Congressman Horace Mann, September 19, 1850

A Mr. Venable, of North Carolina, is making a speech against any special efforts to colonize Liberia. He thinks the negro settlements there will fail; that the settlers are incapable of civilization, and will soon relapse into barbarism. This is a fine commentary upon that view of the special providences which justifies the slave-trade and slavery in this country for these hundred years, in order to return the race to the land from which it came, and thus introduce or transfer our civilization into that region of the earth!

The days wear away beautifully. Ought any one to be placed in such a position as to desire the lapse of time? . . .

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 332

Reverend Horace James, June 6, 1863

Office Of Superintendent Of Blacks,

Newbern, N. C., June 6th, 1863.

Respecting Teachers, I am ready to assure you, from General Foster himself, that he will afford them military protection, government rations, and as good a dwelling place as the circumstances will allow. We have but one Newbern in the department. Here they will have a good house to live in. At Beaufort it would be much the same. But on Roanoke Island, and perhaps at Plymouth and Washington, certainly at Hatteras, we could not supply them so comfortably. I am confident there will be no trouble on this point. Still I wish that those who are sent may share largely in a missionary spirit, and come out here expecting to teach and to live in a log shanty, or even in a tent, if we can do no better for them. Let them aspire to emulate their brothers in self-denial, who have preceded them here in the regiments, and with the sword have cut a passage for the army of Educators' to follow on.

Horace James.

SOURCE: New-England Educational Commission for Freedmen, Extracts from Letters of Teachers and Superintendents of the New-England Educational Commission for Freedmen, Fourth Series, January 1, 1864, p. 7