I have now, my fellow-citizens, given you my “Views and Opinions” on the present crisis in our public affairs. Had I regarded my own feelings, I should have spoken less at length; but the subject has commanded me. I trust I have spoken respectfully towards those from whom I dissent, while speaking my own sentiments justly and truly. I have used no asperity; for all my emotions have been of grief, and not of anger. My words have been cool as the telegraphic wires, while my feelings have been like the lightning that runs through them. The idea that Massachusetts should contribute or consent to the extension of human slavery!—is it not enough, not merely to arouse the living from their torpor, but the dead from their graves! Were I to help this, nay, did I not oppose it with all the powers and faculties which God has given me, I should see myriads of agonized faces glaring out upon me from the future, more terrible than Duncan’s at Macbeth; and I would rather feel an assassin’s poniard in my breast than forever hereafter to see “the air-drawn dagger” of a guilty memory. In Massachusetts, the great drama of the revolution began. Some of its heroes yet survive amongst us. At Lexington, at Concord, and on Bunker Hill, the grass still grows greener where the soil was fattened with the blood of our fathers. If, in the providence of God, we must be vanquished in this contest, let it be by force of the overmastering and inscrutable powers above us, and not by our own base desertion.
I am, gentlemen, your much honored, obliged, and obedient servant,
HORACE MANN.
LETTER II.
To the Editors of the Boston Atlas;
Gentlemen; Your semi-weekly of the 1st instant contains a letter of the Hon. Daniel Webster, to certain citizens of Newburyport, in which he has been pleased to refer to me, and particularly to a passage in the letter which I addressed to a portion of my constituents, on the 3d of May last, [the preceding Letter.] His reference to me is of so extraordinary a character, both as to manner and matter, that I wish to reply. To prevent all chance of mistake, I quote the following passages:—
“But, at the same time, nothing is more false than that such jury trial is demanded in cases of this kind by the constitution, either in its letter or in its spirit. The constitution declares that in all criminal prosecutions there shall be a trial by jury. The claiming of a fugitive slave is not a criminal prosecution.
“The constitution also declares that in suits at common law the trial by jury shall be preserved; the reclaiming of a fugitive slave is not a suit at the common law; and there is no other clause or sentence in the constitution having the least bearing on the subject.
“I have seen a publication by Mr. Horace Mann, a member of Congress from Massachusetts, in which I find this sentence. Speaking of the bill before the Senate, he says: ‘This bill derides the trial by jury secured by the constitution. A man may not lose his horse without a right to this trial, but he may lose his freedom. Mr. Webster speaks for the south and for slavery, not for the north and for freedom, when he abandons this right.’ This personal vituperation does not annoy me, but I lament to see a public man of Massachusetts so crude and confused in his legal apprehensions, and so little acquainted with the constitution of his country, as these opinions evince Mr. Mann to be. His citation of a supposed case, as in point, if it have any analogy to the matter, would prove that, if Mr. Mann’s horse stray into his neighbor’s field, he cannot lead him back without a previous trial by jury to ascertain the right. Truly, if what Mr. Mann says of the provisions of the constitution in this publication be a test of his accuracy in the understanding of that instrument, he would do well not to seek to protect his peculiar notions under its sanction, but to appeal at once, as others do, to that higher authority which sits enthroned above the constitution and above the law.”
I must deny this charge of “personal vituperation;” nothing was further from my thoughts; and I regret that Mr. Webster, while disclaiming “annoyance” at what I said, should betray it. I believe every part of my “Letter” to be within the bounds of courteous and respectful discussion. There is nothing in it which might not pass between gentlemen, without interrupting relations of civility or friendship. Though full of regret at his novel position, and of dissent from his unwonted doctrines, yet it abounds in proofs of deference to himself. I must now, however, be permitted to add that the highest eminence becomes unenviable when it breeds intolerance of dissent, or bars out the humblest man from a free expression of opinion.