“You have to fight your old battle over again, and I only
hope and trust that you may have the physical health to
stand firm where your late speeches place you.”
Colonel Wentworth Higginson, who served so well at the head of
colored troops, and does such honor to American literature,
in a letter from Newport, Rhode Island, thanking Mr. Sumner
for speeches, added, “especially that one word _whitewashing_,
which was the best speech of all.”
* * * * *
These brief utterances illustrate the sentiment beginning to
prevail. The issue with the President, already foreseen, had
come.