“I have never read anything so magnificent as your Lecture
in the _Independent_. How I wish I could have heard it!
Letters from judges in such matters inform me that no
speech in New York for many years has produced such a
sensation.”
Count Gurowski, writing from Brattleboro’, Vermont, expressed
his enthusiastic sympathy, and at the same time predicted the
adverse feeling among slave-masters.
“I have just finished the reading of your admirable
Oration. I am _en extase_. I was near to cry.… But you
have thrown the gauntlet once more to the ‘gentlemen from
the South,’ bravely, decidedly, and pitilessly. Do not be
astonished, if they shall send you, covered with laurels as
you are, to Coventry. This undoubtedly they will do.”
These extracts show something of public sentiment at this stage
of the great contest with Slavery. From this time forward the
discussion broadened and deepened.