Slavery: letters and speeches

by Horace Mann

And now I suggest a further point. Was there a single Free Soiler who received an office last winter, on what is called the division of the spoils, which the people, when they voted for him at the polls, did not desire and mean that he should receive?

Now, I need not say that when men conspire or coalesce for a selfish purpose, whether that purpose be office, or emolument, or the profits of trade, or the increase of dividends, and especially if they sacrifice great principles of public utility, or morality, or religion, for the selfish end, I condemn the deed with my whole heart. So when representatives, or agents of any kind, are elected or appointed for special purposes, and by votes or influences without which they could not have obtained their posts, and then, for their own ambitious or mercenary objects, they coalesce to defeat the will of their constituents, any severity of language, in holding up their conduct to reprobation, may be used with my full consent. Precisely of this nature was the coalition between Mr. Webster and General Cass, to carry through the compromise measures and the Fugitive Slave bill. Both were agents, both betrayed and violated the will of their principals. Could Mr. Eliot, of Boston, have been elected to Congress, had he avowed his intention to vote for the Fugitive Slave bill? Every body knows he could not. Yet he coalesced with the secessionists, Messrs. Clingman and Venable, of North Carolina, and with the whole South Carolina disunion delegation, in voting for the Fugitive Slave bill. For Massachusetts, it was said that the passage of that bill would raise the price of manufacturing stocks; as, for North Carolina, it would increase the profits of negro-breeding. Here, then, are cases of coalition between persons mutually hostile on other points; and all the northern members engaged in it, not to carry out, but to defeat, the will of their constituents.

But the coalition entered into by the Free Soil party in this state, last year, was a coalition planned, formed, sanctioned, and executed, as far as they could execute it, by the people themselves, acting in their original, sovereign capacity, at their primary meetings, and at the ballot box. It was not originated by representatives against the wishes of their constituents; but the representatives carried out what the people who chose them willed. What conclusively proves this to be so is, that the people who elected these representatives were satisfied with what they did; and, since the work has been done, have shown their approval of it in every practicable way.

There may be wrong motives prompting to the most useful and beneficent acts, as good motives sometimes lead to the most pernicious conduct; but I am speaking of these acts of alleged coalition which were instituted by the people themselves, discussed in their hearing at all the primary meetings and all the conventions, and afterwards ratified by their votes; and I say, to compare such a coalition with that which took place between Whigs and Democrats in the Senate of the United States, and between unionists and disunionists, slave-breeders and manufacturers, in the House, to carry through the compromise bills and the Fugitive Slave bill, seems to me illogical, preposterous, and absurd. But it is said that the bargain in the one case was open and public; and that its terms were reduced to writing, like a bond or covenant between individuals. Is it any the worse for that? Had you not as lief have an open bargain that you can see, as secret ones, like the Texas stock bargains, that you cannot see? I suppose that coalitions can be implied and understood, as well as contracts. Why, have you not seen such an implied coalition carried out in Faneuil Hall within a year, when the Hon. Benjamin F. Hallett led on his cohorts, and the Hon. Rufus Choate advanced his forces to join them; when Mr. Benjamin R. Curtis joined hands with Mr. David Henshaw, who was present by letter, if not in person,—honorable men all,—and formed one of the most loving and harmonious coalitions out of as heterogeneous and repulsive elements as ever chaos jumbled together,—a coalition not to lift the bleeding form of liberty up, but to crush it down.

The coalition entered into by the Free Soilers certainly did one thing which would atone for many errors. They elected Mr. Charles Sumner to the Senate of the United States. And I cannot believe there is a man to be found in any party so shameless and depraved as to charge Mr. Sumner with any dishonorable coalescing, or with being tainted, in a hair of his head or in a filament of his garments, with “bargain and corruption.” Mr. Sumner was not elected on any principle of availability, but on the principle of “Detur digniori,”—“Let it be given to the most worthy.” His lofty pedestal is too firm to be shaken by any such accusation. His character is not to be affected by any office which he shall hold, but only by what he does, whether in office or out of it.

While defending, in this way, the principle of coalitions, when formed by the people themselves, no one, of course, could be understood as pledging himself to vote for all their measures. This would be the old and wicked partisan principle of standing by our party, right or wrong. I am also free to say that there is, in my opinion, a prima facie objection against coalitions; but I cannot doubt the existence of cases where they are not only justifiable, but laudable. I lay down this great principle: I think the Free Soil party should act at any time, on any point, with any party through whom they can help the cause of freedom.

The Whig address remarks as follows: “We are now able to say, after the experience of nearly a twelvemonth, that it, [the administration,] has fully earned the confidence which we awarded to it in advance. The great interests of the country have been faithfully cared for!” I ask, What great interests of the country have been faithfully cared for? What interest of the Whig party, assuming to be the country, has been faithfully cared for? Have we got a tariff? Mr. Webster dissipated all chance of that for the present, and I fear for years to come, when he taught the south to threaten and prevail. Have we any river and harbor appropriations? Alas! northern capital and northern lives still go to the bottom on our western waters. Is the financial policy of the country changed? Let the condition of the money market for the last few months, and also its prospective condition, grinding the middle classes of tradesmen and manufacturers as between the upper and nether millstone, answer this question. A reform in all these particulars would doubtless have been affected but for Mr. Webster’s apostasy; but where are these reforms now? If they exist at all, they exist in some indefinite future. What interest of the country, then, has been faithfully cared for or secured? Not one! Not one! The most prominent member of the administration has been engaged in carrying out the policy of the south,—in visiting southern cities to pander to the slave power, and northern cities to stifle the spirit of freedom. Two armed expeditions have been fitted out in our own ports against the territory of a government with which we are at peace, resulting in the loss of hundreds of lives, while the President and his first secretary have been spending their time gayly at watering-places. When some of our citizens, a few years ago, afforded some assistance to the “Liberals” of Canada, in favor of a movement which Canadians themselves had already set on foot, the government promptly and energetically interfered. But Canada and Cuba are wider apart politically than they are geographically. Slavery makes the difference between them.

The only valorous exploit of this administration was the issuing of a proclamation, when one southern slave, from among three millions, escaped from the house of bondage, and found that protection under the British ensign which was denied to him by the American flag, and that right to a trial by jury under a monarchy which was denied to him by a republic. Or, if any other act should be added to the preceding, it was the President’s letter to Dr. Collins, of Georgia, offering the use of the army and navy of the United States to catch one poor white woman, Ellen Crafts, and her husband, and return them to bondage.

In another passage of the Whig address all disguise is cast off, and it is openly declared, that the giving of an extra slave state to Texas, with territory enough for half a dozen more as large as Massachusetts, and ten millions of dollars in addition to that, and the statutory permission that slavery may go into New Mexico and Utah, and even that abhorred enactment, the Fugitive Slave law, are only “factitious and imaginary” grounds of complaint. The Free Soil party is condemned because it takes any notice of such “factitious and imaginary” causes. A three-penny tax on tea was a real grievance,—one fit to be resisted unto blood, to be historically recorded, and to which we are not ashamed to refer when descanting upon the honor of our fathers. But such largesses to slavery as kings could not afford to give, and the robbery of an entire race of all its rights,—yes, and with authority, too, to make us help commit the robbery,—these are “factitious and imaginary” causes of dissatisfaction. Men of Massachusetts! moral and religious men! lovers of freedom and of your country, were you prepared for this?

But the address goes still further. It goes into an elaborate palliation of the Fugitive Slave law itself. It first attempts to shift the question by asking the Free Soilers what they would do with regard to the constitutional provision respecting escaped slaves. The views of the Free Soil party on this point, and their purpose of fidelity to the constitution, have been set forth a hundred times. In further answer, therefore, to this question, I trust it is only necessary to remark, that the Free Soil party will do what they say, and not pass ten long years in asserting, and protesting, and resolving, and calling Earth and Heaven to witness their devotion to Freedom, and then disavow all they had ever avowed, and forswear their oaths.