Robert C. Winthrop to John J. Crittenden, May 13, 1852

BOSTON, May 13, 1852.

MY DEAR MR. CRITTENDEN,—I received a welcome letter from you weeks ago, for which I have often thanked you in spirit, and now tender you my cordial acknowledgments in due form. I trust that we are going to meet you all again this summer. You must come to Newport and resume your red republican robes and bathe off the debilities of a long heat at Washington. I wish you could be here at Commencement, July 22. Between now and then the great question of candidacy will be settled. How? How? Who can say? However it be, this only I pray,—give us a chance in Massachusetts to support it effectively. I do believe that we can elect Webster, Fillmore, Scott, or Crittenden, if there shall not be an unnecessary forcing of mere shibboleths down our throats. There is not an agitator in the whole Whig party here—no one who cares to disturb anything that has been done. As to the fugitive slave law, though I never thought it a wise piece of legislation, nor ever believed that it would be very effective, I have not the slightest doubt that it will long survive the satisfaction of the South and stand on the statute-book after its efficiency has become about equal to that of '93. But tests and provisos are odious things, whether Wilmot or anti-Wilmot. Webster is here, and his arrival has been the signal for a grand rally among his friends. There is no doubt but Massachusetts would work hard for him if he were fairly in the field, and I think there will be a general consent that he shall have the votes of all our delegates; but, what are they among so many? Do not let anybody imagine, however, that we shall bolt from the regular nominee, whoever he be, unless some unimaginably foolish action should be adopted by the convention.

Believe me, my dear sir, always most cordially and faithfully your friend and servant,

R. C. WINTHROP.

J. J. CRITTENDEN.

SOURCE: Ann Mary Butler Crittenden Coleman, Editor, The Life of John J. Crittenden: With Selections from His Correspondence and Speeches, Vol. 2, p. 36

Senator Charles Sumner to Thomas Wentworth Higginson,* September 5, 1851

More than ever do I feel the importance to our cause of preventing the Commonwealth from passing into the hands of Webster Whiggery. This, of course, can be prevented only by a combination—I wish a complete community of principle would allow it to be a union—with the Democrats. Regretting that they are not more essentially with us, I feel that we shall throw our staff away if we reject the opportunity which seems offered of their cooperation against the Whigs. With a mutual understanding of each other, and with a real determination to carry the combination honestly through in the hope of sustaining our great cause, I cannot doubt the result. Webster and Winthrop will be defeated. Perhaps, at the present moment, no political event connected with elections would be of greater advantage to freedom. I fear from what I have heard that these views may not entirely harmonize with but I feel that our aims are so nearly identical, my sympathy yours; with your earnestness is so complete, that I do not think we could differ substantially as to the true course to be pursued if we could see each other and fully interchange opinions.

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* This letter to Mr. Higginson, as well as another to Mr. Whittier, written a few days later, were intended to remove their doubts as to the policy of further co-operation with the Democrats.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 254

Congressman Horace Mann, September 15, 1850

Sept. 15. There has been a very sharp debate in the Senate, in which the Southern men have rode and overrode Mr. Winthrop, and hunted up all the ugly things they could say about Massachusetts, and pitched them at him. I do not think Mr. Winthrop has sustained himself very well. He ought to have carried the war into Africa, or at least to have repelled the intruders from his own territory. When we speak of the South as they are, the first thing they do is to ransack our old history; and whatever they can find either against the law of toleration as we now consider it, or the duties of humanity as a higher civilization exemplifies and expounds them, they bring forward. They have never yet been properly answered. If some such man as Sumner was in the seat, he would turn the tables upon them.

The South are more rampant than ever. They feel their triumph. Two or three times within the last week, the "Union," the Southern Democratic organ here, has declared, that, if such or such a thing is done, the Union will totter to its centre. Her interminable cry will now be, if she cannot have her own way, that the Union is tumbling to pieces. We are to have this idea of dissolution as the supplement for all argument, and the arsenal of all weapons. There is a momentary lull; but the presidency-seekers will soon open a deadly fire upon each other.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 330

Congressman Horace Mann, July 29, 1850

JULY 29, 1850.

We have just heard that Mr. Winthrop has been appointed senator to fill the place made vacant by Mr. Webster. Under the circumstances, the duty of appointing devolved upon Gov. Briggs. I am so certain, that I can almost say I know this appointment has been very disagreeable to Gov. Briggs, and that he has been forced into it by the Webster influence. The promotion, and therefore indorsement, of Mr. Webster by President Fillmore, has given the proslavery party a prodigious advantage in this contest. If the South, and their proslavery friends at the North, do not carry this measure, it will be almost like a miracle. But there is a goodly number of us who will stand firm. For my part, I would rather have the feeling of free thought and free speech within me than to have the highest office which the nation can bestow.

The Compromise Bill is coming to a crisis, and the contest becomes intense. Two tie-votes were taken yesterday in the Senate on important amendments, which shows how nearly parties are divided.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 310

Senator Daniel Webster to Robert C. Winthrop, Sunday Morning, June [possibly 9,] 1850

Sunday morning, June, 1850.

MY DEAR SIR,—I truly lament that my arrangements for the week prevent my acceptance of your invitation for Tuesday, to meet what I am sure will be a most agreeable party of friends.

Mr. Edward Curtis and myself, with Mrs. Curtis and Mrs. Webster, propose to leave the city as early as Monday evening or Tuesday morning, for a short journey into Virginia, to occupy the expected days of recess of the Senate.

As long as I have passed a great part of every year here, I never yet saw the "passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge." We propose to go by the railroad to Harper's Ferry, thence to Winchester or further up the valley, and to return by the way of Charlottesville.

I assure you it gives me pain to miss the opportunity of seeing, at your house, the distinguished strangers mentioned in your note. Yours always truly,

DANIEL WEBSTER.

SOURCE: Fletcher Webster, Editor, The Private Correspondence of Daniel Webster, Vol. 2, p. 372

Congressman Charles S. Morehead to Senator John J. Crittenden, March 30, 1850

WASHINGTON, March 30, 1850.

MY DEAR SIR,—I received your letter of the 19th inst., for which I am very much obliged to you. All that is done here is so fully detailed in the daily papers that I need not attempt to give you an account of it. We are proceeding slowly with the debate on the absorbing topic growing out of our territorial acquisitions. I begin to believe that the whole question will be satisfactorily settled by admitting California as a State and making territorial governments for the residue of the country without the proviso. I regret, however, to state that we can hope for very little, if any, aid from the Whigs of the North in the House. I do not know one man that we can certainly count. There were eight or ten who promised to go with us, but I have reason to believe that the cabinet influence has drawn them off. Ewing and Meredith have evidently much feeling on the subject. Clayton, Crawford, Preston, and Johnson, I understand, will go for territorial bills. It is understood that General Taylor himself would be glad if such bills can be passed without the proviso, and would prefer such a settlement to the non-action policy. I cannot, however, speak from any personal knowledge on this subject. I have no doubt, however, as to the four members of the cabinet I have named. Indeed, it is indispensably necessary that it should be settled on this basis. There is not one single man from any slaveholding State who would agree to any other settlement, and I fear the very worst consequences from any attempt to force through the California bill without a full settlement. Fifty members, under our rules, can prevent the bill from being reported from the committee of the whole, where it now is, to the House. But I believe we have a decided majority for such a settlement as the South demands. There are twenty-nine Democrats from the North pledged to go with us. McClernand, from Illinois, has prepared a bill upon general but private consultation, embracing all the points of difference, and will offer it as a substitute, in a few days, to the California bill. If General Taylor would take open ground for a full settlement, we could get ten or twelve Whigs from the North. I believe he only wants a suitable occasion to do so. I never have in my life had so deep and abiding a conviction upon any subject as at this moment of the absolute necessity of a settlement of this whole question. I am pained to say that I fear that there are some Southern men who do not wish a settlement. We have certainly something to fear from this source, but they are so few that I think we can do without them.

The cabinet, as you might well imagine from the present state of things, receives no support from any quarter. John Tyler had a corporal's guard who defended him manfully, but the cabinet has not one man that I can now name. Each member of the cabinet has a few friends, but I do not know one man who can be called the friend of the cabinet. I apprehend that they are not even friendly to each other. You may have noticed in the Union, if you ever read it, a charge against Ewing for having allowed a very large claim in which Crawford was interested personally to the extent of one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars. It turned out that Mr. Ewing had nothing to do with it; that Whittlesey reported that there was nothing due, and Meredith, in accordance with the opinion of the Attorney-General, allowed it. Now, Ewing, if I am not mistaken (but conjecture on my part, I acknowledge), through his friends is attacking Crawford for having a claim acted on in which he was interested while a member of the cabinet. Upon the whole, I am clearly of opinion that there is but one safe course for General Taylor to pursue, and that is to reconstruct his whole cabinet. I am perfectly satisfied that he cannot carry on the government with his present ministers. Your name and that of Winthrop and of Webster have been spoken of as Secretary of State in the event of a change; but if I had to make a full cabinet I could not do it satisfactorily to myself. I am inclined to think that Mr. Webster would like to be Secretary of State, not from anything I ever heard him say but from occasional remote intimations from his friends. Just at this time his appointment would be exceedingly popular in the South. I wish most sincerely that you were here. We are altogether in a sad, sad condition. There is no good feeling between Mr. Clay and General Taylor, and I am afraid that meddling and busybodies are daily widening the breach. keep entirely aloof, taking especial and particular pains to participate in no manner whatever in the feeling on the one side or the other. I hear all, at least on one side, and try always to reconcile rather than widen the breach. I have sometimes, however, thought that a want of confidence in me resulted from the fact of my being his immediate representative. I may be mistaken—probably am; it may arise altogether from a less flattering consideration. At all events, I have never been able to converse one minute with the President upon politics without his changing the subject, so that when I see him now I never, in the remotest manner, allude to political matters.

[Continued on the next day.]

SOURCE: Ann Mary Butler Crittenden Coleman, Editor, The Life of John J. Crittenden: With Selections from His Correspondence and Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 361-3

Congressman Horace Mann, February 7, 1850

FEB. 7.

Yesterday, Mr. Clay concluded his speech upon his Compromise resolutions. Its close was pathetic. There is hardly another slaveholder in all the South who would have perilled his popularity to such an extent. It will be defeated: but, if we from the North are still, it will be defeated by Southern votes and declamation; and it is better for the cause that they should defeat it than that we should.

You were right in saying that I would not have asked Mr. Winthrop about putting me on a committee; for I would not have answered such a question, had I been in his place, and had it been asked me.

Still, I think I should have held an important place on an antislavery committee; and, what is more, should have had a majority of colleagues who would act with me. Now every thing is in jeopardy.

I never said whom I would vote for, nor whom I would not. It would have been a bitter pill to be obliged to choose between the three candidates; but, if I had been so obliged, I should have voted for the least evil.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 288-9

Charles Sumner to John Bigelow, September 2, 1850

You inquire about Eliot.¹ He is an honest and obstinate man, but essentially Hunker in grain. In other days and places he would have been an inquisitor. He dislikes a Democrat, and also a Free Soiler, as the gates of hell; still he is not without individual sympathies for the slave. I doubt if he can be a tool; besides, personally, he has little confidence in Webster. The attack here is just now most bitter upon Horace Mann. The substance of his “Notes” they cannot answer; but they have diverted attention from them by charging him with personalities, and then by criticism of his classical criticism of Webster. Now, in this matter two things are to be said: first, Webster was the first offender in personalities; and, secondly Webster is clearly wrong in the classical matter.

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¹ Samuel A. Eliot, elected to Congress as successor to Winthrop.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 217

Senator John C. Calhoun to Andrew Pickens Calhoun, December 2, 1849

Washington 2 Dec^r 1849

MY DEAR AND^W, I had a very pleasant and safe journey on. The weather was fine throughout; but is now very bad. It snowed during the night, and is now sleeting, with a North Easter; so that I was lucky in taking time by the forelock. I am now quartered at Hills on Capital Hill for the Session. There is much confusion in the ranks of both parties and it is thought it will be difficult to elect a Speaker.¹ Winthrop and Cobb have been nominated by their respective parties; There is a Scism in the ranks both of the Democrats and the Whigs, as to the Speaker, of which will be difficult to heal. The session will be one of great excitement and confusion.

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¹ See Winthrop's Memoir of Robert C. Winthrop, pp. 96-101. Howell Cobb, of Georgia, was elected.

SOURCE: J. Franklin Jameson, Editor, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1899, Volume II, Calhoun’s Correspondence: Fourth Annual Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, p. 774-5

Congressman Horace Mann, January 7, 1850

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7, 1850.

Mr. A. has infinitely slender cause to praise Mr. Cobb for putting Mr. Giddings on the Committee on Territories, and Mr. Allen on the District Committee, and Mr. King on the Judiciary; for he has so buried them up with Southern Democrats, that they cannot get their heads high up enough to breathe. With such a committee as Mr. Winthrop would have appointed, we should have met with no obstacles in getting our measures before the country and the House. Now we shall encounter the most serious of obstacles at every step; and, if it is possible for skill or power to bar out all antislavery measures, it will be done.

There is no end to the perversions of partisans. A partisan cannot be an honest man, whether he be a political or a religious partisan. How necessary it is to cultivate the seeds of truth in the young! Nothing can be, or can approach to be, a substitute for it. So of the great principle, that it is for the interest of every man to be a true man, and that by no possibility can perversion or error be useful. How the world needs to be educated!

Does H. get exact and complete ideas of things? Can he reproduce what you teach him? This is an all-important part of teaching. Has a lesson been so learned that the pupil can restate it in words, or exemplify it in act, or draw it on blackboards, &c.? This is the test to which learners should be early subjected. I am very glad about the music. We pity Laura Bridgeman for the privation of her physical powers; but how many of us need to be pitied for the privation of faculties whose absence deforms just as much as a loss of the senses! One of these is music.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 285

Congressman Horace Mann to E. W. Clap, January 12, 1850

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12, 1850.

E. W. CLAP, Esq.

DEAR SIR,—If you do not pity a poor fellow who is condemned to stay here and vote day after day, doing no good, and perhaps some harm, then you are more hard-hearted than a slaveholder. . . . I hear the Free-soil men are very ferocious against me because I voted for Mr. Winthrop. Some discussion was had about getting up an indignation meeting to give me a special denunciation. But probably they will think they can do the same thing without exposing themselves to an answer. . . .

I am told that Mr ——— and others have got this notion in their heads, and speak of it freely,— that I am to be put forward next year as a candidate for Governor, in order to break down their party. They want, therefore, to break me down first. It is not what is past, but what they profess to apprehend for the future, that directs their course. They mean to put me in the wrong, at all events. Hence that article in the "Republican," a week or ten days ago, written, as I am told, by ———. I should like a good opportunity to set this matter right. . . .

Truly yours,

HORACE MANN.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 285-6

Charles Sumner to George Sumner, January 8, 1850

You will see by the papers the doings at Washington. The contest on the Speakership is showing its good influence already.¹ The slave-power has received its first serious check, and all parties see that the slavery question is soon to be paramount to all others. General Cass's motion in the Senate² will probably be defeated; it would certainly be a dangerous precedent. Nevertheless, I am so sincerely displeased by the conduct of Austria, I should be willing to see our country depart from its general course of international usage in order to testify its condemnation of what has occurred. But, alas! while we have slavery our voice is powerless. Every word for freedom exposes the horrid inconsistency of our position. The slavery discussion will follow that of the Austrian mission. In the Senate I predict great weight for my friend, the new senator from Ohio, Mr. Chase. He is a man of decided ability, and I think will trouble Calhoun on the slavery question more than any others. He is in earnest, is a learned and well-trained lawyer, and is a grave, emphatic, and powerful speaker."³

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¹ Howell Cobb of Georgia and Winthrop being the Democratic and Whig candidates. Ante, p. 148.

² Looking to a suspension of diplomatic relations with Austria, on account of her treatment of Hungary.

³ Mr. Chase spoke against Clay's Compromise, March 26 and 27, 1850, making the most thorough and spirited speech on that side.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 212

Charles Sumner to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, January 24, 1850

[January 24, 1850.]

DEAR HENRY,

Whittier is here on a short visit. I go to-night with Miss Bremer to hear Wendell Phillips, and to-morrow evening dine out, or I should insist upon taking him [Whittier] to you. He is staying at the Quincy Hotel, in Brattle Street.

I regret the sentiments of John Van Buren about mobs, but rejoice that he is right on slavery. I do not know that I should differ very much from him in saying that we have more to fear from the corruption of wealth than from mobs. Edmund Dwight once gave, within my knowledge, two thousand dollars to influence a single election. Other men whom we know very well are reputed to have given much larger sums. It is in this way, in part, that the natural antislavery sentiment of Massachusetts has been kept down; it is money, money, money, that keeps Palfrey from being elected. Knowing these things, it was natural that John Van Buren should say that we had more to fear from wealth than from mobs. He is a politician,—not a philanthropist or moralist, but a politician, like Clay, Winthrop, Abbott Lawrence; and he has this advantage, that he has dedicated his rare powers to the cause of human freedom. In this I would welcome any person from any quarter.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 212

Charles Sumner to William Jay, March 18, 1850

In this moment of discomfiture I turn to you. I am sick at heart as I think of the treason of our public men. Freedom is forgotten in the miserable competition of party and in the schemes of an ignorant ambition. Webster has placed himself in the dark list of apostates. He reminds me very much of Strafford, or of the archangel ruined. In other moods, I might call him Judas Iscariot, or Benedict Arnold. John Quincy Adams, as he lay in his bed in Boston after he was struck with that paralysis which closed his days at Washington, expressed to me a longing to make one more speech in Congress in order to give his final opinions on slavery, and particularly (I now give his own words) “to expose the great fallacy of Mr. Daniel Webster, who is perpetually talking about the Constitution, while he is indifferent to freedom and those great interests which the Constitution was established to preserve.” Alas! that speech was never made. But the work ought to be done. Blow seems to follow blow. There was Clay's barbarous effort, then Winthrop's malignant attack,¹ and now comes Webster's elaborate treason. What shall we do? But I have unbounded faith in God and in the future. I know we shall succeed. But what shall we do?

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¹ Speech in the House, Feb. 21, 1850.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 213

Diary of Gideon Welles: Wednesday, September 21, 1864

The victory of Sheridan has a party-political influence. It is not gratifying to the opponents of the Administration. Some who want to rejoice in it feel it difficult to do so, because they are conscious that it strengthens the Administration, to which they are opposed. The partisan feeling begins to show itself strongly among men of whom it was not expected. In New York there has been more of this than elsewhere. Robert C. Winthrop, once potent and powerful in Massachusetts, a man of position and of talent, not a great man, but a scholar of taste and pretension, a gentleman and statesman, made his appearance in New York, with Fernando and Ben Wood, Rynders,¹ and others, whom in other days he detested. Winthrop is a disappointed man. He had high aspirations and high expectations, and not without reason. Had he pursued a faithful, conscientious course, he would have won high official distinction and influence. But, confident of his strong position in New England and with the Whigs, he courted their enemies, repelled the Republicans and fell. As he swerved from the track, Sumner and others, who did not, perhaps, regret his error, stepped forward, and poor Winthrop in a very short time found that instead of gaining new friends he had lost old ones. For several years he felt very uncomfortable, and has now committed another great mistake. The National Intelligencer, which has endeavored to hold a position of dignified neutrality during this Administration, has finally given way and become strongly partisan. This I regret, for the editor has ability, and has made his paper respectable. His discussions of current and important questions have been highly creditable and often instructive, and I cannot but think it unfortunate that he should take an attitude which will injure him and his paper and do good to no one.

Some attempt is made by the Richmond papers to help the cause of McClellan by an affectation of dread of his superior military attainments and abilities and his greater zeal for the Union. The effort is so bald, so manifestly intended for their sympathizing friends, that no one can be deceived by it. There was a time when such stuff had a market in the North, but that time has gone by.

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¹ Isaiah Rynders, a local politician of New York.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 153-4

Samuel Gridley Howe to Horace Mann, February 6, 1851

Boston, Feb'y 6th, 1851.

My Dear Mann: — The telegraph will tell you the result of to-morrow's fight before this reaches you.

Adams, and the shrewdest men I meet, say it is impossible to foretell what will be the result. The knowing Whigs say they will be beaten; whether they say so to gammon us, I know not. For myself I have little hope. It looks to me as if the Democrats meant to let Sumner get within one or two votes, and yet not get in; it is however a dangerous game.

This I know, things look better than they ever have before. The Coalition has certainly gained three votes, the Whigs have certainly lost two; and unless some of the Democrats who voted for Sumner before bolt the track, he goes in. I fear they will.

There has certainly been much hard work done, and much drilling and coaxing resorted to to bring the waverers into line. I have done what I could in conscience, — but oh! Mann! it goes against the grain. I have a right to boost Sumner all I can, and I will do so, but not as a Coalitionist, not by working with pro-slavery men. Think of Free-soilers voting to put Rantoul into the Senate; he is no more a Free-soil man than R. C. Winthrop, not a whit! the Free-soilers should have declined all State offices, and claimed the long and short term.

However, let that go.

Mr. W— is a very pig-headed, impracticable man, all the more so because he means to be liberal and thinks he is so. Others have yielded to the great outside pressure upon them.

We have one more card, and that we must play if Sumner fails to-morrow: we must bring pressure enough to bear on Wilson and every Free-soiler in office, to make them go to Boutwell and tell him to put Sumner straight through, or they will all throw up office, leave the responsibility with the Democrats, and go before the people and make war with them. Boutwell is a timid, cunning, time-serving trimmer. He can elect Sumner if bullied into it: he has only to send for half a dozen men to his closet and tell them that Sumner must and shall be elected, and he will be. He won't do it unless he is forced to do so, and Wilson will not force him unless he is forced by outside pressure. We can manufacture that pressure, and by the Jingoes we'll squeeze him tight but he shall do it.

You complain of the paper; bless you, Mann, you do not know under what difficulties we have laboured: I say we have done well to start a new daily paper at four days' notice, commence it without an editor, and carry it on thus far as well as it has been carried on. A daily paper is no joke — you know well enough. . . .

I have been hoping for something from you that we could publish — but in vain. I am going to Albany as soon as this fight is over to address the Legislature on the subject of idiocy.

Our friends are in high spirits here — I am not, but am

Ever yours,

S. G. Howe.

I have used your letter, but it has not been out of my hands.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 337-9