"Your recent rencontre with the wild beasts of Ephesus has been
a brilliant success. I have regarded that debate with pride and
gratification. I am glad it has occurred for many reasons, private
and personal, as well as public and universal. And I have heard
no person refer to it but in terms the most gratifying to my
friendship for you, and my interest in the controversy itself. I
think our friends here are in good spirits and full of hope.
"How do those people treat you now, since they have come to close
quarters with you? I hope you will spare not. You had ample
occasion, and now I hope you will keep up the war _aggressively_;
never fail to attack them, in the right way, whenever they deserve
it. The insolence of the presumption to stand between a man and his
own conscientious interpretation of the Constitution, especially
when they defiantly and every day dare everybody to tread on their
coat-tails, at the price of treason and rebellion, under the name
of '_disunion_,' is utterly unbearable.
"I only wish they _would_ expel you, and Chase, and Gillette,--all
three."