in 1848, Mann resigned the secretaryship of the Massachusetts board of education in order to accept a seat in Congress, to which he was elected to fill the place made vacant by the death of John Quincy Adams. In politics Mann was a Whig of moderate anti-slavery views. In the controversy regarding the Compromise of 185o, he became an open critic of Webster's views regarding slavery as stated in his famous speech of March 7. The tion of the Webster faction caused Mann to lose a renomination to Congress in the Whig convention of 185o. However, he ran as an independent candidate, and was triumphantly re-elected. In 1852, he was the Free-soil candidate for governor of Massachu setts, but was defeated. While in Congress Mann was unable to accomplish anything for education.
In 1853 Mann assumed the presidency of Antioch college, a new institution established at Yellow Springs, 0., which was to be non-sectarian and open on equal terms to both sexes. The determining reason which led him westward was the prospect that this new position offered for supplementing his achievement in reorganizing the public schools, by the establishment of his ideals of co-education and non-sectarianism in higher education. While in this position he was harassed by the financial difficulties of the college, and by the opposition of various professors and supporters of the institution who distrusted his religious views.
However, staunch friends from time to time supplied him with funds to carry on the college, and he won the loyalty of his stu dents. Worn out by his arduous labours in the administration of the college, Horace Mann died at Yellow Springs on Aug. 2, 1859. His parting words to his students had been delivered in his baccalaureate address in 1859 a few weeks previously: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann (Boston, 1891) ; Life and Works of Horace Mann (Boston, 1867-91) ; 0. H. Lang, Horace Mann, His Life and Work (1893) ; George H. Martin, Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System (1894) ; Albert E. Winship, Horace Mann, Educator (Boston, 1896) ; A. D. Mayo, "Horace Mann and the Great Revival of the American Common School 1830-1850," in U.S. Commissioner of Education Report, 5896-97, vol. i., pp. 715-767 (1898) ; B. A. Hinsdale, Horace Mann and the Common School Revival in the United States (1898) ; George A. Hubbell, Horace Mann, Educator, Patriot, and Reformer (Philadelphia, 191o). (J. J. T.)