Showing posts with label George B Emerson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George B Emerson. Show all posts

Saturday, August 4, 2018

Samuel Gridley Howe to Horace Mann, December 29, 1850

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