Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, April 8, 1852

Boston, April 8th, 1852.

Dearest Sumner: — I am very grateful for your frequent though brief notes. I know how much your present position increases the value of those grains of the hour-glass which even in days of leisure you were wont to count as grains of gold.

I should now be on my way to join you, but for the illness of my Flossy. It is nothing serious, I trust, but I could have no comfort away from her. The health of my children is seldom interrupted; they are vigorous, beautiful, bright and happy; but all this makes me less (instead of better) able to bear an interruption.

I have a vacation at the Blind [Institution] and though the Idiots call for some of my time and thought, I shall leave them as soon as my child's health is restored.

I note what you say about your course respecting the compromise, etc. It is perfectly manifest that if you did not feel called upon by a high sense of duty to speak, your silence respecting slavery, and your action upon other matters, are fortunate and felicitous, for you will speak with all the more power and effect when the proper time comes.

As for the Hunkers, they would have made a much worse outcry against you for having spoken, had your speech been that of an angel, than for your having been silent. I say to all here (what is needless however), that your friends may count upon your tact as to “time when,” as you can count upon your friends (?). . . .

We have nothing of interest here.

Kossuth is coming and this will stir up a little excitement.

I have written to offer my whole house and servants to him for as long as he will stay and even if it be two months.

Let us not criticize such a man too closely, dear Sumner. His mission is a high and noble one, and if he asks much, asking boldly, even pretentiously, let us pardon and admire. If God would but vouchsafe to the earth a hundred Kossuths, would it not go forward with a rush?

Ever thine,

S. G. Howe.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 368-9

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, March 15, 1852

Boston, Thursday, March 15, 1852.

Dearest Sumner: — I write you from my house, to which I have been confined by a more than commonly severe attack of neuralgia. I have been indisposed four days, or else I should have studied the land question in order to be able to give a reason for the faith that is in me. I have a sort of instinct that you are in the right, but that you do not go far enough. This whole matter of ownership of God's earth, whether by individuals or by nations, has got to be ripped up and readjusted upon principles and considerations different from those ever yet entertained by any except those who are pooh-poohed down as visionaries.

I do not think the press can make much impression by their outcry against you; besides, that will cease now that Daniel, in order to make a little capital, has followed in your wake. However, I shall be out to-morrow, and will see what I can do.

Some of your friends, and good judicious ones, have been alarmed by the onslaught made upon you for your silence about slavery;¹ and all Hunkerdom shouted “a hit! a capital hit!” when Judge Warren quoted something of yours about the effect of Washington atmosphere upon our Northern representatives &c. Some friends say that you cannot altogether get over an impression (if such should get abroad) that you had wavered, even by your being ever so firm afterwards. I do not share their alarm — not as yet. I do not much regard any temporary and passing policy got up by the daily press; by and by it will not be asked how long was Sumner silent — at what precise moment did he speak — but it will be asked did he speak out and speak bravely? I do think it important, and more than a matter of taste, that your speech should be well-timed, and seem to be called for. There are great and vital questions yet to come up about the Territories, and about California. However, I know nothing about the how, the why, the when — but this I know, you are true and brave—the Bayard of politicians, sans peur et sans reproche.

You will, I doubt not, give due weight to those considerations which your friends urge as calling for a speedy manifestation of your principles.

Vaughan is here, upon Kossuth business principally, but this is entre nous.

I have seen much of him; he is a very intelligent man and I think an honest one as politicians go.

I saw Longfellow at his beautiful home a few days ago.

I saw Palfrey too — growing rapidly into an old man; thin, wan and sad. He is a noble and beautiful spirit.

At the State House our friends are fighting for freedom in every way that seems to them likely to redound to their own credit and continue them in power.

They talk, you know, of violating the common law of custom, and running Rantoul into the Senate — but they will hardly venture, because they do not feel strong enough, and a defeat would be very bad. I am sorry they ever put out any feelers about it.

Your description of your genial days makes me sigh; to-day we have a cold easterly storm and the ground is covered with snow and sleet.

I had fully determined to leave on the first of April when my vacation at the Blind begins; but I have to look out for the Idiots.

Seguin² has been here two months, and proves to be a man of great vigour of intellect, and full of resources; he has done wonders — but we can hardly keep him; he is full of self-esteem and exigeant to the uttermost; one of his conditions is that the Trustees shall not be allowed to hold any meetings without his being present. Another that neither the matron nor any teachers shall hold any communication with the parents of the pupils, &c., &c. Besides, he is choleric, not benevolent, and not very high in his motives.

C'est la gloire — la gloire.

But I must close. Ever thine,

s. G. H.

_______________

¹ See post, p. 382.

² Dr. Edward Seguin, author of “De l'Idiotie,” etc., came in 1852 to “take charge of the school for Idiots long enough to organize the classes, and introduce his method of training.” This gentleman . . . was at the head of the first public institution (for the teaching of idiots,) organized in France.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 365-8

Samuel Gridley Howe to Congressman Horace Mann, February 26, 1852

Boston, February 26th, 1852.

My Dear Mann: — I hope to see you in April — and yet I do not know that I can, for there is some doubt about my having any one for the Idiot School; in which case I must stay here.

I would I had some of your counsel about what to do to show the dissatisfaction of the true friends of Free-soil here with those of the party who have power, yet use it not to promote the cause. They are snugly in office and think only of keeping there. I say we ought to write them a letter and demand of them what they are doing and planning, — and when they mean to show the work which they were elected to do. I have unfortunately no talent for chalking out their course; I only have an intuitive sense that much may now be done for the cause, and that they will not do anything unless driven to it by outsiders.

I wrote Sumner, and begged his advice — but he does not like to give any, even to me.

What shall we do, Mann? — why the deuce did you not let them nominate you at Worcester? If you had, there would now be a chance of putting you where you could do more good and prevent more evil than you ever can in that bear-garden.

In my temporalities I am but so-so; and with a sense of the uncertainty of life which I never had brought home to me in former years. I always had the habit, when going away for a few days, to put all my business affairs in such posture that no trouble would follow if I should die — but I always said, in the back part of my head, it is a useless precaution, for I shall surely come back alive. It is not so now; — death and I are fencing, not with foils but with sharp rapiers, and I with but rusty armour for defence.

Think you not that at times I feel keen regret at the little use I have made of the rare opportunity you have given me of being with and knowing a man like yourself? I do, and resolve to do better; but perhaps I shall resolve and re-resolve and — die the same.

There is one thing I want much to do, and with your active aid could do (that is, if I get the Idiot School fairly established and in public favour) — viz. establish a school for teaching the deaf-mutes to articulate. We have often talked of it, and I made a spasmodic effort at it once; but I am wiser now, and with you could succeed. Mr. Weld's1 last visit here, and his avowal that they do virtually nothing except to those who have some hearing, made me see the necessity of some action.

Do let me hear from you sometimes. Give my kind regards to Madame and believe me

Faithfully yours,

S. G. Howe.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 364-5

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, Thursday, February 12, 1852

Boston, Thursday, Feb. 12th, 1852.

My Dear Sumner: — I have yours of the 7th, and thank you for it.

Don't think too much of my dissent from your Kossuth speech. I have with heart and hand, with conscience and reason, with warmth and affection approved and sustained every political step you ever took save two — the Coalition, and the declaration to European despots that, throttle liberty as they might and when they might, we would never interfere.

On these alone have I differed from you, but give to you the same credit for honesty and earnestness and sincere conviction of right that I claim for myself.

Bygones are not yet bygones, and the sad state of things this day here confirms me in my views of the Coalition; but for your election we should have lost everything.

You are true and earnest and persevering; you are the noble and worthy head of our party and are doing something to save its honour; but the rest of the leaders, where are they? — in office, and trying to keep possession as an end, not a means.

But enough of this! let the infinitesimal of my dissent from you disappear in the wholeness of my approval, admiration and regard.

I am in some perplexity and dismay; a check for $500 has been forged in my name and paid! my suspicion falls upon one for whom I grieve; — and, if true, will carry desolation to a widowed hearth — I am much more anxious to be found wrong than right.

Your note came too late to prevent your election as Trustee — if you are very desirous of being left off you can be — but perhaps you had better remain until I learn what I hope may be [the state of things] at the end of this year. How we change! — once I could not understand your indifference to life — now you can not understand mine.

Faithfully yours,

S. G. Howe.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 363-4

Samuel Gridley Howe to Horace Mann, January 21, 1852

Boston, January 21st, 1852.

My Dear Mann: — It seems an age since I have seen you and long since I have had a word about you. There was a saying about “icicles in breeches” reported of some member of the House, and of course we knew it was aut Mann aut Diabolus who originated it. Was there never any report of your remarks upon that occasion? if there was pray send it to me.

I have little to say to you that will be new or interesting. Of matters personal — first and foremost, my babies are well and beautiful and good; I hope yours are ditto. These little banyan branches of ours that are taking root in the earth keep us tied to it, and keep us young also. My wife is well; we are passing the winter at South Boston; and between Blind and Idiots and my chicks, the time flies rapidly away.

I have luckily secured Dr. Seguin, formerly the life and soul of the French school for idiots. . . .

As to politics, I know little of them. Alley¹ was in here just now and asked me what I thought of the present position of the Free-soil party; I replied that in my opinion it was so much diluted that it would not keep; that the most active Dalgetties had got comfortably placed in office, and did not trouble themselves much about Free-soil; that at the State House, among the Coalitionists, the first article of the creed was preservation and continuation of the Coalition as a means of retaining power — and that the 39th or 339th was Free-soil — just enough to satisfy outside impracticables like myself: in a word we were sold. He laughed and said — “You are more than half right.”

Alley is shrewd and honest, I think. Boutwell goes in for Davis's place [in the Senate] and will have to fight with Rantoul for it.

I told I. T. Stevenson the other day that there was one man whom the Lord intended to lift up to the State House and into the Gubernatorial Chair, in his own good time, and that was you. He replied he did not doubt the intention, but that you had been doing everything in your power to defeat it.

With kind regards to Mrs. M—.

Ever yours,

S. G. Howe.

_______________

¹ John B. Alley of Lynn, afterwards Congressman.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 361-3

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, Thursday Evening, January 10, 1852

Boston, Thursday eve., January 10th, 1852.

My Dear Sumner: — I have a welcome line from you to-day; the first for several days; thanks!

I have been dining (a wonder for me) with Mrs. Ward, when we had Mr. and Mrs. Hare, Emerson, Hillard, &c.

Mrs. Hare makes me feel young again, yet very old. Hare I did not like, mainly however because he spoke not worthily of you — talked of your land speech as a bid for the Presidency!!

Ye Gods, what are we coming to when Charles Sumner is considered by any man with brains in his head as an aspirant for office?

I hope you may cross Felton's path and be brought together in kindness and affection; you would find him changed — sadly — yet your generous catholic nature would find much to dwell upon in his character with regard and esteem.

Our Free-soilers in the State are doing nothing for the cause — nothing. I think some of us outsiders should address them a letter of inquiry as to what they mean to do. I am sure that they need a fillip from somebody.

Can you not mark out some course of policy that they should pursue to forward the great principle of our party?

They are becoming mere politicians, mere office holders. They talk, some of them, of making the Maine liquor law a Shibboleth of our party!

I cannot see my way clear to advocate the enacting of such a law, or any unnecessary sumptuary law. I know that they hold this to be necessary; it seems to me doing wrong that good may come out of it.

Faithfully ever yours,

s. G, H.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 360-1

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, December 28, 1851

South Boston, Dec. 28, 1851.

My dear Sumner: — I received to-day the revised copy of your speech, and thank you for it. It is a beautiful and characteristic speech; and had you stopped where you say, “and here I might stop,” it would have had my heartiest approval. What follows does not please me; nay! it pains and grieves me. Perhaps I cannot give you any good reason for my dissent, because I am not your equal in logical power; I yield habitually to your reasoning; but where my moral instincts lead me to differ with you, you cannot shake me. They have rarely led me so to do, but in this case they rise up, and will be laid by no magic of logic; and they tell me you are wrong. I can understand that Mann and Giddings and Allen,¹ all my superiors, vastly so, in knowledge and power, should approve your sentiment, for they are lawyers, statesmen if you will, and bow themselves with what seems to me a superstitious reverence before the "Law of Nations," as expounded by Grotius, Puffendorf and others.

Do you not yourself, dear Sumner, have too much reverence of this kind? Does it not amount to blind veneration?

You talk about “that Supreme Law, the world's collected will, which overarches the Grand Commonwealth of Christian Nations!”

The world's collected will! in God's name what do you mean? The world is the people of the world; and this “Supreme Law” was not enacted by the people, nor for the people, but by the selfish few who have governed and oppressed the peoples — enacted or rather acted in the interests and for the preservation of the rulers, and not in the interests of the people.

“The Grand Commonwealth of Christian States” — where — when was there ever such a thing or anything approaching it?

It is a mockery to call the Governments of Europe Christian. They hate; they do ever to others as they would not be done to; they try to overreach and undermine and injure and destroy each other. A precious set of piratical combinations against the true interests of the people and the real progress of humanity to be dignified with the name of a “Commonwealth of Christian States!”

This is mere rhetoric, my dear Sumner, and poor rhetoric, for everything is poor that is not true.

You say “what that code forbids you, forbear to do!” and I am sorry you said it, for you may have to unsay it if you continue to be among the powers that embody the sentiment of our people in the stirring times that are coming. Many and many of the laws of your venerated code of national law will be rent asunder and trampled upon in that resurrection day of the people's rights when the principles of international communication shall be settled not with a view to the interest of the governors but the governed.

The law of nations! Why, what is a nation? Is it an entity, a principle, an enduring thing? No! but a temporary arrangement, a convenient classification for those whose motto is divide et impera: a classification which your law of nations would fain keep up, but which is fast disappearing as the sentiment [of] human brotherhood is passing from the abstract into the concrete.

The only fault I have found with Kossuth (and I find the same with you), is the assumption of the innate reality, the great importance, the enduring nature of these national distinctions and divisions. A people united under one government, living within certain geographical boundaries, may do whatever they choose, may enslave, oppress and outrage in every possible way those of a certain sect or colour living within their borders; and those nations over the border, though they may hear the groans of the victims, have no right to interfere. This is not human brotherhood: we were men before we were citizens,² and though we are to look first to the interests of our immediate neighbours and countrymen, we are not [to] overlook the claims of our brethren over the border. I know what you will say — you will use all moral means, but you will never use force — you will have no wars. Against this, again, all the instincts of my nature revolt. God gives us power, force, and the instinct to use it, and though it is better never to use it in war, yet it may be the only means in our power to save the perishing. I tell you, Sumner, as I have often told you before, these instincts of ours, this combativeness and this destructiveness, though destined to die out by and by, when the moral sentiment becomes supreme, have yet their work to do in the suppression of wrong and the establishment of right. Suppose your neighbour is beating his wife and his children, and you hear their cries, and you cannot stop him by any moral means, will you not knock him down and tie him? If you would not, then ought God to wither the arm and shrivel the knuckles that will not use the strength He lent them.

And do you not hear the cries of people over the border, and say, “Oh! I must not interfere, you are not of my people, you are only men and women, not my fellow citizens; the ‘law which overarches the Grand Commonwealth of Christian States’ forbids me to employ the force which God has given me in your behalf, and what that forbids, I cannot do.”

You say that “against every purpose” you will uphold the peaceful neutrality of your country. Now, my dear Sumner, this seems to me a wrong doctrine and a selfish doctrine. Our country is growing with a giant growth; in a few years its strength may become so great, it may so command the commercial and monetary interest of the globe that no nation would dare to risk its enmity; I say this may possibly be: and yet you would so tie up our hands that we could not interfere even if another partition of Poland, or another Massacre of Parga³ or a St. Bartholomew's Eve, were to be enacted. It would be none of our business according to your doctrine, though another Herod slew all the infants over the border, or the rivers on the other side of the mountains were red with the blood of Huguenots, or another Poland shrieked as her last Kosciusko fell.

It is true you say “you would swell with indignation at the steps of tyranny;” but, Lord bless you, if you should swell until you burst, you would not do half so much good as by a kick and a lick at the tyrant.

Sumner, I know that abstractly and logically your peace principles seem sound, and I doubt not they will finally prevail; but there is a time for all things; and so long as avowed tyrants go about tying up people and flogging them, it is the business of somebody who has the power, to knock the tyrant down and let the people up.

Nobody who knows your generous sympathetic nature will ever suspect you of selfishness or of irony, but a stranger might almost suspect you of both, as you apostrophize Kossuth, and tell him “to be content with outgushing sympathy,” while you deny him any material aid; “to trust in God,” while you refuse him, and tell every other nation to refuse him, the aid of means, by which alone God ever does anything.

I have thus loosely and rapidly put down some passing thoughts for your consideration.

But the principal one is this; and this, dear Sumner, has disturbed me more than all: it seems to me that all this latter part of your speech is de trop; is uncalled for; is suggested by a desire to set forth and reiterate your peace principles, in forgetfulness of the harm it may do to the downcast, the struggling, the almost desperate patriots of Europe. Why tell the Despots that under no circumstances will we ever resort to the kind of interference which alone they fear, or care much for? What care they for our “outgushing sympathy” or our “God speed” to patriots, or our swelling bosoms — so that we will only keep quiet, and hold our hands off while they bind their victims securely — and put off, for years incalculable, the emancipation of their people?

If you will be as harmless as a dove, at least be as cunning as a serpent, and do not tell the Despot that you will show nothing but a white feather.

Kossuth has partly exposed the miserable charlatanerie of secrecy in diplomatic intercourse; I wish he had gone further and said that an honest, brave and intelligent people ought absolutely to forbid any secret negotiations, and insist upon every despatch being public. I hope you will move in this matter. I never read of a member of your Senate or of the House asking the President to communicate some information provided in his opinion the public interests do not forbid it, without a feeling that we are grossly humbugged (pardon the word).

How can truth ever do any harm but by being concealed — rotting in the dark? But methinks before throwing aside entirely the old maxims of diplomacy and statesmanship (forsooth !) I would at least use that part which allowed me to conceal from the despots of Europe the (to them comforting and encouraging) fact that never under any circumstances would we be driven by any atrocities of theirs to interfere in behalf of those our unfortunate brethren whom they hold in their grasp, and may legally hold by the “Great Law which overarches the Grand Commonwealth of Christian Nations.” Fas est ab hoste doceri; and if I am to be bound by the Devil's code, let me learn all I can of his mode of working, and counteract him where I may.

I have wanted to sit down and write something about this matter for publication — but alas! I find fast creeping over me a disinclination for any work of the kind — and my deep interest in everything that touches you or your fame, has, I fear, led me to feel more about this matter than my devotedness to the right and good.

At any rate I have done one duty of friendship and told you frankly how much in my opinion the latter part of your speech falls short of the high standard you usually maintain. This is the speech of Lawyer Sumner, Senator Sumner — not of generous, chivalrous, high-souled Charles Sumner, who went with me into the Broad Street riot,³ and who, if need had been, would have defended the women and children in the houses, by pitching their ruffianly assailants downstairs. Enough; I will not begin upon another sheet. Good night, God bless you.

Ever thine,

S. G. h.

_______________

¹ Charles Allen, then a Congressman.

² “Before man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.” — Lowell.

³ By Ali Pasha.

⁴ See ante, page 97.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 355-60

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

Boston, Dec. 26, 1851.

Dear Sumner: — . . . I told you I should give you my views touching that part of your beautiful speech from which I dissent entirely.

You are quite right in saying Kossuth is demanding more than is reasonable, if by reasonable you mean practical and feasible. If however you plant yourself upon the ground of human brotherhood, and demand of your brother man, or brother nation, all that the sacred tie of brotherhood warrants, and suppose others will do their duty — then you have a right to demand nearly, if not all, that he does.

I am not at all moved by what you (and still more others) say about a war costing us five hundred millions — of course we must first settle if it be right, and then meet the cost as we best may.

Depend upon it, Sumner, God has not yet finished his work with his instrument of combativeness and destructiveness; and though wars are as bad as you have ever depicted them; though the ordeal, the fight, is absurd and all that, still, — still, — when the lower propensities are so active in the race they must occasionally be knocked down with clubbed muskets.

It is not at all probable, still it is possible that, taking advantage of reaction, and of Louis Napoleon's treason,¹ and of the intense desire of the bourgeois class all over Europe for peaceful pursuit of business, let who may govern, and despairing of anything better, the Russians and the Prussians and the Austrians may combine to establish despotism and avert all progress in western Europe; and it is possible that England may be forced to engage single-handed with them: if so shall we be neutral? Shall we merely send a “God speed!” — and not back it up by hearty blows at the enemies of the race?

I say no! a thousand times no! and be it five hundred or five thousand millions that it will cost, let us go into the fight.

Kossuth is doing a great and glorious work; and though like all enthusiasts he overdoes his task, — and attempts more than it is possible to perform — still he will do much for us. God keep him and give him a chance to work for five years more, when he will have a chance to try a struggle with Russia.

What does George² write you? I take it Louis Nap. will have it all his own way for some time to come; not long as Nature views things, but long for us impatient mortals.

Ever thine,

s. G. H.

_______________

¹ The Coup d’Etat.

² George Sumner.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 353-5

Samuel Gridley Howe to Charles Sumner, December 12, 1851

Boston, Dec. 12, 1851.

My Dear Sumner: — But for an aching head and a sad heart (my spirits always sink to zero when my body is out of working gear), I should write you fully about your speech, which everybody likes and praises, everybody but I! I think you made a mistake, and went too far — and I'll tell you why I think so, when I have any nervous energy to stimulate the brain.

I am glad to hear its praises however, though not so much from Hunkers as others.

Would I could have heard you! And had I known you were to speak I should have done so at any cost. I had determined upon one thing as what I would not swerve from — hearing your maiden speech. But on the 8th you did not know you were to speak.

I fear we shall not succeed in the attempt to get up a Kossuth demonstration here. I have tried in many quarters in vain. I had faint hopes of Hillard, though others said he was earnest in favour of K——. I found him in a poor mood, evidently ill and irritated. He swore by all his Gods, and with an earnestness amounting almost to fierceness, that he would never again as long as he lived take any part in anything of the kind; he denounced politics and political movements, and vowed never to go one inch out of his way for any public matter whatever.

The prospect is that we shall not have a meeting.

I saw Miss Catherine Sedgwick last evening: she felt most warmly about K—— and was indignant at the coldness here. She said she had been here two weeks and seen many people, but I was the first one who had expressed any feeling in favour of K—— being received with honour.

If our party leaders write to you they will tell you there is trouble ahead. I hope to Heaven they have not in any way pledged the party to the Democrats; we have been their bottle holders long enough. Oh! that we had nominated Mann for Governor! It may be Palfrey will go in.

We must fight the Democrats before long. They have not — the masses have not — intelligence enough to overcome their prejudices about colour. The Whigs have more — and when their tyrant oppressor — the Lord and master of their bodies and souls — Black Dan¹ — is dead politically or corporeally — if it happens soon — they will be better allies than the Dems.

But I cannot write more.

Ever thine,

S. G. Howe.

_______________

¹ Daniel Webster.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 352-3

Samuel Gridley Howe to Charles Sumner, December 5, 1851

Boston, Dec. 5, 1851.

Dearest Sumner: — I had a hasty note from you just as I was closing my last. In neither of your notes do you mention having received one from me in answer to your touching words from N. York. I hope that mine¹ was not lost; not that it would be of consequence to any one, but what was consecrated to your eye of friendship I would not have looked upon irreverently by another.

I miss you, more even than I supposed I should: it makes me sad and almost sick at heart to think that you are where I cannot reach you, be my need of sympathy ever so great. But I have my usual poor resource to drive away thought — regret — sorrow — by work.

I have the whole Idiot School on my shoulders, and enough to do beside that.

We had the pleasure of your sister's company on Wednesday, and as usual found her full of earnest life and joyousness. Julia is fond of her, and knows she can give me no greater pleasure than by kindness to your sister.

We went to hear Felton again last evening. His lecture was better than the first, and better delivered. On the whole it was successful. I was pained, however, to find he indulged in flings at good and high things; for instance, speaking of the agglutinated languages, he made some quaint remarks in ridicule, and then said eagerly, “but don't suppose I have any reference to a late electoral law of this State.”

I saw Longfellow to-day, and as usual saw much that is lovely in him.

His Golden Legend I have read, and shall read again; it is very beautiful.

We had a pretty good meeting here (my office) yesterday about Kossuth's reception: we shall move publicly early next week. Do let me hear from you, if but a line.

Ever thine,

S. G. Howe.

_______________

¹ This note is missing.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 347-8

Samuel Gridley Howe to Theodore Parker, Thursday, April 1851

[Envelope addressed;]

The Reverend

Thunder And Lightning

Parker

Everywhere

SUNNYSIDE, Thursday, April, 1851.

My Dear Parker: — I am never well, but for three days past I have been quite under the weather, and such weather!

I am unable to go out, but my chickens have been counting so fondly upon going to your house that I cannot disappoint them.

You will give me credit for usually refraining from shocking your modesty by expressing my views and feelings about your writings, and you will now excuse my saying a word that I must say to somebody. Never in the whole course of my reading have I met with anything that moved the deepest depths of my soul as did the closing part of your Fast Day discourse. It is truly the thunder and lightning of eloquence! It has all the material majesty, power and beauty of Byron's thunder storm in the Alps; — the resistless strength, — the rushing swiftness, — the dazzling light, and the whole dignified and intensified by the moral element of which it is the war. Not “from peak to peak the rattling crags among,” but from heart to heart “leaps the live thunder;” not “every mountain now hath found a tongue,” but every high and towering passion of man's soul; not “Jura answers through her misty shroud, back to the joyous Alps,” but the great spirit of humanity, rending the veil of conventionalism, shouts back “Amen! Amen! and God bless you,” — to you her minister and interpreter.

Excuse, my dear Parker, a fruitless attempt to describe what I have no language to describe, — the effect upon me of your sublime discourse. Tell me you are not destructive? Ha! had not God stored up in your soul a great store of the wrath and indignation with which He wars upon sin, and given you an opportunity of using it without your benevolence to restrain you, we should never have witnessed such a storm and whirlwind as that in which you have come down upon the wicked.

But I can hardly sit up and must not write, or I too shall get up steam, and having no strength of boiler shall explode like the — the — frog in the fable. Regards to Madame and Miss S.

Ever thine,

S. G. Howe.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 346-7

Samuel Gridley Howe to Horace Mann, Friday Evening, April 1851

Boston, Friday Eve., April, 1851.

My Dear Mann: — Matters of great importance to Sumner will be on the tapis to-morrow forenoon: I am to go to the Council Chamber at ½ past 12. Cannot you be at my office in the forenoon — say at 11 to 12?

You must come if you come on your stumps.

Ever yours,

S. G. Howe.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 345

Samuel Gridley Howe to Horace Mann, Wednesday Evening, April 1851 – 10 p.m.

Wednesday Eve., April, 10 o'clock, 1851.

My Dear Mann: — I am sad and sick at heart at the probable issue to-morrow. You know I have never advocated nor consented to the coalition with the Democrats; I always condemned it as unwise and useless; I always thought that the Free-soil party might have carried the day in five years without coalescing with anybody; I go with Palfrey in his circular; and yet I have come to wish and pray that Sumner may be elected to the Senate, because no man now eligible here can so well represent the anti-slavery sentiment of the North as he.

It is useless for me to go into the causes of the defeat of the Free-soilers here. They have been mainly three, any one of which was enough. Want of skilful leaders; — bad faith on the part of Democrats; — and the prodigious outside pressure of the Union, as it were, upon the waverers. The first defeat was owing to the bungling mismanagement of Earle,¹ who allowed the election to be postponed; then the foolish trusting to Democrats by electing their Governor instead of laying him on the table — and so it has been. I do not believe that more than half the Democrats were honest; and there were some of them who even contemplated defeating Sumner, provided they could not seduce him to compromise himself by pledges. He has rather, I think, leaned over backward, in his attempt to stand erect and firm and be uncompromising. He uselessly froissait (as the French say) some of the Hunker² Democrats who waited upon him at the time when it seemed certain that he would be elected. All this is over now; the Senate has elected him, and to-morrow the House will, I forebode, reject him. Boutwell and the Speaker, and a few other leading Democrats, make a bluster, swear Sumner must and shall be put through, &c. &c. — but I mistrust them. There are all the old Hunkers at work like the devil. Old M——, the slimy snake, who has all along been crawling into Sumner's office and confidence, and telling him that he conferred with no one else on politics, — he has long been denouncing Sumner, and straining every nerve to defeat him. Cushing and Hallett et id genus omne are at work; and there has been brought to work in unison with them the governmental influence at Washington. What did B. R. C[urtis]³ go there for? his friends here said he was going south, perhaps to the West Indies, for his health. Tell that to the marines! We have little or no outside influence; Downer has done more than all the rest put together. There seems a spell on them. Bird has been for trust; Alley (a good man and true) seems utterly paralyzed and discouraged; Wilson can't do much, though he has more head than the rest at the House; Keyes has been firing and fizzing, but can't keep up at red heat long; Phillips has been much miffed; Adams and Palfrey, anti-coalitionists, will not work — and so it goes. The end of the whole matter will be that Sumner will gradually fall behind — the thing will be put off and put off — and nothing done at all. The Democrats will satisfy their consciences by seeming to try for what they know they cannot do.

I think all our friends who have taken office should resign as soon as it is certain Sumner cannot be elected. How to re-unite our broken ranks I know not. We must be honest; eschew coalitions, and get a reputation by living well in future.

Ever yours,

S. G. H.

_______________

¹ John Milton Earle of Worcester.

²The "Hunkers" were conservative Democrats, generally supposed to have a leaning toward slavery; the same class as the “Copperheads” of the Civil War.

³ Benjamin R. Curtis.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 343-5

Samuel Gridley Howe to Horace Mann, February 18, 1851

Boston, Tuesday, Feb. 18th, 1851.

My Dear Mann: — There is nothing new or extraordinary here, except that I have half an hour's leisure, and if no loafer comes in I'll pen you a note before the mail closes.

All the “decency and respectability” is sadly shocked by the recent practical declaration of independence by Shadrach,¹ who had no taste for the fiery furnace of slavery. There is not a blush of shame, not an expression of indignation at the thought that a man must fly from Massachusetts to the shelter of the red cross of England to save himself from the bloodhounds of slavery.

We know that the rescuers were armed, but had orders not to show a weapon unless by the command and example of their leader, himself a fugitive and an old neighbour and friend of Shadrach's.

When Shadrach had got into Vermont and among his friends he fell down upon his knees and poured out his fervent thanksgiving to God in a manner to draw tears from the eyes of my informant who was with him. May God give him good speed, and may thousands follow him.

The prosecution of Wright² is all gammon, of course. It will be very well to try to fix the blame upon one of the editors of the Commonwealth, for that will, they think, damage Sumner; but it may cut two ways. Wright has, however, much damaged Sumner without doing any good by what he has written. I have no time to enter into an account of the singular position of the paper; and there is the less need because, at the meeting this evening, we shall put an end to the present embarrassing condition of things. It will probably go into the hands of F. W. Bird, and the divergence between the two sections of the Free-soil party will become manifest and its extent defined.

I am sorry to part company with some of the Coalitionists, and not particularly pleased to strike hands with Adams, who has, entre nous, behaved unjustifiably in refusing to pay his subscription; but it cannot be otherwise. I think the party is disgracing itself by such steps as the election of Rantoul, and then, after the rascally behaviour of the Democrats, going on dividing such paltry spoil as the Western Railroad Direction.

They are, however, finally taking such measures as will elect Sumner if it is possible to elect him, which I doubt. I mean I doubt whether it is possible to bring the real power which the party possesses in its numbers and its position, to bear effectually upon the election. They have at last organized a Committee in the Legislature and gone systematically to work. We outsiders too shall bring what guns we have to bear upon the waverers and bolters, and shall try to stiffen up the House.

I am afraid, however, of some of our people: I don't know John Mills, but from what I can learn he never will be well enough to throw a vote for Sumner as long as he needs a vote: if the election of S. is sure M. might vote.

Amasa Walker talks loud and flatters Sumner: but he is dazzled; the Democrats would like him; they want a nose of wax and to have the free use of it for four years, which they would have after '52 if he were there. They have been after him, and he lets people whom he knows throw votes for him, without blowing them sky high.

But here comes a loafer, and it is but five minutes to four — so good-bye.

S. G. Howe.

_______________

¹ Shadrach, a fugitive slave, was rescued by Lewis Hayden and a party of negroes under the general advice and direction of Elizur Wright, then editor of the Chronotype, February 18, 1851. He was taken across Cambridge bridge to West Cambridge, now Arlington; there changed carriages and was taken to Concord; there changed again and carried to Sudbury, and from there to Mrs. Olive Drake's in Leominster. Two or three coloured men were indicted under the fugitive slave law, and on the jury which tried them was my neighbour, the Concord blacksmith, Edwin Bigelow. Mr. C. F. Adams in his life of R. H. Dana, Jr. tells the story, but incorrectly. I heard Mr. D. himself tell it (who was counsel for the indicted negroes) and afterwards asked my neighbour about it, one day before 1868, when he came over to put some hinges on my great gate. He said:

“I was drawn on the jury for the United States Court in Boston, and did not know whether I could take the oath to try the case impartially; but I saw Shattuck Hartwell of Littleton our foreman take it, and thought if he could, I could. We heard the evidence, and did not agree. A year or two after that Mrs. Bigelow was at the Watercure in Brattleboro, and I went up to spend a Sunday with her there. Mr. Dana was there with his wife, also an invalid. He recognized me as one of the jury, and said, ‘I have always wanted to ask some juryman why they failed to convict in that case. You remember the witness J. told us how Shadrach was taken to West Cambridge, then to Concord, and then to Sudbury, where the trail was lost, — and how the defendant was connected with the first part of the flight?’ ‘Yes, I recall all that’' ‘Well, what hindered you from convicting on such plain evidence?’ ‘You recall, Mr. Dana, that they changed carriages in Concord, and that some other man drove the party to Sudbury?’ Yes, he remembered that. ‘Well, I was the man that drove from Concord to Sudbury.’ This seemed to answer Mr. Dana's question.”

Mr. B. also told me that Shadrach's rescuers brought him to the door of Mrs. Nathan Brooks, across the Sudbury Road from Mrs. Bigelow's. Mr. Brooks was a lawyer, an old Whig, and was shocked that his wife should aid breakers of the law; but before he left the neighbourhood that night, the good man had given him an old hat, and Mrs. Brooks had fed and warmed him.

At Mrs. Drake's, to avoid suspicion, Shadrach was put into petticoats, and supplied with a black bonnet and veil, and in this guise taken to a Leominster prayer-meeting. After a day or two he was sent on into Vermont, and from there to Canada.

F. B. S

.

² Elizur Wright.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 339-41

Samuel Gridley Howe to Horace Mann, February 6, 1851

Boston, Feb'y 6th, 1851.

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

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

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

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

However, let that go.

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

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

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

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

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

Ever yours,

S. G. Howe.

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

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

Samuel Gridley Howe to Horace Mann, Tuesday, February 1851

Tuesday, February, 1851.

My Dear Mann: — Many thanks for your spicy and able article; truly you are great on Scripture! I always have said I would pay a higher pew tax if you were in the pulpit than I would for any other preacher since Socrates. I shall have the article in to-morrow morning if possible.

We have got still to fight on, and I begin to think that we shall succeed; the bolting Democrats, and many others who in their hearts have sided with them, begin to be in an agony of fear that the Free-soilers will stand firm and go before the people defeated by their treachery. They will hardly adjourn without fulfilling their contract.

We must keep the Free-soilers supplied with ammunition and stiffening: you have no idea what a limpsy set they are. Good honest men, and inclined to be brave and persistent, but utterly without head or backbone. They had a caucus yesterday afternoon, in which Stone of Charlestown put forth as a feeler the question of the propriety of changing the candidate. I had got Hopkins down; he was there; so was Downer. They asked the outsiders to express their sentiments: Hopkins made a strong argumentative speech; Downer put in some hot shot, and I used my popgun (at half cock perhaps), and I tell you Stone took nothing by his motion. We left them brave as Julius Caesar; how long they will stay put I don't know.

We want more from you. Short, spicy articles. Your incog, shall be kept if you do not betray it yourself, which you will do by your piety. I can keep dark, even to my chum and brother Sumner, and often do.

Ever yours,

s. G. h.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 336-7

Samuel Gridley Howe to Horace Mann, Friday, January 31, 1851

Friday, 31st Jan'y, 1851.

My Dear Mann:  — I have summoned some good men and true to hold a council of war. Alas! we are in an extremity, but so much the more it behooves us to fight. Can't you send something for our paper upon the crisis, and the responsibility resting upon those who, having the power to send guardian angels to Washington, send devils to destroy, or do-nothing squires to sing peace, peace when there is no peace? I'll take care you are not known.

Ever yours,

S. G. Howe.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 336

Samuel Gridley Howe to Horace Mann, Friday, January 24, 1851

Boston, Friday, 24th Jan’y, 1851.

My Dear Mann: — You will see by the papers that Sumner falls short four votes to-day of his yesterday's vote. I have been doing what I can, and have thrown aside the repugnance I had to being seen in the State House. I was astonished to find that save Downer's there was no energetic Free-soil pressure from without: within, our friends are like a flock of sheep without a shepherd.

I find that one of the Free-soil Whigs who is voting for Phillips is Rev. Mr. Wight of Wayland, father of our Miss W——, an excellent man and very conscientious, but whom Dr. Parkman and others had made to believe that Sumner was a very dangerous demagogue. I have laboured hard with him, and shall bring all the influence to bear upon him that I can. We will fight it out, but alas! it is almost a desperate game.

I wrote you a hasty line yesterday. I will write again to-morrow.

I have had a very heavy pressure of business — Annual Reports and others on my shoulders — but am getting free.

Ever yours,

S. G. Howe.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 335-6

George L. Stearns to Samuel Gridley Howe, December 23, 1860

[December 23, 1860.]

Dear Friend:

Yours of 20th is at hand. I will see the persons you have named and be ready to report as soon as I have returned home. Stone, I have no doubt, will be an acquisition of great value, but we shall want an editor of equal ability. Some persons here say that we must have $10,000 pledged to secure success, and my present plan is to pay a manager and editor each a moderate salary and one-half the profits, the other half to go to the guaranty fund, or be used in extending the paper. To succeed we must play a bold game. Andrew appears as well as usual. We are having a right good time. You will see all the Washington gossip in the papers before this reaches you, and I shall only give the impression it has made on me, which is that if any Republican members vote for concession or compromise they are politically dead. If a majority of the party vote for it, the party is dead. I have to-day seen a number of leading men and all their talk was a resolution for the impeachment of the President.

We are told Lincoln says no friend of his will propose either dissolution or concession. Wilson says: “They meet us with long faces, and we laugh at them and tell them to go.” In the Senate Committee of Thirteen, all the Republicans voted against the compromises; which, as there would be no compromise without them, was understood to be fatal. When they came to the Fugitive Slave Law, Wade told them that, as they were going out of the Union, there was no need of voting on that, for it would then die of itself. If this goes on much further I think we may expect the immediate abolition of slavery, even if it requires an ocean of blood. If war with the Cotton States comes, I am sure of it.

Yours faithfully,

George L. Stearns.

SOURCE: Preston Stearns, The Life and Public Services of George Luther Stearns, p. 237-8

Samuel Gridley Howe to Horace Mann, January 23, 1851

Boston, Jan. 23rd, 1851.

My Dear Mann: — I am very unfortunate in my attempts to correspond with you. I wrote a long letter last night and left it at South Boston, and it is now too late to get it for the mail. It was perhaps of no consequence, but explained a little the awkward and unfortunate chain of untoward events which have defeated Sumner's election.

On the first ballot to-day Sumner lacked five of the record he gained; they are now on the third, and I shall know the result before long.

The excitement here is intense: the pressure upon the waverers enormous. There are at least a score of Whigs voting for Winthrop who in their souls long to see Sumner elected, only their souls are not their own.

Our friends are very much encouraged to-day about the result: I am not. There are Democrats, I fear, who have voted for Sumner because they thought to save their pledge and do no harm to their party, but who will start back at the last pinch. I was in hopes they would be rebuked by the thunder of popular indignation at home, last Saturday and Sunday, but it is not so. The truth is that though the sentiments of the Democratic masses point in the right direction when let alone, they will not be let alone by the leaders, nor by their own prejudices. They would plunge the country in war and go to the death, to rescue three hundred white Americans from Indian, Russian or Algerian bondage, — but as for three million black Americans, why “damn 'em! good enough for them!” They have no business to be speckled, as the man said when he agreed to spare all snakes but the speckled ones.

3 o'clock. Third ballot taken — Sumner still in the vocative. He seems to be the least interested man among us. Oh for five men like Downer, — to work outside: they could carry Sumner through.

Park Street and Beacon are sweating blood: grant they may sweat to death!

Ever yours in haste,

S. G. Howe.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 334-5