Thursday, September 21, 2023

Congressman Horace Mann to Samuel Downer, March 21, 1850

WASHINGTON, March 21, 1850.
SAMUEL DOWNER, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR, I am glad to hear from you. I did not know but you would give me over to "hardness of heart and to a reprobate mind" after my votes for Speaker. But I am as well satisfied as I can be of any thing that it was the best course. If we must have one of two men for Speaker, you do nothing towards deterring me from supporting one of them, on the ground that he is a bad man, so long as I can prove the other to be a worse one. I have found that those who hold to the doctrine, that they will not take the least of two evils, forget that, by adding their own course to the number of evils, they make three of them, and then generally take the worst two of the three. I prefer the least one of two to the worst two of three. . . .

H. MANN.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 296

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