“I cannot refrain from expressing the satisfaction and pleasure I derived from the perusal of your Worcester speech. In my opinion it expressed the sentiment of a very large majority of the citizens of Massachusetts, and though in advance of the sentiment of the whole country, still, if I can read the signs of the times, our Government, if it has not already reached, is fast approaching, the doctrines there enunciated by you. It seems to me they must be adopted in their length and breadth.”
A writer, admired as “Gail Hamilton,” wrote from Hamilton, Massachusetts:—
“I glory in that speech. It is logic, and sagacity, and morality. Let them maul it. To that complexion must they come at last, and perhaps before. Strange that people will have so much faith in shilly-shally! Strange they will not see that honesty is the best policy, as well as the best religion! But never mind. Do you lead the van.”
Rev. John Weiss, the eloquent preacher, and biographer of Theodore Parker, wrote from Milton:—
“I am surprised and disappointed at the temper shown by the Republicans. Before the Worcester Convention I was ready to declare that the people were only waiting to have the word Emancipation strongly pronounced to repeat it with the aggrandizement of a hundred thousand votes. I am deeply pained to see how the newspapers receive your declarations. They thinly veil a spirit which is ready at the first opportunity to forget the Past, and to sacrifice its living representatives,—the men who alone preserve the glorious Antislavery idea, and whose prophecies can alone secure the Future.… ‘Cry aloud, and spare not.’ Reiterate more flatly and unsparingly, that the war must destroy the evil which engendered it. Give the bullets their billet, and the bayonets something to think about, and lend them a manifesto of Freedom to punctuate. What a Congress will next winter’s be! Compromise will seek to make War its missionary.”
Orestes A. Brownson, Catholic thinker and writer, wrote from Elizabeth, New Jersey:—
“I have re-read your speech at Worcester, and I’m even better pleased with it than I was at the first reading. You have struck the right chord, as the manner in which my own article has been received sufficiently indicates. Our venerable President and his rhetorical adviser, whatever their timidity, or their reluctance, or attachment to the ‘Rule of Three,’ must come to the policy you recommend. It is clear to me that it is impossible to save both the integrity of the Nation and Southern Slavery, and the great question before us now is, whether we shall sacrifice the Nation to Slavery, or Slavery to the Nation. This is the issue before the people, and this issue we must meet.”
Rev. R. S. Storrs, the eminent Congregational divine, wrote from Braintree, Massachusetts:—
“Your admirable speech before the Worcester Convention ought to have been sooner acknowledged, with the fervent gratitude of my heart, to Heaven and you, for its delivery. The spirit that condemns its argument or author is either the spirit of blind infatuation, or of treachery as foul as marks the Southern Confederates themselves. It surprises and grieves me that Republicans wince and scold at the just lashing given to the grand conspirator against Liberty and Religion,—for in this contest they are identical. The timeserving policy of multitudes who have hitherto acted with us, and, as it seems to me, of the Administration itself, is revolting, and puts far away the day of peace and prosperity.”