SEPT. 6.
I had no letter from you last night, nor eke this morning. I am so sure that you never fail, that I always convict the railroads or postmasters, and condemn them.
I had a sad day yesterday. The day before, Mr. Boyd's amendment, giving a Territorial Government to New Mexico, not only without a proviso against slavery, but with an express provision, that, when States are erected, they may be slave States if they wish, was voted down; but yesterday that vote was reconsidered. Then Massachusetts members went for it, although our Legislature, the last of last April, expressed the most decided opinions to the contrary, and although, before this new Administration, in which Mr. Webster takes so conspicuous a part, the whole North, with the exception of a part of the cities, was against it. Mr. E—— has voted steadily and uniformly for slavery. It is getting to be a fixed law, in my mind, to have no faith in men who make money their god. It is amazing into what forms the human mind may be shaped. Here are twenty, perhaps thirty, men from the North in this House, who, before Gen. Taylor's death, would have sworn, like St. Paul, not to eat nor drink until they had voted the proviso, who now, in the face of the world, turn about, defy the instructions of their States, take back their own declarations a thousand times uttered, and vote against it. It is amazing; it is heart-sickening. What shall be done? I know no other way but through the cause in which I have so long worked. May God save our children from being, in their day, the cause of such comments by others!
P.S. It is two o'clock, and the infernal bill has just passed. Dough, if not infinite in quantity, is infinitely soft. The North is again disgracefully beaten, most disgracefully.
SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 322
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