“NEW YORK, July 15th, 1859. “MY DEAR OAKES,—It is with the deepest emotions I have just heard of the death of Rufus Choate. His decease is an irreparable loss to the whole country. A noble citizen, a peerless advocate, a great patriot, has gone, and there is no one to supply his place. In the fall of this great man death has obtained a victory and humanity suffered a defeat. “EDWIN FORREST.” One other letter of his should be preserved in this connection, for its eloquent expression of blended friendship and patriotism: “PHILADELPHIA, July 28th, 1862. “MY DEAR FRIEND,—Where are you, and what are you doing? Are you ill or well? I have telegraphed to you twice, and one answer is that you are ill, another that you are much better. I called on Mr. Chickering during my recent visit to New York, and he assured me you could not be seriously ill, or he would have been advised of it; and so I calmed my fears. That you have greatly suffered in mind I have reason to know. The death of Colonel Wyman assured me of that. You must have felt it intensely. But he fell nobly, in the discharge of a most sacred duty which consecrates his name forever among the defenders of the Union of his country. I too have lost friends in the same glorious cause,—peace and renown to their ashes! Among them one, the noblest of God’s manly creatures, Colonel Samuel Black, of Pennsylvania. Enclosed you have a merited eulogy of him by our friend Forney, who knew him well. Let us prepare ourselves for more of the same sad bereavements. This unnatural war, which has already ‘widow’d and unchilded many a one,’ has not yet reached its fearfullest extent. The Union cemented by the blood of our fathers must and shall be preserved; this is the unalterable decree of the people of the Free States. Better that all the slaves should perish and the blood of all those who uphold the institution of slavery perish with them, than that this proud Temple, this glorious Union consecrated to human freedom, should tumble into ruins. Do you remember what Tom Paine, the great Apostle of Liberty, wrote to General Washington in 1796? ‘A thousand years hence,’ he writes, ‘perhaps much less, America may be what Britain now is. The innocence of her character, that won the hearts of all nations in her favor, may sound like a romance, and her inimitable virtue be as if it had never been. The ruins of that Liberty thousands bled to obtain may just furnish materials for a village tale. When we contemplate the fall of empires and the extinction of the nations of the Old World we see but little more to excite our regret than mouldering ruins, pompous palaces, magnificent monuments, lofty pyramids. But when the Empire of America shall fall the subject for