in which the voice of wife and child would have said: Rest here, for, whatever the world may say, we know that you are good and faithful and noble. Only the friends of his youth, who knew him best, surrounded him with never-flagging confidence and love, and those of his companions-in-arms, who knew him also, and who were true to him as they were true to their common cause. Thus he stood in the Presidential campaign of 1872.
It is at such a moment of bitter ordeal that an honest public man feels the impulse of retiring within himself; to examine with scrupulous care the quality of his own motives; anxiously to inquire whether he is really right in his opinions and objects when so many old friends say that he is wrong; and then, after such a review at the hand of conscience and duty, to form anew his conclusions without bias, and to proclaim them without fear. This he did.
He had desired, and as he wrote, “he had confidently hoped, on returning home from Washington, to meet his fellow-citizens in Faneuil Hall, that venerable forum, and to speak once more on great questions involving the welfare of the country, but recurring symptoms of a painful character warned him against such an attempt.” The speech he had intended to pronounce, but could not, he left in a written form for publication, and went to Europe, seeking rest, uncertain whether he would ever return alive. In it he reiterated all the reasons which had forced him to oppose the Administration and the candidates of his party. They were unchanged. Then followed an earnest and pathetic plea for universal peace and reconciliation. He showed how necessary the revival of fraternal feeling was, not only for the prosperity and physical well-being, but for the moral elevation of the American people and for the safety and greatness of the Republic. He gave words to his profound sympathy with
