“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:—