Professor Henry W. Torrey, of Harvard University, wrote:—
“I hope that you will allow an old Whig, who has often differed from you in political opinion, though never seduced into supporting Mr. Buchanan or Mr. Bell, to congratulate you on the position you have taken and so ably maintained on Neutral Rights. From the first moment I trembled for the consequences of the seizure of the insurgents. Captain Wilkes’s act appeared to be a portentous blunder, matched only by the truculent indorsements that followed it. It consoles me, however, that this deed has become the occasion for teaching our people their own antecedents, and proving to the world their ability to mortify their pride in the presence of higher claims.… You have nobly substituted the argumentum ab humanitate for the argumentum ad hominem, which you so justly condemn.”
Rev. Convers Francis, the learned Professor, wrote from Cambridge:—
“Most heartily do I thank you for your great speech on Maritime Rights, which adds another to your many claims on the nation’s gratitude. It is a thorough, exhaustive, and most able piece of argument,—by far the most so which that question called forth,—and extorts praise even from enemies.”
John Penington, the bookseller, wrote from Philadelphia:—
“I have delayed reading the ‘Maritime Rights’ speech till I could enjoy it in the pamphlet form, corrected. It is an admirable compend, a perfect multum in parvo. It is a verification of the adage, that ‘Doctors don’t like to take their own physic,’—our friend Bull being no exception to the rule. I feel much obliged to you for the treat you have afforded me.”
Alfred Pell, an intelligent Free-Trader, intimate with England, and manager of an important insurance office, wrote from New York:—
“I have a long letter from [Admiral] Dupont. He wrote when his last advices from the North were of the 22d December, so that he could not have known what action the Government had determined upon; yet he says, ‘Few persons in the fleet approved of the action of Commodore Wilkes, and some of the most intelligent condemned it in toto, yet all allowed that it showed high moral courage on the part of Wilkes.’ … You show we do not stoop to conquer, and I am sure that our friends on the other side will feel like the lady’s maid spoken of by Swift, who said ‘that nothing annoyed her so much as being caught in a lie.’”
John E. Lodge, merchant and personal friend, wrote from Boston:—