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[388] bearing throughout.1 Henry Wilson recognized in the speech the heaviest blow its author had struck the slaveholding oligarchy, and again recalled with pleasure his own part in placing him in the Senate. Charles A. Dana, of the New York Tribune, approved it ‘as a splendid excoriation and incineration of those fellows.’ Rev. A. A. Livermore gratefully acknowledged ‘the noble, lofty, and successful power with which he had fought the good fight;’ and Rev. F. A. Farley praised his ‘grand forbearance amid unusual and unjust provocation.’ Theodore Parker wrote that he had never before been so proud of him. John P. Hale had heard all classes express unmingled gratification with the speech, in New York and Boston, and on public conveyances. John A. Andrew regarded his ‘recent rencontre with the wild beasts of Ephesus as a brilliant success.’ Wendell Phillips, as an old friend, wrote with an earnestness of approval which he rarely gave to any man. Richard H. Dana, Sr., recognized ‘the manly dignity, the calm, conscious superiority of the reply.’ John Jay wrote of the speech as ‘a glorious, a most triumphant effort,’ commending the occasional strokes, as the calm scorn of the opening, the apt quotation from Jefferson, the reference to South Carolina as ‘threatening nullification as often as babies cry,’ and the response to Masons insolent assumption of superiority. Charles G. Loring, a lawyer highly conservative by temperament and associations, bore witness to the general and great admiration which the speech had elicited in Massachusetts. Joshua Leavitt, the veteran editor, read it with intense satisfaction, and recalled Tristam Burges's replies to John Randolph as not equal in force and far inferior in scholarly taste and gentlemanly dignity. Two friends of the senator in his youth, Judge Richard Fletcher and Mrs. R. C. Waterston, wrote letters warm with admiration and gratitude. Whittier in an ode commemorated the speech, in which he found—

Brougham's scathing power with Canning's grace combined,

and recalling the rock by which they had sat by the seaside four years before, saw in it

‘the type of one
Who, momently by Error's host assailed,
Stands strong as truth, in greaves of granite mailed,
And, tranquil-fronted, listening over all
The tumult, hears the angels say, “Well done!” ’

1 Works, vol. III. pp. 414-423, where some of these testimonies are given.

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