July 5, 1853.
My Dear Sumner:
— You well know what a babe I am in politics, and how little versed in the
tactics of party; my views therefore can be nothing worth to you; my instinct,
however, and my friendly interest will not be disregarded. You are in what
merchants call a crisis; and you can come out of it not only with great
credit to yourself (that is a small matter), but in a way to promote the honour
and the dignity, and therefore the efficiency of our party.
The leaders at the House and elsewhere — the managers — pooh-pooh at you — they say you are counted as
nothing — have little influence, and will have but little; that you will go to
Washington, make one or two brilliant speeches and there will be the end of
you. Well! as far as you are interested personally—as far as those who love you
best are interested — so be it; the leaders in the Convention are
misrepresenting our party. We are a party of principle; they are for
expediency; we go into the Convention to amend the principles of right, with a
view to the good of the whole people, and future generations of people; they go
to potter and tinker, with a view to local interests, local prejudices, and
party interests. We ought to be represented by statesmen; we are represented
by mere politicians.
Now you, and you alone among them, are able to be the
exponent and defender of the principles and the morals of the Free-soil
party — of the free Democracy. Depend upon it, that party is sound at the core,
and it will answer from the heart and from the conscience to an appeal
from you, in a way that will astonish those who imagine that they are not only
the leaders but the owners of the party. The great mass of our party would say
amen to any declaration like this — let our basis of representation be respect
for man, as man, and not as villager, townsman or city man; let other
things be considered duly, but let no considerations of expediency, no thought
of how the coming elections may be affected, no regard for temporary effect,
induce us to violate a plain rule of right. All men are equal as well as
free, and let us not ask what advantages or what disadvantages of wealth or
position a man may have; as poverty shall not disfranchise him, so wealth shall
not.
I have read most of what our side has said upon this matter
of electoral basis, and (I am sorry to say) I have not read what the
other side has said; nevertheless I have an instinct arising from my faith in a
broad principle, that tells me our side is further from the right than the
other is. But I will do no more now than strive to strengthen what your
instinct must tell you—that the great mass of our party will rise up and
support you in any declaration of adhesion to a great principle of right,
though it should cost us what of apparent political discomfiture and rout might
follow. I see danger to you only in your calculating too nicely upon the manner
of being most useful in your day and generation. Remember, you are part not
only of this but of other days and generations. . . .
Ever thine,
s. G. h.
SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals
of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 391-3
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