South Boston, Dec. 29th, 1850.
My Dear Mann:
— It is not as you say, out of sight out of mind, as far as regards my feelings
towards you. I was too grateful for your letter to answer it in the hurry and
turmoil in which I have been. I have been looking and longing for a leisure
hour to confer with you, and I seize the first one I have had.
Shall I tell you all about myself? A part of each day I have
to fight for life; if
I do not take at least one cold bath I get sick; and if after each bath I do
not take smart exercise for at least half an hour I should turn into an icicle
and die. I am up at half-past five, and chilled down and warmed up again by
half-past six, for the first exercise at the Institution. I have to work there
and to walk some six miles daily and see to my idiots, and worry the rest of
the time.
I have been hard at work in all odd hours writing a paper
upon, or rather against, the proposed State Reform School for Girls. I suppose
it will be published and I shall send you a copy. My ground is that we should
not build a great central House of Reformation and gather the girls there,
because the principle ought to be that of separation and diffusion, not of
congregation of vicious persons, because the girls will be exposed to public
gaze, and get the character of bad girls, and learn to think themselves such;
because we have thousands and thousands of natural reform schools, viz.
virtuous families, in which they ought to be received and reformed, & c.,
&c. The Boys' Reform School costs, with the interest on the capital,
$27,000 per annum. I maintain that with half this sum we may place the girls in
good families, paying a bonus and giving their services as domestics, and
support a corps of women whose business it shall be to visit them and
see to them. But you will see my plan.
I have been put upon the Board of Trustees (of four) to get
up the new Free-soil paper, and a precious mess I have made of it, — for it
takes so much of my time as not to leave enough for sleep. I send you the
prospectus which I published last evening.
I have nearly closed a bargain with Elizur Wright to merge
his Chronotype1
in ours and to work as sub-editor on a salary of $1300. He is to do
the office work, news, etc.; to have a bit in his mouth and say nothing
editorially that the Chief does not approve. The Chief was to be
Palfrey, but yesterday he threw a bombshell into the Free-soil camp in shape of
a Confidential Circular to the Members of the Legislature, calling upon them not
to unite with the Democrats and to have nothing to do with the plan of
selling a Governor and buying a senator. This alarms our trustees, and though I
think it is the true doctrine I cannot make them think so. I never could see
how this coalition was anything but a compounding with the devil: a bad thing
done that a good thing might come out of it; (to use an absurd figure, for good
never can come out of evil). However, perhaps it is my stupidity, for wiser and
better men than I approve it. Sumner and others took a good deal of pains once
to convince me (and succeeded in doing so) that it was necessary to carry Free-soil
principles into State elections: now they want to unconvince me, and to
prove to me that it is not necessary to have a Free-soil Governor or to vote
for one.
We have a fund raised for our paper, and can carry it on for
some time at least. We have a good deal of talent that can be worked in; Wright
(a host in himself), Hildreth, Adams, Palfrey and Bird, Bradburn and others. We
shall be, for the first few weeks, dependent on labours of love, and hope you
can help us. Can you not send something that will be useful?
I have seen G. B. Emerson several times, and he sought
occasion to talk with me about you. He is a very singular man. He has much war
in his elements. He wants to be generous and true and high, but has not enough back-bone.
He said he was about to write a notice of your labours (which as he said
were really prodigious and unparalleled) when your Notes appeared;
and then, said he, “I found it would be of no use, that people would not
hear,” &c., &c. He did not know how much he yielded to the blast; how
much nobler it would have been for him then to have spoken and turned
the public clamour. Finding how much he made of the Notes, I put it to
him whether he and others were not treating you as though you had been guilty
of some moral delinquency, of some unprincipled act, whereas, according to the
worst showing of your worst enemies, you had shown nothing but bad temper and
bad taste. He could say nothing. He admits and deplores, as he says to me, the demoralizing
influence of D—— W——2 upon the public of New England.
I compared him to a great black mountain which possessed the
power of disturbing the moral compass, and producing moral shipwreck, and he
admitted the truth of the comparison.
I tell you, Mann, you gave the old fellow a terrible
shaking; his hold upon the public of the North is loosened very much; there is
a feeling of disgust gradually spreading through the community, and it only
needs something to crystallize round to assume vast proportions. If any one
should set forth, strongly and vividly, the falsehood and treason to virtue and
right which is implied by this worship of an immoral, drunken debauchee, people
would see it and be ashamed of it. They would see that they are but little
better, in the homage they render to mere strength of intellect, than the
savages in their homage to mere bodily prowess.
I have had some occasion to know something of your successor3
and his mode of doing business, — but what a falling off! It took me nearly a
week to get an answer to a question about the rules of the Normal School, and
the answer was finally from a sub saying that it was the opinion of
the Secretary, &c. &c. that the rule was so and so, but he would
ascertain, &c.
There will be very busy and exciting times here this week
and the next, and no man can say what the end will be. The Democrats will try
to outwit the Free-soilers, but these are upon their guard. Sumner cannot
strongly will one way or another: my advice is worth little because I know
little about the machinery, — but my love for Sumner makes me wish that he
could be exalted by something better than a coalition which I regard as rather
iniquitous.
Sumner feels very anxious and disturbed about it: he means
to be perfectly upright and conscientious, and will not compromise any of his
high principles. It will be hard for him to escape unpleasant dilemmas. He
dislikes to give up his dreams of a quiet literary life. He is a rare and noble
spirit, too good for the political ring.
Remember me kindly to Madame, and believe me, dear Mann,
Ever thine,
S. G. Howe.
_______________
1 A paper edited by Wright.
2 Daniel Webster.
3 The new Secretary of the Board of Education.
SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and
Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 330-3
