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much discouraged.
For a week I prospered here, but I have just had two wretched days, which have put me back about where I was when I came here.
I would give much to be again in the Senate, with strength restored, that I might expose anew the crime.
To
Phillips (addressing him ‘my dear
Wendell’), July 24:
1
I long again for my place in the Senate, where I was struck down, to arraign anew the crime which I before arraigned, and to show, which I did not do before, its logical, harmonious, and entire dependence upon a slaveholding civilization.
Of course, I can make no allusion to my assailant.
His act belongs to the history of the country, where it will be judged without any word from me. I cannot close without letting you know how joyfully and tearfully I read your most beautiful spontaneous utterance at that first meeting in Boston.
Few speeches equally felicitous have ever been made; but beyond even its felicity I felt its warm, prompt pulsations, and the completeness of its defence against those cavillers who, true to the instincts of their petty souls, began at once to ransack my language to find in its alleged extravagance some apology for an act which was beyond all apology.
Whenever in any speech or article I have noticed regrets for the language I deemed it my duty to use, I invariably discarded what followed as being the forced offering of the hour and not of the heart.
Please let Mr. Garrison know that I was much touched by his resolution and speech.
Without any sensible improvement he left the seaside, August 3, for a change of air, and became the guest and patient of
Dr. R. M. Jackson at
Cresson, in the
Allegheny Mountains.
2 Wilson, after conferring with
Seward and other Republican senators, advised him not to return to
Washington during the session, which lasted till the middle of August.
At the mountains the former symptoms clung to him, weakness generally, pallor of countenance, a tottering gait, wakeful nights, a sense of weight on the brain, and a dull throbbing pain in the head, indications of coming paralysis; ‘the entire chain of symptoms soon pointing to the head and spine as the seat of a highly morbid condition.’
3 Though quickly prostrated by attempts at walking, He was able to take daily rides on horseback.
Among friendly visitors to
Cresson were
Rev. Dr. Furness,
