"As I came from Washington to this place, in New York, Boston, and in steamboats and railroad cars, I heard but one expression in regard to your speech, and that was of unmingled gratification. I have heard all classes, Whigs and others, and there is no exception. Ladies particularly are in ecstasies at it. Mrs. Hale says, 'Give him my thanks for his speech.' The feeling of gratification at your speech is so great, that people do not think, much less speak, of the Billingsgate by which you were assailed." Hon. Henry Wilson thus expressed his feelings in a letter from Boston:-- "I write to say to you that you have given the heaviest blow you ever struck to the slaveholding oligarchy. All our friends are delighted, and men, who, even up to this hour have withheld all words of commendation, are proud of your speech, and loud in their commendations." John A. Andrew, Esq., wrote:-- "Your recent rencontre with the wild beasts of Ephesus has been a brilliant success. I have regarded that debate with pride and gratification. I am glad it has occurred for many reasons, private and personal, as well as public and universal. And I have heard no person refer to it but in terms the most gratifying to my friendship for you, and my interest in the controversy itself. I think our friends here are in good spirits and full of hope. "How do those people treat you now, since they have come to close quarters with you? I hope you will spare not. You had ample occasion, and now I hope you will keep up the war _aggressively_; never fail to attack them, in the right way, whenever they deserve it. The insolence of the presumption to stand between a man and his own conscientious interpretation of the Constitution, especially when they defiantly and every day dare everybody to tread on their coat-tails, at the price of treason and rebellion, under the name of '_disunion_,' is utterly unbearable. "I only wish they _would_ expel you, and Chase, and Gillette,--all three." Wendell Phillips was most earnest, as follows:-- "The storm of letters of congratulation is perhaps lulled a little by this time, and you'll have a moment's leisure to receive the admiring thanks of an old friend. Amid so much that was sad and dark at home, it has been delightful to sun one's self now and then in the glad noon of hope at Washington. The whole State is very proud of you just now. If your six years were out this next winter, I think you'd be run in again without a competitor, and by a vote of all parties.