Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Congressman Horace Mann, March 10, 1850

March 10.

I have read Mr. Webster's speech carefully. It has all the marks of his mind, clearness of style, weight of statement, power of language; but nothing can, to my mind, atone for the abandonment of the Territories to what he calls the law of Nature for the exclusion of slavery. When so much of Delaware, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, lies far north of a great part of New Mexico, how can a man say that a law of Nature will keep slavery out of the latter, when it has not kept it out of the former? The existence or non-existence of slavery depends more upon conscience than climate. Why should all the South be so anxious to pass this law, if Nature has already passed one? Who knows but mines may yet be discovered in New Mexico?— and mining is the very kind of labor on which slaves can be most profitably employed.

I wish I had not made my speech. I should like to take up these topics, and set forth what seems to be the merit or the demerit of them. There is a very strong feeling here that Mr. Webster has played false to the North. Many of our men will speak, and we shall have an exhibition of Northern feeling yet.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 288

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