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

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, May 11, 1852

Boston, May 11, 1852.

My Dear Sumner: — I have been somewhat taken up with Kossuth's matters, though I work indirectly and not publicly. The other day he sent a message that he would come out to see me at nine o'clock in the evening. I was unfortunately engaged to a formal dinner party at T. B. Curtis's and could only promise to be at home as near nine as possible; when I got home he had just driven from the door, having stayed a quarter of an hour or so. I followed him to his quarters, and he took me into his chamber, and for two hours discoursed to me as only he can: filling me with increased admiration and love. He extended to me a degree of confidence about his plans which quite amazed me; and humiliated me too, for I felt I could do nothing to make me worthy of it.

Julia has seen much of them en famille, and bears glowing testimony to his gentleness and tenderness in the domestic relations.

As I said to you once before I think, I was glad of an opportunity of making Hillard ashamed (or deserving to be so) of having so easily entertained the belief of Kossuth's want of kindness to his wife.

By the by, H—— wrote some articles in the Courier which you may have seen. The other evening he walked into town from my house with Pulsky and others; and Pulsky, knowing H—— had written the articles, took occasion to riddle and utterly cut them to pieces, as he well could. H—— was silent and opened not his mouth.

Kossuth is really making a very strong impression here, that is in the neighbourhood. Hunkerdom is silent — dumb — angry. I was (mirabile dictul) at Ticknor's the other evening, and was surprised to find how subduedly and quietly they took allusions to the subject. They are wise, and, since fas est ab hoste doceri, I hope to imitate the wise caution when I feel excited and angry.

I had a long talk there with Mrs. Agassiz, and it was mostly about you. I thought it best (or rather I did not think much at all) to try to put her right as to your break with Felton, and to show her that she was blaming you without cause. I told her my mind fully, and spoke of F—— kindly but rather sternly, giving him credit for intentions, but not for actions. The next day, (or yesterday) Monday, came a long letter from F—— in which he paraded in formidable array his charges against you. I shall not trouble you with them now; but perhaps you may be interested in one paragraph, in which he says, as he supposes on good authority, that Fillmore, in answer to a query about how you could seek his hospitalities after denouncing him so bitterly, said, “Mr. S—— seems to like me pretty well; at any rate, by coming to my house he shows he did not believe what he said.” I give you this valeat quantum, — but in confidence. I shall perhaps answer F——’s letter, but more probably see him.

Faithfully yours,

S. G. Howe.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 372-4

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, April 25, 1852

Boston, Tuesday, 25th April, 1852.

My Dear Sumner: — I am only waiting to see Kossuth and to ascertain whether I can do anything for his cause, after which I shall flit for Washington.

There is considerable stir and bustle, and note of preparation in our streets (half-past twelve). He will probably be here in an hour or two. I shall hardly go out, for I have no part to play, and I shrink from the crowd and the noise. My whole heart and soul is with this man and his noble cause. I hail him as prophet of good, as high priest of humanity, and I would cheerfully make any sacrifices in my power to aid him in his holy work; but I cannot push forward in the crowd who will be eager to attract his notice. Wilson dined with me on Sunday to meet George [Sumner] and he told me he should have me down among the invited guests at the banquet — but for that I should only see K—— in private, if I can get an interview. He wrote a very kind answer to my letter inviting him to accept my house.

About George, I hardly know what to say. I think he will be well received except by the ultras of the Hunkers. He dines with Prescott on Thursday. Your sisters will probably have told you who and which have called upon him. He is cautious about committing himself in the Kossuth matter. I do not like caution; it betokens little faith in God's arrangement, by which the truth is sure to prevail sooner by bold and open declaration. I reproach myself bitterly for want of faith and courage in my past. The rocks on which most of my hopes have split, — approbativeness, the care for what this one or the other may think. There is nothing good, nothing enduring, nothing worth living for, nothing worth dying for, but truth.

Ever yours,

S. G. Howe.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 370-1

Journal of Amos A. Lawrence, October 26, 1859

Dr. Samuel G. Howe came to ask me if I would be one of ten to furnish good counsel to defend 'Old Brown,' to which I agreed.

SOURCE: William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence: With Extracts from His Diary and Correspondence, p. 132

Samuel Gridley Howe to Congressman Horace Mann, April 9, 1852

Boston, April 9th, 1852.

My Dear Mann: — I am indeed grateful for the kind expressions contained in your note of the 7th. (How it got here on the 9th I cannot conceive.)

You have one virtue in an eminent degree, that of magnifying and multiplying through the eyes of affection the virtues and the capacities of your friends. If I could only get you into Rhadamanthus’ seat when I go below, I should have a less warm berth assigned to me.

But your words stir me up to merit a tithe of the praise you give me.

I should be with you now but for the illness of my Flossy. She has ever been in the most robust and uproarious health, and her present illness, though other people tell me it is nothing, seems to me alarming. I employ a homœopathist, just to keep away all doctors and drugs, and to prevent the women nursing her and coddling her. Fresh air and cold water, inside and outside the belly — these are all my medicines. As soon as she is better, or so that I shall not worry and be pained by the thought that the poor thing is asking for Papa, I shall start.

I must however be here when Kossuth comes. If you see him in Washington tell him to be sure to enter the State from the West, and to gather strength and popularity and heat, so as to melt something of the iceberg he will find here.

I have no news for you, for I see nobody. At the State House they have their sop and I am quiet. We shall have to be quiet until the devil stalks abroad again and behaves so intolerably that we can get up a public battue and hunt him down again.

Ever yours,

S. G. H.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 369-70