Thursday, January 25, 2024

Congressman Horace Mann to Samuel Downer, August 9, 1850

WASHINGTON, Aug. 9, 1850.
S. DOWNER, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR,—Perhaps you will think my prophesying is not from above, because I said the Compromise Bill would pass on the very day that it didn't. But I was deceived, in common with almost everybody else. At the time I wrote you, I had not seen the "Morning Intelligencer" or "Union" of that day, but observed afterwards that both of them anticipated its passage almost certainly. It was a most extraordinary combination of circumstances that defeated it, wholly unexpected by either friend or foe.

You have written me a most excellent letter—your last—full of wisdom and truth. I suppose the issue is made up in Boston, and that Websterism is to be triumphant. Of course, “outer darkness must be the fate of all who do not bow down before the image that he sets up. You speak of my defying it and assailing it. I feel just as you speak; but is not the time now.

New events will develop themselves before the adjournment of Congress; and we shall not know where to plant ourselves until we see the results of present movements. If we were to take any ground today, the chance is that some new event would change the whole aspect of affairs, and render the application of the wisest counsels ineffectual. When the session is over, we shall see what is before us, and what is behind.

I shall not be surprised even if California is not admitted this session, or, if admitted, then admitted on such terms as would make us all prefer that it should remain where it is. . . .

Yours ever and truly,
H. MANN.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 312-3

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