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"After an absence from good old Massachusetts of eleven years, my heart was made glad, the other day, by seeing a notice in the papers that you were to speak at the Republican Convention at Worcester. I immediately hastened thither, and felt happy beyond measure, as I listened to the deafening applause with which your appearance upon the platform was greeted."

Rev. John T. Sargent, the Liberal clergyman, wrote from Boston:

"That noble speech of yours at the Worcester Convention, so complete in its analysis of our national condition, dangers, and duties, ought to be printed in letters of gold, and emblazoned henceforth as the established moral code of every one of our States."

David A. Wasson, the honest thinker and student of philosophy, wrote from Boston:

"God bless you, and make you strong for the arduous and immense work that is immediately before you! The coming session of Congress will, I think, be preeminently the critical and cardinal day in all American legislation. I look forward to it with unspeakable anxiety. If only your counsels had been accepted, how clear, how easy, all would be! Now the situation is fearfully complicated."

Rev. George C. Beckwith, Secretary of the American Peace Society, wrote from Boston :

"Let me express the earnest hope that you will economize your strength for the great conflict soon to come during the approaching Congress. I never doubted the final success of our arms; but when the sword should be sheathed, I have always expected to see our worst crisis in our last grapple with slaveholders. We shall quite need all your prudence, forecast, energy, courage, and decision, to meet the dangers ahead from returning Rebels."

Rev. Charles Brooks, eminent for his services to education, wrote from Medford :

"I thank you, I thank you a thousand times, for your sound, comprehensive, and patriotic speech at Worcester. Shakespeare says, 'Things by season seasoned are.' Never was a word more fitly spoken. It is the best speech I have read for years, and will become historic."

William I. Bowditch, the able conveyancer and Abolitionist, wrote from Boston:

"I read your speech yesterday morning with great satisfaction, and yet with considerable misgiving as to whether its truths will be acted on. I doubt if the North has been punished enough to induce it to forego the attempt of trying again to circumvent God."

P. R. Guiney, on the day the speech was delivered, wrote from Boston:

"I am under an overwhelming conviction, that, unless the views which you express are substantially adhered to, Despotism will have gained all that Liberty won in our recent war. The Battle of Gettysburg was not more of a crisis than this. May God prosper you!

Professor George W. Greene, scholar and author, wrote from East Greenwich, R. I. :

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"I received your Worcester speech this morning. say I have read it carefully and thoughtfully, and say 'Amen' to it all. God grant it may go into every house and every heart! I look with deep anxiety for the opening of Congress. You have yet your hardest fight to win; but it is the fight of God and Humanity, and you will win it."

Professor Charles D. Cleveland, an ardent Abolitionist and successful teacher, recently Consul at Cardiff in Wales, wrote from Philadelphia:

"6 Many, many thanks to you for your noble speech at the Worcester Convention. Oh that your words might unite with the heart of the President and bring forth appropriate fruits! For the last two or three months I have been quite desponding as to his course."

John Penington, the scholarly bookseller, wrote from Philadelphia:

"With its matter I fully sympathize; but I was particularly struck with the aptitude and felicity of your illustrations of the various points of your argument."

William Goodell, the early and constant Abolitionist, author of "Slavery and Anti-Slavery," a history also of the "American Slave Code," wrote from Bozrahville, Connecticut, where he was then residing:

"In my rural retreat, where I am for the present recruiting my health, a copy of the Commonwealth containing your great speech at Worcester, September 14th, providentially falls into my hands, and I cannot forbear trespassing upon your time one moment to congratulate and to thank you, which I do most heartily, upon your great achievement, and for your signal service to your country, in the hour of its greatest peril, — greatest I say, because, as I fear, so little perceived and so little understood. . . . . If you had spent the whole summer in preparing that speech, I see not how you could have improved it, nor how your time and talents could have been more worthily or more usefully employed. . . . . You well say, 'We must look confidently to Congress'; to which permit me to add, that for the

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Hon. Wayne MacVeagh, Chairman of the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania, afterwards Minister at Constantinople, wrote from West Chester, Pennsylvania:

"I have just finished reading your superb speech at Worcester, in the complete form in which you sent it to me, and cannot go to bed without thanking you for it. The right word, in the right time, by the right man, what more should we ask?"

William Hickey, Chief Clerk of the Senate, where he had been a life-long officer, and author of a well-known edition of the Constitution with accompanying documents, wrote from Washington : —

"Your speech ably maintains the consistency, ability, and patriotism which have uniformly distinguished your course, from your first essay in the sacred cause of Liberty, which has elicited so much of disinterested zeal and indomitable courage and perseverance on your part as to call forth, in my hearing, from the most honorable and intelligent of your political opponents from the South, declarations attributing those qualities to you in an eminent degree, giving you credit for consistency and unmistakable integrity of purpose. Your exertions have in a very great degree contributed towards the defeat of the Rebellion and the victory of the Government over its enemies, and you have now the satisfaction of enjoying the fruits of your labors and the exercise of your literary superiority and transcendent talents."

Hon. John C. Underwood, who had written shortly before on Reconstruction, wrote from Alexandria, Virginia:

"I thank you for your Convention speech. Its positions and arguments are so overwhelming that I feel almost certain that your efforts will succeed with our people, and that you will be acknowledged the wise statesman and enlightened Christian patriot that I know you are."

General Saxton, an Antislavery army officer, commanding in South Carolina, wrote from Charleston:

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"I most fully sympathize with and cordially indorse every word and line. In the future, the wisdom of your position will be fully established and vindicated."

Hon. Charles D. Drake, an eminent lawyer and law-writer, afterwards United States Senator from Missouri, and Chief Justice of the Court of Claims, wrote:

1 Ante, p. 481.

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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.

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S a faithful reader of the "Evening Post" for many years, I have perused your article insisting that all present effort for guaranties of national security and national faith must be postponed, in order to obtain the ratification of the Constitutional Amendment by which slavery is abolished throughout the United States. If the Constitutional Amendment were not already ratified by the requisite number of States, I should doubt if even this most desirable object could be a sufficient excuse for leaving the national freedman and the national creditor exposed to peril, when exertions now can save them. But allow me to inquire if you do not forget, that, according to usage of the National Government in analogous cases, this Amendment has been already ratified by the requisite number of States, so that at this moment it is valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of the Constitution? There was a butcher once who looked everywhere for his knife, forgetting that he held it between his teeth; there also was the good Dr. Dove, who was in love without knowing it; and you

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