Sunday, May 28, 2023

Congressman Horace Mann, January 11, 1850

We have been going the same rounds, in attempting to choose a Clerk, which occupied us three weeks before we chose a Speaker. It is most irksome business, and cuts away all the ties that bind me to office.

We have just this minute elected a Clerk from Tennessee. He is a Southerner, but as unobjectionable as any Southerner can be. He does not hold slaves; but he was once a member of Congress, and voted with the slave-party through and through. I have not voted for him at all, though he is a Whig. We had an exciting time at the close of the voting, and before the vote was declared. The Southern Democrats, seeing how near he was to being elected, came over to him one after another, and at last gave him just enough. That is the way. They are always more true to slavery than to Democracy. It is a good result; but I am rejoiced that I did not help to bring it about. During the whole voting, the Northern Whigs came round me, and some of our Massachusetts men too, and urged and besought me to change my vote. At one moment, when only one more vote was wanted, forty men turned bescechingly to my seat. I shook my head at them all; and at that moment a Southern man on the other side of the House jumped up, and changed his vote. This settled it.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 286-7

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