“My dear cousin, I have written you very frankly, but I trust you will not misunderstand me as having any personal reproaches to make for the part you have taken in the matter.  We undoubtedly view the field from different standpoints.  I concede to you conscientious motives in what you do.  You are sustained by those around you, men of intellect, men of character.  I respect them while I differ from them.  I appeal, however, to a higher law, and that, I think, sustains me.”

His strong and outspoken stand for what he believed to be the right made him many enemies, and he was called hard names by the majority of those by whom he was surrounded at the North; and yet the very fearlessness with which he advocated an unpopular point of view undoubtedly compelled increased respect for him.  A proof of this is given in a letter to his daughter, Mrs. Lind, of December 28, 1865:—­

“I also send you some clippings from the papers giving you an account of some of the doings respecting a statue proposed to me by the Common Council.  The Mayor, who is a personal friend of mine, you see has vetoed the resolutions, not from a disapproval of their character, but because he did not like the locality proposed.  He proposes the Central Park, and in this opinion all my friends concur.

“I doubt if they will carry the project through while I am alive, and it would really seem most proper to wait until I was gone before they put up my monument.  I have nothing, however, to say on the subject.  I am gratified, of course, to see the manifestation of kindly feeling, but, as the tinder of vainglory is in every human heart, I rather shrink from such a proposed demonstration lest a spark of flattery should kindle that tinder to an unseemly and destructive flame.  I am not blind to the popularity, world-wide, of the Telegraph, and a sober forecast of the future foreshadows such a statue in some place.  If ever erected I hope the prominent mottoes upon the pedestal will be:  ’Not unto us, not unto us, but to God be the glory,’ and the first message or telegram:  ’What hath GOD wrought.’”

He says very much the same thing in a letter to his friend George Wood, of January 15, 1866, and he also says in this letter, referring to some instance of benevolent generosity by Mr. Kendall:—­

“Is it not a noticeable fact that the wealth acquired by the Telegraph has in so many conspicuous instances been devoted to benevolent purposes?  Mr. Kendall is prominent in his expenditures for great Christian enterprises, and think of Cornell, always esteemed by me as an ingenious and shrewd man, when employed by me to set the posts and put up the wire for the first line of Telegraphs between Washington and Baltimore, yet thought to be rather close and narrow-minded by those around him.  But see, when his wealth had increased by his acquisition of Telegraph stock to millions (it is said), what enlarged and noble plans of public benefit were conceived and brought forth by him.  I have viewed his course with great gratification as the evidence of God’s blessing on what He hath wrought.”