[Concord, N. H., April
26, 1862.]
Your whole speech
breathes a spirit of humanity and love of justice, honorable to your heart.
Almost forty years ago, I used to walk barefooted, and before daylight, by your
father's house on my way to see the musters. I recollect you as a smaller boy
than myself, in more comfortable conditions. I only desire to give you the
good-speed of an humble, but, I trust, honest, earnest lover of liberty and of
man, of every man. I have not forgotten your brave letter to Franklin
Pierce, when he undertook to play President over the country, and work
the tyrant in and over Kansas. My mission is (as for twenty years past) to
demand freedom for every slave, not as a “military necessity,” but in the name
of humanity, and according to the laws of the living God.
SOURCE: William Salter, The Life of James W. Grimes,
p. 193-4
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