This discussion stirred the country from center to circumference, and all the prominent newspapers had editorials favoring one side or the other. It produced the first unpleasantness in the ranks of those who had stood together for the past decade. Greeley launched thunderbolts against the right of divorce under any circumstances, and Mrs. Stanton replied to him in his own paper. Lucy Stone, who just before the convention had written to Mrs. Stanton, "That is a great, grand question, may God touch your lips," now took sides with Phillips. To Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony came letters from far and wide, both approving and condemning. Mrs. William H. Seward and her sister, Mrs. Worden, wrote that it not only was a germane question to be discussed at the convention but that there could be no such thing as equal rights with the existing conditions of marriage and divorce. From Lucretia Mott came the encouraging words: "I was rejoiced to have such a defense of the resolutions as yours. I have the fullest confidence in the united judgment of Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony and I am glad they are so vigorous in the work." Parker Pillsbury sent a breezy note: "What a pretty kettle of hot water you tumbled into at New York! Your marriage and divorce speeches and resolutions you must have learned in the school of a Wollstonecraft or a Sophie Arnaut. You broke the very heart of the portly Evening Post and nearly drove the Tribune to the grave." For the censure of the world at large they did not care, but Phillips' defection almost broke their hearts. He was their ideal of the brave and the true and always before they had had his approval and assistance in every undertaking. Miss Anthony wrote Mrs. Stanton: "It is not for you or for me, any more than for Mr. Phillips, to dictate our platform; that must be fixed by the majority. He is evidently greatly distressed. I find my only comfort in that glorious thought of Theodore Parker: 'All this is but the noise and dust of the wagon bringing the harvest home.' These things must be, and happy are they who see clearly to the end." And to her friend Amy Post: "It is wonderful what letters of approval we are receiving, some of them from the noblest women of the State, not connected in any way with our great movement but sympathizing fully with our position on the question of divorce. I only regret that history may not see Wendell Phillips first and grandest in the recognition of this great truth; but he is a man and can not put himself in the position of a wife, can not feel what she does under the present marriage code. And yet in his relations to his own wife he is the embodiment of chivalry, tenderness and love."