MY DEAR SIR,—Is it true that you say, or that you have been informed, that I have written any apologetic or any explanatory or deprecatory letter to the editor of the "Boston Bee," which he is privately showing?
It certainly shows native genius when men can build so large a superstructure of falsehood on so small a foundation of truth. I will tell you the whole story, so that you may see how big a bird can be hatched out of a small egg.
Some time during the present session, I think, last winter, one of the editors of the "Bee," Mr. R—— called on me here. I saw him several times, and he appeared friendly, and our interviews were agreeable; that is, to me. He asked some favor of me, which I gladly rendered. He then expressed his thanks, quite as warmly as I could have desired; told me that his paper had done me injustice formerly (during my controversy with the Boston schoolmasters); said he resisted it at the time, but was overcome by his partners; and then expressed to me, in strong terms, his regret for the injury that had been done me. I gave him to understand, that, at the time, I had felt the injustice, but that the occasion had passed away, and with it almost all recollection of it; and that I should be none the less ready to do him a favor when occasion should offer.
In July or August last, when the "Bee" published that gross falsehood, that I (with others) had visited Mr. Fillmore, and had interfered to persuade him not to appoint Mr. Webster as a member of his Cabinet, the interviews which I had had with Mr. R———, his apology for the wrong done me by the " Bee," &c., came to my mind. At that period, the "Bee" had, for some time, been assailing me through what was called a "Washington correspondent." Under these circumstances, I thought I would write a letter to Mr. R———, remind him of our former intercourse, and put him upon his bearings as a man of honor and truth. I did not know his partners, and did not wish to write to them, or put myself in their hands in any way. I thought, if I had not entirely mistaken the character of Mr. R———, I would prevent further abuse and falsification by appealing to him. I therefore wrote him the letter marked private, or confidential, in which I referred to our former interview, reminded him of his apology, and remonstrated with him for the course taken in charging me with what I had not done. There was not a word in the letter which a gentleman might not write or receive; nothing clandestine, nothing partisan; no threats for anger, no intercessions for favor. Not knowing Mr. R's partners, and at the same time knowing how such things get distorted and misrepresented and falsified when they pass through a partisan medium, I wrote to him alone; and I can hardly conceive that he should show the letter, even to his partners. Certainly, if I did not entirely mistake his character as a man of honor, he cannot have been showing that letter to the public or to individuals, or suggesting that there is one idea in it unworthy of me, as a man of truth and sincerity, to feel or to express.
I desire, therefore, that you would go to Mr. R, and, if the letter is in being, ask him to show it to you (for which this is my permission), and learn for yourself whether it contains any thing which I might not write, or any thing which would authorize him to break the seal of silence by showing it.
SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 327-8
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