Numerous letters, from various persons and quarters, attest the
general interest, marked in many cases by feeling and personal
gratitude seeking to express itself. Brief extracts from a
portion only are given.
* * * * *
Theodore Tilton, editor of the New York _Independent_, wrote
just before the speech:--
“I protested with all my heart against the Amendment
offered by the Committee of Fifteen. It don’t execute
justice. It leaves the negro to the decision of the Rebel.
It proves that a republic is ungrateful.
“I am glad to notice by the _Tribune_ of this morning that
you are to move an Amendment, or rather a substitute for
that Amendment.”
[FROM MASSACHUSETTS.]
William Lloyd Garrison, the early Abolitionist, always
persistent against Slavery, wrote from Boston:--
“I have perused your eloquent and unanswerable speech on
the Suffrage question, and need not say that it contains
the noblest sentiments, to which all the faculties and
powers which God has given me thrillingly respond. It will
doubtless be more efficacious out of the Senate than in it,
as it will help to educate the popular mind up to the point
of abolishing all complexional distinctions before the law,
North and South.… Your speech, based as it is upon absolute
justice and eternal right, is an admirable elementary
treatise, and I trust will have the widest circulation.…
“What assiduity and perseverance, what courage and
determination, what devotion and inflexible purpose
you have shown, through fiery trials and at the risk
of martyrdom, ‘in season and out of season,’ to effect
the downfall of the atrocious slave system, and thereby
elevate and save the Republic! If to this extent the year
of jubilee has come, you have done much towards ushering
it in, and have a right to be specially glad and grateful
that Heaven has been pleased to make you so potential an
instrumentality in bringing about its beneficent designs.”
Wendell Phillips, who never failed to sympathize with efforts
for Human Rights, wrote from Boston:--
“We are all inexpressibly grateful for your brave position
and words. You and half a dozen others redeem Congress.
Your arguments have been grand and exhaustive. You never
linked so many hearts to you as during the last two months.”