Theodore Tilton, editor of the New York _Independent_, wrote just before the speech:--
“I protested with all my heart against the Amendment offered by the Committee of Fifteen. It don’t execute justice. It leaves the negro to the decision of the Rebel. It proves that a republic is ungrateful.
“I am glad to notice by the _Tribune_ of this morning that you are to move an Amendment, or rather a substitute for that Amendment.”
William Lloyd Garrison, the early Abolitionist, always persistent against Slavery, wrote from Boston:--
“I have perused your eloquent and unanswerable speech on the Suffrage question, and need not say that it contains the noblest sentiments, to which all the faculties and powers which God has given me thrillingly respond. It will doubtless be more efficacious out of the Senate than in it, as it will help to educate the popular mind up to the point of abolishing all complexional distinctions before the law, North and South.… Your speech, based as it is upon absolute justice and eternal right, is an admirable elementary treatise, and I trust will have the widest circulation.…
“What assiduity and perseverance, what courage and determination, what devotion and inflexible purpose you have shown, through fiery trials and at the risk of martyrdom, ‘in season and out of season,’ to effect the downfall of the atrocious slave system, and thereby elevate and save the Republic! If to this extent the year of jubilee has come, you have done much towards ushering it in, and have a right to be specially glad and grateful that Heaven has been pleased to make you so potential an instrumentality in bringing about its beneficent designs.”
Wendell Phillips, who never failed to sympathize with efforts for Human Rights, wrote from Boston:--
“We are all inexpressibly grateful for your brave position and words. You and half a dozen others redeem Congress. Your arguments have been grand and exhaustive. You never linked so many hearts to you as during the last two months.”
Elizur Wright, the veteran Abolitionist, wrote from Boston:--
“Your speech and vote on the Blaine Amendment ought to produce a thrill of life and joy and hope through every spinal column that supports a loyal soul. We can’t afford any of the old nonsense. We took our sable friends into our boat when it was _bulleting_; and if we allow them to be thrown overboard by the traitors now it is _balloting_, we sink, in short.”