Congressman Horace Mann, July 9, 1850

WASHINGTON, July 9, 1850.

It is a sad hour. News has just come from the White House that the President is dying. If he dies, it will be a calamity that no man can measure. His being a Southern man, a slaveholder, and a hero, has been like the pressure of a hundred atmospheres upon the South. If he dies, they will feel that their strongest antagonist has been struck from the ranks of their opponents; and I fear there will not be firmness nor force enough in all the North to resist them. The future is indeed appalling.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 307

Congressman Horace Mann, July 10, 1850

July 10. Long before this reaches you, you will have heard that Gen. Taylor is gone. It is indeed a sad event for the country. Only one thing, at the time of his election, reconciled me to it, the perfect political profligacy of his opponent. But the course of Gen. Taylor has been such as to conciliate me, and all whose opinions have coincided with mine, to a degree which we should have thought beforehand impossible. He had probably taken the wisest course that he could have taken. He poised himself between the North and the South. He knew it was utterly impossible for any prohibition of slavery to pass the present Senate; he supposed that no Territorial Government could possibly be passed by the House, without the proviso; and therefore he took things at first where he knew they could be left after the contest of a session. He went for no Territorial Government at all, leaving the Territories to form State Governments for themselves; being well convinced that they would form free constitutions. He relied upon this with more confidence than of us did but he had it in his power to procure the fulfilment of his own prophecy; and I am satisfied that it has been his purpose, from the beginning, that slavery should be extended no farther.

A dark hour is before us!

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 307

Congressman Albert G. Brown’s Squatter Sovereignty Speech, February 12, 1850

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEBRUARY 12, 1850,

DISSENTING FROM CERTAIN VIEWS PRESENTED TO THE SENATE BY MR. CASS.

MR. BROWN said he would occupy a very few minutes, in presenting some views which he should have presented the other day, but for the expiration of his hour.

Having already taken his position against the President's recommendation of the California constitution, and having expressed his abhorrence of the whole series of movements, which led to its adoption by the people in that country, he should not further allude to the President or Cabinet in that connection.

A new character had presented himself, as one of the champions of this new and extraordinary political movement. He alluded to General Cass, the late Democratic candidate for the Presidency. That distinguished gentleman had redeemed his pledge, and the pledge of his friends, on the subject of the Wilmot proviso. He had spoken against it. He had expressed his determination not to vote for it. With this he was satisfied; he would go further, and say, that the speech, so far as it related to the proviso, challenged his admiration and excited his gratitude. It was replete with sound views, eloquently and happily expressed. And no one could read it attentively without conceding to its author great ability. If the distinguished gentleman had closed his speech with his argument against the proviso, there would not have been a man in all the country more willing than himself to award him the highest honors. But the speech was marred by the expression of opinions, in its closing paragraphs, to which he (Mr. B.) and the southern people generally would dissent. General Cass had (if Mr. B. correctly understood him) avowed his opinion to be, that the people of the territories have the right to exclude slavery; and he was understood to sustain the action of the people in California in forming a state government. Against all these parts of the speech of General Cass, he (Mr. B.) entered his solemn protest. He felt bound to do this, because in the late presidential canvass he had, as the friend of General Cass, given a different interpretation to his views, as foreshadowed in the Nicholson letter. True, he had not done this without some misgivings, at first, of its correctness. But gentlemen nearer the person of General Cass than himself had interpreted the Nicholson letter to mean, that when the people of a territory were duly authorized to form a state constitution, they could then admit or exclude slavery at will, and whether they did the one thing or the other was not a matter to be questioned by Congress. He now conceded, as he had done in the presidential canvass, that whenever a people duly authorized to form a state constitution, have exercised this authority and asked admission into the Union, it is not properly a subject of inquiry whether their constitution admits or excludes slavery from the proposed state. But he understood General Cass as going further than this—to the extent of giving to the people of the territories the right to exclude slavery during their territorial existence, and indeed before government of any sort had been established by Congress. He understood the doctrine as advanced by General Cass to be, that the occupants of the soil where no government existed -as in New Mexico, California, Deseret, &c.—had the right to exclude slavery; and against this doctrine he raised his humble voice; and though he might stand alone, without one other southern representative to sustain him, he would protest against it to the last.

In the late presidential canvass, men of all parties had assailed this doctrine. The Whigs charged General Cass with entertaining these views, and the Democrats had vindicated him against the charge. The doctrine was universally denounced by men of all parties in the South; and now we were startled with the intelligence that General Cass and General Taylor both approve it. For himself, no earthly consideration should keep him silent on such a question. No consideration personal to himself-no party ties nor political obligations, should seal his lips, when his country was about to be betrayed and sacrificed. He had denounced this doctrine before his constituents, he now denounced it before the House. He would not consume time, and prevent other gentlemen from speaking, by going into an argument on the subject. He had felt it due to his own position--to the cause of truth and justice, to make known at the first convenient moment, that what he condemned in General Taylor he equally condemned in General Cass; and having done this, he was satisfied.

SOURCE: M. W. Cluskey, Editor, Speeches, Messages, and Other Writings of the Hon. Albert G. Brown, A Senator in Congress from the State of Mississippi, p. 177-8

Congressman Horace Mann, March 1, 1850

MARCH 1, 1850.

I dined at the President's to-day, and sat on his left, with only one lady between, and had considerable conversation with him. He really is a most simple-minded old man. He has the least show or pretension about him of any man I ever saw; talks as artlessly as a child about affairs of State, and does not seem to pretend to a knowledge of any thing of which he is ignorant. He is a remarkable man in some respects; and it is remarkable that such a man should be President of the United States. He said it was impossible to destroy the Union. “I have taken an oath to support it," said he; "and do you think I am going to commit perjury? Mr. Jefferson pointed out the way in which any resistance could be put down,—which was to send a fleet to blockade their harbors, levy duties on all goods going in, and prevent any goods from coming out. I can save the Union without shedding a drop of blood. It is not true, as was reported at the North, that I said I would march an army and subdue them: there would be no need of any." And thus he went on talking like a child about his cob-house, and how he would keep the kittens from knocking it over.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 292-3