Speech by Ralph Waldo Emerson Delivered at the Brown Relief Meeting, held at Salem, Mass., January 6, 1860

MR. CHAIRMAN: I have been struck with one fact, that the best orators who have added their praise to his fame and I need not go out of this house to find the purest eloquence in the country — have one rival who comes off a little better, and that is John Brown. Every thing that is said of him leaves people a little dissatisfied; but as soon as they read his own speeches and letters they are heartily contented such is the singleness of purpose which justifies him to the head and the heart of all. Taught by this experience, I mean, in the few remarks I have to make, to cling to his history, or let him speak for himself.

John Brown, the founder of liberty in Kansas, was born in Torrington, Litchfield County, Conn., in 1800. When he was five years old his father emigrated to Ohio, and the boy was there set to keep sheep, and to look after cattle, and dress skins; he went bareheaded and barefooted, and clothed in buckskin. He said that he loved rough play, could never have rough play enough; could not see a seedy hat without wishing to pull it off. But for this it needed that the playmates should be equal; not one in fine clothes and the other in buckskin; not one his own master, hale and hearty, and the other watched and whipped. But it chanced that in Pennsylvania, where he was sent by his father to collect cattle, he fell in with a boy whom he heartily liked, and whom he looked upon as his superior. This boy was a slave; he saw him beaten with an iron shovel, and otherwise maltreated; he saw that this boy had nothing better to look forward to in life, whilst he himself was petted and made much of; for he was much considered in the family where he then stayed, from the circumstance that this boy of twelve years had conducted alone a drove of cattle a hundred miles. But the colored boy had no friend, and no future. This worked such indignation in him that he swore an oath of resistance to Slavery as long as he lived. And thus his enterprise to go into Virginia and run off five hundred or a thousand slaves, was not a piece of spite or revenge, a plot of two years or of twenty years, but the keeping of an oath made to heaven and earth forty-seven years before. Forty-seven years at least, though I incline to accept his own account of the matter, at Charlestown, which makes the date a little older, when he said, "This was all settled millions of years before the world was made."

He grew up a religious and manly person in severe poverty; a fair specimen of the best stock of New England; having that force of thought and that sense of right which are the warp and woof of greatness. Our farmers were Orthodox Calvinists, mighty in the Scriptures; had learned that life was a preparation, a "probation" to use their word, for a higher world, and was to be spent in loving and serving mankind.

Thus was formed a romantic character absolutely without any vulgar trait; living to ideal ends, without any mixture of self-indulgence or compromise, such as lowers the value of benevolent and thoughtful men we know; abstemious, refusing luxuries, not sourly and reproachfully, but simply as unfit for his habit; quiet and gentle as a child in the house. And, as happens usually to men of romantic character, his fortunes were romantic. Walter Scott would have delighted to draw his picture and trace his adventurous career. A shepherd and herdsman, he learned the manners of animals, and knew the secret signals by which animals communicate. He made his hard bed on the mountains with them; he learned to drive his flock through thickets all but impassable; he had all the skill of a shepherd by choice of breed, and by wise husbandry to obtain the best wool, and that for a course of years. And the anecdotes preserved show a far-seeing skill and conduct which, in spite of adverse accidents, should secure, one year with another, an honest reward, first to the farmer, and afterwards to the dealer. If he kept sheep, it was with a royal mind; and if he traded in wool, he was a merchant prince, not in the amount of wealth, but in the protection of the interests confided to him.

I am not a little surprised at the easy effrontery with which political gentlemen, in and out of Congress, take it upon them to say that there are not a thousand men in the North who sympathize with John Brown. It would be far safer and nearer the truth to say that all people, in proportion to their sensibility and self-respect, sympathize with him. For it is impossible to see courage, and disinterestedness, and the love that casts out fear, without sympathy.

All women are drawn to him by their predominance of sentiment. All gentlemen, of course, are on his side. I do not mean by "gentlemen," people of scented hair and perfumed handkerchiefs, but men of gentle blood and generosity, "fulfilled with all nobleness," who, like the Cid, give the outcast leper a share of their bed; like the dying Sidney, pass the cup of cold water to the wounded soldier who needs it more. For what is the oath of gentle blood and knighthood? What but to protect the weak and lowly against the strong oppressor?

Nothing is more absurd than to complain of this sympathy, or to complain of a party of men united in opposition to Slavery—As well complain of gravity, or the ebb of the tide. Who makes the Abolitionist? The Slaveholder. The sentiment of mercy is the natural recoil which the laws of the universe provide to protect mankind from destruction by savage passions. And our blind statesmen go up and down, with committees of vigilance and safety, hunting for the origin of this new heresy. They will need a very vigilant committee indeed to find its birthplace, and a very strong force to root it out. For the arch-Abolitionist, older than Brown, and older than the Shenandoah Mountains is Love, whose other name is Justice, which was before Alfred, before Lycurgus, before Slavery, and will be after it.

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, pp. 119-22

Diary of Elvira J. Powers, Tuesday, May 3, 1864

Spring has long delayed her coming here as well as northward. I could not be comfortable this P. M. in my room without a fire. Still, despite the cold, I have seen the blossom of a species of magnolia, which is very beautiful. It is in shape and size something like the African lily, and grew upon a tree the size of the common apple. It is of a peachblow hue upon the outside and white within, and with the mingled fragrance of the roses and lemon.

Aunt Nanny, the former housekeeper of the rebel banker who owned this residence, has just been giving me a highly interesting account of the scenes here when it became known that our forces were coming towards Nashville. It was on Sunday morning the news reached the white citizens, when they were on their way to church. And the streets were soon filled with half-crazed people flying here and there, women and children and even men running out of breath, and screaming, "The Yankees are coming," while the less excited ones were securing every possible conveyance to use for flight.

"We colored folks," said Aunt Nanny, "knew it in the night, and all de mornin' while de white ones was so quiet a putin' on dere finery for church, we knew it wouldn't last long. An' we was all so full wid de great joy, dat we'se a sayin' in our hearts all de time "Bless de Lord," "Thank de good God," for de "day of jubilee has come!"

"But we was mighty hush, an' put on just as long faces as we could, an' was might' 'sprized when they told us of it. An' missus she come runnin' back from the street wid' her bonnet on her neck, an' the strings a flyin', an' she come to the kitchen and put up both arms, an' she said:

"Oh, Aunt Nanny, we'll all be killed! The Yankees are coming! They'll hang or cut the throat of every niggar that's left here!'

"An' after that she tried to have me go south with her, but I told her I'd risk the Yankees a killin' us, an' I wouldn't go."

Aunt Nanny is respected by all who know her. She is neat, industrious, well-informed, although she cannot read, respectful, polite, affectionate, virtuous, and a Christian. Her husband is here, and she has one little daughter who is in my division at school.

She tells me also that only last Sunday she saw the body of a dead negro boy of about nine years who died from blows received from his mistress. The cause was her anger that his mother had run away in search of freedom. But the mother heard of the illness of her child and returned in time to hear him say that "the whipping his mistress had given him had killed him," and to find upon his back the terrible gashes from the whip, and bruises from blows.

I wish I had known of this before the child was buried. Having the name of speaking my mind, it might be as well to do so, occasionally.

Have just listened to a little incident which occurred some months since. While Grant had charge of this department, General Rousseau in his absence, issued an order to the effect that slaveholders, who had taken the oath of allegiance, might dispose of their slaves. One man from the country, accordingly drove in several slave women tied hand to hand. But Grant had suddenly returned and countermanded the permit, and he could not dispose of them. He got into his carriage and ordered his negro women to march home. They refused to obey. This was unprecedented insolence. He caught his horse-whip and was about laying it over their shoulders when the "blue coats" appeared as suddenly and as thick around him as if like fairies they had popped out of the ground.

"No whipping here! No whipping here!" they exclaimed, and the result was, he was forced to return alone, and they were slaves no longer.

SOURCE: Elvira J. Powers, Hospital Pencillings: Being a Diary While in Jefferson General Hospital, Jeffersonville, Ind., and Others at Nashville, Tennessee, as Matron and Visitor, pp. 70-2

Diary of George Templeton Strong, October 22, 1860

Our little Prince sailed . . . Saturday, and got safely out of our hands. Inferences from the phenomena that accompanied his visit are:

(1) No community worships hereditary rank and station like a democracy.

(2) The biggest and finest specimens of flunkeyism occur in the most recently-elevated strata of society, as for example. Cooper: the “self-made millionaire glue-boiler,’’ Leary: the fashionable hatter’s son, and others.

(3) Under all this folly and tuft-hunting there is a deep and almost universal feeling of respect and regard for Great Britain and for Her Britannic Majesty. The old anti-British patriotism of twenty years ago is nearly extinct. . . .

I’ve nearly made up my mind to deposit a lukewarm Republican vote next month. It is a choice of evils, but we may as well settle the question whether a President can or cannot be chosen without the advice and approval of the slaveholding interests; whether 300,000 owners of niggers have or have not a veto on the popular choice. The question must be settled sooner or later, and we may as well dispose of it now. It is impossible for me to vote the Fusion ticket and thereby strengthen the show of the mischief-making demagogue Douglas, or of Breckinridge, the ultra-nigger-driver and demisecessionist. But I may vote for the ten Bell and Everett electors on that ticket, scratching off the rest.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 52

Seward vs. Douglas.

Editors Press and Tribune:

The Nomination of Mr. Seward will necessitate the nomination of Mr. Douglas at Baltimore. If Mr. Seward is placed on the track, the Slaveholders will postpone their quarrel with the Northern Democracy until after the November election, when it will again be renewed, until doughfaces succumb. There is no future event more sure than the nomination of Douglas, and his receiving the united support of the Democratic party, if our convention takes Mr. Seward. The nomination of the latter will draw the broken Democracy together with an adhesion stronger than Spaulding’s glue. And it is also certain that Mr. Bell will draw off a great many of the old Fillmore supporters whose foolish predjudices picture Mr. Seward as an ultra Abolitionist, and Northern fire-eater. Yet I have such confidence in the force and strength of Republican principles, that I firmly believe Mr. Seward can be triumphantly elected over Douglas, notwithstanding the union of the Democracy and the desertion to Bell. I hail from a State where we know no fear, no such thing as defeat. Give us Mr. S. and victory will perch on our banners

MICHIGAN.

Chicago, May 14, 1860.

SOURCE: “Seward vs. Douglas,” The Press and Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, Tuesday, May 15, 1860, p. 1, col. 1

Congressman Horace Mann to Reverend Samuel Joseph May, September 21, 1850

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21, 1850.

MY DEAR SIR,— . . . You have seen how Websterism overrides everything in Boston. A large portion of the voters in my district belong in Boston, and have no sympathies or interests but in Boston, and only come out into the country to sleep and vote. They are exciting an opposition to me, to the extent of their influence and Webster's money. Were it not for this, I should long ago have positively declined to be a candidate again. The posture of affairs may compel me to withhold the execution of this purpose. . . . I have no heart to write a word on the course of things in Congress this session. The slaveholders have overthrown principles, and put them to rout as Napoleon did armies.

Yours very truly,

HORACE MANN.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 331-2

Congressman Horace Mann, July 9, 1850

WASHINGTON, July 9, 1850.

It is a sad hour. News has just come from the White House that the President is dying. If he dies, it will be a calamity that no man can measure. His being a Southern man, a slaveholder, and a hero, has been like the pressure of a hundred atmospheres upon the South. If he dies, they will feel that their strongest antagonist has been struck from the ranks of their opponents; and I fear there will not be firmness nor force enough in all the North to resist them. The future is indeed appalling.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 307

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: Sunday, December 4, 1864

Bright, clear, and warm.

A dispatch from Gen. Bragg.

AUGUSTA, December 3d, 6 P. M.— A strong force of the enemy's cavalry and infantry advanced from Louisville and encamped last night six miles from Waynesborough. They turned off this morning toward Savannah. Our cavalry is pressing in the rear, and all available means is being thrown to their front by rail. There is time yet for any assistance which can be spared, to be sent by way of Charleston.—B. B.

The Northern papers say our army under Hood in Tennessee has met with a great disaster. We are still incredulous—although it may be true. If so, the President will suffer, and Johnston and Beauregard will escape censure—both being supplanted in the command by a subordinate.

Brig.-Gen. Preston is still directing orders to Col. Shields, who is under the command of Major-Gen. Kemper, and the conflict of conscription authorities goes on, while the country perishes. Preston is a South Carolina politician—Kemper a Virginian. Mr. Secretary Seddon leans to the former.

The law allowing exemptions to owners of a certain number of slaves is creating an antislavery party. The non-slaveholders will not long fight for the benefit of such a "privileged class." There is madness in our counsels!

We are still favored by Providence in our family. We have, at the market prices, some $800 worth of provisions, fuel, etc., at the beginning of winter, and my son Thomas is well clad and has his order for a month's rations of beef, etc., which we get as we want it at the government shop near at hand in Broad Street. His pay and allowances are worth some $4500 per annum.

Major Ferguson having got permission of the Quartermaster-General to sell me a suit of cloth-there being a piece too dark for the army, I got four yards, enough for coat, pants, and vest, at $12 per yard—the price in the stores is $125; and I have the promise of the government tailor to make it up for some $30 or $40, the ordinary price being $350; the trimmings my family will furnish—if bought, they would cost $100. Tom has bought a new black coat, made before the war, for $175, the peace price $15, in specie, equivalent to $600. And my daughter Anne has made three fine bonnets (for her mother, sister, and herself), from the debris of old ones; the price of these would be $700. So I fear not but we shall be fed and clad by the providence of God.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p. 346-7

Congressman Horace Mann, February 7, 1850

FEB. 7.

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

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

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

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

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

Congressman Horace Mann, March 14, 1850

March 14.

Mr. Webster has not a favorable response from any Northern man of any influence. It is hard to believe that a man who has been so intellectually consistent should at once overthrow his grand reputation; but who can tell what an ambitious or disappointed man will not do to accomplish his object? Oh, how priceless is principle! . . . The delegate of Congress from Mexico (not yet received as such, because Congress has as yet established no Territorial Government over it) tells me the New-Mexicans are very averse to slavery, and that labor is too cheap, and the danger of slaves escaping too great, for any slaveholder to meet the risk of transferring his property there; that climate and soil are not adapted to it, &c. But the opening of mines, as I have said before, would create a demand for them; and all that is said of outdoor labor in reference to the uncongeniality of the climate does not apply to menial service. Besides, though the Mexicans may be hostile to slavery, yet they are a feeble, effeminate, unprincipled race; and ten strong Southern men, with their energy and activity, with their domineering and overpowering manners, would be a full match for a hundred of the best Mexicans that could be found. There is no absolute security but in the proviso.

As soon as we had the President's message, in which he proposed non-action on the part of Congress, and that the Territories should be left to form their own institutions, I foresaw some defection from the spirit which had before governed Congress. I therefore wrote to some gentlemen in New York, advising first that they should send out a regular missionary, who should traverse all the settlements in that country, and pre-occupy the minds of the people against slavery; or at least that they should send out antislavery tracts in English and Spanish, and scatter them throughout the whole region. The first project was supposed to be too expensive; but the latter has been adopted, and an address to the inhabitants will be distributed there in both languages to every one who can read. We are determining mighty events; and the occasion, therefore, is worthy of a mighty struggle.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 293-5

Charles Sumner to Richard Cobden, July 9, 1850

The slaveholders are bent on securing the new territories for slavery, and they see in prospective an immense slave nation embracing the Gulf of Mexico and all its islands, and stretching from Maryland to Panama. For this they are now struggling, determined while in the Union to govern and direct its energies; or if obliged to quit, to build up a new nation slaveholding throughout. They are fighting with desperation, and have been aided by traitors at the North. Webster's apostasy is the most barefaced. Not only the cause of true antislavery is connected with the overthrow of the slave propaganda, but also that of peace. As soon as it is distinctly established that there shall be no more slave territory, there will be little danger of war. My own earnest aim is to see slavery abolished everywhere within the sphere of the national government,—which is in the District of Columbia, on the high seas, and in the domestic slave-trade; and beyond this, to have this government for freedom, so far as it can exert an influence, and not for slavery. When this is accomplished, then slavery will be taken out of the vortex of national politics; and the influences of education and improved civilization, and of Christianity, will be left free to act against it in the States where it exists.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 216-7

J. N. B. to John Brown, November 24, 1859

BOSTON, Nov. 24.

My Dear Brother John Brown: I am an old man. I have for more than thirty years opposed Slavery in all its forms; though never with violence! I deeply sympathize with you in your present position, and commend you to that Jesus who preached, what Isaiah proclaimed, seven hundred years before his advent. God forbid that I should censure you for acting "deliverance to the captive," when it has the sanction of this "double inspiration." My brother, I respect and love you beyond expression. I have now a letter from my brother, now, I trust, in heaven. It was written in prison at Baltimore, by one whose life was sacrificed to Slavery's demand.

It tells me what I believe is true, that during the last few years of his life, he gave liberty to more than four hundred slaves. I have taken slaveholders to his monument in Mount Auburn, where the enduring marble tells that Charles Turner Torrey, in the early meridian of his life, was a martyr to Freedom. If you can find it possible to write me the smallest line, that I may place at its side, to bequeath to my children as a most valued legacy, you cannot tell how much I should value it. They are all Christians in the highest sense of that word; their abhorrence of Slavery is unquestioned. I have known you and your sons, and have had the pleasure of taking your honest hand in mine.

Yours in Christ,

J. N. B.

That I may be under no obligation to Virginia, I enclose a ten cent stamp to pay for the paper you may use.

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, p. 405

J. M. B to John Brown, November 24, 1859

Ilion, New York, November 24.

Dear Brother in Christ: How I would like to spend this night with you in your cell, and converse for a season on the joys that await you beyond this world of sin and sorrow. I have tried to spend this day in prayer and thanksgiving to Almighty God for the many blessings received at His hand the past year, but in spite of all my efforts in this direction, it has been a sorrowful day to my soul, as my mind has dwelt almost constantly on your death scene. I cannot be joyful; I mourn not so much for you, (for, like the hero of Tarsus, you seem ready to be offered,) but I mourn for my country. I spent the past winter in the South, spending four months in nine of the slave States; and more than once I had to press my lips and clinch my fists, to keep back the feelings of my soul. I saw Slavery in all its phases, and many a night I have wet my pillow with my tears, as I called to mind the sufferings of the poor slave. I had hard work to control my feelings, but did so, and cannot think but it was the best course. Among the slaveholders I found some of the noblest men I ever met with kind, obliging, hospitable, pious, and to all appearances without a fault; so I returned to my home to hate the sin and not the men. I made the acquaintance of Gov. Wise, and found that it was not Wise that killed Cilley; it was not Wise that fought for Slavery at the South; it was his education — for a nobler heart never filled the breast of man; and had he been favored with a birthplace on the shores of Lake Champlain, and a home among the Adirondack mountains, he might have been your general in this conflict, and lying wounded by your side to night.*  Would to God these brethren could read our hearts. O, could they see how we love them; how we desire their present and future happiness; what a change would at once take place in their feelings towards us. Did Gov. Wise know Christ as did Paul when soundly converted, there would not be power enough in all the military force of Virginia to hang John Brown. But enough of this.

I have never believed that Virginia, for her own honor, would hang you; but she may, (my heart is too full, my tears flow too fast to write,) if she does, such a funeral as the sun never saw before, will follow.

Keep up good courage; a few more rising and setting suns, and the struggle will be over; and the thrice welcome words will reach your ears, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you."

I have been a resident of Washington County for thirty-eight years; left Fort Edward, New York, May, 1858, and am sure I have met you, but cannot tell where; but if faithful to the grace already given, I am sure I shall meet you again, and I know where. Praise the Lord, on that blissful shore, where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are forever at rest. You will not be permitted, like Moses, to return after forty years to engage afresh in the struggle for freedom: but God will raise up others, in his own good time, to carry forward the work.

Farewell, till we meet in Heaven; for, when we reach the landing place,—

“In the realms of endless light,
We’ll bid this world of noise and show
Good night, good night, good night;
We’ll stem the storm,” &c.

Your unworthy friend and brother in the Lord,

J. M. B.

_______________

*What miserable cant! "Pious" trafficars in God's children; "pious" robbers of God's poor; "pious" brokers in the souls for whom Jesus died! "Kind, obliging, hospitable!" No doubt of it! To compel men and women to work without reward, is so kind; to barter for base gold the offspring of slave mothers, is so obliging; to rob a race of every social, civil, political, matrimonial, paternal, filial right, is so hospitable an act, that it is not surprising that the class who practise it should be “to all appearance without a fault!" And Wise, the assassin of Cilley, the representative murderer of John Brown, the laudator of the Slave Pens, the acknowledged head and champion of the vilest Commonwealth that the sun looks down on, of course, he deserves the eulogy bestowed on him, when the writer says, that a “nobler heart never filled the breast of man." There are no murderers, there are no assassins, there are no base, nor cowardly, nor wicked men, if the philosophy of the writer be correct. It was not Judas, then, but Judas's education?

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, p. 406-7

Amos Tuck to Rev. James C. Boswell and Samuel A. Haley, November 20, 1846

EXETER, Nov. 20, 1846.

TO REV. JAMES C. BOSWELL, President, and SAMUEL A. HALEY, ESQ., Secretary, &c.

Gentlemen:—I have received your letter of October 24th, in reference to the proceedings at the Convention of Independent Democrats and Liberty men of the First Congressional District, and I embrace the earliest opportunity which my engagements have allowed to send you an answer.

I believe it to be the object of those assembled at the above named convention, to re-affirm the fundamental principles of republican liberty, and to act out with fearless devotion the doctrines of human equality and universal justice. Entertaining these views, I rejoice in their free expression, and am content to stand or fall with the others in their defense.

Two causes have contributed more than all others to effect the late change in the political balance of parties. The first has been the despotism of party power, by which generous impulses have been repressed and discouraged, the exercise of private judgment made dangerous, and all individuality of character sought to be extinguished, by compelling men to believe, or to profess, those sentiments only which were suggested by a selfish and ever-shifting policy and sanctioned by self-constituted party leaders. No tyranny is more galling than that which would quench the free thoughts of free men; no tyrants are more despicable than those who, "dressed in a little brief authority," would attempt in a democracy to exercise the power and the prerogatives hereditary despots; no engine of influence is more dangerous or more execrable than a hireling press, speaking no words for truth or justice, but devoting all its energies to the perpetration of human servitude. To free New Hampshire from such influences, and to expose in their deformity those who had wielded them too long, was one object in our organization, and this object, I rejoice in believing, has been in a good degree accomplished.

The second and chief cause of the late change has been the existence and progressing power of the institution of slavery. The encroachments of the slave-holding interests, and the subserviency of public men to its numerous exactions, have been so exorbitant and so notorious as to have become just cause of alarm to every friend of humanity and the country. The people, irrespective of party, have at length turned their attention to the subject, and by unequivocal manifestations are teaching their public servants that hereafter other things will be expected of them than a base and servile homage to the dark spirit of slavery; that some efforts will be demanded at their hands, more efficient than a “masterly inactivity," or a halting opposition to an abstract idea; that it is time for them to stand up like men, and, echoing the strong voice of a free people, to say to the sweeping tide of oppression, "thus far and no farther." The inquiry now is, what can be done, what can Congress do to free the master and the slave and the nation from the sin and the retributions of slavery? Of cowardly discussion about the extent of our powers we have had enough. The exigency of the country as well as the spirit of the age require now the performance of those acts whose constitutionality and propriety are beyond reasonable doubt. They require that the shadow of slavery shall no longer darken the District of Columbia, and that the trader in human beings shall no longer be permitted to shelter himself from the scorn of the Christian world beneath the wings of the national capitol. They require that no new slave state, with a constitution recognizing slavery, shall hereafter be admitted to the Union, and that no existing state, whether Texas or Florida, shall be dismembered to subserve the slave holding interest. They require that the domestic, inter-state slave trade, a traffic in no respect less infamous than that foreign slave trade which has been branded by the civilized world as piracy, shall, under the clause in the Constitution which gives power to Congress, "to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states," be utterly and forever prohibited. They require that the labor and interest of the free states should be respected, and that slavery be no longer permitted to give character to our legislation.

Let the people of the free states come now to the rescue of freedom and the Constitution, and something may be done to perpetuate the Union,—let them be found wanting in this trial of their integrity, and let the South for a few years more continue unchecked her schemes in behalf of slavery, and no human power can prevent a dissolution. For the sake then of the Union, let the people of the free states be careful to discern and perform on this subject the duties of patriotism and humanity.

One other subject claims attention. The present war with Mexico cannot be lost sight of in any discussion of the public interest. Originating in the unauthorized and iniquitous scheme of the annexation of Texas, it is now prosecuted without that public necessity which can justify us on the page of impartial history, and with no prospect of “conquering a peace," or effecting an honorable reconciliation. It has become a war of conquest, and as such is in violation of every principle of a popular government, as well as of every precept of Christianity. It is adding immense territory to the southern portion of the country, and is thus threatening to destroy the balance of the states, and to consign the nation more hopelessly to the control of slaveholders. It is waged against a neighboring nation, a younger republic, which for years, in weakness and distraction, endeavored to follow the example of our prospering nation; and as such, the war is disgraceful and mean. It is carried on at the expense of the blood of brave men, whose valor is worthy of a better cause, and has already exhausted the treasury of the country, and involved the nation in a heavy debt. Under these circumstances there can be no doubt that the honor and best interests of the country demand a speedy end of the contest, and that all matters in dispute be settled by arbitration or negotiation.

I have thus spoken briefly of some of the topics suggested by your resolutions. It remains for me simply to acknowledge my deep sense of the honor which your nomination has conferred upon me. If it is thought that my acceptance of this nomination can subserve the interests of the cause in which we are engaged, I shall not feel at liberty to shrink from the position in which you have placed me; but shall remain,

Your obedient servant,

AMOS TUCK.

SOURCE: Charles R. Corning, Amos Tuck, p. 21-4

Congressman Horace Mann to E. W. Clap, Undated

DEAR SIR,

Mr. Thompson has been to see me. Of course I was obliged to tell him there might be circumstances in which I would vote for a slaveholder. This, I suppose, has lost me a hundred votes; but I had better lose a hundred by honesty than gain one by dishonesty. . . . In great haste, very truly yours,

H. MANN.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 284-5

Congressman Horace Mann, February 4, 1850

FEB. 4, 1850.

Gen. Taylor's Message is very good so far as it relates to California. He recommends that it be admitted as a State. But, in the same message, he recommends non-action in regard to New Mexico; that is, to form no territorial government for New Mexico, but to await its own motion on the subject. Now, the benefit of a territorial government in New Mexico, with a prohibitior of slavery in it, is, that, while such a prohibition exists, no slaveholders will dare go there, and therefore will not be there to infuse their views into the people, and help form a constitution with slavery in it. If there is no such government, and no such prohibition, the fear is that slaveholders will go there, and exercise an influence in favor of slavery, and help form a constitution which shall not prohibit it, and, when they send that constitution to Congress, will get in, and so slavery be ultimately established by reason of present neglect. I approve, therefore, of the California part of the message, but disapprove of the other.

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

Charles Sumner to William Jay, February 19, 1850

I have just read your admirable letter on Clay's resolutions [of compromise].¹ You have done a good work. . . . There is a great advantage which our cause now possesses in the full reports of antislavery speeches in Congress, which are made by the Washington papers. At last we can reach the country, and the slaveholders themselves. The Senate chamber is a mighty pulpit from which the truth can be preached. I think that Mr. Hale and Mr. Chase should in the course of the session present a complete review of slavery, using freely all the materials afforded by the various writings on the subject. In this way, through the “Globe,” “Union,” and “Intelligencer,” a knowledge of our cause may be widely diffused. But we need more men there; we cannot expect everything from two only. We are about to be betrayed by our political leaders. Cannot the people be aroused to earnest, generous action for freedom? I remember with pleasure my visit to your country home, and hope not to be forgotten by your kind family, to whom I offer my best regards.

_______________

² New York "Evening Post," Feb. 20, 1850

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

H. B., an Old Missionary to John Brown, November 28, 1859

New Haven, Connecticut, Nov. 28.

Dear Sir: Permit a friend of liberty and equitable law to address you a few brief thoughts, which I hope may be acceptable to you and your family. Prayer was yesterday offered for you in a colored congregation in this city, to whom a descendant of Africa, a son of Georgia, a minister of Liberia, and also the writer of this farewell letter, preached the true gospel.

You may be gratified to know that I remember with interest your interview, some two years since, with the cordial friends of Kansas in this city, while that injured territory of our common country was subject to the scorpion lash prepared for the honest advocates of the rights of man, and especially of that freedom which you struggled to establish. These, your New Haven friends, some of whom so ably and so kindly expostulated with our Chief Magistrate in reference to the wrongs of Kansas, remember you with Christian sympathy in your present sufferings.

Take it to your heart that a God of Justice and of Mercy rules, and the Deliverer of Israel from their bondage in Goshen, has mercy in store for a greater number of bondmen and bondwomen, truly as wrongfully oppressed. He has not granted you the full measure of your wishes, but he has allowed you the opportunity of conspicuously and emphatically showing your sympathy for the injured Slave population of our otherwise happy country, and of preaching the duty of giving "them that which is just and equal."

Forty years ago I went among the savages of Polynesia, and preached the gospel of Him whose office it was to proclaim liberty to captives. I plainly taught kings and queens, chiefs and warriors, that He that ruleth men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. I freely exhibited the opposition of God's law and our Saviour's gospel to oppression and every sin found to be prevailing there, and aided my associates in giving them the entire Bible in their own language, and in teaching their tribes to read it and use it freely in all the ranks of life.

Though I labored with them a score of years, and have corresponded with them a score of years more, I have not, lest I should damage my mission, ever told them that I belonged to a nation that deprives three or four millions of their fellow-subjects of Jehovah's Government, of their dearest rights which God has given them one of which is the free use of his own Holy Book.

But when the story of your execution shall reach and surprise them, I will no longer hesitate to speak to my friends there of your sympathy for four millions of the inhabitants of our Southern States, held in unchristian bonds in the only Protestant country on the globe that endorses Slavery.

I can, next week, well afford to endeavor to give them an echo of that protest against the whole system of American Slavery, which on and from the day of your execution, will be louder in the ear of High Heaven than its abettors have been accustomed to hear; rising from the millions of freemen in this noble cordon of Free States, and other millions of now slaveholding freemen, and some slaveholders themselves, in the Slave States.

Have you a kind message to send to the Christian converts at the Sandwich Islands, or to the heathen of Micronesia, a month's sail beyond, where my son and daughter are laboring to give them the Bible and the richest blessings of Christianity? I would gladly forward it to them if you have time to write it.

And now, dear sir, trust in your gracious Saviour; forgive those that have trespassed against you; leave your fatherless children, God will provide for them, and tell your widow to trust in Him, in His holy habitation. "The hairs of your head are all numbered," and not one "shall fall to the ground without your Heavenly Father." Should a lock of your hair fall into my lap before the execution shall help you to shake the pillars of the idol's temple, it would be valued. The Lord bless you, and make your life and death a blessing to the oppressed and their oppressors. Farewell!

Yours faithfully,

H. B.

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, p. 403-5

From a Slaveholder’s Son to John Brown, undated, about November 1859

Dear Brother: My father was a slaveholder, and when at school I commenced searching the Bible for sanction of the divine institution, but have not found it. I am Old School Presbyterian, and believe with our friends, the Quakers, Christ's kingdom will be peace; but now Christ told his disciples, He that hath a sword, let him take it. Therefore, I cannot say I think you exceeded your commission, and I rejoice that a man has been found worthy to suffer for Christ. Yes, dear brother, God Himself will send His angel, December 2, '59, to release you from your prison of clay, and conduct you to your Redeemer and mine, where you will join the souls under the altar, crying. How long before your blood be avenged on the earth? Truly, your ignominious death has a glory equal to that of the Apostles, in the eye of thousands who are praying for you that all your sins may be blotted out, and Christ's Cause, for which you suffer, may be speedily supplied with other witnesses for Right. Enclosed [is] one dollar for your use, because I want to do something to aid you, hoping others will do much. Kind regards to your family. One of the Seven Thousand the Lord knows; to every one known by man, who hate slavery because the Lord does.

[No signature nor date.]

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, p. 391

Senator James H. Hammond to Francis Lieber, April 19, 1860

WASHINGTON, April 19, 1860

. . . I don't remember what I said in my postscript, which seems to have affected you so much, but in all your comments I entirely concur. The Lovejoy explosion, and all its sequences which were so threatening last week, has been for the present providentially cast in the shade by the intensified and utterly absorbing interest in the Charleston Convention. That phase has blown over for the moment. But I assure you, and you may philosophize upon it, that unless the slavery question can be wholly eliminated from politics, this government is not worth two years', perhaps not two months', purchase. So far as I know, and as I believe, every man in both houses is armed with a revolver — some with two — and a bowie-knife. It is, I fear, in the power of any Red or Black Republican to precipitate at any moment a collision in which the slaughter would be such as to shock the world and dissolve this government. I have done, ever since I have been here, all I could to avert such a catastrophe. But, I tell you, knowing all about it here, that unless the aggression on the slaveholder is arrested, no power, short of God's, can prevent a bloody fight here, and a disruption of the Union. You know what I have said about all this, and that I do not advocate such a finale. But seeing the oldest and most conservative senators on our side, — we have no intercourse that is not official, as it were, with the other, — seeing them get revolvers, I most reluctantly got one myself, loaded it, and put it in my drawer in the senate. I can't carry it. Twice in my life I have carried pistols until I became a coward, or very nearly, and threw them aside. But I keep a pistol now in my drawer in the senate as a matter of duty to my section. I concur with you about the Brooks type, that vengeance belongs to the Almighty, and all that. I will do, as I have done, all I can in that line; and while regarding this Union as cramping the South, I will nevertheless sustain it as long as I can. Yet I will stand by to the end. I firmly believe that the slaveholding South is now the controlling power of the world — that no other power would face us in hostility. This will be demonstrated if we come to the ultimate. I have no wish to bring it about, yet am perfectly ready if others do. There might be with us commotion for a time, but cotton, rice, tobacco, and naval stores command the world; and we have sense enough to know it, and are sufficiently Teutonic to carry it out successfully. The North, without us, would be a motherless calf, bleating about, and die of mange and starvation.

But I am going off. Your speech satisfies me about Doctor Hayes's expedition, and I will give it my help.

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 310-1

Will Kansas be a Slave State, Published September 28, 1855

The Hon. Theodore G. Hunt, of La., who was one of the few Southern Representatives in Congress that voted against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, addressed a public meeting of his constituents on the 15th instant in a speech in which, whilst defending his course upon that subject, he conclusively stated the reason that would prevent Kansas from being a slave State:

In addition to the view I presented of good faith, I also urged in my speech on the Nebraska bill that, apart from abstractions, there was no practical advantage to be attained for the South by opening the Territory in question to the admission of slavery. And I still retain that opinion. I believe that Kansas and Nebraska are both destined by nature to be free States. No prudent slaveholder will leave the genial soil and climate of the South, and take his slaves with him, merely to establish the condition of slavery in the less productive and colder region of Kansas or Nebraska. The author of the Nebraska bill himself, and leading Southern gentlemen, who advocated the bill, also entertained the opinion I expressed.

Mr. Douglas said: “I do not believe there is a man in Congress who thinks it could be permanently a slaveholding country. I have no idea that it could.”

Mr. Badger, or North Carolina, said: “I have no more idea of seeing a slave population in either of them I have of seeing it in Massachusetts, not a whit.”

Mr. Butler, of South Carolina, said: “As far as I am concerned, I must say that I do not expect that this bill is to give us of the South anything, but merely to accommodate something like the sentiment of the South.”

Mr. Hunter, of Virginia, said: “Does any man believe that you will have a slaveholding State in Kansas and Nebraska? I confess that for a moment I permitted such an illusion to  rest on my mind.”

Mr. Jones, of Tennessee, said: As I told the honorable chairman of this committee on Territories, and as I have expressed myself everywhere when I have given my opinion on the subject, I was content to let this matter stand as it was, because, in my judgment, there was nothing practical in it.”

There is nothing in the present state of things that shakes my conviction in the destination of Kansas to be a free State. The lawless violence of certain Missourians to control the election and mould the sovereignty of Kansas must fall of its object. The condition of Kansas as to slavery will be determined ultimately by the influence of the law of nature and the principles of human interest, almost as certain in their operation as that law itself. Population, which was flowing rapidly into the Territory, has been checked and greatly obstructed for some time past; but thousands who have settled there opposed to the institution of slavery; and a vast number who, it is believed, will settle there as soon as law and order are established, will join the opposition. Besides, I understand that the number of emigrants going to Missouri bona fide to live there does not exceed the number of emigrants from that state returning to their ancient establishments. Now, if this information be correct, Kansas will in due time, when prepared for admission into the Union, present herself to Congress for admission with a constitution prohibitory of slavery. To her admission under the case supposed there could be no serious objection on the part of the South; for the doctrine is justly avowed by her that when a State is about to be admitted into the Union, that States has a right to decide for itself whether it will or will not have slavery within its limits.

But if I am mistaken in the opinion that Kansas will present herself at the right time to Congress with a constitution prohibitory of slavery, and, on the contrary, by any possibility she should be admitted as a slaveholding Sates, still, I repeat, I am convinced, from the nature of her soil, from the number of foreigners and citizens from the free States who have settled, and who will hereafter settle within her limits, and from the well known aversion of those persons to the institution of slavery, that her career as a slaving State would be a very short one, and that her destiny is fixed by the law of Nature, and the circumstances averted to, as a non-slaveholding State.

Practically, then, the South had nothing to gain by a repeal of the Missouri compromise. Her own fertile lands, suitable for the profitable culture of her great staples, and situated in a climate congenial to the health of her laborers, afforded her, in their immense area, a space far beyond her powers for cultivation for any series of ages yet to come. I condemned the lust for lands which the South did not want, and which honor called upon her not to invade or to acquire by injustice.

SOURCE: “Will Kansas be a Slave State?” Daily American Organ, Washington, D.C., Friday, September 28, 1855, p. 2