“I feel constrained, though entirely unknown to you,
to thank you most cordially for the intense pleasure I
have enjoyed in the perusal of your great oration on the
question of Universal Enfranchisement, as involved in
the proposed Constitutional Amendment, looking towards
universal suffrage. Its lucid didactic statements, its
admirable analysis, its irresistible logic, and its
glowing, brilliant eloquence, with its valuable historic
instruction and its burning love of freedom and humanity,
have both convinced my understanding and captivated my
heart.”
Rev. Charles H. Brigham, an accomplished Unitarian clergyman,
in a letter describing an exhibition at the University of
Michigan, wrote from Ann Arbor:--
“But the most attractive piece on the programme, which
brought the house down with the most prolonged and hearty
applause, was Number Four [entitled “Charles Sumner”],
in which a most glowing and animated tribute was paid to
the scholarship, industry, fidelity, patriotism, love of
justice, and love of man, of the Senator whom Massachusetts
delights to honor. It was a delight, I assure you, to a
Massachusetts man, and a friend of yours, to hear, out here
in the West, among these ‘Fogies’ and ‘Copperheads,’ such
noble words about the old Bay State and her representative
man, and to hear the response to them from the great
audience.”
Hon. Charles V. Dyer, a Judge under the final treaty with
England against the Slave Trade, wrote from Chicago:--
“I am greatly your debtor for your two speeches, in a form
for preservation and re-perusal, and any word of mine in
regard to their ability or patriotism is quite needless.
But I will say that the courage that can face cold looks
of friends, cruel animadversions of one’s own party press,
and, what is easier, the unceasing abuse and bullyism of
the enemies of all good, is so rare that it commands my
admiration.”