Samuel Gridley Howe to Horace Mann, April 28, 1848

Boston, April 28th, 1848.

My Dear Mann: — It has long been lowering and threatening over my head, but at last it pours, and oh how it hurts! Immediately after you left I broke down, and though confined to the house but one day I have been unwell ever since. I should have been off, but one of my pupils, detained during vacation by illness, grew worse, and I have just now come from her funeral.

Yesterday I undertook to write you about the men confined in Washington¹ jail for trying to help our brethren and sisters to the enjoyment of their rights, but I failed.

We (the² Committee) want you to act as their counsel. Cannot you undertake to do it? You will not of course be moved by any consideration of remuneration, though we mean that the counsel shall be paid. The South will employ the ablest devil that can be found to convict these men, let us do what we can to foil them and establish the right.

Do think favourably of this. A great crisis is at hand. The North cannot, must not, will not be longer particeps criminis in this infernal business. The North will awake; it will demand the abolition of human slavery in the District of Columbia. It is looking about now for leaders and champions; it will support, honour and reward with blessings and praise whoever now becomes a mouthpiece and speaks out the pent-up feeling with which it thrills, but which it knows not how to utter.

You can be the man, the leader, the hero of this coming struggle for freedom and the right. Do, my dear Mann, think seriously about this, and let me know whether you cannot lift up this banner.

I shall try to come and see you soon.

Thanks for your letter: God bless you.

Ever yours,

S. G. Howe.

_______________

¹ Drayton and Sayre.

² Vigilance.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 261-2