Congressman Horace Mann to Mr. Combe, July 1, 1852

WASHINGTON, July 1, 1852.

MY DEAR MR. COMBE, — . . . My friend Henry Barnard, Esq., who for many years was Secretary of the Board of Education, either in Connecticut or in Rhode Island, is about to visit England and Scotland, partly on account of his health, and partly to see your schools. You have always been partial enough to affix a higher value to my services on the subject of education than I could honestly claim or fairly expect. If you will put double all the credit you have ever given to me, and pass it to Mr. Barnard's account, you will hardly do his extraordinary services more than justice. His mind is full of wisdom, and his life has been full of devotion on this subject.

You will have learned, before receiving this, the event of our party Presidential nomination. What an awful moral has been derived from the fate of those who have been false to freedom! Every one of those Northern men, who, for the last half-dozen years, have devoted themselves to slavery, have been set aside; and those men who suffered and indirectly promoted all the atrocities of the Mexican war, though against all their own professions, did, by that very dereliction from duty, raise up two warriors to come in and pluck away the honors they had forfeited their integrity to obtain. Was it not a just retribution?

There is all the difference between the candidates that there is between a hero and his valet de chambre. Scott, too, is an antislavery man. Pierce will be the merest tool of slavery.

The Democratic Convention was almost in toto a proslavery body, and the ultra proslavery portion of it prevailed in the selection of Pierce. In the Whig Convention, the antislavery element prevailed; so that, though the contest is implicated with other matters, and its real issues are somewhat obscured, yet, if Scott is elected, it will be a great antislavery triumph. It was the first time that the antislavery element ever prevailed in any national convention.

Mrs. Mann and the children have gone home. I live here alone, and, of course, forlorn. I hear from them every day, and they are well. With kindest regards to yourself and Mrs. Combe,

I remain, as ever, yours truly,

HORACE MANN.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 372-3