Monday, July 15, 2019

Samuel Gridley Howe to Congressman Horace Mann, Thursday, January 6, 1853

Boston, Thursday, 6th Jan. 1853.

My Dear Mann: — You will see that the Commonwealth has gone into new hands. I was foolish enough to re-invest in the concern — but I ought not to say foolish either, for I did not wish to see it go down with dishonour. I wished to nail the anti-slavery flag to the mast and see her swim or sink with that flying.

Downer, Alley, Sewall, Baldwin1 and myself own the concern. I have been for some time doing the Spirit of the Press and helping in my way. How do you like her looks now? I am going to try to get Wright2 to work. Can you not help us from Washington, or find someone who will send us an occasional letter? Would you think of taking hold of the paper after the fourth of March as editor in chief, that is, director of the political pop-gun, and make of it a cannon? You would be called upon for only four or five columns a week. We are going to pay our contributors as much as we can, but that is as yet only one dollar a column; we shall pay more if the income will allow it.

There is what seems to me a squeamishness among members of Congress about being known as writers for the press.

If you cannot send us anything, let us know who can.

Ever faithfully,
S. G. Howe.
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1 Messrs. Samuel Downer, J. B. Alley, S. E. Sewall, and J. B. Baldwin.

Mr. Mann once wrote thus to Samuel Gridley Howe concerning Downer:

“. . . Boston seemed more than half empty when I found you were not in it. But I saw Downer, who is almost enough to save a city. If, when Abraham drove that sharp Yankee bargain about saving Sodom, higgling and screwing and beating down, until he reduced the number of the righteous to ten;—if the Lord could have been induced to lower his terms from that number, I can conceive of his saying: ‘Well, if you can find one Sam. Downer there, I'll spare the cursed city for him. . . .’”

2 Elizur Wright.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 388-9

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