Slavery: letters and speeches

by Horace Mann

I thank you cordially for the honor of being called to this place; though I could have wished that your choice had fallen upon some one of the many more meritorious men whom I see all around me.

Gentlemen, I have come here to-day to add my feeble voice to the thunder tones of execration against the Fugitive Slave law, with which every free state in this Union, and every free community upon the earth, are now echoing and reëchoing.

I do not propose to occupy your attention long. Where so many things are to be said, and so many persons, far better qualified than I am, are present to say them, I shall consult at once your advantage and my duty, by being brief.

We have come together with especial reference to the Fugitive Slave law; but that execrable statute connects itself so directly with almost every other prominent measure of the government, and with the leading acts of our public men, during the past year, that it opens the whole subject of human liberty, and our duty, as freemen, in regard to human rights. Especially does it behoove us to inquire, by what means, by whose instrumentality, the country has been instigated to this treason against the rights of men, and when we may expect their machinations will be brought to an end.

Some of our official dignitaries are giving us law lectures on the subject of high treason against the government. I hope they will not object, if we reciprocate the favor, by giving them a lecture on the higher treason against God and humanity, of which they are guilty.

Gentlemen, it is with unspeakable humiliation and regret that I look back and see where Massachusetts stood twelve or thirteen months ago, and where so many of her citizens stand now. Up to that ever-accursed day, the 7th of March, 1850, there was not a Massachusetts man, in the councils of the state or nation;—nay, so far as I know, there was not a single Massachusetts man any where, of any standing or respectability, who did not assert and proclaim his hostility to the extension of slavery; his purpose to maintain at all times the principle of the ordinance of 1787; and his “resolute and fixed determination,” (to use Mr. Webster’s language,) “to make no further concessions to slavery and the slave power.” The public men of the state, the press of the state, the legislature of the state, avowed these sentiments; and the political conventions of the state rang with these declarations from side to side.

But on that ever-memorable day a senator of the United States, from Massachusetts, saw fit to trample under foot every thing that he had ever said in behalf of human freedom and against human bondage. He saw fit to curl his lip and to intonate his voice in scorn of the principle of the ordinance of 1787, and to dishonor the memory of Nathan Dane, whom, a few years before, on the same spot, he had eulogized. He saw fit to contemn what he knew to be the honest sentiments of Massachusetts. He went far, far out of his way, to fortify and extend the institution of slavery. He offered to add new states to its power, and to take two hundred millions of dollars from the treasury of the United States, to be expended for its extra-constitutional security and defence.

I shall not dwell upon the perfidious nature of that deed, nor upon the obvious motive that prompted it. I will rather advert to the measures which have since been taken to corrupt the public sentiment of Massachusetts, and of the whole north, and to bring over the people, some to a palliation and others to a full indorsement of it.

As soon as the stunning effect of that treacherous blow upon all the moral and religious sensibilities of the state, and upon its traditional and inwrought love of liberty, had begun to subside, a systematic effort was commenced to debauch the patriotism and humanity of the people, by an appeal to their cupidity. Our manufacturing and commercial interests were suffering. A majority of the slave states were the antagonists of these interests. Political ambition and mercantile cupidity associated these two facts together, and the flagitious idea was engendered that by surrendering our liberty we might have a tariff. The poison of this idea was first openly and directly infused into the public mind by Mr. Webster, in his speech at the Revere House, April 29th, 1850, when he said, “Neither you nor I shall see the legislation of the country proceed in the old harmonious way until the discussions in Congress and out of Congress upon the subject to which you have alluded, [slavery,] shall be in some way suppressed. Take this truth home with you, and take it as truth. Until something can be done to allay the feeling now separating different men and different sections, there can be NO USEFUL AND SATISFACTORY legislation in the two houses of Congress.”

Of this declaration there can be but one interpretation. It was perfectly understood by those to whom it was addressed. It says, without enigma or riddle, surrender the territories to the incursions of the slave states, pacify the slave power, give up blood-bought rights for this life, and Savior-bought hopes for another, and you can have your pay in a cent a yard on calico, and a cent a pound on iron. And, as a means of accomplishing this object, it says the discussion of the slavery question must be “suppressed.”