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Rev. George E. Ellis, since president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, wrote, September 14:—
I cannot forbear the expression of the respect and admiration with which I have watched your course in public life, in reading all that comes from your lips and pen, and in imagining you as often amid the surroundings of a coarse and unprincipled crew, maintaining principles that require the highest moral courage for their championship.
It is my firm belief, from many chance remarks that I hear, that multitudes of those who rank themselves politically, socially, and editorially in antagonism with you are in the core of their hearts persuaded that you are right, and yield to you a consideration which they withhold front every other public man now on the stage.
The general voice of praise and gratitude which followed your speech on the clerical protest and upon your noble self-vindication was fully as much an utterance of honest feeling previously cherished towards you, through whatever influences kept back from expression, as it was of a feeling then first excited in your favor by knockings at the heart that could not be resisted.
William Jackson, many years before a member of Congress, now an old man. wrote, July 1:—
Your contest in the Senate brought vividly to my recollection similar scenes which many years since I saw J. Q. Adams passing through.
And now how miserably insignificant and mean in the eyes of the intelligent and honorable of the whole civilized world do those rascally pigmies look!
and how the old man eloquent “ looms up!
Truth is mighty; never fear,—some time or other she will take care of you; nay, she is doing it now with all who can see, and even with multitudes of your opponents who see plainly enough but dare not speak.
In one respect you have beaten ” the old man “ even.
You have kept your temper better than he used always to do. . . . God bless you and keep you, and enable you to come off conqueror and more than conqueror,” is the constant prayer of your assured friend!
R. H. Dana, Jr., wrote, July 2:—
You have done gallantly.
It was just the right sort of fight.
Especially we all like your placing your own character against that of Mason.
It was telling, spirited, and at the same time dignified.
It showed that you felt yourself his superior.
You don't know how rejoiced I am that a Northern gentleman and scholar has met them in the true spirit of a cavalier.
Our rough men, like Giddings, have met them; but rarely if ever have our gentlemen and scholars joined battle with them.
It is atrocious that Pettit, Clay, Butler, and the others were not called to order; but I suppose the rules of order, like all the other laws of our republic, are never executed against the slave-power.
Mr. Dana, in communicating
Prof. Edward T. Channing's expressions of admiration for his pupil's recent triumph in the