Congressman Horace Mann to E. W. Clapp, June 24, 1852

WASHINGTON, June 24, 1852.

MY DEAR SIR, — I left home on Saturday, stopped over Sunday in New York, and came on on Monday. At Philadelphia I heard the news of the nomination; and, when I arrived at Baltimore, the first men I saw were some of our Massachusetts Hunker delegates. Sadder-looking men away from a funeral I never saw. The Fillmore and Webster men composed a majority of the convention, and therefore had every thing their own way in the organization; in the Committee on Credentials, by which they let in all their friends, and shut out all their enemies, without reference to the fairness οr unfairness of their election — just as the Democrats did Rantoul; and also in the Committee on Resolutions.

But, when they came to the nomination, the antislavery and anticompromise portion of the convention prevailed; and, if they did not win a full triumph, their enemies suffered a terrible defeat. They withstood not only the Southern slavery phalanx, but all the influence of the Government, and all the mammon Hunkerism of State Street, Wall Street, and Walnut Street. . . .

H. M.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 370