with great interest. If it is really democratic it will do much good.

I am anxious for the election of the free democratic candidate in the 21st district. I suppose from the information I receive that Dr. Townshend will be the man. I think his election of far greater importance to Freedom than any success of one candidate for Governor over another. The Freesoil Whigs, I suppose, will oppose him as they did me — I trust, with as little success.

As to the withdrawal of Judge McLean's name, that lie can do no harm. I have the Judge's own letters in my possession, which, if necessary, will speak for themselves. Besides I am not in the least sorry that the Judge was not our candidate. He could not have been elected: and the chances are three to one that he would have declined it or withdrawn. If he could have been elected who can say that he would have stood the test better than Webster or Fillmore. He is quoted now as authority for Webster's Fugitive Slave bill. And his decision in Indiana is such as I, though reposing the greatest confidence in his personal integrity, cannot sanction.

SOURCE: Diary and correspondence of Salmon P. Chase, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1902, Vol. 2, p. 217-9