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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Slavery: letters and speeches
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Title: Slavery: letters and speeches

Author: Horace Mann

Release date: April 30, 2023 [eBook #70681]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: B. B. Mussey & Co, 1851

Credits: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
images generously made available by The Internet
Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SLAVERY:

LETTERS AND SPEECHES ***
 SLAVERY:
LETTERS AND SPEECHES,

BY

HORACE MANN,

THE FIRST SECRETARY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BOARD OF EDUCATION.

BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY B. B. MUSSEY & CO.
1851.
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by

H M ,

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

STEREOTYPED AT THE
BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.
 TO

THE YOUNG MEN

OF
MASSACHUSETTS

THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY

Dedicated
BY
THE AUTHOR.

This work comes from one in whose mind present Memories are taking
the place of early Hopes. It is specially addressed to those in whose minds
future Memories will soon take the place of present Hopes. Hence a fitting
occasion presents itself for the statement of a few principles, by whose
unerring guidance the exulting Hopes of Youth may always be transformed
into the happy Memories of Age.
The Youth of all climes and times have a common attribute. The desire of
happiness is a universal desire. God fixes this element in the core of life.
Far back in our moral organization, before human conduct can come in to
control or modify, this longing for happiness, this hope of future welfare, is
radicated in the soul; so that it seems to have been the first attribute which
was taken for the constitution of our nature, and around which the other
attributes were gathered, rather to have been added to the rest as a
secondary or incident. The desire of some form of happiness being secured,
as a motive power, it seems to have been left very much to the option of
each individual to select his own objects of enjoyment, whether noble or
ignoble, and to devise his own means for obtaining them, whether righteous
or unrighteous.
The emulous and aspiring youth of a Free People will always find much
of their private, and most of their public welfare, indissolubly connected
with the institutions and laws of their country. In these, therefore, their
interest is both public and personal;—it pertains to the citizen as well as to
the man. All great moral questions, though touching them but lightly at
first, will come closer and closer home, as long as they live;—growing into
greater importance for their posthumous memory than for their living fame,
and affecting the fortunes of their posterity even more than their own.
Though all Young Men are substantially alike in their desire of well
being, yet, in regard to the guiding principles by which the objects of hope
are pursued, in order to obtain happiness, three marked distinctions, or
classes, exist among them.
1. There are those who adopt with implicit and unquestioning faith the
views of their parents, or of the circle, or caste, into which they were
thrown by the accident of birth. They never venture to explore or wander
outside of the ideas and opinions among which they were born and bred.
For them, an hereditary boundary encloses thought, belief, hope. Whether
the opinions amid which they live are insular in their narrowness, or
continental in their breadth; whether they belong to the earth, came up from
the dark regions below, or descended from the realms of purity above, they
are taken into the receptive soul, as unfledged birds take whatever food is
offered them, from friend or foe, with closed eye and opened mouth. Even
if practically right, therefore, they are never rationally right, for they have
never discerned between good and ill; and all their convictions, whether
true or untrue, rest upon the foundation of bigotry alone.
2. The second class look eagerly beyond family or caste. They anxiously
inquire what views, what dogmas, are in the ascendant among men,—what
party predominates or outvotes, what avowals or professions will most
readily open avenues to wealth, propitiate power, win patronage, insure
advancement. Finding where the preponderance of forces lies, they attach
themselves to the stronger. No matter whether the tide ebbs or flows, they
drift with the current. If popular views change, they change, “like a wave
driven with the wind and tossed;” like a chameleon, changing its color with
every contact.
Some of this class, more sagacious, though not less false to principle,
than the rest, ascend an eminence, whence they can survey the direction of
forces, mark the future point and period of their union, and then they strike
at once for the spot whither those forces are converging They, not less than
their fellows, warp eternal principles to suit the vice of the hour, only it is
an hour somewhat future, instead of the present one.
 3. But there is a third class of Young Men who are true to the sacred
instincts of virtue, and devoutly reverent of duty. They seek, not for the
time-hallowed, but for the truth-hallowed. They have learnt that, in the
divine classification, there are but two great objects in the universe,—God
and Mankind. These are the only existences recognized in those two
supreme laws, which, by divine prerogative, hold all other laws in their
embrace. Hence the two resulting and all-comprehending duties,—love to
God and love to Man. The convictions and sentiments which belong to the
Brotherhood of the one, stand upon the same basis of authority as those
which belong to the Fatherhood of the other. Hence all other entities and
possibilities,—opulence, power, fame, genius, things present, or things to
come,—are, and forever must be, secondary and subordinate to these
primary and everlasting laws. No names so lofty, no multitude so large, that
they can abolish these truths, or abstract one jot or tittle from their binding
force, in this life, or in any life. They are coëternal with their Author;
unchangeable as He, and moral life and moral death wait upon their award.
When the Young Man of this class looks within himself, he finds the
constitution of his own moral nature to be such, that annihilation with truth
is better than the most favored existence with error. And when he looks
without himself, he sees there is a God enthroned above, mightier than
every “god of this world,” and that there is a divine law higher than any
laws of fallible men. Hence he knows that Right and Truth will assuredly
triumph, and that all who oppose them will be scattered as the whirlwind
scatters the chaff. The patriarchs sold Joseph into Egypt; yet God was with
him, and raised him to honor, and at last put the lives of his treacherous
brethren into his hands.
Whatever may be the peculiar madness of the hour, in whatever direction
the gauds of wealth may beckon, or the prizes of ambition call, let the
Young Man remember, that only can be honorable which is just, that only
can be safe which is right. Hence, though the perfumed breezes of flattery
may entice him on one side, and a storm of maledictions beat fiercely
against him on the other, let him consecrate himself to Justice and Truth,
and be inspired with the faith that, though the earth should quake or the
heavens fall, an omniscient eye will over-watch, and an omniscient arm will
protect him.
 Among the wiles of the sorceress that beguile the young to their ruin
there is no more seductive, yet fallacious temptation, than the value which
seems to belong to the passing hour, and to the pleasures it may bring. How
infinitely small a part of existence is the present day, or year! How
insignificant its point compared with the ages to come! What are its huzzas,
its ostentation, and its pride, when placed in the balance against the eternity
of rewards that crown allegiance to duty? O, how insane and fatuous to
barter the undecaying honors of the future for the transitory joys of the
present! In the future, lies the wealth of every man; the present is only an
opportunity to make its title secure. The temporizer must snatch from hour
to hour at some new expedient, which, if he fails to seize, he sinks to
perdition. The virtuous man binds himself to a principle, and soars securely
through all worlds.

Nothing stands upon a more adamantine basis of truth than the principles
which decide between Human Freedom and Human Slavery. These eternal
principles happen now, in a peculiar degree, to be implicated in the shifting
and uncertain current of politics; and political storms may seem for a time
to overwhelm them. But the cloud which obscures the sun does not
annihilate it; and these principles are sure to emerge and shine unclouded in
their native splendor forever. Every act, whether of individuals or of
governments, whether committed in past days or in our day, which
compromises the sacred principles of Human Freedom, or postpones its
interests to other interests, is set down, in the calendar of fate, for ultimate
and universal execration. This is just as certain as it is that the great crimes
of the race committed in past ages,—the persecutions of the early
Christians, the tortures of the Inquisition, or the atrocities of the African
Slave trade,—are now condemned by the awful verdict of history and the
ever-sounding reprobation of mankind. In the spread of Christianity, in the
advance of civilization, in the moral development of the people, a tribunal
is now preparing, which will pronounce sentence of condemnation against
the abetters of slavery, to be promulgated as from Sinai, and preserved in
the archives of eternity. The Progress of the Age bears us on, not only to a
forward, but to an upward point; and what we now say against the apostates
to duty and the traitors of mankind, in past ages, however much they may
have been honored, caressed, and rewarded in their day, will soon be said of
every one amongst ourselves who leads or joins the band of conspirators
against the Rights of Man.
Every Young Man, however obscure or powerless he may seem, can do
something for the cause of freedom. Whatever disadvantages the youth may
labor under, they have one all-compensating advantage. A longer period of
life is before them, and deeds which can only be accomplished through
years of labor, they can achieve. But our success depends infinitely less
upon our strength than upon our motive. When we supply the virtuous will,
God supplies the power; so that the result corresponds, not to our weakness,
but to his omnipotence. We are thus made able

——“to join
Our partial movements with the master wheel
Of the great world, and serve that sacred end,
Which He, the unerring Reason, keeps in view.”

Those Young Men of Massachusetts, then, of the noble lineage of the

Pilgrims, who have been nursed amid the influences of sanctuary and
school, in whose bosoms is the sacred depository of future and boundless
hopes, but who are now counselled to abandon their integrity, who are
brought into peril of being corrupted by the lures of wealth, or fascinated by
the dazzling of worldly honors, or swept away by the pressure of the
multitude that do evil, I adjure to stand fast and immovable on those sacred
and eternal principles of Human Liberty which came down to us through
the fires of oppression and the agony and blood of martyrs, but came from
God;—principles that can never suffer the decays of time, which kings nor
senates of kings can ever abolish, and which, however much the passions of
men may seek to taint or defile them, are ever beautiful and fair, as the
names of all their disciples shall hereafter be. I call upon Young Men to
throw themselves forward in imagination into middle life, or old age, and
there behold how these mighty questions will look in the retrospect of time,
when the brilliant robes which now gild the tempter are gone, and only the
ghastly fiend remains; when the passion that prompted the crime is dead,
and only the remorse survives. Think not of luxury, or wealth, or ignoble
ease, but only of an heroic conflict, careless of the present strength of the
foe. Take no bribe from the hand of power, in whatever disguise of beauty it
may come, but spurn it and its author alike. Let your future manhood realize
the generous aspirations of your youth; and, amid the seductions of the
present hour, prize only the jubilant memories you can lay up for old age. It
may grieve you to break friendships, but truth and duty are your nearest
friends. It may be painful to live amongst those who upbraid and condemn
you; but be a coward when virtue is in peril, and your own accusing
conscience you must live with forever. Study those exemplars of excellence
who came purified and resplendent out of fiery trials. It is said of Francis
the First, that when he read the valorous exploits of Gaston de Foix, he
wept tears of emulation. Rejoice, then, though marshalled in the fore front
of battle when the Rights of Humanity are in danger, and you shall rejoice
again and forever in their triumph. Read and ponder what was so nobly said
by one of the heathen of the old world, and be ashamed, yea, weep for your
country and your kind, if the Christianity of America has fallen below the
paganism of Rome. Seneca says,—
“Virtue covets danger; and whatever may be her aim, she never
stops to consider how much she may suffer, since her sufferings are
a part of her glory. Military men glory in their scars. With exultation
they point us to their blood flowing in an honorable cause. Though
they who return unharmed from the field of battle may have done as
many and as noble deeds, yet it is the wounded soldier who receives
double honors. God provides for those whom he would make most
honorable, by furnishing them with opportunities for achieving
valiant and noble deeds. Hence he strews difficulties along their
path. It is in the storm you see who is worthy to be a pilot; and in
battle, who is the soldier.... How can I know with what constancy
and endurance one will bear up against reproach and obloquy and
popular odium, if he has grown old amidst the applauses of the
world, if he has never encountered misfortune, and has been
followed by the indiscriminating favor of men?... Be not affrighted,
I beseech you, at the dangers which were intended by the immortal
gods only as stimulants to exertion. The season of calamity is
virtue’s opportunity. They, rather, are to be esteemed wretched, who
lie torpid in luxurious ease, whom a sluggish calm detains on the
great voyage, like vessels that lie weltering on a sea without a gale.
Whom God approves and loves, he exercises, and tries them again
and again, and thus inures them to hardship; but those whom he
designs to enervate, he spares and indulges and saves them from
impending ills.... The bravest of the army are they whom the
commander selects for the most perilous service. The general details
his choicest men to send on secret expeditions by night, or to
explore an unknown way, or to dislodge a garrison from their
entrenchments. No man chosen for such an enterprise is ever heard
to say, ‘My commander has wronged and dishonored me,’ but
rather, ‘He has known well whom to choose.’ Such, too, is the
language of those who are required to suffer what would make the
timid and the ignoble weep. We stand honored in the divine regards
when the great experiment, how much human nature can endure for
a virtuous cause, is tried in ourselves.... As teachers deal with their
scholars, so God deals with good men. He demands most of those in
whom he has most confidence.”
W N , October, 1851.
 CONTENTS.
PAGE
LETTER ACCEPTING THE NOMINATION FOR THE 1
THIRTIETH CONGRESS,
SPEECH, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF 10
REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES,
JUNE 30, 1848,
SKETCH OF THE OPENING ARGUMENT IN THE 84
CASE OF THE UNITED STATES vs. DANIEL
DRAYTON,
LETTER ACCEPTING THE NOMINATION FOR THE 119
THIRTY-FIRST CONGRESS,
SPEECH, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF 121
REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, FEB.
23, 1849,
SPEECH, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF 180
REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, FEB.
15, 1850,
TWO LETTERS ON THE EXTENSION OF SLAVERY, 236, 282
AND ON THE RIGHT OF AN ALLEGED FUGITIVE
SLAVE TO A TRIAL BY JURY,
LETTER: THE ORDINANCE OF 1787, 238
LETTER ACCEPTING THE NOMINATION FOR THE 340
THIRTY-SECOND CONGRESS,
SPEECH, DELIVERED AT DEDHAM, NOV. 6, 1850, 357
SPEECH, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF 390
REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, FEB.
28, 1851,
SPEECH, DELIVERED AT LANCASTER, MAY 19, 473
1851,
SPEECH, DELIVERED IN BOSTON, APRIL 8, 1851, 523
SPEECH, DELIVERED AT WORCESTER, SEPT. 16, 536
1851,
 LETTER
A N T C ,
W C D N . 8, M ,
1848.
G ;
Your communication of the 16th inst., being directed to Newton, (instead
of West Newton, where I reside,) did not reach me until this morning. I
thank you cordially for the kind expressions of personal regard with which
you have been pleased to accompany it. You inform me that at a convention
of delegates assembled in Dedham, on Wednesday, the 15th inst., I was
nominated as a candidate to fill the vacancy in Congress occasioned by the
death of the great and good man whose irreparable loss we, his constituents,
with a nation for our fellow-mourners, deplore.
At first thought, the idea of being the immediate successor of John
Quincy Adams in the councils of the nation might well cause any man to
shrink back from the inevitable contrast. But it is obvious, on a moment’s
reflection, that the difference is so trivial between all the men whom he has
left, compared with the disparity between them and him, as to render it of
little consequence, in this respect, who shall succeed him; and the people in
the Eighth District, in their descent from Mr. Adams to any successor, must
break and bear the shock of the fall, as best they can.
I most heartily concur with you in that estimate of the services, and
veneration for the character, of our late representative, which your
resolutions so eloquently express. To be fired by his example, to imitate his
diligence and fidelity in the discharge of every trust, to emulate his moral
intrepidity, which always preferred to stand alone by the right, rather than to
join the retinue and receive the plaudits of millions, as a champion of the
wrong,—this would be, in the beautiful language of the Roman historian,
“to ascend to glory by the path of virtue.”
One of the resolutions adopted by your convention declares the three
following things:—
 1. That the successor of Mr. Adams, on the floor of Congress, should be a
man “whose principles shall be in consonance with those of his
predecessor.”
2. That his fidelity to the great principles of human freedom shall be
unwavering. And,—
3. That his “voice and vote shall on all occasions be exercised in
extending and securing liberty to the human race.”
Permit me to reäffirm these sentiments with my whole heart. Should the
responsibilities of that successorship ever be devolved upon me, I shall
endeavor so to fulfil them, that these dead words should become a living
soul. I should deem it not only an object of duty, but of the highest
ambition, to contend for the noble principles you have here expressed, as
Mr. Adams contended for them; though, unhappily, it would be only as a
David in Saul’s armor. Bear with me for a moment while I enlarge upon
these sentiments.
1. “In consonance with his principles.”—I believe it was the sovereign
rule of Mr. Adams’s life to act in obedience to his convictions of duty. Truth
was his guide. His conscience was non-elastic. He did not strain at a gnat
before company, on account of its size, and then, privately, swallow a
camel. His patriotism was coëxtensive with his country; it could not be
crushed and squeezed in between party lines. Though liable to err,—and
what human being is not?—yet his principles were believed by him to be in
accordance with the great moral laws of the universe. They were thought
out from duty and religion, and not carved out of expediency. When
invested with patronage, he never dismissed a man from office because he
was a political opponent, and never appointed one to office merely because
he was a political friend. Hence he drew from Mr. Holmes, of South
Carolina, this noble eulogium,—a eulogium, considering the part of the
country from which it came, as honorable to its author as to its object,—that
“he crushed no heart beneath the rude grasp of proscription; he left no
heritage of widows’ cries or orphans’ tears.” Could all the honors which
Mr. Adams ever won from offices held under the first five Presidents of the
United States, and from a public service, which, commencing more than
fifty years ago, continued to the day of his death, be concentrated in one
effulgent blaze, they would be less far-shining and inextinguishable than the
honor of sacrificing his election for a second presidential term, because he
would not, in order to obtain it, prostitute the patronage and power which
the constitution had placed in his hands. I regard this as the sublimest
spectacle in his long and varied career. He stood within reach of an object
of ambition doubtless dearer to him than life. He could have laid his hands
upon it. The “still, small voice” said, No! Without a murmur, he saw it
taken and borne away in triumph by another. Compared with this, the block
of many a martyr has been an easy resting-place.
2. “Unwavering fidelity to the great principles of human freedom.”—The
Declaration of American Independence, in 1776, was the first complete
assertion of human rights, on an extensive scale, ever made by mankind.
Less than three quarters of a century have elapsed, and already the greatest
portion of the civilized world has felt the influence of that Declaration.
France, for years, has had a constitutional monarchy; perhaps, to-day, her
government is republican. Holland and Belgium are comparatively free.
Almost all the states of the Germanic Confederation have a written
constitution, and a legislature with a popular branch. Prussia has lately
commenced a representative system. The iron rule of Austria is relaxed
under the fervent heat which liberty reflects from surrounding nations.
Naples and Sicily have just burst the bonds of tyranny. In Rome and the
States of the Church, where, under the influence of religious and political
despotism, the heart of Freedom was supposed to be petrified into insoluble
hardness, that heart is now beginning to pulsate with a new life, and to
throb with sympathy for humanity. Great Britain and Denmark have
emancipated their slaves in the West Indies. Measures are now in progress
to ameliorate the condition of Russian serfs. Even half-barbarous,
Mahometan Tunis has yielded to the tide of free principles. To what bar of
judgment will our own posterity bring us, what doom of infamy will history
pronounce upon us, if the United States shall hereafter be found the only
portion of Christendom where the principles of our own Declaration of
Independence are violated in the persons of millions of our people?
3. “The exercise, on all occasions, of voice and vote, in extending and
securing liberty to the human race.”—There is a crisis in our affairs. A
territory, in extent far exceeding that of the thirteen original states, when
they repelled the power of Great Britain, has lately been added, or is,
doubtless, about to be added, to our national domain. The expanse of this
territory is so vast, that it may be divided into a dozen sections, and these
sections may be erected into separate states, each one of which shall be so
large that Massachusetts would seem but an inconsiderable court-yard, if
placed in front of it. Parts of this territory are fertile and salubrious. It is
capable of supporting millions and millions of human beings, of the same
generation. The numbers of the successive generations, which in the
providence of God are to inhabit it, will be as the leaves of the forest, or the
sands on the sea-shore. Each one of these is to be a living soul, with its joys
and sorrows, its hopes and fears, its susceptibilities of exaltation or of
abasement. Each one will be capable of being formed into the image of
God, or of being deformed into the image of all that is anti-godlike.
These countless millions are to be our kindred; many of them, perhaps,
our own descendants; at any rate, our brethren of the human family; for has
not God “made of one blood all nations of men to dwell upon all the face of
the earth”? In rights, in character, in happiness; in freedom or in vassalage;
in the glorious immunities and prerogatives of knowledge, or in the
debasement and superstitions of ignorance; in their upward-looking
aspiration and love of moral excellence, or in their downward-looking,
prone-rushing, and brutish appetites and passions, what shall these millions
of our fellow-creatures be? I put it as a practical question, What shall these
millions of our fellow-creatures be?—for it is more than probable that this
very generation,—nay, that the actors in public affairs, before the sands of
the present year shall have run out,—will prescribe and foreördain their
doom. That doom will be what our present conduct predestines.
If we enact laws and establish institutions, under whose benign
influences that vast tract of territory shall at length teem with myriads of
human beings, each one a free-born man; each one enjoying the inalienable
right of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” each one free for the
cultivation of his capacities, and free in the choice and in the rewards of his
labor;—if we do this, although the grand results may not manifest
themselves for a thousand years, yet when the fulness of time shall come,
the equity and the honor of framing these laws and institutions will belong
to us, as much as though the glorious consummation could be realized to-
morrow. On the other hand, if we so shape the mould in which their
fortunes are to be cast, that, for them or for any portion of them, there shall
be servitude instead of liberty, ignorance instead of education, debasement
instead of dignity, the indulgence of bestial appetites instead of the
sanctities and securities of domestic life,—then, until the mountains shall
crumble away by age, until the arches of the skies shall fall in rottenness,
these mountains and these arches will never cease to echo back the
execrations upon our memory of all the great and good men of the world.
And this retribution, I believe, will come suddenly, as well as last forever.
In one of the South-western States a vast subterranean cave has been
discovered, deep down in whose chambers there is a pool of water, on
which no beam of sunlight ever shines. A sightless fish is said to inhabit
this rayless pool. In this animal, indeed, the rudiments of a visual organ are
supposed to be dimly discernible; but of an orb to refract the rays of light,
or of a retina to receive them, there is no trace. Naturalists suppose that the
progenitors of these animals, in ages long gone by, possessed the power of
vision; but that, being buried in these depths by some convulsion of nature,
long disuse at first impaired, at length extinguished, and has at last
obliterated the visual organ itself. The animal has sunk in the scale of being,
until its senses are accommodated to the blackness of darkness in which it
dwells. Were this account wholly fabulous, it has the strongest
verisimilitude, and doubtless describes what would actually occur under the
circumstances supposed.
Thus will it be with faculties above the surface of the earth, as well as
below it. Thus will it be with human beings, as well as with the lower
orders of creation. Thus will it be with our own brethren or children, should
we shut up from them the book of knowledge, or seal their senses so that
they could not read it. Thus will it be with all our God-given faculties, just
so far as they are debarred from legitimate exercise upon their appropriate
objects. The love of knowledge will die out, when it ceases to be stimulated
by the means of knowledge. Self-respect will die out, under the ever-present
sense of inferiority. The sentiments of truth and duty will die out, when
cunning and falsehood can obtain more gratifications than frankness and
honesty. The noblest impulses of the human soul, the most sacred affections
of the human heart, will die out, when every sphere is closed against their
exercise. When such a dreadful work is doing, or threatens to be done, can
any one stand listlessly by, see it perpetrated, and then expect to excuse
himself, under the false, impious pretext of Cain, “Am I my brother’s
keeper?”