![handle is hein.beal/homan0001 and id is 1 raw text is: HORACE MANN'S LETTERS
THE EXTENSION OF SLAVERY
CALIFORNIA AND NEW MEXICO;
AND ON
THE DUTY OF CONGRESS TO PROVIDE THE TRIAL BY JURY FOR ALLEGED
FUGITIVE SLAVES.
[REPUBLISHED WITH NOTES.]
LETTER I.
WEST NEWTON, May 3, 1850.
To the Hon. James Richardson, I Cleveland, and
John Gardner, of Dedham; Hon. D. A. Simmons,
John J. Clarke, Francis Hilliard, and George R.
Russell, of Roxbury, 4-c., 8yc.
GENTLEMEN: Having been called home on ac-
count of sickness in my family, I have just receiv-
ed, at this place, your kind invitation to meet and
address my constituents of the 8th Congressional
District, and to give them my views and opinions
upon the question of the immediate admission of Cali-
fornia, and other questions now before Congress aris-
ing out of the acquisition of territory by the treaty
with Mexico?
A request from so high a source has almost the
force of a command. Yet I dare not promise to
comply. I am liable at any moment to be recalled,
and, instead o. speaking here, to vote there, upon
the question to which you refer. I might be
summoned to return on the day appointed for us
to meet. The only alternative, therefore, which
is left me, is to address you by letter. This I will
do, if I can find time. I shall thus comply with
your request, in substance, if not in form.
On many accounts, I have the extremest reluc-
tance to appear before the public on the present
occasion. My views, on some vital questions,
differ most materially from those of gentlemen for
whom I have felt the profoundest respect; and
for some of whom I cherish the strongest personal
attachment. But I feel, on the other hand, that
my constituents, having intrusted to me some of
their most precious interests, are entitled to know
my views and opinions respecting the hopes
and the dangers that encompass them. I shall
not, therefore, take the responsibility of declining.
I will premise further, that my relations to
political parties, for many years past, have left me
as free from all partisan bias as the lot of human-
ity will admit. For twelve years I held an office
whose duties required me to abstain from all ac-
tive cobperation in political conflicts; and that
Buell & Blauchard, Prauters.
duty was so religiously fulfilled, that, to my
knowledge, I was never charged with its violation.
Daring the Presidential contest of 1848 those ob.
ligations of neutrality still rested upon me. For
a year afterwards, I was not called upon to do any
official act displeasing to any party amongst us.
This interval I employed in forming the best
opinion I could of public men and measures, and
their influence upon the moral and industrial in-
terests of the country. I had long entertained
most decided convictions in favor of protecting
American labor, in favor of cheap postage, and of
security to the lives and property of our fellow-
citizens engaged in commerce. But a new ques-
tion had arisen,-the great question of freedom or
slavery in our recently acquired territories,-and
this question I deemed, for the time being, to be,
though not exclusive of others, yet paramount to
them. Or rather, I saw that nothing could be so
favorable to all the last-named interests, as the
proper adjustment of the first. He whp would
provide for the welfare of mankind must first
provide for their liberty.
Sympathizing, then, on different points with dif-
ferent parties, but exclusively bound to none, I
stood, in reference to the great question of terri-
torial freedom or slavery, in the position of the
true mother in the litigation before Solomon, pre-
ferring that the object of my love should be spared
in the hands of any one, rather than perish in my
own.
Our present difficulties, which, as you well
know, have arrested the gaze of the nation, and
almost suspended the legislative functions of Con-
gress, pertain to the destiny of freedom or of sla-
very, to which our new territories are to be con-
signed. After the acquisition of Louisiana, and
Florida, and Texas, for the aggrandizement and
security of the slave power; after the aboriginal
occupants of the soil of the Southern States have
been slaughtered, or driven from their homes, at an
expense of not less than a hundred millions of dol-
lars, and at the infinite expense of our national
reputation for justice and humanity; and after
the area of the slave States has been made](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.beal/homan0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most