We have perfect
faith in your course. We believe that if you had been permitted to speak,1
a better day for the speech could not have been selected than the time you
took. If you had spoken, all would have said so. It was just at the right
interval between the settlement of the policy of the old parties and the
opening of our own. A speech before the conventions of the old parties would
have been reckoning without your host. There are some men who think that
nothing is doing unless there is a gun firing or a bell ringing. There are
superficial persons in whom is no depth of root; they are easily offended. The
work we have to do is a long one; there is no pending question. Patience and
judgment and preparation are as necessary as zeal, and more rare.
_______________
1 A reference to the Senate's refusal to hear
him, July 28.
SOURCE: Edward L.
Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 287
No comments:
Post a Comment