Friday, June 28, 2019

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, January 7, 1853

BOSTON, Jan. 7th, 1853.

DEAREST SUMNER: — I was very sorry indeed to criticize your speech, but I could not do otherwise in loyalty to our friendship. I have felt much grieved about it, the more so that it seemed to me Liberty had received a blow from her staunch friend; all unawares — but still a heavy blow.

— Look at it! will not the declaration that no pressure whatever shall force this country from her neutrality greatly encourage the despots to go on in their devilish career? Could we not at least have held our peace, and not assured them that we should never interfere, though they cut the throat of every liberal in Europe?

Then again, about poor Kossuth. I did feel sad indeed to have you speak (in your note) of his arrogance. My dear Sumner, is he not doing exactly what you felt called upon to do in your first peace oration, propound doctrines true in the abstract, good in principle, and surely realizable by and by, though so unpopular as to be deemed absurd by many? What Kossuth claims in the name of human brotherhood cannot, I concede, be now granted; we cannot plunge the country into war for any cause as yet set forth; but as surely as God lives and keeps up the progressive movement of humanity, so surely will the time come when nation shall say to nation, “Strike not, abuse not our brother nation! or we will help him strike you and defend himself.”

Do not take any fixed ground upon this subject; I mean an unprogressive position, and say what we will and what we will not do; wait and do what the crisis may require. We want peace; peace, and a century of it if possible, but we must have progress; we must remove the impediment in the way to it, and if despots oppose us we must remove them, peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must. . . .

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 386

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