“I have read it with great attention, and with the highest pleasure, for the principles it announces, the facts it narrates, and the firm and manly discussion of them. As an explanation of the great principles of International Law applicable to the nefarious Rebellion, it will open the eyes of the American people to the important fact, that, in all its disguises, English and French policy has wilfully ignored the principles of justice and liberty which the Government of the United States are struggling to maintain.”
Hon. Horatio J. Perry, Secretary of Legation at Madrid, wrote:—
“Your noble effort was well timed. I have had portions of it reproduced in the Spanish press with the best effect. Another part will reappear here in a more durable form, which I shall take pains to send you.
“These admonitions of yours to the European powers have always been of the highest possible service. Whatever necessity there may have been (and there has been necessity) for our diplomatic representatives to act with consummate prudence in our direct intercourse with the courts hostile to us, it was no less necessary that the voice from home, the utterances of our Houses of Congress, of our leading Senators, should be bold and unsubdued,—confidence in ourselves and in our cause, above all, the consciousness of right, and the evidence that we were not afraid.”
Professor Charles D. Cleveland, Consul at Cardiff, wrote from his consulate:—
“I need hardly say with what pleasure I read your recent speech at New York. Though Earl Russell did not like some things in it, it evidently did him much good. I think I saw clearly that he felt the force of your arguments; for, if you will notice, it was not till after your speech had reached this country, and after quotations were made from it in papers friendly to us, that the more decided orders were given to stop the Rebel rams in the Mersey.”
The latter statement is confirmed by a despatch of Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward, dated October 16, where he says: “The Government has, within the past week, adopted measures of a much more positive character than heretofore to stop the steam-rams.”[168]
Hon. T. O. Howe, Senator of the United States, wrote from Wisconsin:—
“Stopping here, where I am to speak this evening, I cannot refrain from telling you that I approve it. How much I approve it I am utterly unable to tell you.
“Such conciseness of statement, such fulness of research, such wealth of illustration, such iron logic, heated, but unmalleable, I really do not think are to be found in any other oration, ancient or modern.