“As a native of Massachusetts, and more than that, as a
lover of my race, I want to thank you for your timely
and eloquent words in behalf of universal and impartial
justice. I thank you also for voting against the Blaine
Amendment. Though it might accomplish one desirable object,
it was a concession to prejudice against color. The black
man could hope for nothing through it. We want no more
compromise.”
Hon. William Greene, an enlightened citizen, who has held
various public offices in Rhode Island, wrote from East
Greenwich:--
“I beg to congratulate you as a friend, and to thank you
as an American citizen, for the great speech recently
delivered by you in the Senate. You have opened a new field
of thought to American statesmen, and furnished a new book
of elementary political lessons to the American people. It
would seem almost impossible that such an effort should not
tell grandly upon both.”
Hon. Gerrit Smith, the devoted Abolitionist, formerly a
Representative in Congress, wrote from Peterboro, New York:--
“God bless you for this noble speech which you have made
against the Apportionment Amendment! I have this day read
the part of it in yesterday’s New York _Tribune_. I long to
read the whole of it.”