“Thanks, thanks for your two great speeches. They will live
and breathe and stir the heart of humanity, when the memory
of A. Johnson and his Republican renegade sycophants will
be forgotten, or brought to mind only to be execrated.
Millions of black men bless you now, and hundreds of
millions of God’s dusky skins will bless you in the ages
to come, for these two grand and eloquent vindications of
human liberty from the assaults of despotism, caste, and
the white man’s meanness; and the white world, too, far
down in the future, will bless your name. The spirit of
prophecy pervades every line of these speeches, and lights
up every step you take with the blaze of logic and truth.…
“Your resistance to the Trojan horse of the Apportionment
Amendment I sincerely hope was crowned with success in
to-day’s vote. That Amendment is the basest compromise that
has yet bubbled to the surface of the cesspool of American
politics.…
“You must all come to it, sooner or later. Congress must
legislate impartial suffrage into all the States by direct
statute. Strange that the States in Congress cannot do what
the States separately out of Congress can do!”
Hon. R. Stockett Mathews, the orator and lawyer, wrote from
Baltimore:--
“I thank you most profoundly for the seasonable courage
which will admonish others of their duty, although I have
but small hope of witnessing any immediate fruition of the
good work you have done for us all.”
F. W. Alexander, of Maryland, who served patriotically in the
war, wrote from New York:--
“I read your speech in the paper this morning, and I write
to express my gratification that you have refused to accept
any half-measures, but have sought to induce Congress to
proceed in its work of Reconstruction on the only sure
foundation, that of justice to all. Whether the measure is
carried or not, your speech will not be lost, and it is a
mere question of time.”