LARRY GARA*

HEN Horace Mann entered Conffress in the Sprins of 1848 to complete the remaining year of John Quincy Adams’ term he was already well-known throughout the nation for his highly successful and well-publicized

efforts on behalf of public education. In addition, Man!i had a record of support for various other reform causes - temperance, religious freedom, a more humane treatment of the mentally ill, peace, and special education for the blind. Nevertheless, education was his foremost concern and it was his eleven years of service as Secretary for the Massachusetts Board of Education that made especially effective his personal influence in behalf OE an expanded program of public schools free from religious bias in their teaching and professional teacher training to improve the instruction in the schools. His wife, Mary, was correct when she commented, “In speaking of Mr. Mann as an educator, I enter into his inmost life: for that cause, of all others, roused into action all his powers.”2 I t was the cause of education that also brought Horace Mann the fame and attention which he craved. His several terms in Congress proved a t e m p o r a r y interruption of his career as an educator rather than a new beginning as a political reformer.

Horace Mann went to Congress a moderate, antislavery Whig but by 1553 when he left Washington to become president of the newly-formed Antioch College, he had a d o p t e d a much stronger stance against the South’s peculiar institution. I n Con- gress he had very few close associates and practically no social lifc. He looked upon himself as an independent reformer rather than a politician or party adherent and his excessive zeal led him into several bitter quarrels with individuals who opposed his views. Indeed, his penchant for argument led Theodore Parker to comment: “He loved personal battle and commonly

W

‘Research for this article was made possible by a research grant from the Kettering Fund, made available to the author by the Wilmington College Tenure and Personnel Policies Committee.

* T h e author is Professor of History at Wilmington College. *Mary Mann, Life of Horace Mann (Boston, 1865), 59.

I9

‘I’he Historian had oiie 011 his hands, and he never forgave a foe.”s Mann’s behavior in Congress was also a reaction to the rush of events towards disruption of the nation. The environment in Wash- ington ivns far more frenzied than Horace Mann had anticipated and i t 1)ecnliic. worse duri,ng his years of congressional service.

The choice of hlann for congressman from the Eighth District in Massachusetts seemed a logical one, especially after the Whigs had passed over the possibility of offering Cliarles Francis Adams the noniination for the seat which had brought such eminence to his late father..’ Mann’s nanie ivas well known ia the state. School teachers and parents were familiar with his work and thousauds had read his books or listened to him lecture on educational topics. He also had a loyal following among the reformers, the Unitarians, and the Harvard faculty. Yet Mann’s acceptance ot‘ the nomination caine as a surprise to many who considered him single-minded in his dedication to the cause of education. Mann himself claimed surprise at his nomination and said his first inclination was to refuse it.: His disclaimer, howevert lacked conviction. There were several reasons €or his acceptance: foremost among them were the compensation and the honor.

The iioniination came to Maim at a time of serious financial difficulty and the eight dollars a day paid to congressmen, combined with the money which would collie to him as a result of his continuing to serve as Secretary of the Board of Education for another year, proved too tempting a promise of economic security to turn down. On several occasions he reminded his wife that their enforced separation was necessary in order to make financial ends meet. In 1850, when the congressional session was prolonged, he wrote home, “As I told you before my com- pensation for all this absence is the per d i e m to get you and the children more butter.”

Probably of equal importance was the promise of new glory through leadership as a political reformer. Fresh from numerous triumphs in education he might now head the antislavery hosts

a ‘l’heotiorr Parker to Charles Sumner, .lugust 31, 1839, in the Tlieodore Parker

‘ Martin D. Duberiuan, Charles Francis A d a m : 1807-1886 (Boston, 1961), 1%. 5Mann to George Coinbe, April 12, 1819, in the Horace Mann Papers in the

Massachusetts Historical Society. All subsequent manuscript citations, unless other- wise indicated, are from the Xlann Papers.

I’;tper, in thc .\la~~acliu.cetts Historical Society.

Mann to Mary Jlann, August IS, 1850.

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Horace Mann which the North would inevitably send to Washington.‘ At the time of his nomination his close friend, Samuel Gridley Howe, wrote him, suggesting that he should put himself “at the head of the great antislavery (not abolition) party which is growing up here. . . .” Howe appealed knowingly to Mann’s egotism: “It is true that you will aspire to nothing but what may give you greater measure of usefulness, but that very disinterestedness will promote your high end.” *

Mann obviously had sincere and deep convictions as a reformer. He also loved approbation and had a keen sense of history. When he publicly defended his decision to accept the nomination for Congress he emphasized the great significance of the sectional crisis brought on by the Mexican War and its adding so vast a territory to the United States. The enactment of laws for the newly-acquired territory was a work which seemed “to precede and outrank even education itself.” Among other things, such legislation would decide whether the territory should be filled “with beings to whom education is permitted, or with those to whom it is denied, -with those whom humanity and the law make it a duty to teach, or with those whom inhumanity and the law make it a legd duty not to teach, . . . ” O In his first congressional speech Mann referred to the matter of legislation for the territories as “the question of the age,” upon which would hang the ,nature of the institutions and the character of the men destined to populate the vast region of the West.1°

If Mann had expected to be the leader of the antislavery forces in Congress he was quickly dispelled of the notion. He continued to maintain his reputation as an educator by staying on as Secretary to the Massachusetts Board of Education and by writing and lecturing on educational topics. Here he had no competitor and requests for his time and service far outweighed his ability to serve. With Congress it was different. Shortly after taking his seat he confided to a friend, “I have no idea that I can make my efforts tell on the body with which I am as~ociated.”~~ And when, during the thick of the battle against the 1850 com-

Mary hlann later alleged that her husband went to Congress hoping to establish a national department of public instruction. If this was in Mann’s mind he failed to mmtion i t in his many letters, and certainly did not exert any energy directly on its behalf. Mary Mann, Life of Horace Mann, 259.

sSamnel Gridley Howe to Maan, nd.. 1848, in the Howe Family Papers in the Houghton Library of Harvard University.

sMat~n to Thomas French and others, March 21, 1848, in Horace Mann, Slavery: Letters and Speeches (Boston, 1851), 9.

lo Speech of Mr. Horace Mann, of Massachusetts, in the House of Representatives of the United States, Jiine 30, 1848, . . . . (Revised ed., Boston, 1848). 1.

’’ Mann to Cyril5 Peirce, April 24, 1818.

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The Historian promise proposals, his wife worried lest his congressional service should prove even more trying than his earlier feuds with the orthodox clergy, Mann assured her that he did not feel half so bad as he had in the previous encounter. “My high-hope SC my reputation all deper?ded upon my success on that field,” he commented. “Here I a m only one insignificant person among many-among thousands. T h e cause does not depend upon me here.” He also had other resources not previously available to him. “Having found the great object of my life, I have made a certain sort of reputation, & can thro’ that, I trust, get a frugal living should I be thrown off the political track.”12

While on the political track, however, Mann was determined to exert himself for freedom and against slavery. -4lthough he occasionally joined others of free soil sympathies at the Saturday evening socials put on by Gamaliel Bailey and his wife, he tended to act alone and i n d e p e n d e n t l y . From Charles Sumner he received frequent advice, both solicited and unsolicited, first by correspondence and later in person after Sumner entered the Senate, and he borrowed some of Sumner’s ideas €or his own congressional speeches. l3 He also rejected Sumner’s advice occa- sionally, as he did when he voted for Robert Winthrop, the Whigs’ candidate for Speaker of the House, and when, much to Sumner’s disaust, he refused to oppose openly Zachary Taylor’s presidential bid. l4 Samuel Gridley Hoive was another of Mann’s confidants a5 were T h e o d o r e Parker and Samuel Downer, a shrewd whale oil merchailt and old friend, whose lengthy letters of advice and analysis of Massachusetts public opinion were invaluable to him. l5

As congressman, Horace Mann’s outlook was influenced by those same factors which had earlier led to so striking a success in the field of education. One of those factors was phrenology which he had discovered just prior to his becoming Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. H e at once became a total convert to the new science, permitting i t to fill the vacuum created by his youthful rejection of orthodox Calvinism.

Mann never lost faith in phrenology, and its precepts con- tinued to influence his behavior while he was in Congress. H e

IB hlann to hlary Xlann, June 7, 1850. “David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York.

1961), 234. “Charles Surnner to Joshua Reed Ciddings, February 12, 1850 in the Giddings

Papers, Ohio Historical Society; hlann to Sumner, June 28, 1848. IB ..\tigust 20, 1850, Mann wrote his wife that ever since “the children of Mammon

have opened their batteries” tierause of his attack on It’ehster, Downer wrote often and said “the wisest things about politics and personal alrairs.”

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Horace Mann frequently generalized about his colleagues’ personalities on the basis of their phrenological make-up. When Henry Clay took a seat near him, Mann studied his head, which was of very small dimensions, and reported to his wife: “Benevolence is large, Self-esteem and Love of Approbation are large. The intellect, for the size of the brain is well developed. His benevolence prevents his self esteem from being offensive: and his intellect controls the action of his love of approbation, and saves him from an excessive vanity.’’ Clay derived his “whole strength from his temperament,” said Mann, concluding: “Considering the volume of the brain, or size of the head, it has the best adjusted faculties, I have ever seen.” l6 His character readings sometimes missed the mark, however. When Charles Sumner was reluctant to speak irn the Senate, Mann decided that Sumner lacked combativeness. l7

The impact of phrenology on Mann’s outlook went deeper than an impulse to amateur character readings. I t seemed to him that a failure to educate the human propensity for morality while the intellect was being educated was a basic cause of political and national immorality. “See what comes of intellect without morality,” he said of Daniel Webster’s support for sectional compromise i’nstead of throwing his great influence in opposition to slavery.Is An imbalance of educational effort was only one of a number of factors which prevented politicians from becoming statesmen and moral leaders. Others included in Mann’s list were a failure to look at questions from the perspective of the future, and the sheer “wickedness of men,” a view which suggested Mann had not rejected all the tenets of Calvinism. l9

Although he had served ten years in the Massachusetts legis- lature where he became rather skilled in the art of politics, Mann never thought of himself as a political partisan. At times he even denied that political decisions could really bring about meaningful reform, a process which only education could effect.20 Even in Congress he tried to avoid making sticky political decisions. When the Whig party nominated Zachary Taylor for president Mann refused to declare himself publicly on the soldier candidate, using the excuse that he was still Secretary of the Massachusetts Board

*Mann to Mary hfann, December 11, 1849. *‘Mann to Samuel Downer, July 27, 1852. ‘8Mann to Mary Mann, August 25, 1850. 10Mann to Mary Mann, April 1, September 8, 1850. aD John L. Thomas, “Romantic Reform in America, 1815-1865,” in David Bnon

Davis, ed., Ante-Bellurn Reform (New York, Evanston and London, 1967), 165.

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The Historian of Education and should not use his educational office for political influence. 21

Of course he was well aware of the possible consequences of an open stand. Confiding to his wife, Mann described Taylor’s nomination as the work of “the combined force of Slavery and War” and said the “principles on which all the best men of the North profess to act . . . have been sacrificed to sustain the War-Fever and the Slavery grip. I do not feel as tho’ I could sustain this,” he concluded. However, he urged her not to discuss his views u-ith anyone else, and admitted that the Taylor sup- porters were right in saying the Polk administration would be turned out at any rate and failure to support Taylor would elect Cass, which would be “the zoont of very bad evils.’’22 Faced with that dilemma, Mann could not openly support Taylor, nor would he join the Free Soil movement despite strong pressure from Henry Wilson and Charles Sumner who told him “the Anti- Taylor movement promises to sweep like a hurricane through Massachusetts and the Free States.”23 Mann did not vote in the national election though he later became convinced that Taylor was truly antislavery and viewed his death as a devastating blow to the cause of freedom in the territories.24

Eventually it was necessary for Mann to break with the Whig party, though he was always inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to Whig rather than Democratic candidates so long as the IYhigs had not betrayed the principles of the North. Sam Downer told him in 1850: “You are constitutionally rather conservative and with about as strong a leaning to look through ’Whig telescopes, as Dr. Bailey of the Era has thru Democratic -and besides, . . . I t is quite possible you are Mann also had once compared his political position with that of Bailey. “He was a democrat so now he thinks of freedom first and then of Democracy, whereas I go €or Freedom first, and then for Whiggery.” And, during the debates on the 1850 Compromise measures Mann wrote to his wife that not all of the Whigs were as he wished they were, but still he was convinced that if the new territories were to be “saved for Freedom, they will be saved by them.”*6

Mann to Charles Sumner, June 28, 1848. hfann to Mary Mann, June 9, 13, 1848.

sS~irnner to Mann, July 2, 1848. ‘‘ Commenting after Taylor’s death, Mann said, “He had probably taken the

wisest course which he could have taken. He poised himself between the north and the south.” Mnnn to Mary Mann, July 10, 1850.

sSamuel Downer to Mann, March 28, 1850. “hlann to Mary Mann, May 13, 14, 1850.

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Horace Mann To save the territories for freedom was the reason Mann gave

most frequently for his accepting the nomination for Congress in the first place. He was never very comfortable while out of education and he con t inued to maintain close contact with educators even while serving in the House of Representatives. 37

Nevertheless the urgency of political decisions overrode other considerations for him. To some extent his view of history conditioned his sense of responsibility. Mann thought of history as divided into “three great stages of development.” The first stage, a “period of physical development,” when might prevailed, belonged to the past; the “age when the mind towered above the body,” when knowledge became power, was the present, and the “Moral Age” was yet to be ushered in. He believed that man might we11 be on the threshold of the new era, “when the moral shall preside over the intellectual,” and was convinced that the omens of change iacluded revolutionary stirrings in Europe and a new concern for human freedom in the United States.28 Education would provide the key to the future, but in order to permit education to perform its marvels it was necessary to make the territories newly-acquired from Mexico free rather than slave. T o help settle the question on the side of freedom became his mission. When it was apparent that the decision was to go to the wrong side he became despondent about the immediate future and lost whatever interest he had had in his congressional seat. 29

But in 1848, Mann was full of hope. Not only did he make the cause of freedom for the territories his uppermost immediate concern, but he threw himself into the struggle with the same zeal he had earlier applied to education. While i a Congress he made several important contributions to the antislavery cause. Shortly after entering the House he agreed to act as one of the attorneys for Daniel Drayton and Edward Sayres who were accused of stealing seventy-six slaves from the District of Columbia. In court Mann assumed a reasonable and moderate position. It was his first clash with the slaveholding interest and he was shocked to learn how impervious to reason was a southern jury, and how slavery perverted the course of justice. The trials dragged on, causing Mann to suffer considerable financial loss, and finally ended with the conviction of Drayton and Sayres for transporting the slaves. Unable to pay fines of more than $10,000 each, they went to jail for more than four years. Through the iatervention

91 Mann to Charles Pierce, April 24, 1848. =See Mann’s speech in the Boston Daily hlorning Comnionwealth, Ma) 23,

nHorace Mann, Speeches, 8. 1851 for one of several versions of his view of history.

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The Historian of Senator Charles Sumner they were finally released in 1852 by President Fillm0re.3~

The Drayton and Sayres case strengthened Mann’s antislavery convictions and the publicity he got from it contributed to his re-election in 1848 with both Whig and Free Soil support. Another factor contributing to that victory was the first of four speeches he delivered on the floor of Congress. Antislavery con- gressmen had a national audience not shared by other spokesmen for the rekorm and their political position gave their words considerable weight. The antislavery speeches inspired local reformers to increase their efforts at the same time they lent a degree of respectability to the cause, previously lacking. After prodding from Charles Sumner, Samuel Gridley Howe and others, Mann decided to speak on “The Right of Congress to Legislate for the Territories of the United States, and its Duty to Exclude Slakery Therefrom.” His appeal was rational and aimed partly at enlightened self-interest in the South. Congress had always legislated for the territories, said Mann, and in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had acted to restrict the advance of slavery. Mann viewed universal education as the key to economic and moral progress and believed slavery could not coexist with public education. “Slavery would abolish education, if i t should invade a free State; education would abolish slavery, if it could invade a slave State.” By checking the spread of education and its benefits, as well as by other undesirable influences, slavery was retarding economic development of the South. 31 Mann’s argu- ments not only met with approval in Massachusetts but even brought some favorable reaction in the slave states. George Emerson was confident the speech would have great influence with all lovers of the truth.32 Josiah Quincy reported that at home it was considered “the speech of the session. Its logic and eloquence are considered but secondary to the spirit it breathes of a pmtlemanly and firm opposition to slavery, for the sake of the slaveholder as well as the slave.”33 A Virginia correspondent told Mann he wished he had thousands of copies to distribute in his state. He was especially impressed with the way Mann handled “the feeling of self interest. . . . That argument is so handled in your speech that I would not fear to circulate it now,

J, Daniel Drayton, Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton, for Four Years and Four Months a Prisoner (for Charity’s Sake) i n Washington Jail, Including a Narrutioe of the Voyage and Capture of the Schooner Pearl (Boston, 1855); Mann LO M a n Mnnn, August 10, 1852.

a1 Speech of MY. Horccp Mann, of Massachusetts, in the House of Representdiver of the I-Jnited States, June 30, 1548, . . . 3, 7, 17.

rGeorge B. Emerson to Mann, July 28, 1848. Y, Josiah Quincy to Mann, July 29, 1848.

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Horace Mann coming as it does from a Northern man favorably known to many of our intelligent citizens.”34 A promoter of public educa- tion in Mississippi said of Mann’s views of the impact of slavery on education: “This, candor compels me to subscribe to, however painful the admission. . . . That Slavery is a social evil, I am willing to admit, that it does thereby retard a general diffusion of education no sane man can deny - that it does and will retard our progress in educational purposes I firmly believe; and whether we shall ever succeed in establishing a working system is the great problem we are endeavoring to solve.’”J5

The other three congressional speeches Mann delivered - there was one a year - were more aggressive in tone. In February 1849 he spoke on slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia, asserting that Congress had never had constitutional authority to establish slavery there and should pass a law “for ascertaining and paying the market value of the slaves, and for repealing all laws which uphold slavery in this District.” 30 In 1850 he spoke of the consequences of a dissolution of the Union, warning the South that separation would lead to a mass slave exodus and that civil war, if it came, would lead to slave insurrec- tion. But, he thundered, “better disunion, -better a civil or a servile war, - better anything that God in his providence shall send, than an extension of the bounds of slavery.”s7 For his last congressional speech Mann turned to the Fugitive Slave Law, a key item in the 1850 compromise and its most vulnerable measure in the North. The law, he claimed, was unconstitutional and it warred against “the fundamental principles of human liberty.” For those and nine other reasons he demanded its repeal. 88

Horace Mann’s congressional speeches were thorough and comprehensive, the productions of a person who had a drive for perfection and a tendency to become completely involved with whatever task he undertook. He recognized his tendency to carry matters to excess and believed it was a characteristic of his family. 39

“Henry Ruffner to hlann, August 13, 1848. ‘N. Kirk Whiteford to Mann. October 23, 1848.

h h n . Speeches, 121-179. Ibid., 180-235.

.8 Ibid., 390-412. =On one occasion Mann wrote his sister: “It is the tendency of all our blood

to enter into any work, or into any feeling too intensely. Hence we are all inclined to make too serious matters of small ones: and, when matters are really serious, they absorb us, and incite and stimulate us, to a degree which our physical organiza- tion is not fitted to bear. We all have a tendency to extremes. I have felt this, and have contended against it, as well I could.” Mann to his sister, May 30, 1848.

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The Historian The same tendency led him to be hypercritical and to question the motives of anyone with an opposing viewpoint. When he became embroiled in intellectual combat, as he had earlier with orthodox religious critics of his school program and with the Boston school teachers, he gave no quarter. During such controversies Mann appeared to others to be petulant and inclined to reduce an attack on ideas to the level of an attack on his opponent’s personality. Xone of Mann’s early controversies gained as much national attention as his feud with Daniel Webster, and none of Webster’s other opponents did as much as Mann to tarnish his political reputation and question the wisdom of his support for the 1850 compromise measures.

Before 1Vebster delivered his Seventh of March speech to a crowded Senate, Mann and some of the other antislavery Whigs expected that he would support their demand for free territories. “I do not believe he will compromise the great question,” Mann wrote home. “He will have too much regard for his historic character and for his consistency to do any such thing.”4o Stunned by Webster’s address, Mann characterized him as “a fallen star! Lucifer descending from heaven! We all had the grea tes t confidence in him. He has disappointed us all.”41 Mann could only explain Wehster’s “desertion” as a “bid for the presidency.” 42

He underestimated Webster’s sincere concern for the future of the Union,43 and he certainly did not approve of truckling to the South, even if the alternative might be civil war.

Pressed by the Conscience Whigs and Free Soilers to answer Webster, Mann decided to publish his views in the form of a letter to his constituents. He attacked the proposed sectional compromise as the kind “the wolf offers to the lamb, or the vulture to the dove.” As for Webster, said Mann, “he is great, but truth is greater than us all.” To say, as Webster did, that nature and physical geography would exclude slavery from the territories, was to draw “moral conclusions from physical premis- es,” and to assume falsely that slavery was confined to agriculture. TVhen Webster supported the fugi t ive slave bill without a atinrantee of trial by jury he “spoke for the south and for slavery; not for the north and for freedom.”44 Rfann’s most telling point

4’8Mnnn to Mary Xfann, 3,farch 4 . 1A5n. ‘I Ihid., 5l:irch 8, 1850. ’: Z T I j d . , April 9, 1850. r” In private corrwpondence \\‘elJster esprnsed strong apprehension almit the

nation’s future. He wrote his son: ”I Lnow not how to meet the present emergent). or with what weapons to beat down the Northern and the Southern follies, now raging to equal estrernes.” Webster to Fletcher IVebster, February 20, 1850 in the Everett Papers in the Massachusetts Hiqtorical Society.

Mann, Fpeeches. 249-273.

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Horace Mann was his answer to Webster’s a n ti-provisoism. Commented Charles Suniner, it was “clear, simple and demonstrative, like geometry. T think it will go far to crush him.”46

Mann’s letter was the first of a series. Even such a moderate Whig as Robert Winthrop feared that Webster’s speech “was rather too strong doctrine for his Northern friends,” 46 and Mann’s letters virtually guaranteed that Winthrop’s fears would be justi- fied. In his second letter Mann accused Webster of dogmatizinw “He makes strong assertions without offering even weak reasons? He criticized his opponent’s knowledge of Latin and geography as well as his logic. Referring to Webster’s use of the moderate Quaker position on slavery to strengthen his case, Mann asked: “Now what shall be thought of a cause that requires such a series of fabrications as Mr. Webster is here proved to have made, or of the man that can make Even Horace Mann’s friends were shocked at that. Sam Downer doubted whether the attack on Webster’s private character was judicious. *6 But Webster had been severe in his replies, and Mann thought it was only truth that gave his own remarks an edge. “Ia what might be called harshness, or bitterness, or, to use a still harder word, vindic- tiveness, my references to Webster compared with his contemp- tuous and supercilious manner to me were as honey to vitriol.”49

Despite the widespread notice given Mann’s letters, President Fillmore, in the midst of the controversy, appoisnted Webster Secretary of State. From the Cabinet office Webster and his friends exerted considerable pressure to attempt to undermine Mann’s influence and to prevent his re-election. BY one vote the Whigs rejected Mann as their candidate in 1850 but he then accepted an invitation to run on the Free Soil ticket and won by a handsome majority, as did the coalition of Free Soil Democratic state candi- dates. “Our election is all bad,” moaned Webster.50 Mann felt gratified by his personal triumph, “but as a triumph of principle it is of hfinitely more value,” he said.61

His victory was in fact partly a result of a growing resistance in New England to what appeared to be arrogant demands of

Charles Sumner to Salmon P. Chase, May 4, 1850 in the Chase Papers, Library of Congress.

*Robert C. Winthrop to N. Appleton, March 11, 1850 in the IVinthrop Papers in the Massachusetts Historical Society.

47 hfann, Speeches, 304, 317-318, 336. “Downer to Mann, July 28, 1850. aManii to Downer, July 29, 1850. WDaniel Webster to Millard Fillmore, November 13, 1850 in the Everett Papers

in the Massachusetts Historical Society. nMann to Mr. and Mrs. George Combe, November 15, 1850.

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The Historian the South, and to Yankee submission to such demands. Many LVIiigs joined the coalition and all the efforts of Webster and his friends could not unite the party under the compromise program. Even the usually reliable Boston Whigs were hotly divided and the Boston Atlas, a Whig organ, lent powerful support to Mann’s campaign. I n November 1850 Webster made a special visit to Boston in order to supervise the arrest of several fugitive slaves and to observe the political climate first-hand. H e was distretsed to learn that “the general weight of U. S. officers” in the Boston District was “against the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law,” and that several custom house officials did all in their potter to re-elect Mann. This influence, along with the defection of the General State Whig Committee and the Atlas, Webster concluded, were responsible for Mann’s election victory. 62

Despite Mann’s satisfaction with his own re-election, he had lost, within two years, virtually all hope of immediate success for the free soil cause. Although he remained confident that history would vindicate his stand, there was very little he and the other antislavery congressmen could do a t the moment. I n 1852 the preoccupation of many of his colleagues with the forth- coming presidential election disgusted him, and the routine congressional matters bored him. He took time out from his 1Vashington duties to make a lecture tour, speaking on temperance and education, and told his good friend Samuel Gridley Howe: “The truth is, we the advocates of free principles,-not the principles, but we,-are beaten down. . . . That battle which ought to have been won two years ago, has got to be fought again by our successors, and at tremendous odds.”63 H e decided not to accept another nomination for Congress, and though in 1852 he did agree to run for governor of Massachusetts on the Free Soil ticket, he had already accepted a n invitation to become Antioch College’s first president. H e had no time to write any new congressional speeches and found his mind had “taken an entirely new tack. T h e rudder has been put hard up on the opposite side. My associations,” he reported, “are all clustering around a new nucleus: new prospects, new labors, new hopes, new dangers, and new devices to avoid them.”M

In addition to the setback for free soilism which followed the Compromise of 1850, two events further discouraged Horace Mann. In August 1852 he was shocked by the death of Robert

62 Daniel Webster to hlillard Fillmore, November 15. 1850 in the Webster Papers, Xew Hampshire Historical Society.

Mhlnnn to Samuel Gridley Howe, March 11. 1852. “ M a n n to Howe, February 9, 1853.

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Horace Mann Rantoul whose loss he believed “irreparable.” There were others who could exert influence on men who were already right, he said, “but Rantoul had his hand on many bad men, who will now run riot,” He viewed the effect of Rantoul’s death on the Massachusetts antislavery party as similar to that of Taylor on the antislavery party of the country. 65 Rantoul’s death coincided with a bitter, running debate between Mann and Wendell Phillips in the Liberator. The basic issue was whether the true antislavery man could vote and hold office. Phillips argued that it was impossible and criticized Mann for not recognizing that the Constitution was a pro-slavery document. Both men became involved with personality and the argument, which continued for six months, provided a sad postscript to Mann’s congressional career. 68

For, though few of his contemporaries would have agreed with Mann’s own statement that he stood “in the front rank of the antislavery phalanx,” 67 his contribution to the cause deserved more credit than Phillips and the other Garrisonians were willing to grant. T o Mann, freedom was absolutely essential to progress, and therefore slavery had to go. His political and moral battle against slavery, however, was based on his view of history rather than on any intimate knowledge of the institution. He had observed slavery at first hand on only a few occasions and had never witnessed a slave sale.6s Though he had once boarded a black student in his home, he was even out of touch with free black people in the North.69 When a group of Ohio black people asked his opinion of their future he characterized the African race, in comparison with the Caucasian, as “inferior in intellect, while in sentiment and affection the whites are inferior to the blacks.” He suggested further that the blacks were more adapted to a tropical climate and, though he disavowed any program of involuntary colonization, he believed they would fare better in separate, independent communities. 8o A group of New Bed€ord

=Mann to Howe, August 16, 1852. “While both Mann and Phillips had their enthusiastic backers, a number of

antislavery leaders deplored the public argument. “I do mourn the feud between brothers in Anti-Slavery,” Charles Sumner confided to Theodore Parker. Sumner to Parker, March 28, 1853 in the Parker Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

mMann to George Combe, May 8, 1852. “On one occasion when Mann planned to observe a slave sale the announced

event did not take place. “I was greatly disappointed. I wanted to see whether I could see a human being sold without turning atheist,” he commented. Mann to Samuel Downer, February 13, 1853.

”Mann to Mary Mann, April 23, 26, 1848. The Nafional Era, April 22, 1852 contains Mann’s letter to the Ohio Convention

of Colored Freemen.

31

The Historian black l’oters protested Mann’s views and publicly announced that they had “not the remotest idea of leaving this country . . . for the purpose of gratifying negro haters at the North, and slai-ery propagandists at the South.” 61

The severe criticism from the New Bedford gathering was only a single example of the judgment which various individuals and groups made of Horace Mann in Congress. Samuel May, Jr. and some of the other Garrisoniakis censured Mann for his 1850 speech in which he reproached the disunionist abolitionists. In the same address he had pointed out that if the South left the Union it would doom slavery, “thus arguing to the slaveholder, in one breath,” said May, “that the existing Union subserved his interests, and that its overthrow would be exceedingly detri- mental to those interests, and in another denouncing the aboli- tionists, who seek the dissolution of this Compact and Union on the very p o u n d that it is the slaveholder’s strong tower and main protection. Is not this base of Horace Mann?” May asked.62 Free Soiler George W. Julian modified his opinion of Mann, who had previously ”stood about number one in his estimation” after seeing him in Congress. He characterized him as “a great coward in politics” who was “a decided free soil man in feeling, and yet so afraid of the Whig Cottonocracy of Boston that he will not identify himself with out and out free soil men. He does nothing in Congress and don’t seem to care what Congress does,” he lamented.63 On the other hand Lucretia Mott, who had feared that iMann’s “pure mind would be sullied by such close contact with worldly minded partisan spirits,” became greatly interested in his “excellent speeches.” O4 Lewis Tappan reported to Mann that “no speeches in Congress have been considered niore able than yours; and scarcely any here have had wider circulation, especially among anti-slavery readers.” 65

Theodore Parker recognized Mann’s great faults - asceticism, duplicity, and quarrelsomeness - but commented: “Garrison is the only American who has served his country so much and so high as Horace Mann. The quantity of his service was great: the quality fine.” In Parker’s opinion only John Quincy Adams

Society.

Boston Public Library.

Papers. Library of Congress.

P;ipers, Library of Congress.

Unidentified clipping in the Theodore Parker Papers, Massachusetts Historical

aSaluuel May, Jr. to Richard D. IVebl,, F e b r t i q 19. 1850 in the May Papers,

a George I V . Jul ian to “Brother Isaac,” January 25, lR5O in the Giddings-Julian

MLucrelia Mutt to George I V . Julian, January 31, 1850 in the Ciddings-Julian

’5Lewic Tappan to Mann, March 27, 1850.

32

Horace Mann was his equal among those whom Massachusetts had sent to the House of Representatives.

Yet as congressman Mann never lived up to the high expecta- tions of the more ardent antislavery adherents nor did he gain the reputation to which he had personally aspired. He could not hope realistically to become the national antislavery leader in the same sense that he had received far-spread fame as a proponent of public education. From time to time he referred to his desire to return to the field of endeavor closest to his heart and the desire grew stronger as the immediate success of antislavery poli- tical action became virtually impossible. He definitely decided not to seek re-election in 1852, and when he left Congress anti- slavery matters were at an unusually low ebb with the Democratic presidential victory seemingly based on national approval of the compromise measures of two years earlier.

Scarcely a year later, however, after Mann had left Congress convinced that antislavery matters were declining, the Kansas- Nebraska issue reopened the simmering sectional debates with a fury that soon overwhelmed the spirit of compromise. Events in Kansas and the emergence of a northern political party intrigued Mann. When he heard the shocking news of the attack on Charles Sumner he wished for the first time to be back in Washington. Yet he was not inclined to act upon the wish, for as president of Antioch College other matters were occupying his attention. He even turned down a reques t to speak in Massachusetts because he was “in hurried’ at Yellow Springs “planting the seeds of the Higher Law in a richer soil than I ever tilled before.” Of course he was still interested in Massa- chusetts politics, but felt he had made his contribution in that area. Now he could be much more optimistic about the future. “What a fortune mine has been,” he commented, “to be put in the fore-front of the battle when the peril was direst, to be wounded and carried off the field at the hour of victory.”67

-Theodore Parker to Charles Sumner, August 31, 1859 in the Parker Papers,

67Mann to Samuel Gridley Howe, September 24, 1856. Massachusetts Historical Society.