“I have read and studied your speech, and am really unwilling to repeat to you what I have said in commendation of it to others.
“This question may be considered after the fashion of a lawyer, or a politician, or a statesman.
“You have viewed it as a statesman, and, in my understanding of the word, that includes the other two, and elevates them both.
“The affair has given rise to no paper so entirely satisfactory to me, nor to one calculated, in my judgment, to be so truly and permanently useful.”
Hon. Emory Washburn, Professor at the Law School, and former Governor of Massachusetts, wrote:—
“I cannot forbear expressing my satisfaction in reading your speech in the Senate on the Trent affair. It seems to me to place the matter on the true ground; and if the English Government do not find, when they come to look coolly at the matter, that in taking Mason and Slidell they have caught two Tartars, I shall be greatly mistaken. I think, moreover, you have spoken the sober, sound thought of the country; and while they are indignant at the inconsistent annoyance of the ministry and the press of England, they feel that the course taken is not only the wise and expedient one, but, on the whole, the most consistent.”
Hon. John H. Clifford, former Attorney-General of Massachusetts, and Governor, wrote from Boston:—
“I have read with unqualified approval and satisfaction your admirable exposition of the interesting questions of public law in your recent speech, growing out of the arrest and rendition of the ‘two old men’ taken from the Trent. I trust its treatment of the doctrine of Maritime Rights will command on the other side of the water the respect to which it is so justly entitled, and of which its reception by the best minds at home gives a hopeful assurance.”
Hon. John C. Gray, a venerable and accomplished citizen, wrote from Boston:—
“I return you my acknowledgments for your speech on the Mason and Slidell affair. The more I have examined the law,—and I regret that I did not do it earlier,—the more I am satisfied that our civilians here were mistaken in their first impressions.”