“With gratitude and love and admiration, your friends, constituents, and fellow-citizens.”
Dr. Joseph Sargent, the eminent surgeon and strong Republican, wrote from Worcester, Massachusetts:—
“When I first read your speech, as I did immediately after its delivery, my blood boiled anew, as after the outrage which our country’s Barbarism inflicted on you four years ago. God has punished that crime, in the persons of its more immediate perpetrators, in his own way. Your speech is the apt and condign punishment of that portion of the community who supported them. In its learning, its truth, and its eloquence, it is worthy of you; while in its comprehensiveness, its compactness, and its completeness, it has exhausted the whole subject. If you never say a word more, your record will be right, and may God bless you!”
Hon. James H. Morton, holding a judicial situation, wrote from Springfield, Massachusetts:—
“I have long been expecting to hear from you in your regaining health, and my expectation has been fully realized in the noble, scorching, withering expression of the true sentiment of Massachusetts on this subject. Would to God that every man who entertains the sentiments contained in your speech, whether of the North or South, had the moral courage boldly to express them! We should soon see an end of that accursed thing, Slavery.”
Hon. D. W. Alvord, lawyer and warm Republican, wrote from Greenfield, Massachusetts:—
“I write to thank you for your recent speech. There is not elsewhere in the English language so powerful an argument on the Barbarism of Slavery. In my opinion it is just such a speech as you were bound to make,—just such a speech as the honor of Massachusetts required from you. It is such a speech as few men living but you could make. Hurt the Republican party, will it? If it will, then the party does not deserve success.”
Humphrey Stevens, Register of Deeds for Franklin County, Massachusetts, wrote from Greenfield:—
“I have just read your speech on the Barbarism of Slavery. God be praised that you did not compromise, and that the prayers of the good have been answered! Some Republicans may condemn, but hosts will rejoice that you regard the cause more than Republicanism.”