“For one, I desire to thank you for declaring in the Senate that the petition from Boston, asking for any compromise to propitiate the South, did not represent the sentiment even of the city, but was signed by multitudes ignorantly and recklessly,--the left hand not knowing what the right hand did. I wish it were in your power to have that list of names critically examined. I am quite sure that hundreds of names would be proved to be ‘men of straw.’ I have been told that the names of Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore Parker (!),[139] and my own, were appended to it. This is possible, but hardly credible. Still, excepting the Border-Ruffian returns in Kansas, I do not believe there was ever a petition more impudently and fraudulently presented to a legislative assembly than the one from this city. “I congratulate you upon being the special object of the _Courier’s_ malignant abuse. Do not fear of being fully sustained by Massachusetts in your boldest utterances; and how posterity will decide is easily seen.” M. P. Kennard, an excellent citizen and business man, wrote from Boston:-- “The petition was placed in the lobby of our post-office, under the charge of a crier, who saluted every one who passed him with, ‘Sign this petition?’--and it was thoughtlessly signed by men and boys, native and foreign.” Charles W. Slack, of the newspaper press, wrote from Boston:-- “You are entirely right relative to the signers of the Crittenden Petition. Boys, non-voters, foreigners, anybody, were taken, who could write a name. The city police canvassed all the out-of-the-way places, and took the names they could gather.… Glad that you spoke as you did. We look to you to give the key-note. None knows Massachusetts better than you, and none will be more faithful to her, come weal or woe.” Dr. William J. Dale, afterwards the Surgeon-General of Massachusetts, wrote from Boston:-- “The other day a neighbor of ours, Mr. Brown, an intelligent citizen, a provision dealer, corner of Derne and Temple Streets, stopped me and said, ‘If you ever write Mr. Sumner, tell him that I, with many others, signed that Crittenden Petition under an entire misapprehension.’ Says he, ‘I would cut off my right hand before it should sign so infamous a proposition.’ That is the feeling among the middling-interest people. The so-called Union men assume the air and manner of slave-overseers. They have overdone the thing here.” J. Vincent Browne, afterwards Collector of Internal Revenue in the Essex District of Massachusetts, wrote from Salem:--