“I have just been reading your masterly and unanswerable speech
of the fourth instant with thrills of delight. Massachusetts
can afford to let one of her Senatorial chairs remain vacant,
if we can have such a speech as that once in four years. I feel
like thanking God from the bottom of my heart that you have
been restored to health, and have the nerve, or, as you once
expressed yourself, the ‘backbone,’ to stand as one of God’s
noblemen and give utterance to truth.”