Daniel Henshaw, a venerable citizen, once a journalist and always a reformer, wrote from Boston:—
“I have read your speech on the Barbarism of Slavery attentively, having devoted seven hours thereto yesterday, and I cannot refrain from offering you my humble thanks, although words cannot express my feelings on the subject. You know something of my views on Slavery. For thirty years I have considered it the leading and most important subject before the nation.”
Charles M. Ellis, the lawyer, and always against Slavery, wrote from Boston:—
“Especially allow me to thank you for the discourse of the Barbarism of Slavery; for it shows you well again, and leading on the good fight. It is needed now, when men at the South seek to justify the thing,—needed, I think, more than anything,—and leaves little to be done in that direction.”
Warren Sawyer, a merchant and active Republican, wrote from Boston:—
“I have looked over the newspaper reports, and have thanked God your life was spared to prepare such a masterly production, so full of facts, so happily arranged, so glowingly knit together, and that you were able in strength to stand up in the Senate and deliver it.
“To my mind, the speech will do much good; it was needed. The great mass of the people have become, or are becoming, what is now called conservative on the Slavery Question; they forget, amid their business and their many calls, the horrors, the crime, and the Barbarism of Slavery.”
C. J. Higginson, a merchant, wrote from Boston:—
“Notwithstanding all that has been said and written on Slavery, I think you have first perceived and expressed this ‘unconsciousness’ of slaveholders; and the additional fact of this unconsciousness being nearly as general at the North as South explains the necessity of proving at this late day, even to us of the North, the Barbarism of Slavery. We thought their wealth and leisure led them to be generous; nobody has ever so plainly shown their accepted necessity of meanness. We have been unconscious of their influence in lowering our standing.… I only wish to express my satisfaction at finding Massachusetts again represented by a man with a constitution, so valuable in the latitude of Washington, capable of standing the burning heat of the South and the chilliness of the North.”