Congressman Horace Mann, July 10, 1850

July 10. Long before this reaches you, you will have heard that Gen. Taylor is gone. It is indeed a sad event for the country. Only one thing, at the time of his election, reconciled me to it, the perfect political profligacy of his opponent. But the course of Gen. Taylor has been such as to conciliate me, and all whose opinions have coincided with mine, to a degree which we should have thought beforehand impossible. He had probably taken the wisest course that he could have taken. He poised himself between the North and the South. He knew it was utterly impossible for any prohibition of slavery to pass the present Senate; he supposed that no Territorial Government could possibly be passed by the House, without the proviso; and therefore he took things at first where he knew they could be left after the contest of a session. He went for no Territorial Government at all, leaving the Territories to form State Governments for themselves; being well convinced that they would form free constitutions. He relied upon this with more confidence than of us did but he had it in his power to procure the fulfilment of his own prophecy; and I am satisfied that it has been his purpose, from the beginning, that slavery should be extended no farther.

A dark hour is before us!

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 307