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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