“Your noble effort was well timed. I have had portions of
it reproduced in the Spanish press with the best effect.
Another part will reappear here in a more durable form,
which I shall take pains to send you.
“These admonitions of yours to the European powers have
always been of the highest possible service. Whatever
necessity there may have been (and there has been
necessity) for our diplomatic representatives to act
with consummate prudence in our direct intercourse with
the courts hostile to us, it was no less necessary that
the voice from home, the utterances of our Houses of
Congress, of our leading Senators, should be bold and
unsubdued,--confidence in ourselves and in our cause, above
all, the consciousness of right, and the evidence that we
were not afraid.”
Professor Charles D. Cleveland, Consul at Cardiff, wrote from
his consulate:--
“I need hardly say with what pleasure I read your recent
speech at New York. Though Earl Russell did not like some
things in it, _it evidently did him much good_. I think I
saw clearly that he FELT the force of your arguments; for,
if you will notice, it was not till after your speech had
reached this country, and after quotations were made from
it in papers friendly to us, that the more decided orders
were given to stop the Rebel rams in the Mersey.”
The latter statement is confirmed by a despatch of Mr. Adams to
Mr. Seward, dated October 16, where he says: “The Government
has, within the past week, adopted measures of a much more
positive character than heretofore to stop the steam-rams.”[168]
Hon. T. O. Howe, Senator of the United States, wrote from
Wisconsin:--
“Stopping here, where I am to speak this evening, I cannot
refrain from telling you that I approve it. How much I
approve it I am utterly unable to tell you.
“Such conciseness of statement, such fulness of research,
such wealth of illustration, such iron logic, heated, but
unmalleable, I really do not think are to be found in any
other oration, ancient or modern.
“To me it seems bursting with new and most inspiring ideas.
But even when you deal with ideas which are not new, but
old and familiar, you present them in words so marvellously
chosen that they are themselves giant forces.…
“No single man has ever so grandly struggled against the
barbaric tendencies of a frightfully debauched generation.
I cannot certainly foresee the future; you may be worsted
in this encounter; but I know the world will be the better
for it.”
Hon. Henry B. Anthony, Senator of the United States, wrote from
Providence:--
“I suppose you are tired of compliments about your great
speech. Everybody says it is one of the best things that
even you have done. It must have a large and beneficial
effect, not only here, but in Europe, where your reputation
will secure for it the consideration of those who control
public affairs and mould public opinion.”
Hon. Samuel S. Blair, a Representative in Congress from
Pennsylvania, wrote:--
“I have just read your New York speech on our Foreign
Relations, and most cordially thank you for a statement
of our cause which ought to give us the verdict of the
civilized world.”
Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, for so many years eminent as
Antislavery champion in Congress, and then Consul-General at
Montreal, wrote:--
“I have just read your lecture at Cooper Institute. That
production excites in my heart the deepest gratitude and
the highest pleasure.”
Hon. Simon Cameron, who had recently returned from Russia,
where he had been Minister, wrote:--
“It is a masterly production of a master mind, and if you
had never made a single mental effort before, or if you
should cease from this moment to enjoy the power of speech,
it would stand as a monument unrivalled among the many
great productions of American and British statesmen. It is
unanswerable. Its influence, like all great ideas founded
on truth, may be comparatively slow, but it is already
acting over the world, and in a brief period it will be
so potent that men and nations will be ashamed to avow a
belief in any other code of morals.”
Rev. William H. Furness, the accomplished Unitarian preacher of
Philadelphia, wrote:--
“I have no words to express my sense of the large
familiarity with human affairs, and of the conscientious
fidelity which it shows. If you had done nothing else for
the past year but prepare that, I should hold you to be
a miracle of work. It is impossible it should not tell.
It indicates a statesmanship fitting the grandeur of our
unequalled cause.”
Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, of Boston, eminent in the medical
profession and as an Abolitionist, wrote:--
“Allow me to express to you my most hearty thanks for
your noble, and, as it seems to me, unanswerable, speech
at New York. It is truly statesmanlike, and I regard it
in that light as one that will last longer and have more
effect than any delivered by any one in this country since
the war began. It must have a wide influence in Europe. I
thank you, therefore, most heartily for it. It will aid
mightily public sentiment in England, and _tend_ to force
the Government of that country, for consistency’s sake, at
least, to deal more fairly.”
Parker Pillsbury, the earnest Abolitionist, wrote from Concord,
New Hampshire:--
“When a nation is expressing its admiring gratitude for
your recent masterly oration on our Foreign Relations,
what place or what need for my feeble utterance remains?
And all the nations will thank you, as they shall read, in
present and coming time, this chapter in the new political
dispensation. It is a scripture for the ages.”
Hon. Amasa Walker, formerly a Representative in Congress, a
Vice-President of the American Peace Society, devoted to the
cause of peace, and a writer on political economy and finance,
wrote:--
“It is the grandest thing you have yet done, if I am
qualified to judge. I think it cannot fail to exert a great
influence at home and abroad. I am quite anxious to find
out how it is received in England, and am much mistaken, if
it does not produce a great impression.
“The friends of our Government will be greatly delighted at
it, our enemies greatly annoyed by it.
“I have the impression that there is no speech of any
American statesman, that has ever been printed, that will
secure such a lasting reputation, and be so often referred
to in the future, as this.”
Hon. George R. Russell, of various experience, who had recently
returned from Europe, wrote:--
“I have often thought of writing you about your speech on
our Foreign Relations, which I read with much attention,
and decided that it was the best that could be said. I
met a friend of ours a few evenings since, and he told
me that he had said to you that you made a great mistake
in assailing England as you had done. I met him with the
rejoinder, that you had hit the nail on the head, that the
proofs of change we see daily are in consequence of your
attacks, and that, instead of upbraiding you, we owed you
our heartfelt thanks for the good you had done.”
Brigadier-General Saxton, of the United States army, wrote from
his station at Beaufort, South Carolina:--
“I can hardly express to you the intense satisfaction and
delight with which I read your great oration delivered in
New York. In my humble opinion you have rendered a great
service to our country and to humanity. The words of truth
and wisdom which you have spoken cannot fail to command the
attention and respect of the statesmen of England as well
as of this country.”
Captain George Ward Nichols, of the United States army, wrote
from his station at Milwaukee:--
“I hardly know what to say of this eloquent exposition,
so full of righteous indignation, terrible denunciation,
exhaustive research, unanswerable argument,--so abundant,
so powerful, and so eloquent in the cause of humanity. It
seems to me like a timepiece, which, with unfailing faith,
I consult to mark the hour in a stormy day, unmindful of
the wondrous art and wit which combine this perfect whole.
I thank you more than I can say for this noble speech. It
is already a part of the history of this momentous time. It
is as much a fact as is Gettysburg or Vicksburg.”