"No, my dear cousin, it was in _bad taste_ to say the least of it, and it was equally _impolitic_ to intercalate such a demonstration into the usual and appropriate exercises of the week. You expect, I presume, to have pupils from the South as heretofore; will such a sectional display be likely to attract them or to repel them? If they can go elsewhere they will not come to you. They will not be attracted by a perpetual memento before their eyes of your triumph over them. It was not politic. It is no improvement for Christian America to show less humanity than heathen Rome. The Romans never made demonstrations of triumph over the defeat of their countrymen in a civil war. It is no proof of superior civilization that we refuse to follow Roman example in such cases. "My dear cousin, I have written you very frankly, but I trust you will not misunderstand me as having any personal reproaches to make for the part you have taken in the matter. We undoubtedly view the field from different standpoints. I concede to you conscientious motives in what you do. You are sustained by those around you, men of intellect, men of character. I respect them while I differ from them. I appeal, however, to a higher law, and that, I think, sustains me." His strong and outspoken stand for what he believed to be the right made him many enemies, and he was called hard names by the majority of those by whom he was surrounded at the North; and yet the very fearlessness with which he advocated an unpopular point of view undoubtedly compelled increased respect for him. A proof of this is given in a letter to his daughter, Mrs. Lind, of December 28, 1865:-- "I also send you some clippings from the papers giving you an account of some of the doings respecting a statue proposed to me by the Common Council. The Mayor, who is a personal friend of mine, you see has vetoed the resolutions, not from a disapproval of their character, but because he did not like the locality proposed. He proposes the Central Park, and in this opinion all my friends concur. "I doubt if they will carry the project through while I am alive, and it would really seem most proper to wait until I was gone before they put up my monument. I have nothing, however, to say on the subject. I am gratified, of course, to see the manifestation of kindly feeling, but, as the tinder of vainglory is in every human heart, I rather shrink from such a proposed demonstration lest a spark of flattery should kindle that tinder to an unseemly and destructive flame. I am not blind to the popularity, world-wide, of the Telegraph, and a sober forecast of the future foreshadows such a statue in some place. If ever erected I hope the prominent mottoes upon the pedestal will be: '_Not unto us, not unto us, but to God be the glory_,' and the first message or telegram: '_What hath GOD wrought._'"