Your communication of the 16th inst., being directed to
Newton, (instead of West Newton, where I reside,) did not reach me until this
morning. I thank you cordially for the kind expressions of personal regard with
which you have been pleased to accompany it. You inform me that at a convention
of delegates assembled in Dedham, on Wednesday, the 15th inst., I was nominated
as a candidate to fill the vacancy in Congress occasioned by the death of the
great and good man whose irreparable loss we, his constituents, with a nation
for our fellow-mourners, deplore.
At first thought, the idea of being the immediate successor
of John Quincy Adams in the councils of the nation might well cause any man to
shrink back from the inevitable contrast. But it is obvious, on a moment's
reflection, that the difference is so trivial between all the men whom he has
left, compared with the disparity between them and him, as to render it of
little consequence, in this respect, who shall succeed him; and the people in
the Eighth District, in their descent from Mr. Adams to any successor, must
break and bear the shock of the fall, as best they can.
I most heartily concur with you in that estimate of the
services, and veneration for the character, of our late representative, which
your resolutions so eloquently express. To be fired by his example, to imitate
his diligence and fidelity in the discharge of every trust, to emulate his
moral intrepidity, which always preferred to stand alone by the right, rather
than to join the retinue and receive the plaudits of millions, as a champion of
the wrong, — this would be, in the beautiful language of the Roman historian, “to
ascend to glory by the path of virtue.”
One of the resolutions adopted by your convention declares
the three following things: —
1. That the successor of Mr. Adams, on the floor of
Congress, should be a man “whose principles shall be in consonance with those
of his predecessor.”
2. That his fidelity to the great principles of human
freedom shall be unwavering. And, —
3. That his “voice and vote shall on all occasions be
exercised in extending and securing liberty to the human race.”
Permit me to reaffirm these sentiments with my whole heart.
Should the responsibilities of that successorship ever be devolved upon me, I
shall endeavor so to fulfil them, that these dead words should become a living
soul. I should deem it not only an object of duty, but of the highest ambition,
to contend for the noble principles you have here expressed, as Mr. Adams
contended for them; though, unhappily, it would be only as a David in Saul's
armor. Bear with me for a moment while I enlarge upon these sentiments.
1. “In consonance with his principles.” — I believe it was the
sovereign rule of Mr. Adams's life to act in obedience to his convictions of
duty. Truth was his guide. His conscience was non-elastic. He did not strain at
a gnat before company, on account of its size, and then, privately, swallow a
camel. His patriotism was coextensive with his country; it could not be crushed
and squeezed in between party lines. Though liable to err, — and what human
being is not? — yet his principles were believed by him to be in accordance
with the great moral laws of the universe. They were thought out from duty and
religion, and not carved out of expediency. When invested with patronage, he
never dismissed a man from office because he was a political opponent, and
never appointed one to office merely because he was a political friend. Hence
he drew from Mr. Holmes, of South Carolina, this noble eulogium, — a eulogium,
considering the part of the country from which it came, as honorable to its author
as to its object, — that “he crushed no heart beneath the rude grasp of
proscription; he left no heritage of widows' cries or orphans' tears.” Could
all the honors which Mr. Adams ever won from offices held under the first five
Presidents of the United States, and from a public service, which, commencing
more than fifty years ago, continued to the day of his death, be concentrated
in one effulgent blaze, they would be less far-shining and inextinguishable
than the honor of sacrificing his election for a second presidential term,
because he would not, in order to obtain it, prostitute the patronage and power
which the constitution had placed in his hands. I regard this as the sublimest
spectacle in his long and varied career. He stood within reach of an object of
ambition doubtless dearer to him than life. He could have laid his hands upon
it. The “still, small voice” said, No! Without a murmur, he saw it taken and
borne away in triumph by another. Compared with this, the block of many a
martyr has been an easy resting-place.
2. “Unwavering fidelity to the great principles of human
freedom.”—The Declaration
of American Independence, in 1776, was the first complete assertion of human
rights, on an extensive scale, ever made by mankind. Less than three quarters
of a century have elapsed, and already the greatest portion of the civilized
world has felt the influence of that Declaration. France, for years, has had a
constitutional monarchy; perhaps, to-day, her government is republican. Holland
and Belgium are comparatively free. Almost all the states of the Germanic
Confederation have a written constitution, and a legislature with a popular
branch. Prussia has lately commenced a representative system. The iron rule of
Austria is relaxed under the fervent heat which liberty reflects from
surrounding nations. Naples and Sicily have just burst the bonds of tyranny. In
Rome and the States of the Church, where, under the influence of religious and
political despotism, the heart of Freedom was supposed to be petrified into
insoluble hardness, that heart is now beginning to pulsate with a new life, and
to throb with sympathy for humanity. Great Britain and Denmark have emancipated
their slaves in the West Indies. Measures are now in progress to ameliorate the
condition of Russian serfs. Even half-barbarous, Mahometan Tunis has yielded to
the tide of free principles. To what bar of judgment will our own posterity
bring us, what doom of infamy will history pronounce upon us, if the United
States shall hereafter be found the only portion of Christendom where the
principles of our own Declaration of Independence are violated in the persons
of millions of our people?
3. “The exercise, on all occasions, of voice and vote, in
extending and securing liberty to the human race.” — There is a crisis in our affairs. A territory, in
extent far exceeding that of the thirteen original states, when they repelled
the power of Great Britain, has lately been added, or is, doubtless, about to
be added, to our national domain. The expanse of this territory is so vast,
that it may be divided into a dozen sections, and these sections may be erected
into separate states, each one of which shall be so large that Massachusetts
would seem but an inconsiderable court-yard, if placed in front of it. Parts of
this territory are fertile and salubrious. It is capable of supporting millions
and millions of human beings, of the same generation. The numbers of the
successive generations, which in the providence of God are to inhabit it, will
be as the leaves of the forest, or the sands on the sea-shore. Each one of
these is to be a living soul, with its joys and sorrows, its hopes and fears,
its susceptibilities of exaltation or of abasement. Each one will be capable of
being formed into the image of God, or of being deformed into the image of all
that is anti-godlike.
These countless millions are to be our kindred; many of
them, perhaps, our own descendants; at any rate, our brethren of the human
family; for has not God “made of one blood all nations of men to dwell upon all
the face of the earth”? In rights, in character, in happiness; in freedom or in
vassalage; in the glorious immunities and prerogatives of knowledge, or in the
debasement and superstitions of ignorance; in their upward-looking aspiration
and love of moral excellence, or in their downward-looking, prone-rushing, and
brutish appetites and passions, what shall these millions of our
fellow-creatures be? I put it as a practical question, What shall these millions
of our fellow-creatures be? — for it is more than probable that this very
generation, — nay, that the actors in public affairs, before the sands of the
present year shall have run out, — will prescribe and foreordain their doom.
That doom will be what our present conduct predestines.
If we enact laws and establish institutions, under whose
benign influences that vast tract of territory shall at length teem with
myriads of human beings, each one a free-born man; each one enjoying the
inalienable right of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” each one
free for the cultivation of his capacities, and free in the choice and in the
rewards of his labor; —if we do this, although the grand results may not
manifest themselves for a thousand years, yet when the fulness of time shall
come, the equity and the honor of framing these laws and institutions will
belong to us, as much as though the glorious consummation could be realized
to-morrow. On the other hand, if we so shape the mould in which their fortunes
are to be cast, that, for them or for any portion of them, there shall be
servitude instead of liberty, ignorance instead of education, debasement
instead of dignity, the indulgence of bestial appetites instead of the
sanctities and securities of domestic life, — then, until the mountains shall
crumble away by age, until the arches of the skies shall fall in rottenness, these
mountains and these arches will never cease to echo back the execrations upon
our memory of all the great and good men of the world. And this retribution, I
believe, will come suddenly, as well as last forever.
In one of the South-western States a vast subterranean cave
has been discovered, deep down in whose chambers there is a pool of water, on
which no beam of sunlight ever shines. A sightless fish is said to inhabit this
rayless pool. In this animal, indeed, the rudiments of a visual organ are supposed
to be dimly discernible; but of an orb to refract the rays of light, or of a
retina to receive them, there is no trace. Naturalists suppose that the
progenitors of these animals, in ages long gone by, possessed the power of
vision; but that, being buried in these depths by some convulsion of nature,
long disuse at first impaired, at length extinguished, and has at last
obliterated the visual organ itself. The animal has sunk in the scale of being,
until its senses are accommodated to the blackness of darkness in which it
dwells. Were this account wholly fabulous, it has the strongest verisimilitude,
and doubtless describes what would actually occur under the circumstances
supposed.
Thus will it be with faculties above the surface of the
earth, as well as below it. Thus will it be with human beings, as well as with
the lower orders of creation. Thus will it be with our own brethren or
children, should we shut up from them the book of knowledge, or seal their
senses so that they could not read it. Thus will it be with all our God-given faculties,
just so far as they are debarred from legitimate exercise upon their
appropriate objects. The love of knowledge will die out, when it ceases to be
stimulated by the means of knowledge. Self-respect will die out, under the
ever-present sense of inferiority. The sentiments of truth and duty will die
out, when cunning and falsehood can obtain more gratifications than frankness
and honesty. The noblest impulses of the human soul, the most sacred affections
of the human heart, will die out, when every sphere is closed against their
exercise. When such a dreadful work is doing, or threatens to be done, can any
one stand listlessly by, see it perpetrated, and then expect to excuse himself,
under the false, impious pretext of Cain, “Am I my brother's keeper?”
Fully, then, do I agree with you and the delegates of the
convention you represent, in saying that the successor of Mr. Adams should be
one “whose voice and vote shall, on all occasions, be exercised in extending
and securing liberty to the human race.” Of course I do not understand you to
imply any violation of the constitution of the United States, which every
representative swears to support.
Permit me to say a word personal to myself. For eleven
years, I have been estranged from all political excitements. During this whole
period, I have attended no political meeting of any kind whatever. I have
contented myself with the right of private judgment and the right of voting,
though it has usually so happened that my official duties have demanded my absence
from home at the time of the fall elections. I have deemed this abstinence from
actively mingling in political contests both a matter of duty towards
opposing political parties, and a proper means of subserving the best interests
of the cause in which I had embarked. I hoped too, by so doing, to assist in
rearing men even better than those now belonging to any party.
The nature of my duties also, and all my intercourse and
associations, have attracted me towards whatever is worthy and beneficent in
all parties, rather than towards what is peculiar to any one. Not believing in
political pledges, I should have had the honor to decline giving any to you,
had you not had the first and greater honor of asking none from me. After what
I have said above in favor of liberty for all mankind, it would be a strange
contradiction did I consent to be myself a slave of party. The hands which you
raised in behalf of yourselves and your constituents, when you voted for the
noble sentiments contained in the resolution I have quoted, could never degrade
themselves by forging a fetter for the free mind of another, or fastening one
upon it; and the hand with which I have penned my hearty response to those
sentiments can never stretch itself out to take a fetter on. Should your nomination,
therefore, be accepted and be successful, it must be with the explicit
understanding between us that I shall always be open to receive the advice of
my constituents, shall always welcome their counsel, always be most grateful
for their suggestions, but that, in the last resort, my own sense of duty must
be the only arbiter. Should differences arise, the law opens an honorable
escape for both parties, — declination on my part, substitution on yours.
I must add, in closing, that so far as personal preferences
are concerned, I infinitely prefer remaining in my present position, with all
its labor and its thanklessness, to any office in the gift of the people. I had
hoped and intended, either in a public or private capacity, to spend my life in advancing the great cause
of the people's education. Two considerations alone could tempt me to abandon
this purpose. The first is important. The enactment of laws which shall cover
waste territory, to be applied to the myriads of human beings who are hereafter
to occupy that territory, is a work which seems to precede and outrank even
education itself. Whether a wide expanse of country shall be filled with beings
to whom education is permitted, or with those to whom it is denied, — with
those whom humanity and the law make it a duty to teach, or with those whom
inhumanity and the law make it a legal duty not to teach, seems
preliminary to all questions respecting the best systems and methods for
rendering education effective.
The other consideration is comparatively unimportant;
though, for the time being, it has embarrassed me greatly. I now learn that
expectations were excited at your convention, that if a nomination were
tendered me, it would not be declined. Had I anticipated the favorable regards
of the convention, or foreseen that such expectations would be raised, I should
not have hearkened to the proposition for a moment; and I may be permitted to
add, that when I saw my name announced in the papers, my first act was to
prepare a letter of declination. It was only when I went to deliver the letter
that I learnt what had been done, and that, in the opinion of persons whose
judgment I am bound to respect, I had been so far committed by my too partial
friends, as that no option remained.
Yielding to these considerations, I submit myself to the
decision of my fellow-citizens.
With sentiments of high personal regard,
I am, gentlemen,
Your friend and
servant,
HORACE MANN.
Hon. Thomas French,
President; Samuel C. Mann, John K. Coebett, Edward Crehore, Esqs.,
Secretaries.
West Newton, March
21, 1848.
SOURCE: Horace Mann, Slavery:
Letters and Speeches, p. 1-9
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