Wednesday Eve., April,
10 o'clock, 1851.
My Dear Mann: —
I am sad and sick at heart at the probable issue to-morrow. You know I have
never advocated nor consented to the coalition with the Democrats; I always
condemned it as unwise and useless; I always thought that the Free-soil party
might have carried the day in five years without coalescing with anybody; I go
with Palfrey in his circular; and yet I have come to wish and pray that Sumner
may be elected to the Senate, because no man now eligible here can so well
represent the anti-slavery sentiment of the North as he.
It is useless for me to go into the causes of the defeat of
the Free-soilers here. They have been mainly three, any one of which was
enough. Want of skilful leaders; — bad faith on the part of Democrats; — and
the prodigious outside pressure of the Union, as it were, upon the waverers.
The first defeat was owing to the bungling mismanagement of Earle,1
who allowed the election to be postponed; then the foolish trusting to
Democrats by electing their Governor instead of laying him on the table — and
so it has been. I do not believe that more than half the Democrats were honest;
and there were some of them who even contemplated defeating Sumner, provided
they could not seduce him to compromise himself by pledges. He has rather, I
think, leaned over backward, in his attempt to stand erect and firm and be
uncompromising. He uselessly froissait (as the French say) some of the
Hunker2 Democrats who waited upon him at the time when it
seemed certain that he would be elected. All this is over now; the Senate has
elected him, and to-morrow the House will, I forebode, reject him. Boutwell and
the Speaker, and a few other leading Democrats, make a bluster, swear Sumner
must and shall be put through, &c. &c. — but I mistrust them. There are
all the old Hunkers at work like the devil. Old M——, the slimy snake, who has
all along been crawling into Sumner's office and confidence, and telling him
that he conferred with no one else on politics, — he has long been denouncing
Sumner, and straining every nerve to defeat him. Cushing and Hallett et id
genus omne are at work; and there has been brought to work in unison with
them the governmental influence at Washington. What did B. R. C[urtis]3
go there for? his friends here said he was going south, perhaps to the West
Indies, for his health. Tell that to the marines! We have little or no outside
influence; Downer has done more than all the rest put together. There seems a
spell on them. Bird has been for trust; Alley (a good man and true)
seems utterly paralyzed and discouraged; Wilson can't do much, though he has
more head than the rest at the House; Keyes has been firing and fizzing, but
can't keep up at red heat long; Phillips has been much miffed; Adams and
Palfrey, anti-coalitionists, will not work — and so it goes. The end of the
whole matter will be that Sumner will gradually fall behind — the thing will be
put off and put off — and nothing done at all. The Democrats will satisfy their
consciences by seeming to try for what they know they cannot do.
I think all our friends who have taken office should resign
as soon as it is certain Sumner cannot be elected. How to re-unite our broken
ranks I know not. We must be honest; eschew coalitions, and get a reputation by
living well in future.
Ever yours,
S. G. H.
_______________
1 John Milton Earle of Worcester.
2The "Hunkers" were conservative
Democrats, generally supposed to have a leaning toward slavery; the same class
as the “Copperheads” of the Civil War.
3 Benjamin R. Curtis.
SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and
Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 343-5
