Nov. 17, ’48.
Hon. S. Fairbanks.
Dear Sir: — In
reply to your question the other day whether there was any truth in the story
that I led blind persons to the polls, on the last election day, and guided
their hands to the ballot box while they dropped in their votes, I said that
there was not, and that probably there was no foundation for it.
I now learn that there was some foundation for the
story. One of our teachers, who is blind, wished to vote, and our principal
teacher, Mr. Littlefield, led him to the polls, and guided his hand to the
ballot box.
From the satisfaction which you manifested when I told you
the story was untrue, I am led to believe that you regard the act of helping a
blind man to vote as an improper one: and I know that you have so much
rectitude of purpose and so much kindness of heart that you will be glad to be
disabused of such an error.
I consider the act of Mr. Littlefield as perfectly
proper; and I should feel ashamed of myself if I could hesitate a moment
about leading any blind man to the polls, and guiding his hand to the ballot
box, if he was duly qualified and wished to vote.
Look at it, my dear Sir, for one moment, and if there ever
was the shadow of doubt in your mind about the propriety of the thing it will
vanish away.
We endeavour by all means in our power to inspire the blind
with a proper degree of self-respect; we educate them for the world, for
citizens of a free country; and when their education is finished, we bid them
go out into the world and take their place among men. The blind person whom Mr.
Littlefield led to the polls is a most intelligent, high-minded, and worthy
young man.
He was trained here in our school: he afterwards went
through college, and graduated with honour. He feels the same interest in the
general politics and welfare of the country that you and I do; he is as
desirous as we are of discharging all the duties of a freeman, and exercising
all the privileges of a voter; and why should he not vote?
I say nothing about the practice so common here of paying
for carriages to carry the old, the feeble, or the lazy to the polls, out of a
fund to which our wealthy men contribute; but I ask you, if on the morning of
the election you had met one of your friends who had by accident lamed himself,
and injured his arm so as not to be able to hold his hand steadily, and he
asked you for your aid, would you not have given him your arm to lean upon as
he walked to the polls, and even steadied his hand, if he so wished, while he
dropped his vote? And shall I refuse my aid to my fellow man because he is afflicted
with the dreadful calamity of blindness? God forbid!
But it would be an insult to your understanding and to your
heart to suppose that any argument is necessary to convince you of the
propriety of Mr. Littlefield's action.
If you should think the matter worth mentioning to your
informant, please say, that Dr. Howe did not lead a blind man to the
polls, and guide his hand to the ballot box at the late election, but that he
regrets that he had not the opportunity of doing such a kind and righteous act.
Now that I am upon the subject, let me say that if I had
chosen to exercise my influence here, and especially if I had, as is often done
in Boston, paid the poll tax for others, I might have sent more than half a
dozen persons to the polls from this house, every one of whom, probably, would
have voted the Free-soil ticket.
But I did no such thing. I leave the inmates to make up
their own mind on political matters, taking care that they shall have the means
of getting that side of the question that they would not be likely to
get from me. The only newspapers that have been regularly supplied to them and
paid for by the Institution are the Daily Advertiser, the Courier, and
the Evening Journal, all staunch Whig papers; and if they have not been
able to convince the blind of the correctness of the doctrines they teach, it
is their own fault.
Excuse this long intrusion upon your patience and believe me
Very truly yours,
S. G. Howe.
SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and
Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 296-8
