“Being detained at home by indisposition, I was glad of the privilege of at once reading your latest views on the great questions of the day in connection with Reconstruction. For them, and for the heroic spirit with which you take your stand, and determine ‘to fight it out on that line,’ I offer you my most sincere and fervent thanks. May God preserve your life and health, and enable you to fight it out to a complete victory!”
Hon. Charles Durkee, formerly Senator of the United States from Wisconsin, and then Governor of Utah, wrote from Salt Lake City to Governor Farwell, of Wisconsin:—
“I have just finished reading Mr. Sumner’s great speech delivered at the Massachusetts State Convention. What a masterly argument! It embodies the condensation of Calhoun, the strength of Webster, and more than the eloquence of Clay. In logic, in illustration, in simplicity of truth, I have never read a state-paper that equals it. Its timely utterance how fortunate for the country! He inspires some of the most vital parts of the Constitution (which heretofore have been a dead letter) with new life and activity. Washington and Lincoln led in the first and second revolutions, but it was left for Charles Sumner to lead in the third,—a revolution in Constitutional and Republican ideas. Be so kind as to thank him, in my name, for this timely effort in behalf of his country and in the cause of the oppressed.”
Such words from distant places were an encouragement to the speaker. Evidently he was not alone, nor had he spoken in vain.
QUORUM OF STATES NECESSARY IN ADOPTION OF A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.
Letter to the New York Evening Post, September 28, 1865.
To the Editor of the New York Evening Post.