Sunday, —1848.
My Dear Mann: — I have been much exercised in spirit about
your position, but conclude that you find it necessary to maintain it.
I can understand how poignant must be your grief at the thought of
leaving the field of your labours; but without allowing myself to look back I
see much in the future to console me.
I could not say anything last evening, for Charlie1 talks
faster and better than I can. May it not be that you will do even more for the
cause of education out of the office of Secretary2 than in it? Will
not the moral effect of your unofficial labours be greater than that of your
official ones? Can you not attain a position in which you will bring even more
official influence to bear upon your favourite subject?
Should you, as you may, put yourself at the head of the great
anti-slavery (not abolition)3 party which is growing up here, you
can become Governor or anything else that you aspire to. It is true that you
will aspire to nothing but what will give you greater means of usefulness, but
that very disinterestedness will promote your high ends. It appears to me that
you should in the very outset, in the letter to the committee of nomination,
take the high ground you will afterwards maintain.
It is absurd for me to reach up from my littleness to tender
counsel to one so high as you, but my love for you is as great as though we
stood face to face.
You can afford to trample all doctrines of expediency,
all trimming, all manœuvering,
all tactics under foot. If you have one fault it is over caution; you are not
reliant enough upon your own powers, — and upon the power of the earnest,
honest, noble purposes of your mind. I hope you will throw all calculations
about effect to the winds, and speak right out to the electors what your heart
prompts you. I hope you will not, as Sumner advises, try to write a letter to
disarm the liberty party, but one that ought to do so whether it is
likely to do so or not.
Oh! for a man among our leaders who fears neither
God, man nor devil, but loves and trusts the first so much as to fear
nothing but what casts a veil over the face of truth. We must have done with
expediency: we must cease to look into history, into precedents, into books for
rules of action, and look only into the honest and high purposes of our own
hearts; that is, when we are sure we have cast out the evil passions from them.
Would to God I could begin my life again; or even begin a
new one from this moment, and go upon the ground that no fault or error or
shortcoming should ever be covered up from my own eyes or those of others.
I believe you can write a letter that will ring through this
land like a clarion, and proclaim that a champion is entering the political
arena with vizor up and with no other arms than truth and honesty and courage.
I know you will do so. I only want to warn you against the over activity of
your caution. You are too much afraid of the Devil and his imps; you do not
rely enough upon your own generous and high impulses. Believe me, you need no
armour and should fear no open assaults or secret ambuscades.
However, I need not write any more; all I have said is
nothing worth except to show you that I am ever and most sincerely yours.
S. G. Howe.
_______________
1 Charles Sumner.
2 Of the Board of Education
1 At this time the opponents of slavery formed two distinct
parties, the Abolitionists, headed by Garrison and Phillips, who refused
to vote or take office under a Constitution sanctioning slavery, and the more
moderate Anti-slavery Party, who, working for the same end, the emancipation of
the negro, believed that they could best do so by taking part in politics and
working with the tools already provided.
SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and
Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 256-8
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