“I am greatly your debtor for your two speeches, in a form for preservation and re-perusal, and any word of mine in regard to their ability or patriotism is quite needless. But I will say that the courage that can face cold looks of friends, cruel animadversions of one’s own party press, and, what is easier, the unceasing abuse and bullyism of the enemies of all good, is so rare that it commands my admiration.” Jesse W. Fell wrote from Normal, Illinois:-- “I have just finished reading your late speech on Reconstruction, and I cannot forbear dropping you a line to say how much I have been gratified by its perusal. I will not characterize it as under different circumstances I should be tempted to. Suffice it to say, in my poor judgment it is the noblest, ablest effort of your life, and is just the document to send broadcast over the land.” James H. Alderman wrote from Jacksonville, Illinois:-- “A thousand thanks for your incomparable speech, expounding and defining the true theory of a republican government. Yes, I say a thousand thanks. I have always believed the Constitution was fully adequate for every exigency. Congress, therefore, must of necessity guaranty to every State a republican form of government.” Worthington G. Snethen, an Abolitionist, of Baltimore, wrote:-- “Thanks, thanks for your two great speeches. They will live and breathe and stir the heart of humanity, when the memory of A. Johnson and his Republican renegade sycophants will be forgotten, or brought to mind only to be execrated. Millions of black men bless you now, and hundreds of millions of God’s dusky skins will bless you in the ages to come, for these two grand and eloquent vindications of human liberty from the assaults of despotism, caste, and the white man’s meanness; and the white world, too, far down in the future, will bless your name. The spirit of prophecy pervades every line of these speeches, and lights up every step you take with the blaze of logic and truth.… “Your resistance to the Trojan horse of the Apportionment Amendment I sincerely hope was crowned with success in to-day’s vote. That Amendment is the basest compromise that has yet bubbled to the surface of the cesspool of American politics.… “You must all come to it, sooner or later. Congress must legislate impartial suffrage into all the States by direct statute. Strange that the States in Congress cannot do what the States separately out of Congress can do!” Hon. R. Stockett Mathews, the orator and lawyer, wrote from Baltimore:--