No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Horace Mann was flattered to be offered the opportunity to succeed the venerable John Quincy Adams in the House of Representatives. Adams's long and distinguished service in the House, to which he went after his defeat for a second term in the presidency, was nationally recognized. It would be difficult to fill the shoes of ‘Old Man Eloquent’. The Whigs of the Eighth Congressional District of Massachusetts had to choose a figure of some fame and reputation. Horace Mann's several years of residence in West Newton qualified him for nomination.
1 ‘Take egotism out, and you would castrate the benefactors. Luther, Mirabeau, Napoleon, John Adams, Andrew Jackson; and our nearer eminent public servants, – Greeley, Theodore Parker, Ward Beecher, Horace Mann, Garrison would lose their vigour’, Perry, Bliss (ed.), The Heart of Emerson's Journals (Boston, 1926), p. 298.Google Scholar
2 Mann, to Clapp, E. W., Newton, W., 11 03 1848Google Scholar. Mann Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. Manuscript letters cited in this paper, unless otherwise noted, are in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
3 Fisher, J. D. to Mann, , Boston, 14 03 1848.Google Scholar
4 See his letter to Mann, , Walpole, 16 03 1848.Google Scholar
5 Fowle, to Mann, , Boston, 17 03 1848.Google Scholar
6 Fowle, to Mann, , Boston, 17 03 1848.Google Scholar
7 Quincy, Josiah to Mann, , Boston, 16 03 1848.Google Scholar
8 Mann, to Parker, Theodore, Newton, W., 22 05 1847.Google Scholar
9 Miscellaneous notes, 1848–52, Mann Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.
10 Mann, Horace, Slavery: Letters and Speeches (Boston, 1851), p. 9.Google Scholar
11 The Liberator, 18 (7 April 1848), p. 54.
12 Hundreds of these letters are preserved in the Mann Papers in the Massachusetts Historical Society.
13 Sewell, S. E. to Mann, , Boston, 26 04 1848.Google Scholar
14 Shorey, John to Mann, , Dedham, , 25 04 1848.Google Scholar
15 Mann, to Howe, Dr Samuel Gridley, Washington, 1 05 1848.Google Scholar
16 Mann, Mary to Mann, Horace, Newton, W., early 05 1848.Google Scholar
17 Mann, to Mann, Mary, Washington, 12 05 1848.Google Scholar
18 Congressional Globe, 30th Congress, 1st Session, 1847–1848, p. 623.
19 Mann, to Mann, Mary, Washington, 21 04 1848.Google Scholar
20 Mann, , Slavery, p. 7.Google Scholar
21 See his letters to Sumner, Charles, Washington, 24 06 1848Google Scholar, and to an unidentified person, Washington, 9 June 1848, in Mann, Mary, Life of Horace Mann (Washington, 1937; original ed., Boston, 1865), pp. 264–5.Google Scholar
22 Mann, to Sumner, Charles, Washington, 28 06 1848.Google Scholar
23 Sumner, to Mann, , Boston, 2 07 1848.Google Scholar
24 Ibid.
25 Sumner, to Mann, , Boston, 3 07 1848.Google Scholar
26 In the long run Mann was pleased with the general trend of the Taylor administration. He believed President Taylor's approach to the question of extension of slavery into the territories sound. He was saddened by Taylor's untimely death and viewed the event with foreboding for the future.
27 ‘Speech, delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, June 30, 1848, on the Right of Congress to Legislate for the Territories of the United States, and its Duty to Exclude Slavery Therefrom’; reprinted in Slavery, pp. 10–83.
28 Mann, to Mann, Mary, Washington, 26 05 1848.Google Scholar
29 Slavery, pp. 40–1.
30 Ibid., p. 42.
31 Ibid., p. 43.
32 Ibid., p. 48.
33 Ibid., p. 53.
34 Ibid., pp. 49–50.
35 Mann, to May, Samuel J., Newton, W., 22 09 1848Google Scholar; quoted in Mann, Mary, Life of Horace Mann, p. 272.Google Scholar
36 Mann, to May, Samuel J., Washington, 5 08 1848Google Scholar; quoted in ibid., p. 268.
37 Stafford, John to Mann, , Camp, Snow, North Carolina, 6 01 1849.Google Scholar
38 Four major speeches he delivered in the House on the subject of slavery and related matters, along with speeches he delivered on the hustings and letters he sent to his constituents and the newspapers, were published as a campaign document in 1851 under the title Slavery: Letters and Speeches. A fifth major speech delivered in the House in 1852 was published that year.
39 Slavery, p. 125.
40 Ibid., p. 213.
41 Ibid., p. 179.
42 Ibid., pp. 278–9.
43 Mann, to Mann, Mary, Washington, 14 02 1850.Google Scholar
44 ‘Speech delivered in the United States House of Representatives, February 15, 1850, on the Subject of Slavery in the Territories, and the Consequences of a Dissolution of the Union’, reprinted in Slavery, pp. 180–227.
45 See his newspaper exchange with Senator Badger of North Carolina reprinted in ibid., pp. 228–34.
46 See ‘Speech delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, February 23, 1849, on Slavery and the Slave Trade in the District of Columbia’, reprinted in ibid., pp. 121–79.
47 Slavery, pp. 70–1.
48 Ibid., p. 143. The exchange was recorded in the Congressional Globe in this manner: ‘Some gentlemen asked him whether he would elevate the blacks to a political and social equality with the people of this Government? to which he replied, that he would elevate them as fast as their nature would rise; and when they became enlightened, it would then be time enough for the people to decide whether they would make them their associates.’ Congressional Globe, 30th Congress, 2nd Session, 1848–1849, p. 590.
49 Slavery, p. 143.
50 Mann, to Mann, Mary, Washington, 23 04 1848.Google Scholar
51 Mann, Mary to Mann, Horace, Newton, W., 21 04 1848.Google Scholar
52 Mann, Mary, Life of Horace Mann, p. 443.Google Scholar
53 See ‘Speech delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, in Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, February 28, 1851, on the Fugitive Slave Law’, reprinted in Slavery, pp. 390–472.
54 Slavery, pp. 342–3. Daniel Webster had complained in the printed version of his Seventh of March Speech (although he had not done so in the oral delivery) that Northern free Negro sailors were unjustifiably imprisoned in Southern ports. Fuess, Claude, Daniel Webster (2 vols., Boston, 1930), vol. 2, p. 216.Google Scholar
55 Slavery, p. 274.
56 Ibid., p. 403.
57 Ibid., p. 422.
58 Ibid., p. 433.
59 Ibid., p. 449.
60 Ibid., p. 437.
61 Ibid., p. 453.
62 His passionate speech at this meeting on 8 April 1851 is reprinted in ibid., pp. 523–35. Sims was escorted by 300 armed policemen to the brig Acorn in which he was taken to Savannah. Fuess, , Webster, vol. 2, p. 271.Google Scholar
63 Slavery, p. 355.
64 Ibid., p. 479.
65 Ibid., pp. 236–81.
66 See his letter to the Boston, AtlasGoogle Scholar, reprinted in ibid., pp. 282–337. Webster at first considered Mann's objections a minor irritation. He wrote to his son Fletcher, ‘Mr. Mann's second letter is weak, though malignant; and so is the article in the Atlas. These people you must take care of, some of you, at home. I cannot take any considerable notice of Mr. Mann, tho' I have some idea of saying a word about him, in a letter which I am preparing for Kennebeck.’ Webster to Fletcher Webster, Washington, June 1850: Everett Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. As the dispute continued, Webster ‘cut Mann on the Washington streets’. Nevins, Allan, Ordeal of the Union (2 vols., New York, 1947), vol. 1, p. 293.Google Scholar
67 Slavery, p. 516.
68 Ibid.
69 Ibid., p. 525.
70 Ibid., p. 529.
71 Ibid., pp. 518–9. A somewhat stronger version of the speech can be read in manuscript at the Massachusetts Historical Society. See the Mann Papers, Miscellaneous Notes, 1848–52.
72 By one vote. Fuess, , Webster, vol. 2, p. 222.Google Scholar
73 See his speech delivered in the House, 28 February 1851, reprinted in Slavery, pp. 390–472.
74 It was delivered on 17 August 1852 and was published as ‘The Institution of Slavery’. It can be read in the Congressional Globe, 32nd Congress, 1st Session, Appendix, pp. 1071–81, or in the pamphlet version (Boston, 1852).
75 Slavery, p. 562.
76 Ibid., p. 564.