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