Boston, July 4th, 1852.
Dearest Sumner:
— I got your note yesterday, and read most of it to Carter;1
afterwards I sent it to Parker, to be used with care. I have done what I could
in a quiet way to inspire others with the confidence I feel in the final
success of your plan. I received this morning a note from Parker (written of
course before I sent yours) which I think it best to send you. A wise man likes
to know how the wind blows, though he may have determined not to vary his
course, even for a tempest. I wrote to Parker saying that he was lacking faith,
and I feared beginning to lack charity — things in which he had abounded
towards you.
I think the crying sin, and the great disturbing force in
the path of our politicians is approbativeness; they let public opinion
be to them in lieu of a conscience. So will not you do.
I want you to raise your voice and enter your protest, not
because it is for your interest to do so, but for the sake of the cause, and of
the good it will surely do. The present is yours, the future may not be; you
may never go back to Washington even should you be spared in life and health.
Again, it may be imprudent to wait till the last opportunity, for when
that comes you may be prostrated by illness. Mann made a remark in one of his
late letters about you, which I think I have more than once made to you, viz:
that you yield obedience to all God's laws of morality, but think you are
exempt from any obligation to obey his laws of physiology. You will have a
breakdown some time that will make you realize that to ruin the mental powers
by destroying that on which they depend is about as bad as neglecting to
cultivate them.
However, what I mean to say is this: that though you would
not heed all the world's urging you to speak if you thought it your duty to be
silent, yet believing with all your friends that you ought to speak, you must
not vista everything, in the hope of doing so at a particular moment,
when you may be disabled by sickness.
Downer said to-day: “I don't see how it is to be, yet
I have great faith that Sumner will come off with flying colours.” He would say
so, even if you were prevented from speaking at all this session, and so should
I, but so would few others.
Julia has returned and is well; so are all my beautiful and
dear children. We go to Newport next Monday to stay awhile in the house with
Longfellow, Appleton, etc.2 No news here. Daniel [Webster] is
determined to show fight; he has much blood, and it is very black. . . .
S. G. H.
_______________
1 Robert Carter
2 At Cliff House. The party consisted of my
father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Longfellow and their children, George William
Curtis, Thomas G. Appleton, and two or three others.
SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and
Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 382-3
