Rev. William H. Furness, the accomplished Unitarian preacher of Philadelphia, wrote:—
“I have no words to express my sense of the large familiarity with human affairs, and of the conscientious fidelity which it shows. If you had done nothing else for the past year but prepare that, I should hold you to be a miracle of work. It is impossible it should not tell. It indicates a statesmanship fitting the grandeur of our unequalled cause.”
Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, of Boston, eminent in the medical profession and as an Abolitionist, wrote:—
“Allow me to express to you my most hearty thanks for your noble, and, as it seems to me, unanswerable, speech at New York. It is truly statesmanlike, and I regard it in that light as one that will last longer and have more effect than any delivered by any one in this country since the war began. It must have a wide influence in Europe. I thank you, therefore, most heartily for it. It will aid mightily public sentiment in England, and tend to force the Government of that country, for consistency’s sake, at least, to deal more fairly.”
Parker Pillsbury, the earnest Abolitionist, wrote from Concord, New Hampshire:—
“When a nation is expressing its admiring gratitude for your recent masterly oration on our Foreign Relations, what place or what need for my feeble utterance remains? And all the nations will thank you, as they shall read, in present and coming time, this chapter in the new political dispensation. It is a scripture for the ages.”
Hon. Amasa Walker, formerly a Representative in Congress, a Vice-President of the American Peace Society, devoted to the cause of peace, and a writer on political economy and finance, wrote:—
“It is the grandest thing you have yet done, if I am qualified to judge. I think it cannot fail to exert a great influence at home and abroad. I am quite anxious to find out how it is received in England, and am much mistaken, if it does not produce a great impression.
“The friends of our Government will be greatly delighted at it, our enemies greatly annoyed by it.