“Had not God separated you early in life, and guided and guarded and instructed you through many years, with special reference to this very exigency, that concentration of clear and just conception, of indignant hatred of tyranny, and of confidence in the final triumph of justice, could not have been called up at pleasure by you, merely to grace a speech.”
Rev. Francis Wayland, of Providence, the able author of works on Moral Philosophy and Political Economy, wrote:—
“I will not say that I, the whole nation, or the free portion of it, sympathize with you,—and, what is far better, I believe them to be solemnly moved. At least I have seen nothing like it before. With us the wave has reached an elevation which it never before touched. Our ablest, best, and most influential men, men who have been highly conservative, as it is called, have made up their minds on this subject. They are calm, considerate, constitutional; but they mean what they say, and they will never go back.…
“I thank you for your speech, as I do for all the others you have sent me. I hope you will deliver many such, and I think you will do it henceforth without peril. Do not, however, go out, or use your mind actively, until you are perfectly well.”
Rev. Convers Francis, of Harvard University, wrote:—
“I remember you told me last November, just before your departure for Washington, that you were looking forward to fearful trials in the approaching session, but that the path of duty was plain before you, and that you should walk therein. Nobly, most nobly, have you redeemed that pledge. But the apprehension with which the first part of your remark filled me at the time included nothing like this scene of murderous guilt. How could it? How could any one, who had not measured all the length and breadth of slaveholding depravity, as I had not, have brought such a thing within the range of imagination or prophecy?”
Thomas Sherwin, Head Master of the Boston High School, wrote:—
“To-day we have had a public Declamation, and in the preparation my chief difficulty was to determine how many lads should be allowed to make selections from your speech. I send you a programme, from which you will see that there is a good sprinkling of the true spirit. To you, intrusted with the momentous interests of our whole country, not to say those of the world, these boyish affairs may seem trifling.”
Dr. Joseph Sargent, the eminent surgeon, of Worcester, wrote:—
“You have not said one word that we would have unsaid; and when you shall have opportunity again to speak those words of truth which are words of fire, we only wish to be at hand to take the blows ourselves, while you shall have the glory of having aroused a nation as it has not been aroused before, since the days which preceded the Revolution. Shame on the country which needed such a wrong to move it to the right!”