Theodore Parker to Francis Jackson, November 24, 1859

Rome, November 24, 1859.

MY DEAR FRIEND: I see by a recent telegraph which the steamer of November 2d brought from Boston, that the Court found Captain Brown guilty, and passed sentence upon him. It is said Friday, December 2d, is fixed as the day for hanging him. So, long before this reaches you, my friend will have passed on to the reward of his magnanimous public services, and his pure, upright, private life. I am not well enough to be the minister to any Congregation, least of all to one like that which, for so many years, helped my soul, while it listened to my words. Surely, the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society in Boston needs a minister, not half dead, but alive all over; and yet, while reading the accounts of the affair at Harper's Ferry, and of the sayings of certain men at Boston, whom you and I know only too well, I could not help wishing I was at home again, to use what poor remnant of power is left to me in defence of the True and the Right.

America is rich in able men, in skilful writers, in ready and accomplished speakers. But few men dare treat public affairs with reference to the great principles of justice, and the American Democracy; nay, few with reference to any remote future, or even with a comprehensive survey of the present. Our public writers ask what effect will this opinion have on the Democratic party, or the Republican party? how will it affect the next Presidential election? what will the great State of Pennsylvania, or Ohio, or New York say to it? This is very unfortunate for us all, especially when the people have to deal practically and that speedily with a question concerning the very existence of Democratic institutions in America; for it is not to be denied that we must give up Democracy if we keep Slavery or give up Slavery if we keep Democracy.

I greatly deplore this state of things. Our able men fail to perform their natural function to give valuable instruction and advice to the people; and, at the same time, they debase and degrade themselves. The hurrahs and the offices they get are poor compensation for falseness to their own consciences.

In my best estate, I do not pretend to much political wisdom, and still less now while sick; but I wish yet to set down a few thoughts for your private eye, and, it may be, for the ear of the Fraternity. They are, at least, the result of long meditation on the subject; besides, they are not at all new nor peculiar to me, but are a part of the Public Knowledge of all enlightened men.

1. A man, held against his will as a slave, has a natural right to kill every one who seeks to prevent his enjoyment of liberty. This has long been recognized as a self-evident proposition, coming so directly from the Primitive Instincts of Human Nature, that it neither required proofs nor admitted them.

2. It may be a natural duty of the slave to develop this natural right in a practical manner, and actually kill all those who seek to prevent his enjoyment of liberty. For, if he continue patiently in bondage: First, he entails the foulest of curses on his children; and, second, he encourages other men to commit the crime against nature which he allows his own master to commit. It is my duty to preserve my own body from starvation. If I fail thereof through sloth, I not only die, but incur the contempt and loathing of my acquaintances while I live. It is not less my duty to do all that is in my power to preserve my body and soul from Slavery; and if I submit to that through cowardice, I not only become a bondman, and suffer what thraldom inflicts, but I incur also the contempt and loathing of my acquaintance. Why do freemen scorn and despise a slave? Because they think his condition is a sign of his cowardice, and believe that he ought to prefer death to bondage. The Southerners hold the Africans in great contempt, though mothers of their children. Why? Simply because the Africans are slaves; that is, because the Africans fail to perform the natural duty of securing freedom by killing their oppressors.

3. The freeman has a natural right to help the slaves recover their liberty, and in that enterprise to do for them all which they have a right to do for themselves. This statement, I think, requires no argument or illustration.

4. It may be a natural duty for the freeman to help the slaves to the enjoyment of their liberty, and, as means to that end to aid them in killing all such as oppose their natural freedom. If you were attacked by a wolf, I should not only have a right to aid you in getting rid of that enemy, but it would be my duty to help you in proportion to my power. If it were a murderer, and not a wolf, who attacked you, the duty would be still the same. Suppose it is not a murderer who would kill you, but a kidnapper who would enslave, does that make it less my duty to help you out of the hands of your enemy? Suppose it is not a kidnapper who would make you a bondman, but a slaveholder who would keep you one, does that remove my obligation to help you?

5. The performance of this duty is to be controlled by the freeman's power and opportunity to help the slaves. (The Impossible is never the Obligatory.) I cannot help the slaves in Dahomey or Bornou, and am not bound to try. I can help those who escape to my own neighborhood, and I ought to do so. My duty is commensurate with my power; and, as my power increases, my duty enlarges along with it. If I could help the bondmen in Virginia to their freedom as easily and effectually as I can aid the runaway at my own door, then I ought to do so.

These five maxims have a direct application to America at this day, and the people of the Free States have a certain dim perception thereof, which, fortunately, is becoming clearer every year.

Thus, the people of Massachusetts feel that they ought to protect the fugitive slaves who come into our State. Hence come, first the irregular attempts to secure their liberty, and the declarations of noble men, like Timothy Gilbert, George W. Carnes, and others, that they will do so even at great personal risk; and, secondly the statute laws made by the legislature to accomplish that end.

Now, if Massachusetts had the power to do as much for the slaves in Virginia as for the runaways in her own territory, we should soon see those two sets of measures at work in that direction also.

I find it is said in the Democratic newspapers that "Captain Brown had many friends at the North, who sympathized with him in general, and in special approved of this particular scheme of his; they furnished him with some twelve or twenty thousand dollars, it would seem." I think much more than that is true of us. If he had succeeded in running off one or two thousand slaves to Canada, even at the expense of a little violence and bloodshed, the majority of men in New England would have rejoiced, not only in the End, but also in the Means. The first successful attempt of a considerable number of slaves to secure their freedom by violence will clearly show how deep is the sympathy of the people for them, and how strongly they embrace the five principles I mentioned above. A little success of that sort will serve as priming for the popular cannon; it is already loaded.

Of course, I was not astonished to hear that an attempt had been made to free the slaves in a certain part of Virginia, nor should I be astonished if another "insurrection" or "rebellion" took place in the State of ——, or a third in or a fourth in ——. Such things are to be expected; for they do not depend merely on the private will of men like Captain Brown and his associates, but on the great General Causes which move all human kind to hate Wrong and love Right. Such "insurrections" will continue as long as Slavery lasts, and will increase, both in frequency and in power, just as the people become intelligent and moral. Virginia may hang John Brown and all that family, but she cannot hang the Human Race; and, until that is done, noble men will rejoice in the motto of that once magnanimous State "Sic semper Tyrannis!" "Let such be the end of every oppressor."

It is a good Anti-Slavery picture on the Virginia shield: a man standing on a tyrant and chopping his head off with a sword; only I would paint the sword-holder black and the tyrant while, to show the immediate application of the principle. The American people will have to march to rather severe music, I think, and it is better for them to face it in season. A few years ago it did not seem difficult first to check Slavery, and then to end it without any bloodshed. I think this cannot be done now, nor ever in the future. All the great charters of Humanity have been writ in blood. I once hoped that of American Democracy would be engrossed in less costly ink; but it is plain, now, that our pilgrimage must lead through a Red Sea, wherein many a Pharaoh will go under and perish. Alas! that we are not wise enough to be just, or just enough to be wise, and so gain much at small cost!

Look, now, at a few notorious facts:

I. There are four million slaves in the United States violently withheld from their natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, they are our fellow countrymen yours and mine—just as much as any four million white men. Of course, you and I owe them the duty which one man owes another of his own nation the duty of instruction, advice, and protection of natural rights. If they are starving, we ought to help feed them. The color of their skins, their degraded social condition, their ignorance, abates nothing from their natural claim on us, or from our natural duty toward them.

There are men in all the Northern States who feel the obligation which citizenship imposes on them the duty to help those slaves. Hence arose the Anti-Slavery Society, which seeks simply to excite the white people to perform their natural duty to their dark fellow-countrymen. Hence comes CAPTAIN BROWN'S EXPEDITION an attempt to help his countrymen enjoy their natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

He sought by violence what the Anti-Slavery Society works for with other weapons. The two agree in the end, and differ only in the means. Men like Captain Brown will be continually rising up among the white people of the Free States, attempting to do their natural duty to their black countrymen that is, help them to freedom. Some of these efforts will be successful. Thus, last winter, Captain Brown himself escorted eleven of his countrymen from bondage in Missouri to freedom in Canada. He did not snap a gun, I think, although then, as more recently, he had his fighting tools at hand, and would have used them, if necessary. Even now, the Underground Railroad is in constant and beneficent operation. By-and-by it will be an Overground Railroad from Mason and Dixon's line clear to Canada: the only tunnelling will be in the Slave States. Northern men applaud the brave conductors of that Locomotive of Liberty.

When Thomas Garrett was introduced to a meeting of political Free-Soilers in Boston, as "the man who had helped eighteen hundred slaves to their natural liberty," even that meeting gave the righteous Quaker three times three. All honest Northern hearts beat with admiration of such men; nay, with love for them. Young lads say, "I wish that heaven would make me such a man." The wish will now and then be father to the fact. You and I have had opportunity enough, in twenty years, to see that this philanthropic patriotism is on the increase at the North, and the special direction it takes is toward the liberation of their countrymen in bondage.

Not many years ago, Boston sent money to help the Greeks in their struggle for political freedom, (they never quite lost their personal liberty,) but with the money, she sent what was more valuable and far more precious, one of her most valiant and heroic sons, who staid in Greece to fight the great battle of Humanity. Did your friend, Dr. Samuel G. Howe, lose the esteem of New England men by that act? He won the admiration of Europe, and holds it still.

Nay, still later, the same dear old Boston Hunkers have never been more than rats and mice in her house, which she suffers for a time and then drives out twelve hundred of them at once on a certain day of March, 1776,—that same dear old Boston sent the same Dr. Howe to carry aid and comfort to the Poles, then in deadly struggle for their political existence. Was he disgraced because he lay seven-and-forty days in a Prussian jail in Berlin? Not even in the eyes of the Prussian King, who afterwards sent him a gold medal, whose metal was worth as many dollars as that philanthropist lay days in the despot's jail. It is said, "Charity should begin at home." The American began a good ways off, but has been working homeward ever since. The Dr. Howe of to-day would and ought to be more ready to help an American to personal liberty, than a Pole or a Greek to mere political freedom, and would find more men to furnish aid and comfort to our own countrymen, even if they were black. It would not surprise me if there were other and well-planned attempts in other States to do what Captain Brown heroically, if not successfully, tried in Virginia. Nine out of ten may fail — the tenth will succeed. The victory over General Burgoyne more than made up for all the losses in many a previous defeat; it was the beginning of the end. Slavery will not die a dry death; it may have as many lives as a cat; at last, it will die like a mad dog in a village, with only the enemies of the human kind to lament its fate, and they too cowardly to appear as mourners.

II. But it is not merely white men who will fight for the liberty of Americans; the negroes will take their defence into their own hands, especially if they can find white men to lead them. No doubt the African race is greatly inferior to the Caucasian in general intellectual power, and also in that instinct for liberty which is so strong in the Teutonic family, and just now obvious in the Anglo-Saxons of Britain and America; besides, the African race have but little desire for vengeance the lowest form of the love of justice. Here is one example out of many: In Santa Cruz, the old slave laws were the most horrible, I think, I ever read of in modern times, unless those of the Carolinas be an exception. If a slave excited others to run away, for the first offence his right leg was to be cut off; for the second offence, his other leg. This mutilation was not to be done by a surgeon's hand; the poor wretch was laid down on a log, and his legs chopped off with a plantation axe, and the stumps plunged into boiling pitch, to stanch the blood, and so save the property from entire destruction; for the live Torso of a slave might serve as a warning. No action of a court was requisite to inflict this punishment; any master could thus mutilate his bondman. Even from 1830 to 1846, it was common for owners to beat their offending victims with "tamarind rods" six feet long and an inch in thickness at the bigger end — rods thick set with ugly thorns. When that process was over, the lacerated back was washed with a decoction of the Manchineel, a poison tree, which made the wounds fester and long remain open.

In 1846, the negroes were in "rebellion," and took possession of the island; they were 25,000, the whites 3000. But the blacks did not hurt the hair of a white man's head; they got their freedom, but they took no revenge! Suppose 25,000 Americans, held in bondage by 3000 Algerines on a little island, should get their masters into their hands, how many of the 3000 would see the next sun go down?

No doubt it is through the absence of this desire of natural vengeance, that the Africans have been reduced to bondage, and kept in it.

But there is a limit even to the negro's forbearance. San Domingo is not a great way off. The revolution which changed its black inhabitants from tame slaves into wild men, took place after you had ceased to call yourself a boy.

It shows what may be in America, with no white man to help. In the Slave States there is many a possible San Domingo, which may become actual any day; and, if not in 1860, then in some other "year of our Lord." Besides, America offers more than any other country to excite the slave to love of Liberty, and the effort for it. We are always talking about "Liberty," boasting that we are "the freest people in the world," declaring that "a man would die, rather than be a slave." We continually praise our Fathers "who fought the Revolution." We build monuments to commemorate even the humblest beginning of that great national work. Once a year, we stop all ordinary work, and give up a whole day to the noisiest kind of rejoicing for the War of Independence. How we praise the "champions of liberty!" How we point out the "infamy of the British oppressors!" "They would make our Fathers slaves," say we, "and we slew the oppressor Sic semper Tyrannis!"

Do you suppose this will fail to produce its effect on the black man, one day? The South must either give up keeping "Independence Day," or else keep it in a little more thorough fashion. Nor is this all: the Southerners are continually taunting the negroes with their miserable nature. "You are only half human," say they, "not capable of freedom." "Hay is good for horses, not for hogs," said the philosophic American who now represents the great Democracy" at the court of Turin. So, liberty is good for white men, not for negroes. Have they souls? I don't know that — non mi ricordo. Contempt," says the proverb, "will cut through the shell of the tortoise." And, one day, even the sluggish African will wake up under the threefold stimulus of the Fourth of July cannon, the whip of the slaveholder, and the sting of his heartless mockery. Then, if "oppression maketh wise men mad," what do you think it will do to African slaves, who are familiar with scenes of violence, and all manner of cruelty? Still more: if the negroes have not general power of mind, or instinctive love of liberty, equal to the whites, they are much our superiors in power of cunning, and in contempt for death — rather formidable qualities in a service war. There already have been several risings of slaves in this century; they spread fear and consternation. The future will be more terrible. Now, in case of an insurrection, not only is there, as Jefferson said, “no attribute of the Almighty" which can take sides with the master, but there will be many white men who will take part with the slave. Men like the Lafayettes of the last century, and the Dr. Howes of this, may give the insurgent negro as effectual aid as that once rendered to America and Greece; and the public opinion of an enlightened world will rank them among its heroes of noblest mark.

If I remember rightly, some of your fathers were in the battle of Lexington, and that at Bunker Hill. I believe, in the course of the war which followed, every able-bodied man in your town (Newton) was in actual service. Nowadays, their descendants are proud of the fact. One day it will be thought not less heroic for a negro to fight for his personal liberty, than for a white man to fight for political independence, and against a tax of three pence a pound on tea. Wait a little, and things will come round.

III. The existence of Slavery endangers all our Democratic institutions. It does this if only tolerated as an exceptional measure—a matter of present convenience, and still more when proclaimed as an instantial principle, a rule of political conduct for all time and every place. Look at this: In 1790, there were (say) 300,000 slaves; soon they make their first doubling, and are 600,000; then their second, 1,200,000; then their third, 2,400,000. They are now in the process of doubling the fourth time, and will soon be 4,800,000; then comes the fifth double, 9,600,000; then the sixth, 19,200,000. Before the year of our Lord nineteen hundred, there will be twenty million slaves!

An Anglo-Saxon with common sense does not like this Africanization of America; he wishes the superior race to multiply rather than the inferior. Besides, it is plain to a one-eyed man that Slavery is an irreconcilable enemy of the progressive development of Democracy; that, if allowed to exist, it must be allowed to spread, to gain political, social, and ecclesiastical power; and all that it gains for the slaveholders is just so much taken from the freemen.

Look at this!—there are twenty Southern representatives who represent nothing but property in man, and yet their vote counts as much in Congress as the twenty Northerners who stand for the will of 1,800,000 freemen. Slavery gives the South the same advantage in the choice of President; consequently the slaveholding South has long controlled the federal power of the Nation.

Look at the recent acts of the Slave Power! The Fugitive Slave bill, the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the Dred Scott decision, the fillibustering against Cuba, (till found too strong,) and now against Mexico and other feeble neighbors, and, to crown all, the actual re-opening of the African slave-trade!

The South has kidnapped men in Boston, and made the Judges of Massachusetts go under her symbolic chain to enter the Courts of Justice. (!) She has burned houses and butchered innocent men in Kansas, and the perpetrators of that wickedness were rewarded by the Federal Government with high office and great pay! Those things are notorious; they have stirred up some little indignation at the North, and freemen begin to think of defending their liberty. Hence came the Free-Soil party, and hence the Republican party; it contemplates no direct benefit to the slave, only the defence of the white man in his national rights, or his conventional privileges. It will grow stronger every year, and also bolder. It must lay down principles as a platform to work its measures on; the principles will be found to require much more than what was at first proposed, and, even from this platform, Republicans will promptly see that they cannot defend the natural rights of freemen without destroying that Slavery which takes away the natural rights of a negro. So, first, the wise and just men of the party will sympathize with such as seek to liberate the slaves, either peacefully or by violence; next, they will declare their opinions in public; and, finally, the whole body of the party will come to the same sympathy and the same opinion. Then, of course, they will encourage men like Captain Brown, give him money and all manner of help, and also encourage the slaves, whenever they shall rise, to take their liberty at all hazards. When called to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, they will go readily enough, and do the work by removing the cause of insurrection: that is by destroying Slavery itself.

An Anti-Slavery party, under one name or another, will before long control the Federal Government, and will exercise its constitutional rights, and perform its constitutional

duty, and "guarantee a republican form of government to every State in the Union." That is a work of time and peaceful legislation. But the short work of violence will be often tried, and each attempt will gain something for the cause of humanity, even by its dreadful process of blood.

IV. But there is yet another agency that will act against Slavery. There are many mischievous persons who are ready for any wicked work of violence. They abound in the City of New York, (a sort of sink where the villany of both hemispheres settles down, and genders that moral pestilence which steams up along the columns of The New York Herald and The New York Observer, the great escape-pipes of secular and ecclesiastical wickedness;) they commit the great crimes of violence and robbery at home, plunder emigrants, and engage in the slave-trade, or venture on fillibustering expeditions. This class of persons is common in all the South. One of the legitimate products of her "peculiar institution," they are familiar with violence, ready and able for murder. Public opinion sustains such men. Bully Brooks was but one of their representatives in Congress. Nowadays they are fond of Slavery, defend it, and seek to spread it. But the time must come one day it may come any time. when the lovers of mischief will do a little fillibustering at home, and rouse up the slaves to rob, burn, and kill. Prudent carpenters sweep up all the shavings in their shops at night, and remove this food of conflagration to a safe place, lest the spark of a candle, the end of a cigar, or a friction-match should swiftly end their wealth slowly gathered together. The South takes pains to strew her carpenter's shop with shavings, and fill it full thereof. She encourages men to walk abroad with naked candles in their hands and lighted cigars in their months; then they scatter friction-matches on the floor, and dance a fillibustering jig thereon. She cries," Well done! Hurrah for Walker!" "Hurrah for Brooks!" "Hurrah for the bark Wanderer and its cargo of slaves! Up with the bowie-knife!

“Down with justice and humanity!" The South must reap as she sows; where she scatters the wind the whirlwind will come up. It will be a pretty crop for her to reap. Within a few years the South has burned alive eight or ten negroes. Other black men looked on, and learned how to fasten the chain, how to pile the green wood, how to set this Hell-fire of Slavery agoing. The apprentice may be slow to learn, but he has had teaching enough by this time to know the art and mystery of torture; and, depend upon it, the negro will one day apply it to his old tormentors. The Fire of Vengeance may be waked up even in an African's heart, especially when it is fanned by the wickedness of a white man then it runs from man to man, from town to town. What shall put it out? The white man's blood!

Now, Slavery is a wickedness so vast and so old, so rich and so respectable, supported by the State, the Press, the Market, and the Church, that all those agencies are needed to oppose it with those and many more which I cannot speak of now. You and I prefer the peaceful method; but I, at least, shall welcome the violent if no other accomplish the end. So will the great mass of thoughtful and good men at the North: else why do we honor the Heroes of the Revolution, and build them monuments all over our blessed New England? I think you gave money for that of Bunker Hill: I once thought it a folly; now I recognize it as a great sermon in stone, which is worth not only all the money it cost to build it, but all the blood it took to lay its corner-stones. Trust me, its lesson will not be in vain — at the North, I mean; for the Logic of Slavery will keep the South on its lower course, and drive it on more swiftly than before. "Captain Brown's expedition was a failure," I hear it said. I am not quite sure of that. True, it kills fifteen men by sword and shot, and four or five men by the gallows. But it shows the weakness of the greatest Slave State in America, the worthlessness of her soldiery, and the utter fear which Slavery genders in the bosoms of the masters. Think of the condition of the City of Washington, while Brown was at work!

Brown will die, I think, like a martyr, and also like a saint. His noble demeanor, his unflinching bravery, his gentleness, his calm, religious trust in God, and his words of truth and soberness, cannot fail to make a profound impression on the hearts of Northern men; yes, and on Southern men. For "every human heart is human," &c. I do not think the money wasted, nor the lives thrown away. Many acorns must be sown to have one come up; even then the plant grows slow; but it is an Oak at last. None of the Christian martyrs died in vain; and from Stephen, who was stoned at Jerusalem, to Mary Dyer, whom our fathers hanged on a bough of "the great tree" on Boston Common, I think there have been few spirits more pure and devoted than John Brown's, and none that gave up their breath in a nobler cause. Let the American State hang his body, and the American Church damn his soul; still, the blessing of such as are ready to perish will fall on him, and the universal justice of the Infinitely Perfect God will take him welcome home. The road to heaven is as short from the gallows as from a throne; perhaps, also, as easy.

I suppose you would like to know something about myself. Rome has treated me to bad weather, which tells its story in my health, and certainly does not mend me. But I look for brighter days and happier nights. The sad tidings from America- my friends in peril, in exile, in jail, killed, or to be hung-have filled me with grief, and so I fall back a little, but hope to get forward again. God bless you and yours, and comfort you!

Ever affectionately yours,

THEODORE PARKER.

TO FRANCIS JACKSON, ESQ., Boston.

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, p. 73-87

Senator Charles Sumner to Samuel Gridley Howe, November 26, 1851

DEAREST HOWE, Three times yesterday I wept like a child, — I could not help it first in parting with Longfellow, next in parting with you, and lastly as I left my mother and sister. I stand now on the edge of a great change. In the vicissitudes of life I cannot see the future; but I know that I now move away from those who have been more than brothers to me. My soul is wrung, and my eyes are bleared with tears. God bless you ever and ever, my noble, well-tried, and eternally dear friend!

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 259

Samuel Gridley Howe to Theodore Parker, Between December 17 & December 31, 1853

Dear T. P.: — You ask me to tell you what to do with regard to S——!! Lend him no money! dissuade your friends from lending him any. He is becoming demoralized, I fear, by borrowing and living on others. Let him undergo the natural cure — suffer and be saved.

Could I say without a blush to the next runaway, or honest applicant for my help — “I can only give you so much because I have just applied $20 to S——’s case?”

Ever yours,

Chev.

I may be wrong about it — but I am more likely, I fear, to err on the side of leniency of judgment.

S. G. H.

SOURCES: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 397

Speech of Samuel Gridley Howe, September 24, 1846

I have been requested, Fellow-citizens, as Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements for this meeting, to make a statement of the reasons for calling this meeting, and of the objects which it is proposed to attain; and I shall do so very briefly. A few weeks ago, there sailed from New Orleans a vessel belonging to this port, owned and manned by New England freemen, under the flag of our Union—the flag of the free. When she had been a week upon her voyage, and was beyond the jurisdiction of the laws of Louisiana, far out upon a broad and illimitable ocean, there was found secreted in her hold, a man lying naked upon the cargo, half suffocated by the hot and stifled air, and trembling with fear. He begged the sailors who found him not to betray him to the captain, for he had rather die than be discovered before he got to Boston. Poor fellow! he had heard of Boston; he had heard that there all men are free and equal;—he had seen the word Boston written on that ship, and he had said to himself—“I, too, am a man, and not a brute or a chattel, and if I can only once set my foot in that blessed city, my claims to human brotherhood will be admitted, and I shall be treated as a man and a brother,”—and he hid himself in the hold. Well, Sir, the knowledge of his being there could not long be kept from the captain, and he was dragged from his hot and close hiding-place, and brought upon deck. It was then seen that he was a familiar acquaintance,—a bright intelligent mulatto youth, who used to be sent by his master to sell milk on board; he had been a favorite, and every man, from the captain to the cabin-boy, used to have his jokes with “Joe.” They had treated him like a human being, could he expect they would ever help to send him into slavery like a brute?

And now what was to be done? Neither the captain nor any of his officers had been privy to his coming on board; they could not be convicted of the crime of wilfully aiding a brother man to escape from bondage; the man was to them as though he had been dropped from the clouds, or been picked up floating on a plank at sea; he was thrown, by the providence of God, upon their charity and humanity

But it was decided to send him back to New Orleans; to deliver him up to his old owner; and they looked long and eagerly for some ship that would take charge of him. None such, however, was found, and the “Ottoman” arrived safely in our harbor. The wish of the poor slave was gratified; his eyes were blessed with the sight of the promised land. He had been treated well for the most part, on board, could he doubt that the hearts of his captors had softened Can we suppose that sailors, so proverbial for their generous nature, could have been, of their own accord, the instruments of sending the poor fellow back I, for one, will not believe it.

But the captain communicated with his rich and respectable owners, men whom he was accustomed to honor and obey, and they decided that whether a human being or not, poor “Joe” must be sent back to bondage; they would not be a party, even against their will, to setting free a slave. (Loud cries of “Shame,” “Shame,” and “Let us know the name of the owner.”) The name of the firm is John H. Pearson & Co. (Repeated cries of “Shame,” “Shame,” “Shame.”). It was a dangerous business, this that they undertook; they did not fear to break the laws of God—to outrage the laws of humanity; but they did fear the laws of the Commonwealth, for those laws threatened the State's Prison to whoever should illegally imprison another. They knew that no person, except the owner of the runaway slave, or his agent, or a marshal of the United States, had any right to touch him; they were neither the one nor the other; and they therefore hid their victim upon an island in our harbor and detained him there.

But he escaped from their clutches; he fled to our city—to the city of his hopes—he was here in our very streets, fellow-citizens! he had gained an Asylum, he called on us for aid. Of old, there were temples so sacred that even a murderer who had taken refuge in them was free from pursuit; but no such temple did Boston offer to the hunted slave; he was pursued and siezed, and those of our wondering citizens who inquired what it all meant, were deceived by a lie about his being a thief, and he was dragged on board ship. But the news of this got abroad; legal warrants were at once procured; the shield of the habeas corpus was prepared to cover the fugitive; officers of justice were urged to the pursuit; the owner of the vessel was implored to give an order for the man's surrender, but all in vain. A vessel was found, bound for New Orleans, which would consent to be made a slave-ship of (Loud cries for the name of the ship.) The Niagara, belonging to the same owners, and on board of this ship the man was sent back, to receive the lash, and to wear the shackles, for his ill-starred attempt to be free, and to drag out all the days of his life, a degraded, wretched, and hopeless slave!

And now, fellow-citizens, how does all this differ from piracy and the slave-trade? The man was free—free at sea, free on shore; and it was only by a legal process that he could be arrested. He was siezed in our city; bound and carried into slavery by those who had no more right to do so than has the slave-trader to descend upon the coast of Guinea and carry off the inhabitants. All these facts are known and admitted; nay, they are defended by some who call themselves followers of Him who said, “As ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them;” they are defended, too, by some of those presses, whose editors arrogate to themselves the name of Watchmen on the towers of Liberty!

And now it will be asked,—it has been asked, tauntingly,–How can we help ourselves? What can this meeting do about it?

In reply, let me first state what it is not proposed to do about it. It is not proposed to move the public mind to any expression of indignation, much less to any acts of violence against the parties connected with the late outrage. As to the captain, it is probable that he was more sinned against than sinning. I am told that he is a kind, good man, in most of the relations of life, and that he was made a tool of Let him go and sin no more. As for the owners and their abettors—the men who used the wealth and influence which God gave them, to kidnap and enslave a fellow-man,—a poor, trembling, hunted wretch, who had fled to our shores for liberty and sought refuge in our borders—let them go too, their punishment will be dreadful enough without our adding to it. Indeed, I, for one, can say that I would rather be in the place of the victim whom they are at this moment sending away into bondage,_I would rather be in his place than in theirs: Aye! through the rest of my earthly life, I would rather be a driven slave upon a Louisiana plantation, than roll in their wealth and bear the burden of their guilt; and as for the life to come, if the police of those regions to which bad men go, be not as sleepy as the police of Boston, then, may the Lord have mercy upon their souls'

But, Mr. Chairman, again it is asked, “What shall we do?” Fellow-citizens, it is not a retrospective but a prospective action which this meeting proposes, and there are many ways in which good may be done, and harm prevented, some of which I hope will be proposed by those who may follow me, and who probably will be more accustomed to such meetings than I am. But first, let me answer some of the objections which have been urged by some of those gentlemen who have been invited to come up here to-night and help us, and have declined to do so. They say, “We must not interfere with the course of the law.” Sir, they know as well as we know, that if the law be the edge of the axe, that public opinion is the force that gives strength and weight to the blow.

Sir, we have tried the “let alone system" long enough ; we have a right to judge the future by the past, and we know that the law will not prevent such outrage in time to come, unless the officers of the law are driven by public opinion to do their duty. What has made the African slave-trade odious? Was it the law, or public opinion?

But, Sir, in order to test the strength of this objection, let us suppose that instead of the poor hunted mulatto, one of the clergymen of Boston had been carried off into slavery. Would the pulpit have been silent? Had one of our editors been carried away, would the press have been dumb Would there have been any want of glaring capitals and notes of exclamation? Suppose a lawyer had been kidnapped in his office, bound, and carried off to work on a slave plantation; would the limbs of the law have moved so lazily as they did week before last Or suppose a merchant had been torn from his counting-room in State street, and shipped for the slave-market of Tunis; would there not have been an excitement all over the city? Think you there would not have been “Indignation meetings” on “Change?”

And yet, Sir, are any of these men more precious in the sight of God than the poor mulattoo Or suppose a slave ship from the coast of Guinea, with her human cargo on board, had been driven by stress of weather into our port, and one of her victims had escaped to our shore, and been recaptured and carried off in the face of the whole community; would there have been any want of “indignation” then ? And, Sir, is there any difference, would it be a greater crime to carry such an one away, except that as this man had been once a slave, he might be made a slave again, that is, that two wrongs might make a right.

No, Mr. Chairman, these are not the true reasons. It is, Sir, that the “peculiar institution,” which has so long been brooding over this country like an incubus, has at last spread abroad her murky wings, and has covered us with her benumbing shadow. It has silenced the pulpit; it has muffled the press; its influence is everywhere. Court street, that can find a flaw in every indictment, and can cunningly devise ways to save the murderer from the gallows—Court street can find no way of escape for the poor slave; State street, that drank the blood of the martyrs of liberty, State street is deaf to the cry of the oppressed slave: the port of Boston, that has been shut up by a tyrant king as the dangerous haunt of freemen, the port of Boston has been opened for the slave-trader; for God's sake, Mr. Chairman, let us keep Faneuil Hall free. Let there be words of such potency spoken here this night as shall break the spell that is upon the community. Let us devise such means and measures as shall secure to every man who seeks refuge in our borders, all the liberties and all the rights which the law allows him.

Let us resolve that even if the slave-hunter comes to this city to seek his runaway victim, we will not lay our hands upon him, but we will fasten our eyes upon him, and will never take them off till he leaves our borders without his prey. Sir, there is a potency, a magic power, in the gaze of honest indignation. I am told that one of the parties of the late outrage—one of the owners of the “Ottoman,” came up here to this temple of liberty the other night to hear Mr. John P. Hale talk about slavery. He was discovered and pointed out. And, Mr. Chairman, what was done to him? Why, Sir, he was fairly looked out of this Hall. No one touched him ; but he could not stand the look of indignation, and he fled away. Sir, this beats the hunters of the West; they boast that they can “grin the varmint off the trees,” but they cannot look a slave-hunter out of countenance, as the freemen of the East Can.

I say, Sir, if ever the slave-hunter come among us in pursuit of his victim, let us not harm a hair of his head—“let us touch not the hem of his garment; but let him be a Pariah among us,” and cursed be he who gives him aid, who gives him food, or fire, or bed, or anything save that which drove his friend and coadjutor from Faneuil Hall the other night.

SOURCES: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 399-400; Address of the Committee Appointed by a Public Meeting: Held at Faneuil Hall, September 24, 1846, Appendix, p. 2-6

Samuel Gridley Howe to Horace Mann, December 16, 1853

Boston, Dec. 16th, 1853.

My Dear Mann: — I cannot express to you the relief — yes ! relief as well as pleasure, which the sight of your beloved old sign manual has given me. I wrote to you soon after your departure,¹ and though nothing that I said was worthy your notice I have been hoping for some reply.

From Downer's and from all other accounts you are doing a noble work. I will not say God speed you in it, for I think the sooner we get rid even of the forms of speech which favour the doctrine implied in them, the better for the world. You ask, may not a man be a cripple and a hunchback in his soul, as well as in his legs and his dorsal vertebrae? Doubtless he may — nay! how few are not so! But I cannot help thinking that this doctrine of reliance upon something outside of and above us helps to cripple us. This constant reference to we know not what leads us to disregard we do know what — the capacities and dispositions put within us. I presume that au jond we think much alike, however much we may differ in forms of expression. I believe that what is called religion — the creeds, the sects — even the mildest of them, swaddle humanity and keep it in the wickedness and weakness of infancy. I believe if all who see and know that man has capacities, tendencies, powers to be true and good irrespective of any hopes or fears of the consequences, here or hereafter — that man is so constituted that he need not rely on any thing or being extraneous to himself — if they who see this dared say it openly, it would be better for the race.

But not to talk of these abstractions: I am greatly moved, dear Mann, I am deeply touched, I am exceedingly rejoiced to find that you have got into such a field as you are now breaking up and planting, for a glorious harvest of good to humanity. It cheers me in my little, narrow beat to know that one whom it is my cherished privilege to call friend is filling such an orbit of beneficence. I feel this from my heart, and am humbly proud of the consciousness that I would rather be doing what you are doing than be master of the White House.

Downer tells me you are well, and this cheers me, for I feared you were rapidly using up the oil of life.

I have nothing to tell you of affairs here that you do not know. The Coalition millstone that was about our necks is gone, and we shall not, I trust, be drowned with it. The great commercial prosperity is against us, for alas! as yet men will not quit Mammon when he pays very high, illegal interest.

Good-bye; Love to all!

S. G. H.

_______________

¹ For Antioch College.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 395-6

Samuel Gridley Howe to Theodore Parker, July 5, 1853

Sunday, 1853.

My Dear Parker: — I have been in to hear you, but did not like what you were saying well enough to stay more than a quarter of an hour in a thorough draught, which I liked still less than your wind.

Why do you hammer away at the heads of Boston merchants, none of whose kith or kin come to hear you, when the rest of the population of the city, and even many of the mechanics, were just as ready to back up the authorities for kidnapping men as the merchants were?

Why do you say, and reiterate so often, that God uses the minimum force to accomplish the maximum ends? Is it so? How do you know? Does God know quantity or space or regard them? Is there more or less with Him? How do you know that without this or that thing or man this or that fact or deed would not have followed?

With the vast waste (or apparent waste) of animal life and mineral resources which geology reveals — families, species, whole races, whole worlds swept away — how do you, Theodore Parker, know that without salt to a potato, or even without salt or potato either, this or that thing would not and could not have been?

That was all very fine about God's great span, Centrifugal and Centripetal, but suppose either one of them should break down or slip a joint, has not the Governor a whole stud in the stable all ready for work? But, coolly, is there not something of what the Turks call Bosh about this? I never knew you to deal in the article before; but did you not go to the wrong barrel this morning? How can you say that without our revolution France would not have had hers — a little later perhaps, but still had it? Who told you that God would have broken down in his purpose if Washington had had the quinsy at a score, instead of three score years; and that New England would have now been worse off than Canada?

I did not stay long enough to hear you say any more unparkerish things, and so I will have done with my comment and close by saying that if I loved you less I might admire you more.

Your incorrigible,

Old Samuel South Boston.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 394-5

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, July 5, 1853

July 5, 1853.

My Dear Sumner: — You well know what a babe I am in politics, and how little versed in the tactics of party; my views therefore can be nothing worth to you; my instinct, however, and my friendly interest will not be disregarded. You are in what merchants call a crisis; and you can come out of it not only with great credit to yourself (that is a small matter), but in a way to promote the honour and the dignity, and therefore the efficiency of our party.

The leaders at the House and elsewhere — the managers —  pooh-pooh at you — they say you are counted as nothing — have little influence, and will have but little; that you will go to Washington, make one or two brilliant speeches and there will be the end of you. Well! as far as you are interested personally—as far as those who love you best are interested — so be it; the leaders in the Convention are misrepresenting our party. We are a party of principle; they are for expediency; we go into the Convention to amend the principles of right, with a view to the good of the whole people, and future generations of people; they go to potter and tinker, with a view to local interests, local prejudices, and party interests. We ought to be represented by statesmen; we are represented by mere politicians.

Now you, and you alone among them, are able to be the exponent and defender of the principles and the morals of the Free-soil party — of the free Democracy. Depend upon it, that party is sound at the core, and it will answer from the heart and from the conscience to an appeal from you, in a way that will astonish those who imagine that they are not only the leaders but the owners of the party. The great mass of our party would say amen to any declaration like this — let our basis of representation be respect for man, as man, and not as villager, townsman or city man; let other things be considered duly, but let no considerations of expediency, no thought of how the coming elections may be affected, no regard for temporary effect, induce us to violate a plain rule of right. All men are equal as well as free, and let us not ask what advantages or what disadvantages of wealth or position a man may have; as poverty shall not disfranchise him, so wealth shall not.

I have read most of what our side has said upon this matter of electoral basis, and (I am sorry to say) I have not read what the other side has said; nevertheless I have an instinct arising from my faith in a broad principle, that tells me our side is further from the right than the other is. But I will do no more now than strive to strengthen what your instinct must tell you—that the great mass of our party will rise up and support you in any declaration of adhesion to a great principle of right, though it should cost us what of apparent political discomfiture and rout might follow. I see danger to you only in your calculating too nicely upon the manner of being most useful in your day and generation. Remember, you are part not only of this but of other days and generations. . . .

Ever thine,

s. G. h.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 391-3

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, January 16, 1853

Boston, Jan. 16th, 1853.

My Dear Sumner: — You never yet performed the friendly office of criticizing anything of mine that I did not thank you for it, and I do thank you for the black line drawn against an expression in Wednesday's Commonwealth. Almost always I feel the justice of your criticisms, and acknowledge your taste; this time, however, I think you run purity into purism. Surely, in a newspaper squib, meant as an answer to a squib, the use of an expression like that of poking fun, so common, and free from offence to anything but conservative conventionalism, is harmless. As for folks, it should have been marked as a quotation from another paper.

Dear Sumner, are you not illiberal and ultra-conservative in this one matter of style and form of expression? Would you not shut up the “well of English” from the healthy influences of the spirit of the age, and deprive language of the aid and the interest which the use of local and colloquial expressions give it? Writing is an art, a good art; and a good writer is an artist. It does seem to me absurd, however, to suppose it can be removed from that class of things capable of change and improvement; or to hold that we are to be tied down to the forms of expression used by classical writers. However, of one thing I am quite sure; you have so little sense of fun or, to use a less inelegant word, of the ludicrous, that you cannot make allowance enough for those who have more of it, and who stir up that sense in the popular mind by the use of what are considered, by mirthful people, very pleasant and agreeable liberties with language. God made man to be mirthful as well as moral; and Mirth may say to Morals, as Emerson makes the Squirrel say to the Mountain:

“If I am not so large as you,

You are not so small as I,

And not half so spry!”

However you may have developed many other sides to your character, one is dwarfed and undeveloped, the mirthful side.

So much for fun. Do continue to send me everything that you can, even my Spirit of the Press with one black line against it. It is not likely I shall continue it, however: it is like drumming in a pint pot. And yet, when I think of the five thousand readers of the paper, and reflect upon what I know, that my motives ought to appeal to and strengthen what is good and high in them, I think I ought to do all I can, consistently with other duties.

The Whigs here, Boston Whigs, are moving everything for Everett; they feel however that they may have cause to repent by and by of their success.

As for our friends, they are all dull or indifferent except the “Dalgetties.” They feel sure of carrying the State next year, and Wilson counts certainly upon the Gubernatorial chair. I think however that most of them are quite careless about the modus in quo. They look to the Democrats from a sort of fellow feeling. Now every element in my nature rises up indignantly at the thought of our principles being bartered for considerations of a personal and selfish nature; and all my feelings bid me do what my reason forbids — that is, make open war, cause a clean split; appeal to the “conscience Whigs” who formed the nucleus of our party, and march out of the ranks with a banner of our own.

There are many considerations against it, and not the least is the necessity of condemning severely the course of the party, and so losing the advantage of the real good it has effected.

We shall see. What do you say?

Yours ever,

S. G. H.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 389-91

Samuel Gridley Howe to Congressman Horace Mann, Thursday, January 6, 1853

Boston, Thursday, 6th Jan. 1853.

My Dear Mann: — You will see that the Commonwealth has gone into new hands. I was foolish enough to re-invest in the concern — but I ought not to say foolish either, for I did not wish to see it go down with dishonour. I wished to nail the anti-slavery flag to the mast and see her swim or sink with that flying.

Downer, Alley, Sewall, Baldwin¹ and myself own the concern. I have been for some time doing the Spirit of the Press and helping in my way. How do you like her looks now? I am going to try to get Wright² to work. Can you not help us from Washington, or find someone who will send us an occasional letter? Would you think of taking hold of the paper after the fourth of March as editor in chief, that is, director of the political pop-gun, and make of it a cannon? You would be called upon for only four or five columns a week. We are going to pay our contributors as much as we can, but that is as yet only one dollar a column; we shall pay more if the income will allow it.

There is what seems to me a squeamishness among members of Congress about being known as writers for the press.

If you cannot send us anything, let us know who can.

Ever faithfully,

S. G. Howe.

________________

¹ Messrs. Samuel Downer, J. B. Alley, S. E. Sewall, and J. B. Baldwin.

Mr. Mann once wrote thus to Samuel Gridley Howe concerning Downer:

“. . . Boston seemed more than half empty when I found you were not in it. But I saw Downer, who is almost enough to save a city. If, when Abraham drove that sharp Yankee bargain about saving Sodom, higgling and screwing and beating down, until he reduced the number of the righteous to ten;—if the Lord could have been induced to lower his terms from that number, I can conceive of his saying: ‘Well, if you can find one Sam. Downer there, I'll spare the cursed city for him. . . .’”

² Elizur Wright.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 388-9

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, January 7, 1853

BOSTON, Jan. 7th, 1853.

DEAREST SUMNER: — I was very sorry indeed to criticize your speech, but I could not do otherwise in loyalty to our friendship. I have felt much grieved about it, the more so that it seemed to me Liberty had received a blow from her staunch friend; all unawares — but still a heavy blow.

— Look at it! will not the declaration that no pressure whatever shall force this country from her neutrality greatly encourage the despots to go on in their devilish career? Could we not at least have held our peace, and not assured them that we should never interfere, though they cut the throat of every liberal in Europe?

Then again, about poor Kossuth. I did feel sad indeed to have you speak (in your note) of his arrogance. My dear Sumner, is he not doing exactly what you felt called upon to do in your first peace oration, propound doctrines true in the abstract, good in principle, and surely realizable by and by, though so unpopular as to be deemed absurd by many? What Kossuth claims in the name of human brotherhood cannot, I concede, be now granted; we cannot plunge the country into war for any cause as yet set forth; but as surely as God lives and keeps up the progressive movement of humanity, so surely will the time come when nation shall say to nation, “Strike not, abuse not our brother nation! or we will help him strike you and defend himself.”

Do not take any fixed ground upon this subject; I mean an unprogressive position, and say what we will and what we will not do; wait and do what the crisis may require. We want peace; peace, and a century of it if possible, but we must have progress; we must remove the impediment in the way to it, and if despots oppose us we must remove them, peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must. . . .

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 386

Samuel Gridley Howe to Congressman Horace Mann, October 21, 1852

South Boston, October 21st, 1852.

My Dear Mann: — I am too impetuous a person ever to give a politic answer to political questions; but were such a question put to me as is put to you I should say, I would not favour the enactment of a law prohibiting corporations from employing persons more than ten hours per day; and this for various reasons.

The Legislature by taking the people under this sort of guardianship and protection does them no good, but harm. It emasculates people to be protected in this way. Let them be used to protecting themselves. It is bad policy to enact any but absolutely necessary laws. Commerce and trade should be free — entirely free.

Besides — such a law would seem to favour the notion that labourers ought to work ten hours daily — whereas in reality they ought not, in a good state of society, to work more than six to eight. The man who has worked hard bodily ten hours is incapacitated for working mentally with full appetency and vigour. Operatives ought not to be obliged to work more than six to eight hours; but in the present state of society legislation to that effect would be folly and madness; you cannot legislate rightly about it — therefore I would not at all.

Ever yours,

S. G. Howe.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 385

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, July 1852

Boston, July, 1852.

My Dear Sumner: — I have to thank you for many documents, valuable in themselves, but the more so as signs of your kind remembrance of me. I have not troubled you with letters, for you must be encombri already. Everybody but the most desperate of Hunkers is loud in your praise. You know how I feel; with none of their surprise at your prompt and gallant repulse of a cowardly attack, I have more than their appreciation of your motives for so much moderation.

I will tell you of only two out of a hundred things said — one by a lady — young, handsome, enthusiastic; she disliked you formerly — but the other day said with enthusiasm — “If I should meet him now I should be prompted to throw my arms around his neck and kiss him!” My banker, Blake, a Hunker, said yesterday — “Your friend Mr. Sumner has forced my admiration and earned my gratitude; he has done nobly; tell him so!”

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 384-5

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, July 4, 1852

Boston, July 4th, 1852.

Dearest Sumner: — I got your note yesterday, and read most of it to Carter;¹ afterwards I sent it to Parker, to be used with care. I have done what I could in a quiet way to inspire others with the confidence I feel in the final success of your plan. I received this morning a note from Parker (written of course before I sent yours) which I think it best to send you. A wise man likes to know how the wind blows, though he may have determined not to vary his course, even for a tempest. I wrote to Parker saying that he was lacking faith, and I feared beginning to lack charity — things in which he had abounded towards you.

I think the crying sin, and the great disturbing force in the path of our politicians is approbativeness; they let public opinion be to them in lieu of a conscience. So will not you do.

I want you to raise your voice and enter your protest, not because it is for your interest to do so, but for the sake of the cause, and of the good it will surely do. The present is yours, the future may not be; you may never go back to Washington even should you be spared in life and health. Again, it may be imprudent to wait till the last opportunity, for when that comes you may be prostrated by illness. Mann made a remark in one of his late letters about you, which I think I have more than once made to you, viz: that you yield obedience to all God's laws of morality, but think you are exempt from any obligation to obey his laws of physiology. You will have a breakdown some time that will make you realize that to ruin the mental powers by destroying that on which they depend is about as bad as neglecting to cultivate them.

However, what I mean to say is this: that though you would not heed all the world's urging you to speak if you thought it your duty to be silent, yet believing with all your friends that you ought to speak, you must not vista everything, in the hope of doing so at a particular moment, when you may be disabled by sickness.

Downer said to-day: “I don't see how it is to be, yet I have great faith that Sumner will come off with flying colours.” He would say so, even if you were prevented from speaking at all this session, and so should I, but so would few others.

Julia has returned and is well; so are all my beautiful and dear children. We go to Newport next Monday to stay awhile in the house with Longfellow, Appleton, etc.² No news here. Daniel [Webster] is determined to show fight; he has much blood, and it is very black. . . .

S. G. H.

_______________

¹ Robert Carter

² At Cliff House. The party consisted of my father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Longfellow and their children, George William Curtis, Thomas G. Appleton, and two or three others.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 382-3

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, July 2, 1852

Boston, July 2d, 1852.

My Dear Sumner: — There is a scattering of our forces here, or there has been, but I think now we begin to settle down to this conclusion — that we cannot vote for Scott,¹ and that we have only to prevent as many Democrats from voting for Pierce as possible. What do you say? Shall you not write to the Worcester Convention, or a letter to a friend that may be used there? Speaking for myself alone, I must say the course seems clear; to go for the abstract right and disregard the consequences. We must teach all parties that there are some men (and they are becoming more numerous) who will not be bought and sold and handed over by any conventions.

I have always had an instinct in me which I have never been able to body forth clearly — which tells me that all this manoeuvering and political expediency is all wrong, and that each one should go for the right regardless of others. If every man, or every third man, would do so, an unworthy candidate, or an unworthy platform, would never be put up; and is it less one's duty to do so because only every three-thousandth man will follow his example? Why is it deemed necessary to go on with great parties, and to twist principles until they all but break — why but because there are so few men who will be inflexible? Let us make those few more, and all will be right.

Can you not foretell about when you shall speak? If you can, with any degree of certainty, I shall be strongly tempted to go on there to hear. Great things are expected of you.

I was in at Mills's to-day; one or two desperate Hunkers were there: they caught eagerly at my expression of a firm belief in Scott's anti-slavery tendency, and Mills swore he would publish what I said. I believe they still cling to the hope of bringing the old man, their man, [Webster] upon the ring yet. They do not know how, or when, but hope for a contingency.

Do write me; and believe me ever faithfully,

S. G. Howe.

_______________

¹ Winfield Scott.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 380-1

Samuel Gridley Howe to Congressman Horace Mann, May 30, 1852

Boston, May 30th, 1852.

My Dear Mann: — I was equally surprised and disappointed by hearing of your Hegira (to Washington). I was in hopes of seeing you and talking with you fully about your plans. I have a sort of conviction that we must lose you here: that you will go West; and I try in all ways to reconcile myself to it. You are, much more than you suppose, necessary to the new college — while it is not necessary to you. There is a radical fault in your organization which prevents you from feeling your own worth and power and acting upon the feeling. Your self-esteem is too small; so small that it does not know it is small. You have a sort of intellectual perception of your talents and virtues — but these intellectual perceptions never do the duty of the feelings. Old Dan sees with his intellect the beauty and the glory of virtue, right and truth — but how poorly does this intellectual perception supply the place of the normal sentiments, which should engender, feel and embody virtue and goodness.

By the by — I heard old Dan¹ last Saturday, and was most painfully impressed by the melancholy spectacle which he presented. I do not say that he was drunk, but he appeared like a man who was nearly drunk — or else half paralyzed. I am told that most of the Methodist clergy got the impression that he was very drunk — and were indignant. One thing is certain — most certain; not a fifth part, perhaps not an eighth part could make out what he said; and yet they sat, patient and open-mouthed, waiting for words of power and beauty. Oh! what an awful reckoning it would be if that man had to answer for the hundred talents which were committed to him! Would be? It is now awful — how he suffers and how the world suffers, if we consider that when we do not have what we might and ought to have we suffer positive loss. . . .

If you were going to a clime ten degrees further south and on the west slope of the Alleghanies, I should be strongly tempted to pull up stakes and follow you. There is a degree of self-conceit and intolerance [in Boston] that makes it seem a pitiful place. Then the prospect for the future is not good. The American population is getting crowded out of town and the houses filled up with Irish. By the by, do you remember the beautiful mansion formerly inhabited by P. C. Brooks, in Atkinson Street, and more recently by Samuel May? Well, it is now a colony of Irish, where they pig in sixteen in a room. So long as these poor creatures came to us only fast enough to be leavened by the little virtue there was in us, so long we welcomed them; but if they are to pull us down instead of our pulling them up we may well cry hold off! However, I suppose that this evil is only local: as a whole the process may be good for humanity, and we have no right to partition off God's earth and say here shall be Saxon and here shall not be Celt. . . .

I shall write you again in a day or two; meanwhile I am, dear Mann,

Ever yours,

S. G. Howe.

_______________

¹ Webster's last speech in Boston.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 378-380

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, May 30, 1852

Boston, May 30th, 1852.

Dear Sumner: — I have been remiss of late about writing to you, but have been hardly in a state to do more than make the movements which the treadmill of necessity enforces.

I note what you say about Felton, and your wish that I should not, in defending you, lose his friendship. I did indeed delay to the last moment answering his letter; not through fear of losing his friendship, but from a reluctance to undertake a disagreeable and vain task. On Thursday evening I wrote to him my reply; the ground I took was, that it would be utterly useless to try the case between you in the court of the reason; it must be removed to that of the affections. I then put it to him to say whether, if he should receive news of your death, he would not then begin to think that he should have made more allowance for your peculiarities of manner; and even if what he charged were true, whether he should not rather have kept in mind the many noble and endearing traits of character, and the devotion to principle which he admitted you to possess. I gave him credit for honesty of purpose, but told him that in my humble opinion his public course, or acts, had been hostile to the sacred cause of humanity. I wrote a long letter of which the above is the substance. The next evening he appeared at our children's fete, and said to me briefly but feelingly, “It is all right! all right!” and that was all.

We had a party got up on my plan. We had about fifty children, who came early in the afternoon and frolicked to their hearts' content. Afterward came their parents to tea, and on the whole we had about eighty persons, whose pleasure and enjoyment it was pleasant to behold. We had swinging and dancing, and running and tumbling; we had also music, and a theatrical representation for the big folks. Altogether it was a good affair, a religious affair. I say religious, for there is nothing which so calls forth my love and gratitude to God, as the sight of the happiness for which He has given the capacity and furnished the means; and this happiness is nowhere more striking than in the frolics of the young. It is true that the sight of any true happiness should call forth the same feeling; and if we only cultivated it, we should have a religion that all could enjoy, instead of one that is sad and repellent to all but a few minds of peculiar stamp.

My vacation is over, and my hopes of seeing you in Washington are over for the time. I was glad, as were all your friends here, to hear of your so courteously throwing down the gauntlet, and announcing by a sort of herald that you would soon appear in the arena. It is well-timed; for it gives you the advantage of satisfying the anti-slavery people, and does not give to Webster and others the advantage they might derive from your speaking before the nominations. What I said about a person to furnish information from Washington I supposed you would understand. It was for Kossuth, who wished especially not to have anyone recommended by Senator Cass, but one who would not be likely to be in the interests of either party. He has agents and informants in all the courts of Europe; he needs one in Washington; he is willing to pay a correspondent. It is not a spy, in the obnoxious sense of the word, but a man who, acting in the interests of humanity, will furnish information honourably obtained, to be honourably used. Do you know any such?

s. G. H.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 376-8

Thomas Wentworth Higginson to Louisa Storrow Higginson, June 26, 1856

Worcester, June 26,1856

I have a momentary lull, having yesterday sent off my second party to Kansas. . . . The first had forty-seven and our Committee will send no more, leaving it for the State Committee, which was appointed yesterday, chiefly on my urging. . . .

At Chicago they show an energy which disgraces us; have arrangements and men already and need only money. The night I came from Brattleboro', Friday, we had letters from Chicago, and our Finance Committee voted them fifteen hundred dollars and voted to add three thousand dollars more, unless I could raise this second party by Wednesday, which I did. Saturday, the day after, I was sent to Boston, with the same letters, to urge the Boston Committee to send money to Chicago. With great difficulty I got five minutes each from Pat Jackson and several other merchants, and at two they came together for ten minutes and voted to send two thousand dollars, Ingersoll Bowditch being happily absent, who had just told me he should come and oppose it entirely. I saw the telegraphic despatch written and came back.

That very night we got a telegraphic despatch from Chicago, imploring us to send that precise sum, for the relief of a large party of emigrants, detained at Iowa City for want of means. The two despatches crossed on the way.

This two thousand dollars, with our remittance, and our two parties of emigrants (which would not have gone till by this time if I had not gone to work on it the first night I came) are absolutely All that has yet been done by New England for Kansas, in this time of imminent need. This I say to show you how ill-prepared we are for such emergencies. The busy give no time and the leisurely no energy, and there is no organization. I should except the Committee here, which has done admirably, and that in Concord, Massachusetts, and Dr. Howe, Sam Cabot, Charles Higginson, and a few others in Boston.

There is talk now of sending Dr. Howe to Kansas with a large sum of money, and this will be the best thing possible, but it should have been done a fortnight ago.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 137-9

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, May 19, 1852

Boston, May 19, 1852.

Dearest Sumner: — I wrote you a very hasty note from my office to-day.

Kossuth left us yesterday. At his request I accompanied him to Worcester, and Julia went also, to talk to Madame Kossuth. I know not why, but K—— has given me more of his confidence than any other person here. To the Committee that was formed at his request, he said he should like to have one person appointed to whom he could reveal in confidence so much of his plans and prospects as would show there was reason for hope and for immediate action; and he so plainly indicated me that they insisted upon my being their agent of conversation with him. I have had several interviews with him; he has been here twice, and was to have privately spent the two last days here, but the pressure of business prevented. I am quite overwhelmed by the degree of confidence he has placed in me, and feel keenly the mortification of being unable to do more than guard what he confides to me, and work in a public way for his cause.

Surely he is an inspired man! and he is as gifted in moral qualities as in intellectual powers. I can well understand the enthusiasm that would lead his followers fearlessly to the death at his command. He is the only man to whom my intellect bows quite down. He has done a great work here. The amount of material aid is about $16,000, but that which may be forthcoming in case of need is incalculable. Say what Hunkerdom may, he really made a deep impression on our people, and though there was not much noisy applause, there was deep enthusiasm among our best people. As for the soi disant aristocracy of Boston, though it is of little consequence what they do or say, the truth is that while pretending to ignore him, they felt, and others do too, that he ignored them. They would have opened their salons to him — but they knew he would not enter them. Winthrop is the only man among them who openly upheld him. The Pulskys were everywhere — the Governor [Kossuth] went nowhere! Upon the people of the Commonwealth he left the impression — the conviction — of his being an honest, earnest, eloquent and highly gifted man.

Julia was much with the ladies. I saw them not much. Madame Kossuth, as you know, is an invalid, and nervous; she is not a gifted woman. She brought with her to America some money, and has received some from home since; this she carried about with her, being anxious to invest it, but not daring to trust any one with it; meantime the good Governor kept borrowing from her for Hungary, so she mustered courage and almost with tears put a bag of five hundred eagles ($5,000) in my hands, the day before yesterday, and told me to invest it for her. To-day I got fifty shares of Worcester Railroad for her. She saw and liked good Mrs. Hillard much, but upon Hillard's being proposed to receive the money, she declined, and told Julia she could not trust a Hunker!

We have formed a Committee for Hungarian affairs; S. C. Phillips, Banks, Carter, Wilson, Kellogg, Alley, etc., and shall see what we can do.

I was at Ellen Dwight's¹ wedding this forenoon, a very brilliant party, as the world goes. The bride was really most beautiful, with all that wild fire of her eyes subdued into an earnest seriousness. Twisleton looked anxious and not well. He is nineteen years her senior. I have not seen Felton, nor noticed his letter; it is very long, and has an array of complaints (if I may so call them) against you. I put off the answer as an undesirable thing. I must be true to you and to the right, and by so doing I shall give him offence, mortal I fear; yet I hope not, for with all his faults he is a man to be esteemed.

Julia dined with the Agassiz the other day, and said Felton was even more jovial than in the olden time. Mann is here, not looking well.

Ever faithfully yours,

S. G. Howe.

_______________

¹ She married Edward Twisleton of London, younger brother of Lord Say-and-Sele.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 374-6