Congressman Horace Mann, August 17, 1852

AUG. 17.

Miss Dix's bill is now up. We are calling the yeas and nays upon it. It will pass, I think, without doubt; but I shall let you know before I seal this.

Miss Dix finds new work all the time. This District has about forty lunatics, which it supports at the Institution of Maryland, near Baltimore. These are all to be turned out in a few days; and she is trying to get a bill passed for a hospital in this District.

The bill for a hospital has passed the House!

I thought I was to have the floor just now, and my heart went pit-a-pat; for I have never yet been able to speak anywhere without trepidation. But the chairman gave it to another man. At ten minutes to three, I shall try again.

Miss Dix's bill passed by yeas 98, nays 54. It always took two-thirds to get it up: so a majority did not help us.

Miss Dix is alarmed about her land-bill in the Senate; but I think it will go through there. She wishes to get through here, so that she can go to Nova Scotia, where they have made an appropriation for a hospital.

I had rather a boisterous time for half an hour with my speech. It blew hard; but I weathered the storm.

Don't be alarmed when you see what Polk said about my not holding myself responsible; that is, according to the laws of the duello. He is a poor drunken fellow from Tennessee, for whom no one has any respect, though he is brother of the former President. They tried to choke me down: but they might as well have tried to roar down old Boreas; for, when I "gets up" a little, I am quite as hard to be subdued as the more noisy ones.

I hope to have it all printed, and perhaps in your hands, this week.

You will see what an attack Polk made on Parson Fowler yesterday, — not violent and furious, but annoying. He said to the parson coseyly, while speaking, "You know we two are Christians." Polk is drunk every day. But it is now said that it will be honorably arranged, and there will be no "coffee and pistols" between them.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, pp. 380-1

Congressman Horace Mann, August 27, 1852

AUG. 27, 1852.

Sumner spoke about four hours yesterday; and it was a very finished and able speech, sustaining in every point his high reputation as a jurist and a scholar. It was delivered in a very elegant and finished manner. To speak in full, the 26th of August, 1852, redeemed the 7th of March, 1850.

Webster came into the Senate very early in the speech. He took a seat not far from Sumner, and about eight feet from me; so situated that I must look into his face, or turn my head. I looked at him fascinatingly. I think he felt the magnetism streaming out of me. In about two minutes, his countenance fell: he got up and walked round to the other side of the Senate Chamber, staid a while, and went off. Sumner, during all the time he was there, was in the least solid part of his speech. It was one of his best orations, well studied and well delivered, and will tell on the country, and be a speech for a book and for history.

That drunken Clemens of Alabama jumped up instanter, and said,

"Mr. President, it is proper sometimes to take notice of the ravings of a lunatic; but the yelpings of a puppy are not to be regarded."

Miss Dix's bill has gone over to the next session. She sent for me yesterday afternoon in despair. But she has got an appropriation of a hundred thousand dollars for a hospital in this District; and it is thought that her land-bill can be carried next session. It has passed the House, and, unless some amendments are made to it, will not have to come back here again.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 381

Congressman Horace Mann, September 12, 1850

SEPT. 12.

What I wished to tell you yesterday was what Miss Dix had just told me about her hospital in New Jersey. One gentleman has given money enough — several hundred dollars to place a fountain in the yard; another to buy a magic lantern for the amusement of the patients; and she had just asked a Mr. King, a member of the House, to give her money for a library, and he had given it. So she was all smiles and delight when I saw her. Think of her going round, first to establish hospitals; then to fill them, and to take care of them; and then to enrich them with libraries and apparatus, and beautify them with embellishments!

I have been writing so far while the clerk was calling the yeas and nays on the Fugitive-slave Bill, an outrageous bill; not so bad as the one I denounced in my second letter, but one which will make abolitionists by battalions and regiments.

It has just passed by a vote of 105 to 73, an enormous majority. I think this bill will inflame the country more than the Territorial bills; but I do not know but the nerve of the country has been so often excited, that it has lost its susceptibility. I cannot speak with any composure of this series of diabolical measures. What makes it all so terrible is, that these bills passed by treachery, the grossest treachery of those who were chosen to do directly the opposite thing. I wish I had my former force with which to curse the measures, if not the men!

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 326

Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes to Lucy Webb Hayes, October 1, 1864

HARRISONBURG, VIRGINIA, October 1, 1864.

DEAREST:— The First Brigade has gone out six miles to grind up the wheat in that neighborhood - three mills there and Dr. Joe has gone with them.

Colonel Powell just returned from Staunton. They burned all wheat stacks, mills, and barns with grain, and are driving in all cattle and horses. Large numbers of families are going out with us. Dunkards and Mennonites, good quiet people, are generally going to Ohio. I hope we shall move back in a day or two.

Our wounded all doing well. Only seven deaths in all the hospitals at Winchester. Miss Dix and Presidents of Christian and Sanitary Commissions with oceans of luxuries and comforts there, and the good people of Winchester to cook and help. [The] Sixth Corps take one street; [the] Nineteenth, the Main Street; and Crook's, the Eastern. Rebel (wounded) and ours now there about three thousand. Twenty-third, thirty-three; Fifth, eight; Thirty-sixth, thirteen, and Thirteenth, twenty. All the rest gone home. Captain Hiltz, Twelfth-Twenty-third, lost his leg. As soon as the operation was over and the effect of the chloroform passed off, he looked at the stump and said: "No more eighteen dollars for boots to sutler now; nine dollars [will] shoe me!" Captain Hastings doing well; heard from him last night.

General Lightburn came up a day or two ago with staff and orderlies and asked General Crook for the command of my division. He had reported along the road that he was going out to take General Crook's old division. General Crook told him the division was officered to his satisfaction and ordered him back to Harpers Ferry to await orders.

Colonel Duval is doing well and hopes to return by the last of this month (October).

Colonel Comly keeps a pretty full diary. He has sent extracts containing the two battles home. They will probably appear in the Cincinnati Gazette.

I shall send a Rebel's diary to the Commercial. It was taken from his pocket at Winchester.

We rather expect to go into something like winter quarters soon after getting back to Winchester or Martinsburg. Of course there will be extensive campaigning done yet, but we think we shall now be excused. I speak of Crook's Command. - Love to all.

Affectionately ever,

R.

MRS. HAYES.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 519-20