Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Parker Pillsbury to Senator James W. Grimes, April 26, 1862

[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

No comments: