Thursday, January 25, 2024

Congressman Horace Mann to Samuel Downer, August 15, 1850

WASHINGTON, Aug. 15, 1850.
S. DOWNER, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR,—I have yours of the 10th inst., in which you say, "I do not hear that any of your friends are hearing from you." If you had heard of any such thing, you would have heard of what does not exist. I have written to but one friend in my district since the first clap of thunder that opened the storm: that was to my friend Clap, of whom I spoke to you. To whom can I write, and what can I say? I hope I am not entirely without friends, personal at least, if not political. . . . But what can I write to them? They do not write to me; and my bump of self-esteem is not large enough to enable me to thrust myself before them, and intimate a desire of being defended by them. I should like very well, if not too much trouble, to have you introduce yourself to E. W. Clap. I think, if I have a zealous friend in the world, he is one. He lives out in the country, and sees many of the Boston men who go out into the country to sleep. The noisy, clamorous Whigs never had much political liking for me. I was not sufficiently subservient to party discipline. . . .

It seems a great pity now that I had not formally declined being a candidate before this outbreak. Then I could have stood my ground, and bade them defiance before the people; nor should I have any doubt, under such circumstances, what their decision would be. But now there is so much in what you say about my declining looking like fear, or, at any rate, being construed into fear, that, in the present condition of things, I hate to do it. Still, if it has got to be done before a nominating convention meets, perhaps it should be done before long. It will be hardly safe for any convention to act before the close of the session of Congress; for it will be impossible to tell how things are to be left at the end of it.

. . . Your friendship seems a thousand times more valuable now, in my need, than when, in former days, I knew it to be worth so much.

Yours most truly,
HORACE MANN.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 314-5

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