[259] The friends of freedom generally regretted the course of Mr. Burlingame, though they were not unmindful of the salutary influence which such a response was calculated to exert upon men who had depended largely upon the unwillingness of Northern men to adopt their self-styled ‘code of honor.’ Indeed, he himself did not fully indorse the course he felt constrained to adopt. At a public reception, given him in Boston on the 12th of September, he said: ‘My errors, if errors they were, sprang from the dim light in which I stood and out of a sincere love for the old Bay State. To my mind, a conflict which under other circumstances would have been merely personal and disgraceful, from the standpoint from which I viewed it, rose to the dignity of a great transaction—as a defence of freedom of speech. I should have been wiser, I am certain, if I had followed the noble example set by one now near me, who has ever been my leader, and whom I am proud so to acknowledge—one who represents Massachusetts in her loftiest mood, on her highest plane of action—one whose reason was never dimmed by passion. I pay my full homage to that position here. It is the right position unquestionably.’
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