I trust the reluctant and struggling editors of that paper are not to be overcome by the mammon of slavery, whatever disguises it may assume or compulsion it may use.
Horace Mann
The Public Record
Horace Mann was an American educational reformer, abolitionist and Whig politician known for his commitment to promoting public education; he is thus also known as The Father of American Education. In 1848, after public service as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, Mann was elected to the United States House of Representatives (1848–1853). From September 1852 to his death in 1859, he served as President of Antioch College.
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He voted the Taylor electoral ticket, but indorsed a prayer on the back of his ballot, saying that he was painfully uncertain as to the course of duty, and imploring that his vote might be sanctified for the good of the country.
I believe he desired freedom for all the territories; and, could he have been permitted to carry out his own plans, he would have secured not only the freedom of the territories, but would also have consummated all the great national…
Webster’s slogan, or war-cry, “No more slave states!
No more slave representation in the Congress of the United States!” At all their conventions, the Whigs “resolved and re-resolved,” and--but I hope we may not be compelled to finish the line.
The Whigs were the true Free Soilers; they held Free Soilism as a hereditament, or as an heir-loom long possessed by the ancient family of the Whigs.
I pray to know what words they can use, or can dictate to me, freer than those which have dwelt upon my lips.
I pray to know with what feelings they can inspire my breast more resolute and firm in resisting slavery EXTENSION OR ENCROACHMENT than have inhabited my bosom since the first time I opened my mouth in public life.
It was by such false pretences as these that thousands, and I doubt not tens of thousands, of men wholly penetrated and imbued with Free Soil principles, were kept in the Whig ranks.
The needle points to the pole; but if you bring a huge black mass of pig iron and place by its side, it trembles, yet deviates, like a man struggling to be virtuous before overwhelming temptations.
Remove the disturbing force, and it returns to its fidelity.
Resolved, That Massachusetts avows her unalterable determination to maintain all the principles and purposes she has in times past affirmed and reäffirmed, in relation to the extension of slavery.
Yet, at this crisis in human affairs, the one idea, the master purpose of the address and resolutions of that convention, seems to have been, to disparage and depreciate the great, eternal principles of freedom, and to bring odium and…
Its members, I admit, are free to follow them to their ruin, if they will; but free, too, I thank God, to go on in their old course, steering for the haven of honor and liberty.
Politicians like Horace Mann
