“Nobly and well have you met the expectations of those who,
like myself, have waited through four years of silence for your
next utterance on the great sin of our times. Highly as I prize
the speech, I think your brief and pointed reply to Senator
Chesnut fully doubles its value, for all practical purposes.”
W. H. Herndon, the able lawyer, associated in business with Abraham
Lincoln, wrote from Springfield, Illinois:--
“I have received and read your most philosophic, logical, and
classical speech, made in the Senate of the United States. The
speech is a withering one to Slavery. It is worthy of you, and
you of it. I thank you very, _very_ much for it.… We feel well
out here; are confident of success. We hope the East will do as
well as the West.”
S. M. Booth, journalist, who, spurning the Fugitive Slave Act, helped
fugitive slaves, and was sentenced to imprisonment, wrote from “U. S.
Custom-House Prison” at Milwaukee:--
“I bless God for the utterance. It is timely and needed at this
juncture. I have no sympathy with that craven policy which
would suppress such a speech, lest it might prejudice the
rights of Kansas or endanger the election of Lincoln.… Your
portrait of Slavery is true; its character and effects are all
you describe it; and the nation needs to have its own sin and
shame mirrored as you have done it. I see, too, the assassins
have since sought your life.… You have struck a mighty blow
at the very _existence_ of Slavery. You have laid the axe at
the root of the tree. We never can reach the evil as long as
we fight on the defensive. But if the doctrines of your speech
are true, it is no longer a question _where_ or _how far_
Slavery shall go, but whether it shall be allowed to go or to
be _anywhere_.… In God’s name let it perish, and the sooner the
better.”
Hon. A. A. Sargent, delegate from California to the Chicago Convention
which nominated Abraham Lincoln as President, and afterwards
Representative in Congress from California, wrote from Newburyport,
Massachusetts:--
“You go back of mere political distinctions to lay bare the sin
and barbarousness of a hoary iniquity, falsely assuming to be a
form of Civilization. You have taken up a train of thought, and
pursued it well, which I have long wished to have developed,
and filled a void in the system of declared truths upon which
Republicanism is based, too long neglected. Your speech stirred
my heart with feelings of pride for the representative of my
native State.”
Hon. Neal Dow, eminent in the cause of Temperance, and afterwards a
general in the War, wrote from Portland, Maine:--
“You will be glad to know that among all thoughtful men of our
side your speech is commended without a qualification. There
is no sympathy with the cowardice of the mere politicians, in
the fear that it may excite the bad passions of the South, and
provoke them to do some dreadful thing. I think the general
wish is that _the whole truth_ should be boldly spoken, and
that the crisis, whatever it may be, may come soon. The
indications now are that the South will have an opportunity to
make up its mind what it will do about it.”
John Neal, the veteran of American literature, wrote from the same
city:--
“I have just finished the reading of your great and conclusive
speech upon the ‘Barbarism of Slavery,’ and I have only to say
that I go with you heart and soul, and that I concur entirely
in the opinion expressed by the venerable Josiah Quincy of your
argument.
“Your manliness, your Christian forbearance, your plainness
of speech, and your unexaggerating truthfulness are all of a
piece, and I desire to thank you in the name of this whole
generation for what you have done and suffered and said.”
Hon. James S. Pike, also of Maine, for many years a journalist,
afterwards Minister of the United States at The Hague, wrote from Cape
May:--
“I think you have got hold of a heavy sledge, and hit between
the horns at every lick. The style of treatment will do as much
towards bringing the beast upon his knees as any other, and the
duty is peculiarly appropriate at your hands. I am very sure
you are right, and feel prompted to say so.”
Hon. John Appleton, the learned jurist, and Chief Justice of Maine,
wrote from Bangor:--
“I owe you thanks for your able and unanswerable speech, which
came in my absence. More truth was never condensed in one
speech. But woe to those by whom it so becomes the truth!”