TOiliiii& I "im/ i 

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I 

t 




JET 68. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS: 



THE AGITATOR. 



BY 



CARLOS ^ARTYN, 

Editor of " American Reformers," and author of " John Milton," il Wm. E. 
Dodge" etc. 



WITH AN 



APPENDIX 

CONTAINING THREE OF THE ORATOR S MASTERPIECES, NEVER BEFORE 
PUBLISHED IN BOOK FORM, VIZ. : 

"THE LOST ARTS." 

" DANIEL O CONNELL." 

"THE SCHOLAR IN A REPUBLIC." 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES. 



FUNK & WAGNALLS. 

NEW YORK: g LONDON: 

18 & 20 ASTOR PLACE. 44 FLEET STREET. 

All Rights Rttrved. 



35 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1890, by 

FUNK & WAGNALLS, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. 



PREFACE. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS was a citizen of the twentieth 
century sent as a sample to us of the nineteenth. 
There is not in biography another character more 
profoundly interesting and instructive. Whether 
judged by the length, variety, influence, or genius 
of his life, this man was unique. Fredrika Bremer 
said long ago : " The anti -slavery struggle will be 
the romance of American history." The Swedish 
novelist foretold that our future Sir Walter Scott 
would find in this " debatable ground" the richest 
materials for his " Sixty Years Hence." But where 
was there in the "irrepressible conflict" a more 
heroic figure than Mr. Phillips ? 

Nor was his an isolated advocacy. He identified 
himself as inseparably with every other reform of 
the age. There was no exception. He stood, " The 
Admirable Crichton" of progress. Would any one 
understand this century ? Would he equip himself 
for usefulness ? Would he catch fire from contact 
with one of the purest, ablest, most inspiring of 
men ? Let him study and emulate the career of 
Wendell Phillips. 

Biography has been defined as the story of a single 
soul. But the narrative becomes complex, since in 
its passage a single soul touches many other souls. 

, M144731 



IV PREFACE. 

Hence biography expands into history. The prob 
lem is to preserve the biography in the history to 
make the individual stand out in the midst of the 
crowd. This difficulty is intensified when the life 
portrayed, like the shuttle in weaving, plays into the 
very warp and woof of the times. 

In the case of Mr. Phillips, the effort has been to 
give only so much of the wider view as should make 
his career comprehensible. In these pages every 
thing has been subordinated to the setting forth 
of the man in his essential features, clean-cut and 
pronounced. Under this rule, a mass of inter 
esting matter has been set resolutely aside. Many 
related persons have been passed over, or dismissed 
with, a mere mention. Nothing has been admitted 
save what would individualize, animate, and repro 
duce the great reformer. This is a biography, not 
a history. Surely, a man should be the hero of his 
own life. 

A vast amount of new material only just now ac 
cessible, yet essential to a just estimate of the orator, 
and suggestive and illustrative of his mental and per 
sonal habits, will be found within these covers, giving 
a near and intimate view of him. The account of 
his earlier and mid-career is especially full. 

One great merit we may confidently claim for this 
volume. It abounds in copious quotations from Mr. 
Phillips s utterances. He is given the opportunity 
to state his position in his own words on every one 
of the great issues in which he was interested. 
Hence it is in some sense a handbook of his opinions. 

Here are principles for the philosophical, facts for 
the matter-of-fact, extracts from speeches which 
made and vocalized history, for the admirers of elo- 



PREFACE. V 

quence, anecdotes for the lovers of ana, portraits for 
students of pictures, illustrations for teachers and 
speakers, tumults for those who delight in excite 
ment. something for every one, and a good deal for 
all. Who loves freedom ? Who desires to look into 
and help forward the great reforms still struggling 
toward accomplishment ? Who is interested in the 
enlargement of woman s sphere, in temperance, in 
the question of capital and labor, in the Irish agita 
tion, in the ethics of progress ? Mr. Phillips was 
their consummate exponent. As well read " Ham 
let," with Hamlet cut out, as hope to grasp these 
issues without his luminous guidance. 

If at any point this narrative drops below the level 
of our friend Dryasdust, the charge of a lack of 
dignity will be cheerfully borne if it carries the 
reader inside of the subject. Boswell is by com 
mon consent the best of biographers. Why? Be 
cause he jots down the day s minutiae every occur 
rence from the morning bath, the chops for breakfast, 
the walk along Fleet Street, to the last mot at night. 
Trifles reveal character. We get at the real self 
most surely when the hero is off parade and in un 
dress. Thanks to Boswell, we know Dr. Johnson. 

The writer confesses that as he has written he has 
dipped his pen in his heart for ink. He has made 
himself not the critic, but the biographer of Mr. 
Phillips. The life he lived is the life described. An 
effort has been made to open a window into the man 
so that the, world might look in. There is nothing 
to hide. The deeper the insight, the greater will 
be the admiration for the Agitator s talents and the 
reverence for his character. 

To the many friends who have interested them- 



VI PREFACE. 

selves in and aided his task, the author expresses 
again, in this formal way, his earnest thanks. Let 
us hope the result may compensate the effort. It 
will, if Wendell Phillips shall live and breathe again 
before our eyes and in our souls as these pages are 

turned. 

CARLOS MARTYN. 

NEW YORK CITY, March, 1890. 



THERE, with one hand behind his back, 
Stands Phillips, buttoned in a sack, 
Our Attic orator, our Chatham ; 
Old fogies, when he lightens at em, 
Shrivel like leaves ;. to him tis granted 
Always to say the word that s wanted. 
So that he seems but speaking clearer 
The tip-top thought of every hearer ; 
Each flash his brooding heart lets fall. 
Fires what s combustible in all, 
And sends the applauses bursting in 
Like an exploded magazine. 
His eloquence no frothy show. 
The gutter s street-polluted flow, 
No Mississippi s yellow flood 
Whose shoalness can t be seen for mud ; 
So simply clear, serenely deep, 
So silent -strong its graceful sweep, 
None measures its unrippling force 
Who has not striven to stem its course. 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 



THE greatest praise government can win is, that its citizens 
know their rights and dare maintain them. The best use of 
good laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet. 
On these principles I am willing to stand before the community 
in which I was born and b rought up ; where I expect to live and 
die ; where, if I win any reputation, I expect to earn and keep 
it. As a sane man, as a Christian man, and as a lover of my 
country, I am willing to be judged by posterity. WENDELL 
PHILLIPS. 

MR. PHILLIPS had all the qualities of a great orator : command 
of himself, warm sympathy, responsive intellect, splendid rep 
artee, the power to flash, the power to hit close, the language 
of the people, a wonderful magnetism, and an earnestness that 
made him the unconscious hero of the cause he pleaded. The 
Boston Herald. 



CONTENTS. 



BOOK I. 

MORNING. 

1811-1837. 

PAGE 

I. GENESIS 15-24 

II. ENVIRONMENT 25-33 

til. SCHOOLING 34-48 

IV. THE YOUNG LAWYER 49-56 

V. THE MARTYR AGE , 57~77 

VI. THE NEW CLIENT 78-85 

VII. IN FANEUIL HALL. . . 86-102 



BOOK II. 

NOON. 

1838-1865. 

I. THE ABOLITIONISTS MEN AND MEASURES 105-115 

II. A CONUNDRUM 116-121 

III. "VALE" 122-126 

IV. SCENES AND EXPERIENCES IN EUROPE 127-147 

V. No. 26 ESSEX STREET 148-151 

VI. THE IRISH ADDRESS 152-158 

VII. A NEW BATTLE OF CONCORD 159-163 

VIII. THE " COVENANT WITH DEATH" 161-173 

IX. INFIDELITY IN THE FORTIES 174-178 

X. THE AGITATOR 179-188 

XI. EGERIA 189-198 

XII. CONCERNING A SINGULAR EPIDEMIC. 199-203 

XIII. MR. CALHOUN S IDEA OF EQUILIBRIUM 204-211 



X CONTENTS. 

I AGB 

XIV. INCIDENTS 212-222 

XV. THE DEVIL S GOSPEL 223-234 

XVI. THE WOMEN, AND A MAN 235-242 

XVII. DISJECTA MEMBRA 243-250 

XVIII. GOOD WORKS 251-258 

XIX. PORTRAITS 259-266 

XX. EXCITEMENT 267-275 

XXI. GREAT EVENTS 276-288 

XXII. " IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT" 289-299 

XXIII. THE WINTER OF SECESSION 300-311 

XXIV. UNDER THE FLAG 312-322 

XXV. THE STRUGGLE OF Two CIVILIZATIONS 323-337 

XXVI. SHADOW IN SUNSHINE 338-345 



BOOK III. 

AFTERNOON. 

1866-1879. 

I. FROM BATTLE-FIELD TO FORUM 349-365 

II. lo ! TRIUMPHE ! 366-376 

III. " NEW OCCASIONS TEACH NEW DUTIES" 377-385 

IV. LIVING ISSUES 386-398 

V. GRANT GREELEY FROUDE 399-406 

VI. OLLA PODRIDA 407-417 

VII. USEFULNESS , 418 430 

VIII. THE RADICAL CLUB 431-439 

IX, LYCEUM EXPERIENCES 440-447 



BOOK IV. 

EVENING. 

1880-1884. 

I. STILL CONTENDING 451-469 

II. LENGTHENING SHADOWS 470-478 

IH. SUNDOWN 479-482 



CONTENTS. XI 

PACK 

IV. " AT EVEN-TIME IT SHALL BE LIGHT" 483-488 

V. THE ORATOR 489-505 

VI. THE MAN * 506-524 

VII. PHILLJPSIANA 525-530 



* 



APPENDIX. 



THE LOST ARTS" 533-547 

DANIEL O CONNELL" 548-569 

THE SCHOLAR IN A REPUBLIC" 57<>-594 



INDEX 595-^00 



BOOK I. 



MORNING 

181 1-1837. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 



i. -^ 

GENESIS. 

THE first American Phillips was an Englishman ; 
and so was the second. Since the family began on 
this side of the water in a paradoxical way, it is not 
strange that the most illustrious member of it should 
have been fond of paradoxes. 

The Rev. George Phillips was one of the band of 
conscience exiles who sailed from Great Britain for 
the new world, in 1630, in the "Arbella," withWin- 
throp and Saltonstall and Johnson ; this last a land 
owner in three counties, after whose charming wife 
the chief vessel of the flotilla of ten ships was named. 1 
Things were in a bad way over there, or seemed to 
be ; although, as is apt to be the case, it was darkest 
just before the dawn ; for within ten years Hampden 



1 The common orthography is Arabella, but later writers almost 
unanimously reject this spelling, which is founded on the often-erring 
authority of Mather in the " Magnalia," and of Josselyn, and accept 
that of John Winthrop in his Diary, of Johnson, in the " Wonder- 
Working Providence," and of Dudley s Epistles. These men were 
personally acquainted with Mr. Johnson. Vide Winthrop, p. i, 
note. 



^ \Sy-ENDELLPHILLIPS. 



and Pym and Vane and Cromwell revolutionized 
England in never-to-be-forgotten fashion. Just now. 
however, the situation was forlorn enough. The 
mother-country was parcelled out among three con 
tending parties : The Puritans, who were so namec, 
because they stickled for the simplicity of the Gos 
pel ; the Papists, who had swayed the sceptre under 
" Bloody Mary," and were destined to grasp i: 
again a generation later under James II., and in the 
mean time were sleeplessly plotting ; and the Prcl- 
atists, Protestants by profession, Papists in practice, 
who were encamped at court. Charles I. now sat 
on the throne. He was that oddest of anomalies, ;i 
treacherous moralist. Yes, Charles was the painting 
of a virtue. Outwardly, he was Cato ; inwardly, 
he was lago. His faction, wedded like himself to 
the tenets of absolutism, eagerly cried Amen to his 
most arbitrary ac(s, which they often instigated. 
Liberty -loving people men and women whose Bible 
was the Old and New Testaments and not the Prayer- 
book, who worshipped God in spirit rather than in 
form, Christians instead of Pharisees had a sorry 
time of it. Britain, emancipated from the Pope, 
hugged the popedom. Dissent from the State re 
ligion was heresy. The measure of a conscience 
was the length of a prelate s foot. Thus stood the 
Puritans at the date we have mentioned : popery 
preparing to spring upon them, while the fangs of 
prelacy were already buried in their throat. 

Looking about for a chance to escape, these vic 
tims of persecution were attracted hither, where a 
colony of their fellows had been planted in 1620 the 
famous landers on Plymouth Rock. The newcomers 
disembarked to the north of the earlier settlers, at 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I/ 

Salem, a place so called " for the peace they had 
and hoped in it." 1 

The Rev. Mr. Phillips was a Puritan. He could 
not and would not conform to Strafford, the syste- 
matizer of tyranny in the State, and to Laud, the ex 
ponent of absolute power in the Church. A gentle 
man by birth, a graduate of the English Cambridge, 
a rector at Boxted, in Essex County, happily mar 
ried and at work, he did not hesitate to tear himself 
up root and branch in obedience to his conscience. 
Come-outerism being in the blood, it should not sur 
prise us to find the quality, an occasion having arisen, 
again asserting itself down the line of descent. 

Soon after reaching America, Mr. Phillips lost his 
wife ; she, like the lady Arbella Johnson, who pre 
ceded her to the grave, dying from exposure on the 
voyage and hardship on land. Delicately reared and 
accustomed to luxurious surroundings, they were 
early and lovely martyrs. The widower s sorrow 
was too full for utterance, or he might have hymned 
it in those lines of Dr. Watts, so tender and pathetic : 

" I was all love and she was all delight ; 

Let me run back to seasons past ; 
Ah, flowery days, when first she charmed my sight ! 
But roses will not always last." 

Leaving Salem, Mr. Phillips went to Watertown, 
now a part of Boston, where he became the first 
minister of the town. This pastorate he held during 
fourteen years, until his death, in 1644, at the age of 
fifty -one. He was a man of solid attainments and 
vigorous intellect, was associated with John Win- 



1 In reference to the meaning of the word Salem, vide Cotton 
Mather s " Magnalia," vol. ii., pp. 67, 68. 



IS WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

throp in the government of the Colony of Massa 
chusetts, and was the earliest advocate in America 
of the Congregational order and discipline. 1 Thus 
he marches among the founders of empire conditorcs 
impcriorum, to whom Lord Bacon, in his " Marshal 
ling of theSovereign Degree.? of Honor," assigns the 
foremost place. 

Such was Phillips the first. His eldest son, Phil 
lips the second/ was born in England in 1625 ; 
crossed the sea with his parents when five years old ; 
was among the earliest graduates of Harvard Col 
lege, then recently founded ; 3 entered the ministry ; 
settled at Rowley, in Massachusetts, in 1651, where 
he remained until his death, in 1696, making himself 
kmown and felt as* the Rev. Samuel Phillips. A 
twelvemonth after leaving college, he married Sarah 
Appleton, of Ipswich, and this couple left a large 
family. The second Phillips was a man of estimable 
character and brilliant ability --the favorite orator 
on anniversary occasions. 4 This characteristic, too, 
reappeared, later on, with added vim. 

Phillips the third was named Samuel, after his 
father. He broke the clerical continuity and took 
to business, removing to Salem, where he became 
a goldsmith. Born in 1657, he married a grand 
daughter of Deputy-Governor Symonds, Mary Emer 
son, of Gloucester, Mass., and died in 1722, at the 
age of sixty-five. He was a man of unblemished 
reputation, had a genius for trade, and made money. 



" Phillips Genealogies," by Albert M. Phillips, p. 10. 

2 The Rev. George Phillips married a second time, and left seven 
children by this marriage. 

3 Opened in 1638. 4 Gage s " History of Rowley." 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. IQ 

He also begat children, 1 two of whom it behooves 
us attentively to notice. The eldest son, named 
Samuel after his father, jumped back into the min 
istry. The four chief events in his life were : his 
birth, in 1689 ; his graduation from Harvard College, 
in 1708 ; his settlement as pastor of the " Old South 
Church" in Andover, in 1710, and his marriage, in 
1711, to Hannah White, of Haverhill, Mass., whose 
father was a deacon and a captain in the militia. This 
Phillips, of the fourth generation, continued to 
preach in Andover until his death, in 1771 ; was a 
model of industry and self-restraint, and a born 
leader in thought and action. 2 

He left five children, two of whom became widely 
useful and distinguished, viz., Samuel and John 
Phillips. These brothers were laymen, and settled 
the one in Andover, Mass., the other in Exeter, 
N. H. Both accumulated wealth, and they became 
the joint founders of the celebrated Phillips Acad 
emy, in Andover an institution whose usefulness in 
creases with the lapse of time. In addition to this 
good work, John founded the Phillips Academy, in 
Exeter, the twin of Andover, and also endowed a 
chair of theology at Dartmouth College. Living in 
the "times that tried men s souls," these brothers 
were patriots and saints among the most eminent 
ot all. 3 The son of the eldest, known as Judge Phil 
lips, inherited the best qualities of both ; became 
lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts, and continued 



1 Samuel Phillips, like his grandfather, was twice married. All his 
children were by his first wife, save the last. 

2 " Memoir of Judge Phillips," by Rev. John L. Taylor, p. 7. 

3 Vide " Phillips Genealogies," pp. 15-20, passim. 



20 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

their benefactions to the cause of learning, lavishing" 
time, attention, money upon the Andover Academy, 
especially, whose constitution and course of study 
are the output of his brain. 1 

Having said so much regarding the elder of this 
fourth generation, and his immediate descendants, 
beguiled into it by their usefulness and eminence, 
we return now to the second son of Samuel Phillips, 
the goldsmith, whose name was John the great 
grandfather of the subject of these pages. John 
Phillips was born in 1701. He became a Boston 
merchant ; married, in 1723, Mary, a daughter of 
Nicholas Buttolph, also of Boston ; possessed marked 
mercantile ability, as his success shows ; was a dea 
con in the old Brattle-street church, a justice of the 
peace, colonel of the Boston regiment, and many 
times represented the town in the General Court. 
He died in 1768, " and was buried with military 
honors." 3 This was the fourth Phillips in the direct 
line to Wendell. Phillips the fifth was William, 
only son of John and Mary Buttolph, who was born 
in 1737, and who married Margaret, youngest child 
of the Hon. Jacob Wendell, 3 a distinguished mer 
chant of Boston, a military magnate, and one of the 
Governor s Council. William Phillips died early 



1 Vide " Phillips Genealogies," pp. 20-24. Judge Phillips gave 
many thousands of dollars in this way. Bearing in mind the difference 
in the purchasing power of money then and now, his gifts would be 
equivalent to hundreds of thousands of dollars to-day. See an inter 
esting and valuable article on Andover in Harper s Magazine, vol. lv. f 
P- 564. 

8 /., p. 29. 

3 The Wendells were of Dutch extraction, and came to Boston from 
Albany, N. Y., in the ea*ly years of the eighteenth century. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 21 

at thirty-four. His widow survived him many 
years. 1 It was from her that our Wendell received 
his name. 

Their only son became famous as the Hon. John 
Phillips sixth in the line from the American ances 
tor. He was born in 1770. Two years later his 
father died. His mother proved equal to the emer 
gency. She was a woman of unusual strength of 
character, well educated, and a devoted Christian. 
On account of the advantages he would there enjoy, 
she sent her boy to abide under the roof-tree of his 
uncle, Lieutenant-Governor Phillips, at Andover, 
where he fitted for college at the academy of which 
his kinsman was such a generous patron. Entering 
Harvard when he was fourteen, he was graduated 
in 1788, and pronounced the salutatory oration. He 
was called to the bar shortly afterward, and leaped 
into an extensive and lucrative practice. In 1794 he 
was selected to deliver the oration on the Fourth of 
July, with Boston for an audience a production 
familiar ever since through an extract in the school- 
books, where it rests as a model of eloquence, and 
which several generations of boys have declaimed. 
The finger-tips of the writer tingle as they hold the 
pen in memory of one such occasion. 

While the echoes of that speech yet resounded in 
the old town, Mr. Phillips married Sally Walley, 
whose father was a successful merchant there. This 
lady became one of the best of wives, one of the 
most devoted of mothers. Patient, watchful, con 
siderate, self-sacrificing, she was a power for good 
in all the relations of home and neighborhood. She 



1 She died February 271!), 1823. 



22 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

possessed fine natural powers of mind and heart, 
which she had been able carefully to cultivate. Thus 

she stood, 

" A perfect woman, nobly planned, 
To warn, to comfort, and command." 

Aided by his own powers, admirably seconded by 
his wife s co-operation, John Phillips passed rapidly 
on and up from high to higher. In 1800, on the 
establishment of the Municipal Court in Boston, he 
was made public prosecutor, a function which, in a 
less official but far Avider sense, his celebrated son 
inherited. In 1803 he was elected to the House of 
Representatives. In 1804 he was returned to the 
Senate of Massachusetts, where he remained until 
his death. In 1809 he became judge of the Court of 
Common Pleas. In 1812 he was chosen a member 
of the corporation of Harvard College. In 1820 he 
sat in the Convention for the Revision of the Con 
stitution of the State perhaps the most conspicuous 
figure in that able and dignified body. In 1821 Bos 
ton adopted a city charter. Two candidates, equally 
eminent, were named for the mayoralty Harrison 
Gray Otis, a nephew of that James Otis whose elo 
quence had defied George III., and consecrated Fa- 
neuil Hall and the " Old South " Church to liberty, 
himself one of the most accomplished orators of that 
generation ; and Josiah Quincy, already decorated 
with honors, State and national, to which he further 
added, in after years, the titles of Speaker of the 
Massachusetts House of Representatives, Judge of 
the Municipal Court, and President of Harvard Col 
lege. Between two such worthy competitors selec 
tion was difficult. A vote resulted in no choice, 
whereupon the Hon. John Phillips was pitched upon 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 23 

as a compromise candidate, and was immediately 
elected practically without opposition. He thus 
became the first Mayor of Boston. His incumbency 
was so satisfactory that there was a universal de 
mand for his re-election. But before the close of 
his term he was suddenly removed from earth by 
angina pectoris, an insidious disease destined more 
than half a century later to end the mortal career of 
his great son. 

John Phillips was universally respected. His 
mind was clear and wide, his heart was warm, his 
hands were open and clean, his soul was anchored 
in deep piety. Filling as he did a great variety of / 
offices, no one ever questioned either his integrity y 
or his ability. He was specially gifted in speech, 
and this power was enhanced by a singular charm 
of manner. In this he was evidently the father of 
his son. But he is also credited by tradition with 
"a pliable disposition," which, just as plainly, he 
did not transmit to one of his children. 

Early in the century, Mr. Phillips built for himself 
a spacious mansion of the colonial pattern, at the 
corner of Beacon and Walnut streets, which became 
a show place (the old engravings of Boston loved to 
reproduce it), and which the curious may still gaze 
at, though it has been somewhat altered. It was the 
navel of the aristocratic quarter, and stood in the 
"West End" of the New England London; the 
"Saint Germain" of the Yankee Paris. A block 
away, to the left, on the summit of Beacon Hill, was 
the Hancock house as bold and unmistakable in 
the landscape as its owner s signature was in the 
Declaration of Independence. Next door, "on the 
right, lived the Winthrops the town residence of 



24 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

that historic family. In front stretched the forty- 
three acres of Boston Common. Around and about 
thronged the dons and donas of the capital. Here, 
on November 29th, 1811, Wendell was born the 
eighth in a family of nine ; a nest of brothers, with 
three sisters in it. 1 



1 The complete list of the children of John and Sally (Walley) 
Phillips, with dates of birth and death, is as follows : 

1. Thomas Walley, born January i6th, 1797 ; died 1859. 

2. Sarah Hurd, born April 24th, 1799 ; died 1837. 

3. Samuel, born 1801 ; died 1817, while a member of the Sopho 
more Class of Harvard College. 

4. Margaret, born November 2gth, 1802 ; died 

5. Miriam, born ; died 

6. John Charles, born November I5th, 1807 ; died 1878. 

7. George William, born January 3d, 1810 ; died 1880. 

8. WENDELL, born November 2gth, 1811 ; died February 2d, 1884. 

9. Grenville Tudor, born August I4th, 1816 ; died 1863. 
Vide " Phillips Genealogies," pp. 30-35. 



II. 

ENVIRONMENT. 

EVERY thoughtful observer of life knows that the 
fireside is the earliest and most influential of schools. 
The nursery is the child s university. When the 
nature is uninscribed and plastic the home writes 
the first and most lasting impressions. More that is 
elementary a key to all the rest is learned in the 
cradle and beside the mother s chair than in all after 
time. Here dawns upon the mind the conception of 
life. Here ideals are imparted. Parents decree the 
future. Happy the boy or girl whose heart throbs 
with the memory of a good and happy home ! 
Hence in studying any human eminence the instant 
and critical inquiry touches this decisive point. 

It was a kindly turning of Providence in Wendell 
Phillips s favor that he was born when and where he 
was. His high-chair was placed in a Puritan house 
hold. This means much. It indicates lofty thought. 
It stands for holy living. It implies a domestic 
economy regulated by gravity and decorum and vir 
tue above the frivolities of the hour. It signifies that 
definite ideas of right and wrong were implanted. It 
shows that, in conformity with Milton s suggestion, 

" To measure life learn thou betimes," 

the boy s nascent intelligence was seasonably in 
structed in the chief articles of human being and 
doing. 



26 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Then, too, that old colonial mansion was warm 
with plenty. John Phillips, being wealthy, was a 
liberal provider. Mrs. John was a model New Eng 
land housewife. Consequently, their children, one 
after the other, opened their eyes upon delightful 
surroundings. Abundance laughed in the larder. 
Books elbowed one another on the shelves of the 
library. Pictures smiled down from the walls. Stat 
uary breathed from the corners of the rooms. Thus 
an insensible education of the eye and ear was ever 
proceeding. That subtle element which we call 
aesthetic, at once delicate and formative, impregnated 
the air. Could any atmosphere be more helpful to 
one who should by and by become an orator ? 

It was further happy for young Wendell that he 
was one of many children. An only child is apt to 
be petted and spoiled. Where there are a number, 
each demands so much that no one can get all. Be 
sides, it should seem to be a physiological fact that 
the friction of several minds from the nursery up to 
adult life is necessary to the best development of 
genius. There is scarcely an instance of an only 
child s achieving greatness. Even when latent, 
ability gasps and dies for lack of elbow-room and 
play. On the other hand, history is full of char 
acters that were helped out and thrust forward by 
early attrition at home. Thus Napoleon was one of 
thirteen children ; Franklin was one of seventeen ; 
General Sherman was one of eleven ; Charles Dickens 
was one of eight ; Gladstone was one of seven. 
Those large American families which were universal 
a generation or two back were they not so many 
schools of genius ? Their infrequency to-day is 
this not suggestive, ominous? What possibilities 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 2/ 

our fashionable mothers nowadays forego ; the pos 
sibilities of fostering genius and winning for them 
selves personal distinction ! 

John Phillips made this wise rule for his children : 
" Never ask another to do for you what you can do 
for yourself ; and never ask another to do for you 
what you would not do for yourself if you could." 
There is no end of self-reliance in this rule, and a 
world of sound democratic philosophy, besides. 
Knowing, also, the uncertainty of fortune in America 
a game of blindman s-buff and remembering-, 
perhaps, the old Jewish saying, " He who does not 
teach his children a trade, brings them up to steal," 
he encouraged them to master whatever tools of 
manual labor they could handle. Accordingly, as 
soon as he got on his feet, Wendell began to potter 
about the house with hammer and chisel and saw. 
In later life he claimed .that there was hardly an or 
dinary trade in vogue when he was a boy at which 
he had not done many a day s work. 1 Indeed, his 
mother said : " A good carpenter was spoiled when 
Wendell became a lawyer." 

Moreover, he early developed another trait, more 
significant of his future career. Feeling the push 
of his clerical ancestry, he became a preacher at four 
or five, and placing a Bible in a chair before him, and 
arranging other chairs in circles about the room, he 
would harangue these wooden auditors (hardly more 
wooden than some of the human ones he afterward 
addressed) by the hour. 3 



1 Thomas Wentworth Higginson s "Wendell Phillips," published 
by Lee & Shepard, Boston, 1884. 

2 Testimony of Theodore D. Weld. 



28 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

" Wendell," said his father to him, one day, 
" don t you get tired of this ?" 

"No, papa," replied the speaker, "/don t get 
tired, but it s rather hard on the chairs !" 

He inherited his wit from his father, who was very 
bright. When a member of the Convention for the 
Revision of the Constitution of Massachusetts, John 
Phillips, in debating a certain proposed change, re 
marked : " I hope our case may not be like that of a 
man whose epitaph may be read in an Italian church 
yard : I was well ; I wanted to be better ; I took 
medicine ; and here I lie ! 

Wendell was of a domestic turn, sympathetic and 
affectionate, and open as the daylight. His love for 
his mother was a passion. He was also devoted to 
his nurse, Polly. When the birthday of this good 
soul came round, he gave her a needle-case, bought 
with his own pennies, and with it a verse which he 
composed, and (with a single later exception to be 
cited in due time) his first and only poetic flight. 

The boy s nearest and dearest intimate, residing a 
block away, at the corner of Walnut and Chestnut 
streets, was J. Lothrop Motley, destined to become 
famous as the historian of the Netherlands. It was 
David and Jonathan with these two ; and their friend 
ship, beginning in the cradle, lasted to the grave. 
Phillips was the elder by two years ; but Motley was 
precocious a scholar in his childhood. Referring 
to this period, the orator says : " Motley could not 
have been eleven years old when he began writing 
a novel. It opened, I remember, not with one soli 
tary horseman, but with two, riding up to an inn, 



1 Found in the records of the Convention. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 29 

in the Valley ol the Housatonic. Neither of us had 
ever seen the Housatonic, but it sounded grand and 
romantic. Two chapters were finished." 

Thomas Gold Appleton, the son of one of the 
patriarchs of New England manufactures, who had 
amassed a great fortune, also lived near by, and 
made this duo a trio. Appleton became a noted wit 
and raconteur, and joined to these gifts the charm of 
a graceful pen. As Phillips speaks of Motley, so 
Appleton tells of both : " Phillips was an old friend 
of mine. I remember how we used to play together 
long ago, and the recollection is very pleasant in 
deed. He was a fine, manly little fellow, and I was 
very proud of him as a playmate. Wendell Phillips, 
J. Lothrop Motley, and I frolicked in the garret of 
the Motley house ; and I recall that their favorite 
pastime used to be to strut about in any fancy cos 
tume they could find in the corners of the old attic, 
and shout scraps of poetry and snatches of dialogue 
at each other. It was a fine sight to watch them, 
for both were noble-looking fellows ; and even then 
Wendell s voice was a very pleasant one to listen to, 
and his gestures as graceful as could be." a 

Mr. Appleton s account is corroborated by Oliver 
Wendell Holmes (a kinsman of Wendell Phillips) in 
his admirable " Memoir of Motley" : " If one could 
have looked into that garret when our country was 
not far advanced in its second score of years, he 
might have found these three boys in cloaks and 
doublets and plumed hats, as heroes and bandits, 
enacting more or less impromptu melodramas." * 

1 "Memoir of Motley," by Oliver Wendell Holmes, p. 7. 

2 Vide Boston Globe, Phillips Memorial Edition, February 4th, 1884. 

3 " Memoir of Motley," p. 5. 



30 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Wendell was his mother s favorite . 1 Possessed 
herself of a strong character, marked by singular 
simplicity and keen insight, she early discerned the 
dormant powers of her gifted son, and never spared 
herself in the endeavor to put the best that was in 
her into him. She was profoundly religious. Her 
foremost purpose, therefore, was to root him in faith 
and hope and love. She used to take him aside and 
pray with and for him. Her earliest gift to him was 
a Bible his inseparable companion for seventy 
years. 2 She taught him the catechism as he sat on 
her lap. And when he could hardly toddle she 
guided his steps, his hand in hers, to the family 
pew on Sunday mornings. " Wendell," she would 
say, " be good and do good ; this is my whole de 
sire for you. Add other things if you may these 
are central." Under such wholesome tuition how 
could the lad s moral nature do otherwise than 
healthily develop ? 

Physically, he was strong and well. Mrs. Phillips 
was almost as solicitous for his bodily as for his 
moral welfare. She taught him the laws of life and 
health the gospel of hygiene mens sana in corporc 
saiio. Those habits of temperance, exercise, and 
purity which characterized him from first to last in 
a remarkable degree, were the fruitage of her in- 

1 His own testimony. See also the " Eulogy of Wendell Phillips," 
by T. D. Weld, p. 19. 

8 This he gave just before his death to his intimate friend, Mrs. 
E. S. Crosby, who treasures it among her jewels. In it he marked 
two passages, which he requested should be read at his funeral, viz., 
Ps. 23 and i Cor. 15 : 12. These were so read. 

3 Mr. Phillips repeated these words to the writer in 1868, and ten 
years afterward, when his attention was called to the matter, corrob 
orated the utterance. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 31 

structions. A wise mother wisely at work fashioning 
the soul within, and the form, its shrine, without 
what usefulness quite equals this ? 

Both parents were widely and variously interested 
in affairs beyond their door-steps. John Phillips, as 
we have noted, was in public life. His wife was a 
true helpmeet. His concerns were hers. Hence 
questions and issues astir out there in the streets 
were brought into the household, and talked over 
at the fireside and around the table. Persons were 
characterized, measures were discussed, matters of 
historical moment w r ere dwelt upon, in full family 
conclave. In this way the children gained an intel 
ligent acquaintance with the outside world. The 
hearthstone was a vantage-ground from which to 
survey, in seclusion, but not in exclusion, the multi 
form life of the commonwealth. At such times, we 
may be sure, no eyes and ears were wider open than 
Wendell s ; and so he learned from the start that his 
neighborhood extended farther than just around the 
corner. 

In those days the Revolutionary tradition was 
fresh and vigorous. This has been happily called 
the native air of Wendell Phillips. 1 It marked and 
dominated his life. Several of the chief actors in the 
drama were yet on the stage Jefferson at Monti- 
cello ; John Adams just at hand, in Quincy ; while 
Elbridge Gerry sat in the Governor s chair of Mas 
sachusetts at the very moment of his birth. All 
about were the lofty and inspiring scenes immortal 
ized by these and kindred heroes. Yonder, in sight 
from his door-sill, loomed Bunker Hill. Here was 



George William Curtis s " Eulogy of Wendell Phillips," p. 5. 



32 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

the church-tower whose lantern started Paul Revere 
upon his ride. There was Winter Hill, whose can 
non-ball struck old Brattle Street church. Across 
the Common was the " Old South," dedicated to 
God by the Puritans, and to liberty by Otis and 
Warren. Within five minutes walk was Faneuil 
Hall, twice the cradle of freedom : the freedom of 
the Colonies and the freedom of the negro race in 
America ; the birthplace and waiting theatre of this 
boy s own renown. And behold ! the very elm 
under whose branches Washington first drew his 
sword. What an environment ! What an incen 
tive ! 

Moving daily among these historic associations, 
the boy, at once perceptive and receptive, learned 
to reverence the " dead but sceptred sovereigns who 
still rule our spirits from their urns." Having him 
self thrilled beneath their touch, he came to value 
them as " the normal school of politics." He voiced 
the influence of his environment, long years after 
ward, in speaking of revolutionary Boston : 

41 We had a signal prominence in those days. It was not our 
merit ; it was an accident, perhaps. But it was a great acci 
dent in our favor that the British Parliament chose Boston as the 
first and prominent object of its wrath. It was on the men of 
Boston that Lord North visited his revenge. It was our port 
that was to be shut, and its commerce annihilated. It was Sam 
Adams and John Hancock who enjoy the everlasting reward of 
being the only names excepted from the royal proclamation of 
forgiveness. 

" It was only an accident ; but it was an accident which, in 
the stirring history of the most momentous change the world 
has seen, placed Boston in the van. Naturally, therefore, in our 
streets and neighborhood came the earliest collision between 
England and the Colonies. Here Sam Adams, the ablest and 
ripast statesman God gave to the epoch, forecast those measures 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 33 

which welded thirteen colonies into one thunderbolt, and 
launched it at George III. Here Otis magnetized every 
boy into a desperate rebel. Here the fit successors of Hugh 
Peters and Knox consecrated their pulpits to the defence of that 
doctrine of the freedom and sacredness of man, which the State 
borrowed so directly from the Christian Church. The towers 
of the North Church rallied the farmers to the Lexington and 
Concord fights ; and these old walls (the Old South Church) 
echoed the people s shout when Adams brought them word that 
Governor Hutchinson surrendered and withdrew the redcoats. 
Lingering here still are the echoes of those clashing sabres and 
jingling spurs that dreamed Warren could be awed to silence. 
Otis s blood immortalizes State Street, just below where Attucks 
fell (our first martyr), and just above where zealous patriots 
made a teapot of the harbor. 

" It was a petty town of some twenty thousand inhabitants ; 
but the rays of royal indignation collected upon it served only 
to- illuminate and not to consume. Almost every one of its 
houses had a legend. Every public building hid what was 
treasonable debate, or bore bullet-marks or bloodshed evidence 
of royal displeasure. It takes a stout heart to step out of a 
crowd and risk the chances of support, when failure is death. 
The strongest, proudest, most obstinate race and kingdom on 
one side : a petty town the assailant ; its weapons, ideas ; its 
trust, God and the right ; its old-fashioned men patiently arguing 
with cannon and regiments ; blood the seal of the debate, and 
every stone, and wall, and roof, and doorway witness forever of 
the angry tyrant and sturdy victim. 

" Boston boys had reason to be thankful for their birthright. 
The great memories, noble deeds, and sacred places of the old 
town are the poetry of history and the keenest ripeners of char 
acter." l 

Such, then, was the home, such the instructions, 
and such the scenes in which were passed the earli 
est and most impressionable years of Wendell Phil 
lips. 



1 Oration at the Old South Meeting House, for its preservation. 
June I4th, 1876. 



III. 

SCHOOLING. 

To the formative influences of the home and the 
streets, Wendell Phillips superadded the best educa 
tional advantages. He was sent in his eleventh year 
to the Boston Public Latin School prolific mother 
of famous sons. This landmark of ancient Boston 
then stood on School Street, between Washington 
and Tremont, upon a portion of the ground now 
covered by the Parker House. Mr. A. B. Gould, 
an ideal pedagogue, was then and long remained 
the head-master. The school was largely attended, 
and the scholars represented the blue blood and brains 
of young America in 1822. Motley went to North 
ampton to fit for college, an institution officered, 
in part, by the historian Bancroft ; so that he and 
Phillips did not continue their camaraderie during the 
five years from 1822 to 1827 resuming it at Har 
vard. But Appleton remained as the churn of Phil 
lips. And now he met and cemented his lifelong 
friendship with Charles Sumner, who was his elder 
by nearly a year, and who was in .the class a twelve 
month ahead. Sumner, as Phillips himself testifies, 
came from a family " long prominent in Massachu 
setts," a family " noted for physical as well as intel- 



1 See Holmes s "Memoir;" also the "Correspondence of J. Lo- 
throp Motley," edited by George William Curtis, published by 
Harper & Brothers, New York, 1889. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 35 

lectual vigor." The senator that was to be em 
bodied even now the physical and intellectual traits 
of his ancestry ; but at the Latin School " he was 
a recluse and studious boy, hardly ever joining in 
any amusements or athletic games ; and this mood 
lasted through his college years." 2 

Indeed, Boston then discountenanced athletics. 
Schools and colleges existed for the cultivation of 
brain, not brawn. Now they exist for the culti 
vation of brawn, not brain. Probably, the truth lies 
in that golden mean which the classics recommend 
in medias res. Anyhow, Phillips was ahead of his 
times in this respect ; as, later, he was in other ways. 
For though never negligent of his books, he dearly 
loved athletics. He was a champion boxer and 
marksman, and fencer and oarsman, and horseman. 
Inheriting a magnificent physique, palpitating with 
health, he trampled prejudices under foot and would 
have exercise, and plenty of it. 3 His standing as 
a scholar was excellent, 4 as a result, no doubt, of 
those despised gymnastics. The curriculum 5 neces- 



1 Johnson s New Universal Cyclopcedia^ article " Sumner," by W. 
Phillips. 

a Ib. 3 Such is the united testimony of his classmates. 4 Ib. 

5 Here it is as it then stood: In Greek, Valpy s "Grammar," 
the " Delectus Sententiarum Graecarum ;" Jacobs s " Greek Reader ;" 
the " Four Gospels" and two books of Homer s " Iliad ;" in Latin, 
Adams s " Latin Grammar," " Liber Primus," " Epiteme Historiae 
Grseca?," " Vivi Romse," " Phaedri Fabulse," " Cornelius Nepos ;" 
Ovid s "Metamorphoses;" Sallust s "Catiline" and "Jugurthine 
War ;" Caesar ; Virgil ; Cicero s " Select Orations ;" the " Agricola" 
and " Germania" of Tacitus, and the "Odes" and " Epodes" of 
Horace ; in the study of mythology, Tooke s " Pantheon of the 
Heathen Gods" served as a text-book ; in arithmetic, Lacroix was 
the text-book ; in reading, Lindley Murray s " English Reader." The 
school was so large that each class was subdivided into three divisions. 



36 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

sitated diligence ; and there was head-master Gould, 
ferule in hand, to enforce attention and knock learn 
ing into unwilling heads. 

Wendell continued in School Street those habits 
~of declamation begun among the chairs at home and 
practised in Motley s garret ; but now with a larger 
audience. What first led me to observe him," 
writes a fellow-student, " and fixed him in my mem 
ory, was his elocution ; and I soon came to look for 
ward to declamation day with interest, mainly on his 
account, though many were admirable speakers. 
The pieces chosen were chiefly such as would excite 
patriotic feelings and an enthusiasm for freedom." 
Phillips himself tells us that already he "had by 
heart the classic eulogies of brave old men and 
martyrs," and carried at the end of his silver tongue 
" Greek and Roman and English history." 2 Then 
and afterward he embraced every opportunity to 
hear the " masters of assemblies :" his own father, 
Harrison Gray Otis, Edward Everett every great 
ness of the day. 

In 1825 an event occurred which convulsed the 
continent with enthusiasm the visit of Lafayette, 
When the illustrious friend of Washington landed in 
Boston the city was in a frenzy. Phillips shall tell 
us about his share in the scene in his own words, 
quoted from a charming address which he made in 
the afternoon of his career to a vast audience in the 
Music Hall, at the annual School Festival of Boston : 3 

" This is the first time for many years that I have participated 
in a school festival. I have received no invitation since 1824, 



1 " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips, " by George L. Austin, p. 29. 

2 " Speeches and Lectures, "by Wendell Phillips, p. 226. 
8 July 25th, 1865. Vide p. 344 of this volume. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 37 

when I was a little boy in a class in the Latin School, when we 
were turned out on yonder Common in a grand procession at 
nine o clock in the morning. And for what ? Not to hear fine 
music no ; but for something better than music, that thrilled 
more than eloquence a sight which should live in the memory 
forever, the best sight which Boston ever saw the welcome of 
Lafayette on his return to this country, after an absence of a 
score of years. I can boast, boys and girls, more than you. I 
can boast that these eyes have beheld the hero of three revolu 
tions, this hand has touched the right hand that held up Han 
cock and Washington. Not all this glorious celebration can 
equal that glad reception of the nation s benefactor by all that 
Boston could offer him a sight of her children. It was a long 
procession ; and, unlike other processions, we started punctually 
at the hour published. They would not let us wander about, 
and did not wish us to sit down. I there received my first lesson 
in hero-worship. I was so tired after four hours waiting, I 
could scarcely stand ; but when I saw him that glorious old 
Frenchman ! I could have stood until to-day." 

Amid such scenes and experiences five tranquil 
years of preparation were passed. The boy of ten 
was now the youth of fifteen tall, lithe, and grace 
ful as a Greek statue. Leaving the Latin School with 
an established reputation for every accomplishment 
of body and mind that suited his age, and for some 
more mature, he stepped up into the broader world 
of Harvard. This was in 1827. 

Although his home was just in sight across the 
river Charles, it was not as easy then to get to and 
from Boston and Cambridge as it is now. Besides, 
it was thought best to give Wendell the benefit of a 
college entourage. His father was dead had died 
the year after the lad was entered at the Latin 
School, in 1823. Thus the entire responsibilit}^ for 
the education and outfit in life of a large family de 
volved upon the mother. The sagacious manner in 



38 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

which she met and mastered the emergency contrib 
uted, no doubt, to give her son that respect for and 
appreciation of female ability which became one of 
his characteristic traits. But we must pity these 
two, separated now for the first time, though not for 
long. She wept on his neck, commended him to 
God, and cautioned him about his linen in the same 
breath, and told him never to forget his prayers and 
his Bible and regularly to air his room ! True 
mother and true saint ; an enchanting and common 
combination ; embodying the divine and human, and 
therefore not strangely mixing earth and heaven in 
speech and action. 

When Phillips matriculated the Rev. Dr. John T. 
Kirkland was president. Two years later, in 1829, 
Josiah Quincy succeeded him, the same Quincy who 
had divided the suffrages of Boston Avith Harrison 
Gray Otis, when Wendell s father was elected 
mayor ; a man both good and great, whose life God 
spared to a serene and honored evening of old age. 
The faculty and the students all are gone ! To read 
their names in the catalogue of 1 827 is like spelling 
the names on the weather-stained head-stones in a 
graveyard. Harvard is old enough to be mellowed 
by time. A certain pensiveness hangs around it 
and mates it with European universities dating back 
to the Middle Ages. True, youth is on the campus, 
and the dormitories and the class-rooms are popu 
lous with animation and color. Just the same, yes 
terday shadows to-day. The old clock which has 
tolled away so many generations will toll away this 
generation. 1 The grave only waits ! An historic 

1 See this thought developed by Professor Goldwin Smith, " Lec 
tures on the Study of History," p 220. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 39 

college is an isthmus separating two eternities, yet, 
like Suez, canalled to marry the oceans ; and it is 
this relation which it sustains to the past and the 
future which endows it with such influence over the 
imagination of dreamy and poetic youth. 

Phillips became intimate with President Quincy 
as intimate as was possible considering their differ 
ence in age and station. With the president s son, 
Edmund Quincy, he formed at this .time an associa 
tion which ran through both lives as veins run 
through a block of marble. 

Young Quincy was several years older than Phil 
lips ; but they got together and stayed together. 
Sumner was a Sophomore when Phillips entered the 
Freshman Class ; but in this case friendship over 
leaped the boundary of class, as in the case of Quincy 
it had of age. Now, too, Motley came to Harvard, 
and those Beacon-Hill relations were cemented 
anew. Speaking of Motley, Phillips gives interest 
ing testimony lets us behind the scenes : 

" His quickness of apprehension was wonderful. During our 
first year at college, though the youngest in the class, ne stood 
third, I think, or second in rank ; and ours was an especially 
able class. Yet to maintain this standing he neither cared nor 
needed to make any effort. Too young to feel any responsibil 
ities, and not yet awake to ambition, he became so negligent 
that he was rusticated. He came back sobered and worked 
rather more ; but with no effort for college rank thenceforward. 
In his room he had a small writing-table with a shallow drawer ; 
I have often seen it half-full of sketches, unfinished poems, solilo 
quies, a scene or two of a play, prose portraits of pet characters, 
etc. These he would read to me, though he never volunteered 
to do so ; and every now and then he burned the whole, and 
began to fill the drawer again." 1 



1 " Memoir of J. Lothrop Motley," by Oliver Wendell Holmes, p. 8. 



40 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

It is further recorded of Motley, that one day his 
tutor came into his room and found the table littered 
up with novels instead of text-books. 

" How is this ?" asked the tutor. 

4 Well," was the answer, " you see, I am pursuing 
a course of historical reading. I have now reached 
the novels of the nineteenth century. Take them in 
bulk, they are tough reading !" 

Phillips had from the start and always retained an 
intense sense of the ludicrous. These and such like 
experiences of his crony he appreciated then and 
told years later with inimitable effect. Of himself, 
however, no such stories can be related. Though 
never a hermit like Sumner, neither was he a scape 
grace like Motley. Between the two in age he was 
enough like both to win their confidence and com 
mand their respect. In college rank he stood well 
up toward the head. 2 But his interests were too 
broad and diversified for the valedictorian s crown. 
At Harvard, as in the Latin School, he gave a good 
deal of attention to athletics, and continued his box 
ing, fencing, boating, and horse-riding, becoming an 
expert in these manly accomplishments. 3 He was 
also an omnivorous reader, history and mechanics 
being his specialties. 4 His passion was horses ; in 
later life he made a personal friend of Rarey, the 
horse-tamer. 

When Phillips went to Cambridge the Rev. Dr. 
Lyman Beecher was the Jupiter of the Boston pul 
pit. Every Sunday, and often on week-day nights, 



1 " Memoir of J. Lothrop Motley," by Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
p. 9. 

2 The Rev. Edgar Buckingham, class-secretary of the Class of 1831. 

3 Ib. 4 Ib. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 4! 

he thundered and lightened in Hanover Street 
church. He shook and kindled the town. Thou 
sands throbbed under his preaching. His special 
mission was to combat Unitarianism, which then sat 
in all the high places. One day some one said to 
him : 

" Well, Dr. Beecher, how long do you think 
it will take you to destroy Unitarianism in Bos 
ton ?" 

" Humph !" was the gruff reply, " several years, 
I suppose roots and all." 

Among the many attracted to hear his discourses 
was young Phillips, whose immediate family was 
orthodox in creed. As a child he had learned his 
first lessons in theology with his mother s lap for an 
altar. Now those childish impressions were deep 
ened and confirmed by Dr. Beecher, never afterward 
to change. He passed through the experience called 
conversion. 

A personal friend asked him, not long before his\ 
death : " Mr. Phillips, did you ever consecrate your 
self to God?" 

" Yes," he answered, " when I was a boy fourteen 
years of age, in the old church at the North End, 
I heard Lyman Beecher preach on the theme, You 
belong to God ; and I went home after that service, 
threw myself on the floor in my room, with locked 
doors, and prayed, O God, I belong to Thee ; 
take what is Thine own. I ask this, that whenever 
a thing be wrong it may have no power of tempta 
tion over me ; whenever a thing be right, it may 
take no courage to do it. From that day to this it 
has been so. Whenever I have known a thing to 
be wrong, it has held no temptation. Whenever I 



42 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

have known a thing to be right, it has taken no cour 
age to do it." 

S The event here referred to occurred in 1826, a 
year previous to his matriculation. With this seri 
ousness upon him, like the halo around a saint s head 
on the canvas of the old painters, he went to col 
lege. 

Now let us stop and look at his portrait, as drawn 
by several of his classmates. 

Referring to his religious experience, the Rev. 
Dr. Edgar Buckingham remarks : 

4 The excitement of the revival gradually passed 
off that is, in a few years. But his conversion for 
quite a while made a deep impression on his com 
panions, awakening their reverence (the word is not 
too strong) for this religious boy. I remember well 
his appearance of devoutness during morning and 
evening prayers in the chapel, which many attended 
only to save their credit with the authorities. Dodd- 
ridge s Expositor Wendell bore to college in his 
Freshman year (a present, I think, from his mother, 
a new volume), to be his help in daily thought 
and prayer." 2 

Another of his classmates refers to the same ex 
perience : 

Before entering college he had been the subject 
of religious revival. Previous to that he used to 
give way to violent outbursts of temper, and his 
schoolmates would sometimes amuse themselves by 
deliberately working him into a passion. But after 

1 Evidence of Rev. O. P. Gifford, D.D., at Eighth Annual Convex 
lion of the United Societies of Christian Endeavor. Reported in the 
Golden Rule, August 15th, 1889, p. 737. 

Cited in Austin s " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," p. 38. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 43 

his conversion they could never succeed in getting 
him out of temper." 

Truly, a conversion which makes a boy master of 
himself must be genuine ! But how about other 
traits of the young collegian ? 

To my mind," writes the Rev. Dr. Bucking 
ham, " Phillips was the most beautiful person I ever 
saw handsome, indeed, in form and features ; but 
what I mean by his beauty was his grace of charac 
ter his kindly, generous manners, his brightness of 
mind, his perfect purity and whiteness of soul. His 
face was very fair, though it could not have been 
called pale ; and it had a radiance from which shone 
forth the soul that dwelt within. He was of a 
wealthy family ; and with manly beauty, with a most 
attractive face, a smile that was a benediction/ 
with manners of superior elegance, with conversa 
tion filled with the charms of literature, with biog 
raphy and history, full of refined pleasantry, with 
never a word or thought that the purest might not 
know and listen to, it was no wonder that his society 
was courted and respected by those who had wealth 
at their command, and still more by those young 
men who came from the South, It is said that he 
was proud ; that he was a born patrician. In a good 
sense of the word, he was a born patrician ; in the 
sense of a French expression, noblesse oblige, he felt 
the responsibility of his birth and education his 
responsibility to keep himself^ pure, upright, and 
good. I would not say that he never developed a 
any time anything of worldly pride also. I believe 



1 Cited by Theodore D. Weld, in his " Eulogy of Wendell Phil 
lips," p. 16. 



44 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

he did look down with scorn on that vulgarity, that 
form of professed democracy, whose virtue was to 
envy those better and purer than themselves, as well 
as loftier in position. I never knew that he scorned 
any one who was merely poor. But it happened, 
as one of the strangest of all human phenomena, that 
this young man who, in all his public life, had been 
the defender of the down-trodden and despised, was 
he especial pet, in his Junior and Senior years, in 
college, of the aristocracy in that institution. In 
deed, he had the credit of being their leader ; they 
put him up to it. The democracy of the class be 
came excited to the highest degree for reasons that 
I do not now recall, and believe I never knew (and 
I dare say there were none) and it was determined 
to put Phillips and others of his associates down. 
I think he used some of his fine scorn at that 
time. We had then a military organization, a great 
pride of ours the Harvard Washington Corps - 
and though our uniform was black coats and white 
pantaloons, and the officers had gold buttons on 
their coats, with the usual feathers, epaulets, and 
sashes, yet, in my mind then, no company, how 
ever richly uniformed, made a handsomer appear 
ance. When the time came for the election of officers 
by the class to which we belonged, a great struggle 
took place. It ended in a compromise. Phillips 
was not chosen captain. A young man from the 
South, yet not. of the acknowledged aristocracy a 
young man of herculean stature and proportions, one 
who had never taken sides in this social quarrel, and 
whom the whole college would have said was prop 
erly the man for the place was chosen ; and Phillips 
became one of the highest officers lieutenant, I 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 45 

think. I never asked him what he learned about 
Southern pride and assumption in those days. But^ 
was it not singular that, from having- been the most \ 
admired companion and most ardent champion of ) 
Southern men in his youth, he should have become / 
in after years an opponent of Southern principles, j 
than whom there has been none more powerful in I 
the country ?" <r 

Hear, next, what his room-mate, the Rev. John 
Tappen Pierce, of Illinois, has to say : 

" Our acquaintance began at Harvard, in 1827, 
when we first met to be examined. I was then a lad 
of fifteen, but two weeks younger than Phillips. 
Though I had never seen him before I was drawn to 
him by irresistible attraction, and I always found 
him true as magnet to steel. I had engaged a room 
mate, otherwise we should have roomed together 
the first year ; but, just before entering the Sopho 
more Class in 1828, Phillips came to my room and 
proposed our partnership, which I joyfully accepted ; 
and here began our life intimacy, a sweet and en 
during tie. 

I will speak first of his moral traits. He never 
said or did anything unbecoming to Christian char 
acter. What President Kirkland said in his Life of 
Fisher Ames was eminently true of Phillips : He 
needed not the sting of guilt to make him virtuous. 
His character shone conspicuous. He was above 
pretence a sincere, conscientious, devoted friend. 
He had a deep love for all that was true and honor 
able ; always detested a mean action. His Bible 
was always open on the centre-table. His character 



1 Austin s ^ Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," pp. 36, 38 sq. 



46 WENDELL HIILLIPS. 

was perfectly transparent ; there were no subter 
fuges, no pretences about him. He was known by 
all to be just what he seemed. 

" Second, his social traits : He was the favorite 
of the class. If any class honor was to be conferred, 
who so likely to have it as he ? Nor would any dis 
pute his claim. Though very modest in his self-esti 
mate, every one willingly yielded him the palm. 
Upon the death of a valued classmate, Thompson, 
none but Phillips must pronounce the eulogy. 

Third : His standard as a scholar was among 
the first in a large class. This is saying not a little, 
when we recall the names of Motley, the historian ; 
Simmons, the distinguished orator ; Ames, United 
States charg^ d affaires ; McKean, a true son of 
genius ; the Rev. Dr. Morrison, late editor of the 
Unitarian Review ; Mayor Shurtleff and Dr. Shat- 
tuck, of Boston ; Pickering, the Boston lawyer ; 
Judge Darrell, of New Orleans ; Joseph Williams, 
Lieutenant-Governor of Michigan and president of 
a State college there. 

"As an orator Phillips took the highest stand of 
any graduate of our day. I never knew him to fail 
in anything or hesitate in a recitation. In mathe 
matics he was facile princeps ; natural and moral 
philosophy, history, the ancient languages in all 
pre-eminent ; equally good in all branches." 

The Rev. Dr. Morrison, to whom Mr. Pierce re 
fers in the above extract, testifies as follows : 
\ " " Wendell Phillips in college and Wendell Phillips 
\six years after were entirely different men. In col- 
Plege he was the proud leader of the aristocracy. 
[From what he then was no one could possibly pre 
dict what he afterward became, as the defender and 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 47 

personal friend of the helpless and despised. There 
was always the same grace and dignity of personal 
bearing, the same remarkable power of eloquence, 
whether in extempore debate or studied declamation. 
It was a great treat to hear him declaim as a college 
exercise. He was always studying remarkable pas 
sages, as an exercise in composition, and to secure 
the most expressive forms of language. In this he 
did not accept the aid of teachers. His method was / 
his own. ** 

" His classmates would have selected him as one 
born to be a power among men. No other student 
in those days could compare with him in that re 
spect. He was already distinguished for his unsul 
lied purity of character. But it was not easy to un- 
derstand how this aristocratic leader of a privileged 
class could cast in his lot with the most despised of 
his race. The simple and true explanation is that a 
new thought had come in as the central motive of 
his life. His attention was drawn to the great na 
tional curse and crime of his day, and he gave him| 
self heart and soul to the cause. 1 

While his rhetorical genius made him the easy 
master of the college platform, his social qualities 
pushed him into leadership in the numerous societies 
of Harvard. He was a member of the " Phi Beta 
Kappa," by virtue of his .scholarship that exclusive 
brotherhood being confined to the first sixteen in 
each class. He was president of the " Porcellian," 
of the " Hasty-Pudding Club," and of the " Gentle 
man s Club" circles which admitted only the jett- 
nesse dorce. At this time there was nothing of the 



1 Vide Weld s " Eulogy," pp. 14. 



48 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 



dical about him hardly a flavor of democracy. 
|He seemed to be the predestined leader of American 
I conservatism, the inevitable champion of class dis 
tinctions and elegant leisure. Through these years 
he suggests the Cavalier, never the Puritan Pha 
raoh, not Moses. He was so far from radicalism 
that his maiden speech at college was made against 
the proposed establishment of a temperance society 
in his class, and he killed it ! 

One day Phillips went into Boston to attend a 
Whig meeting in Faneuil Hall. It was during the 
Presidential campaign of 1828, when Adams was 
running against Jackson. As the student ascended 
the stairs he heard for the first time the powerful, 
metallic voice of Daniel Webster arguing in favor of 
the tariff ; not very musical, he thought, as Clay s 
was, or Harrison Gray Otis s, but full of strength. 
As he entered the hall and listened he speedily de 
tected that "his statement was argument." After 
this he frequently heard Webster in the courts and 
at political gatherings always with admiration for 
his gifts. The great expounder, he found, was pon 
derous, almost heavy on ordinary occasions. It 
took a crisis to rouse him then he was sublime. 1 

Mr. Phillips was graduated in 1831, with a class 
which numbered sixty-five members. W T hatnext? 2 



1 " Recollections of Wendell Phillips," by F. B. Sanborn (MS.). 

2 Austin says, in his " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," p. 34 : 
" During his college life Mr. Phillips rarely read speeches, or even 
had any taste for oratory." This is an evident error, and is contra 
dicted by the concurrent testimony of all his classmates, as witness the 
authorities cited, 



IV. 

THE YOUNG LAWYER. 

THE orthodox steps in the upward course of a 
well-born and rich young Bostonian, fifty years ago, 
were : First, the Public Latin School ; next Harvard 
College ; and then the Harvard Law School. Two 
of these steps Phillips had already taken ; in the au 
tumn of 1831 he took the third, and seated himself 
to be instructed by Judge Story a new Paul at the 
feet of a modern Gamaliel. Meantime, his college 
classmates were scattered everywhither most of 
them dismissed into oblivion ; for many graduates 
when they get a diploma only add a sheepskin to 
a sheep s-head, and provoke the spectators to cry 
" Bah !" Some of the Class of 33, however, drew 
out of the crowd of nonentities. Of those mentioned 
in these pages Appleton sauntered off to a life of 
belles - lettres enjoyment literary gormandism. 
Motley sailed away to continue his studies in Berlin 
and Gottingen, and by and by to write himself into 
immortality. Sumner went, with Phillips, to the 
Harvard Law School, where the two continued and 
increased their intimacy. 

Judge Story was a legal luminary of the first mag 
nitude the peer of Marshall. His students wor 
shipped him. Both Phillips and Sumner shared in 
this feeling, and counted it as chief among their 
privileges that they might sit on his benches. The 



5O WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

school was divided into three classes the Senior, 
Middle, and Junior ; and the course covered three 
years. In those early days the attendance was com 
paratively small, the whole number of students being 
forty in 1833. This was a happy circumstance for 
them because they were individualized. Each re 
ceived a fair share of the preceptor s personal atten 
tion, and the instruction took the form of a recitation 
rather than of a lecture, as now. The progress was 
correspondingly rapid ; while the relations of the 
students to the professors and to one another were 
close and delightful. Phillips at once took and main 
tained a high rank ; though he did not permit his 
outside interests to dwarf by disuse. The practice 
of athletics was rigidly adhered to, while his miscel 
laneous reading broadened and deepened. His one 
regret at this time was that his studies continued to 
separate him from his widowed mother, for the Law 
School was at Cambridge. But he knew her heart 
and prayers were with him, and both got consola 
tion from frequent, if brief meetings. 

He was especially fond of those aspects and prin 
ciples of the law which presented it as a science, as 
the source and seat of human justice. The saying 
of Coke made a great impression on him, that " rea 
son is the life of the law ; nay, the common law itself 
is nothing else but reason ;" and he would have 
agreed with Froude, that " our human laws are, or 
should be, but the copies of the eternal laws, so far 
as we can read them." a But while particularly at 
tracted *tOAvard legal philosophy, Phillips was not 
lacking in the grasp of details, nor reluctant to sub- 



1 First Institute. 2 " Short Studies in Great Subjects," " Calvinism. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. $1 

ject himself to the drudgery incidental to the mas 
tery of forms and statutes. 1 He did not find any 
department of the study dry. 2 How could he, when 
the fire of a mind like Story s kindled it ? 

In a characteristic passage Mr. George William 
Curtis paints Wendell Phillips as his study of the 
law proceeded : " Doubtless the sirens sang to him, 
as to the noble youth of every country and time. 
If, musing over Coke and Blackstone, in the full 
consciousness of ample powers and of fortunate op 
portunities, he sometimes forecast the future, he saw 
himself succeeding Fisher Ames, and Harrison Gray 
Otis, and Daniel Webster, rising from the bar to the 
Legislature, from the Legislature to the Senate; 
from the Senate who knew whither ? the idol of 
society, the applauded orator, the brilliant champion 
of the elegant repose and the cultivated conserva-l 
tism of Massachusetts. The delight of social ease,| 
the refined enjoyment of taste in letters and art, 
opulent leisure, professional distinction, gratified 
ambition all these came and whispered to the young 
student. And it is the force that can tranquilly put 
aside such blandishments with a -smile, and accept 
alienation, qutlaw_ry, ignominy and apparent defeat^ 
11 need be, nqiflss than the courage which grapples 
with poverty and outward hardship? and climbs over 
them to worldly prosperity, which is the test of the 
finest manhood. Only he who knows the worth of 
what he renounces gains the true blessing of renun 
ciation." 3 

At this hour, however, only the anticipations were 

1 The remark of Judge Hopkinson, his classmate. 

9 /., Sumner s Testimony also. 

8 " Eulogy of Wendell Phillips," pp. 6, 7. 



52 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

present the renunciation was hidden behind the 
impenetrable veil of futurity. 

Three years, exactly, after the commencement of 
his legal course, Phillips found himself in the pos 
session of his professional degree, viz., in September, 
1834. With the blessing of Judge Story, who fore 
told for him an unprecedented career (which he had, 
but in a very different sense from Story s prophecy), 
and with the even more valued benediction of his 
mother, he was admitted to the bar. 

Soon after this important event, he went away on 
a short tour, travelling as far as Philadelphia. Here, 
at a fashionable boarding-house, whither he had 
gone as the escort of a bevy of ladies, he met Tre- 
lawny, the English friend of Byron and Shelley. 
Trelawny was there in attendance upon Mrs. Fanny 
Kemble Butler, the leading actress of the day, of 
whom he professed to be an admirer. He had been 
in South Carolina, at the house of the lady s hus 
band, Pierce Butler, and was on his way to Niagara. 
The Englishman, who had learned, or unlearned, 
his morality in the clubs of Pall Mall and with the 
brace of scapegrace poets with whom he had asso 
ciated on the Continent, shocked the young Puritan 
by the open expression of atrocious sentiments re 
specting women boasting of his success with them, 
and declaring that no woman ought to live beyond 
the age of twenty. 1 

Facing homeward, Phillips stopped for a few days 
in New York. In some way he made the acquaint 
ance of Aaron Burr during his tarry. The slayer of 
Hamilton was exceedingly polite and showed him 

1 " Recollections of Wendell Phillips," by F. B. Sanborn (MS.). 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 53 

the sights. Soon after his return Burr visited Bos 
ton. Phillips called on him at the Tremont Hotel, 
and offered to act the part of a cicerone. Among 
other places they went to the Athenaeum, then on 
Pearl Street, to see the pictures and look at the 
library. As they walked down the hall, between 
the alcoves, Phillips caught sight of a bust of Ham 
ilton, one of the ornaments of the library, which he 
had forgotten was there. He tried on some pretext 
to draw Burr in another direction ; but he, too, had 
seen the bust and marched straight up to it. He 
stood facing it for a moment, then turned and said : 
" A remarkable man a very remarkable man." 
Upon this he wheeled on both heels in military style 
and moved on again with great composure. 1 

Mr. Phillips s first public honor his very earliest 
recognition as an orator came from New Bedford, 
whose authorities, just after his graduation, invited 
him to deliver the Fourth of July address. The late 
Charles T. Congdon, an eminent journalist, paints 
a pen-portrait of the scene : 

When Phillips stood up in the pulpit I thought 
him the handsomest man I had ever seen. When 
he began to speak, his elocution seemed the most 
perfect to which I had ever listened, and I was sure 
that the orations of Cicero were given with smaller 
effect. Even then the future orator of the Abolition 
ists was an admirable speaker ; nor did he, though 
scarcely past his majority, lack the grace and force 
of language with which the whole country has since 
become familiar." 2 



1 " Recollections of Wendell Phillips," by F. B. Sanborn (MS.). 
4 " Recollections of a Journalist." 



54 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Desiring to prepare himself thoroughly before 
engaging in practice, the young lawyer went from 
Boston to Lowell, and entered the office of Thomas 
(afterward Judge) Hopkinson ; his purpose being to 
familiarize himself with the code and with technical 
methods. Mr. Hopkinson had been his classmate 
at the Law School, but was older. He made both 
fame and money from the start, and welcomed the 
brilliant Bostonian with both hands outstretched. 
Fain would he have kept him in Lowell and admitted 
him into partnership, 1 but the pet of Judge Story 
had other plans. After a few months of persistent 
toil his object was accomplished, and he returned to 
Boston, not, however, before meeting and beginning 
an acquaintance with that singular man, Benjamin 
F. Butler, then an errand boy in a neighboring law 
office. 2 

And now at last Wendell Phillips, with all these 
years of diligent preparation behind him, with a 
mind which is a teeming storehouse of accumulated 
material manipulated by faculties rigorously trained, 
with a body which is a model of symmetry and 
strength, with the manners of a prince, genius in his 
face and honey on his lips, opens his office, hangs 
out his sign, 3 puts up his library, and cries, 
"Ready !" 

How did he get on ? 

Here we must stop to notice and refute a singular 

misunderstanding. One of his biographers and one 

A) of his eulogists have given wide currency to the 

v/ 

1 Letter of Judge Hopkinson, in possession of the writer. 

2 Vide the Letter of Benjamin F. Butler in Boston Globe, February 
4th, 1884. 

3 George L. Austin, in his " Life of Wendell Phillips," p. 44. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 55 

statement that the young lawyer met with no suc 
cess that he waited in that spick-and-span office 
" for clients who did not come." No proof is ad 
duced of this unlikely assertion, save, in one case, 
the hazy recollection of an aged friend of his younger 
days. On the other hand, we have the probabilities 
of the case, which are overwhelmingly contradictory 
of this mistake. With his position, acknowledged 
ability and address, how could he fail to capture a 
practice ? But, better still, we have the testimony 
of Mr. Phillips himself. " He often," writes a lady 
who was much in his family, and who knew him, 
perhaps, better than any other person save his wife, 
" spoke to me of his practice and the nature of it. 
Very much, he said, was office work drawing up 
legal papers, wills, etc. He would sometimes say, 
with a smile, he did better then as a young lawyer 
than most young men do to-day upon entering the 
profession. Those two opening years I paid all 
my expenses, and few do it now. 

To the same effect speaks Mr. Sumner, who was 
perfectly familiar with the facts, and who declared, 
not long before his death, that 4< when Mr. Phillips 
became an Abolitionist he withdrew from the roll of 
Massachusetts lawyers the name of the greatest." 3 

Mr. A. H. Grimke, too, a learned and eloquent 
colored man, writes that Mr. Phillips himself in 
formed him that his practice was extensive and suc 
cessful. 4 

Nobody would be more likely to possess informa- 

1 George William Curtis, in his " Eulogy," p. 8. 

2 Mrs. William Sumner Crosby, quoted in the " Eulogy of W, 
Phillips," by Theodore D. Weld, p. 19. 

8 lb. * Ib. 



$6 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

tion on this point than Mr. Phillips s old friend and 
coworker, James Redpath, who compiled his vol 
ume of " Speeches and Lectures," and he says, in 
the last edition of that volume, in his biographical 
notice : "A large and increasing practice so occu 
pied his time that he forgot all else. In the trial of 
cases at the bar he was training his eloquence, and 
before juries he was modulating that voice so soon 
to. thrill humanity." 

We may be sure, therefore, that it was not because 
he was wearied from " waiting for clients who did 
not come," that Wendell Phillips soon took down his 
sign and closed his office. Future chapters will dis 
close the reason. 



See the volume itself. 



V. 

THE MARTYR AGE. 

THE afternoon of October 2ist, 1835, was charm 
ing, the air balmy, with a touch of tonic in it. Wen 
dell Phillips sat beside an open window in his office 
on Court Street reading. Suddenly his attention 
was attracted by shoutings angry, menacing, pro 
fane accompanied by the tramp of hurrying feet 
along the sidewalk. The young lawyer rose and 
leaned over the window-sill. He saw a crowd half 
a block away on Washington Street. Evidently 
they were acting under great excitement. What 
was the matter ? Leaving the window he put on his 
hat and sallied forth. Presently he was in the midst 
of the crowd. He found it a mob. They were con 
fronting the Anti-Slavery office at the head of Wash 
ington Street, while four or five thousand gesticulat 
ing, vociferating men were trying to push their way 
up the narrow stairs and into the hall, which was up 
two flights. 

Mr. Phillips stood and watched. Now he sees the 
mayor (Theodore Lyman) come on the scene. He 
hears him vainly beseech the people to disperse, in 
stead of commanding them to do so. In a moment 
the mayor disappears ; he has gone into the build 
ing. Now some thirty women, pale but composed, 
come down the stairs and march in procession along 
the street and so away amid the hoots and insults 



58 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

of the rabble. Among these brave ladies is one des 
tined to become Mrs. Wendell Phillips, 1 though as 
yet they have not consciously met. 

But look yonder ! A man bare-headed, with a rope 
about his waist, his clothing torn and bedraggled, 
but with the erect head, calm face, and flashing eyes 
of a martyr going to the stake, 2 is dragged toward 
the City Hall, 3 which is just at hand. " Kill him !" 
" Lynch him !" " Hang the Abolitionist !" these ex 
clamations are hurled at the composed prisoner as 
though they had been missiles. 

" Who is that?" asks Mr. Phillips. 
That?" is the answer of a bystander. " Why, 
that s Garrison, the d d Abolitionist. They are 
going ta hang him." 

The young man sees Colonel John C. Park, the 
commander of the Boston regiment, of which he is 
himself a member. Approaching him, he says : 
" Colonel, why doesn t the mayor call for the guns ? 
This is outrageous !" 

Why," retorts the officer, " don t you see that 
the regiment is in the mob ?" 4 

Profoundly astonished he observes this fact, and 
further notices that the mob is composed of " gentle 
men of property and standing," his friends and asso 
ciates on Beacon Hill ! 5 A mob in broadcloth ! 
Being now shut out from further observations of the 



1 Vide " William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii., p. 12, 
note. 

8 The remark of Charles Sprague, the banker-poet, quoted in z/>., 

p. 22. 

:5 /.. p. 23. 

4 7l>., p. 32. See Phillips s " Speeches and Lectures," p. 213. 
6 /^, P- 33- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 59 

scene by the intervening multitude, and, indeed, 
supposing that the authorities would keep Mr. Gar 
rison in the City Hall until it should be safe for him 
to venture to his home, Mr. Phillips walked slowly 
back to his office in deep thought. 

On the morrow he learned that he had not seen 
the drama through ; that Mr. Garrison had been 
new-clad in borrowed raiment in the mayor s room, 
hurried into a hack and, at the risk of his life, sent 
off to jail as a disturber of the peace, while the mob- 
ocrats were permitted to saunter off without any at 
tempt at their arrest ! 1 He also discovered from 
the newspapers that the occasion of the riot had been 
a meeting of the " Boston Female Anti-Slavery 
Society." Here, too, he found that Mayor Lyman 
played an opera-bouffe part, turning the ladies (noble 
women, graced with manifold accomplishments) out- 
of-doors instead of the rioters ; contributing to, not 
resisting, the disgrace of trampling upon the dearest 
right of liberty free speech. Most surprising of 
all, the press of the city, with hardly an exception, 
extolled the mob and gloried in the shame ! Him 
self a member of the bar, trained to feel that there 
was more force in the writ of a constable than in the 
bayonet of a soldier, supposing that he lived under 
the reign of law rather than mob violence, he was 
rudely awakened from these pleasant dreams to real 
ize the fact that, in the country of which he was a 
proud citizen, an unpopular minority had no rights 
which the State was bound to respect, that law was 
not worth the parchment on which it was engrossed 
when it stood in the way of popular prejudice. It 



Phillips s " Speeches and Lectures," p. 216. 



6O WENDELL PHILLIPS. 



U 



_was his first, but by no means his last lesson in the 
essential weakness and limitation of republican gov- 
rnment. 

And now, at the moment when Wendell Phillips s 
attention was first practically drawn to the momen 
tous issue, we pause to outline the state of the popu 
lar mind on the question of slavery. 

The patriots and sages who created the United 
States were, almost without exception, opposed to 
slavery. Many of them were practical Abolitionists 
Washington and Patrick Henry, for instance, freed 
their slaves. Nevertheless they recognized slavery 
as an existing institution. They believed it would 
eventually die ; it was already dead in the North. 
But meantime they protected it against an uprising 
on the part of the slaves by the insurrectionary guar 
antee of the Constitution. They foisted into that 
fundamental document the three-fifths slave basis of 
representation, and thus unwittingly gave the task 
masters a powerful political motive for retaining 
slavery. And they agreed that the accursed slave- 
trade should continue in full blast for twenty years 
from the date of the adoption of the instrument. 
These were three sops to Cerberus. What did they 
matter ? Were not the republican idea, the laws of 
trade, the voice of religion against the curse ? The 
very doctrine of equality, which was the right hand 
of the Constitution, would must sooner or later, 
smite the system into the grave. So they reasoned. 
Mistaken men ! " He needs a long spoon," says the 
proverb, " who sups with the devil." Referring to 
this error, Mr. Phillips said : " God gives manhood 
but one clew to success equal and exact justice ; 
that He guarantees shall be always expediency. De- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 6l 

viate one hair s breadth plant only the tiniest seed 
of concession you know not how many and tall 
branches of mischief shall grow therefrom. 

For a time, however, all went well. Randolph 
pronounced slavery "a volcano in full operation." 
Abolition societies sprang up everywhere. Frank 
lin, Rush, and their compeers were glad and proud 
to act as their presidents. Slavery stood cap in hand 
and begged leave to be. Its tone was apologetic. 

Presently the scene changed. In an evil hour 
" the devil hovered over Charleston with a hand 
ful of cotton-seed (again we quote Mr. Phillips). 
Dropped into sea-island soil and touched by the 
magic of Massachusetts brains (referring to Eli Whit 
ney s invention of the cotton-gin, which instantly 
made the culture of cotton cheap and profitable), it 
poisoned the atmosphere. That cotton fibre was a 
rod of empire such as Caesar never wielded. It fat 
tened into obedience pulpit and rostrum, court, 
market-place, and college, and leashed New York 
and Philadelphia to its chair of State. In 1787 slave 
property, worth, perhaps, two hundred millions of 
dollars, strengthened by the sympathy of all other 
capital, was a mighty power. It was the Rothschild 
of the State. The Constitution, -by its three-fifths 
slave basis, made slave-holders an order of nobles. 
This was the house of Hapsburg joining hands with 
the house of Rothschild. Prejudice of race was the 
third strand of the cable, bitter and potent as Catho 
lic ever bore Huguenot, or Hungary ever spit on 
Moslem. This fearful trinity won to its side that 
mysterious omnipotence called Fashion a power 



" Speeches and Lectures," p. 377. 



62 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

which, without concerted action, without thought, 
law, or religion on its side, seems stronger than 
them all. Such was slavery. In its presence the 
North knelt and whispered. . When slavery could 
not bully, it bubbled its victim." 1 
/In these circumstances the early repugnance to 
ythe " peculiar institution" began to fade away. 
Those Abolition societies one by one disbanded. 
Business, quickened by the impulse which came 
from the gigantic traffic in cotton, stifled conscience 
in order to make money. Thus the great centres 
of trade, from New Orleans to Boston, were bribed 
into complicity. Society, borrowing its tone from 
wealth, spread its screen over human bondage. Law 
soon found or made precedents and sanctions, for 
did not a fat retainer jingle in its hands ? The pulpit 
opened the Bible and turned back to the Book of 
Genesis for a scriptural warrant, in obedience to 
the demand of the slavery-infected pews. Ah, it 
was not slavery that was dying, as the fathers 
dreamed, it was anti-slavery ! The South, which 
began by being apologetic, now reversed the role 
and arrogantly commanded, while the North became 
abject. 

Serfdom in Russia was dreadful. Bondage in 
Brazil was wicked it was at a good, salt-sea dis 
tance. But slavery in America was a necessity 
a commercial, political, social, religious necessity, 
which let any one gainsay at his peril ! Here it was 
entirely proper to knock men down under the ham 
mer of the auctioneer, whip women to prostitution, 
and sell babies by the pound. There was money in 



" Speeches and Lectures," p. 377. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 63 

it. Traffic in human flesh ! Why, ask the minister 
if Abraham did not own slaves, and if Paul did not 
return the fugitive Onesimus ? 

Such was the strangely altered condition of the 
public mind when, in the year 1829, suddenly uprose 
a young man who new-voiced the testimony of the 
fathers against slavery, and did it with an emphasis 
all his own. Who was he ? His name was William 
Lloyd Garrison. Born in Newburyport, in Massa 
chusetts, in 1805, ms earlier years were passed as a 
printer s apprentice. He had a genius for ethics, 
and soon began to write for his master s journal, 
the Newburyport Herald, upon current, moral, and 
political questions, which he did acceptably. Grad 
uating from this printing-office, his high school and 
college, he started a newspaper in his native town, 
the Free Press, which gasped through a few issues 
and then died. Mr. Garrison made his way to Bos 
ton and tried again, the National Philantliropist being 
the title of his venture. It was the first journal ever 
established as the champion of total abstinence. 
Here he met Benjamin Lundy, a middle-aged Quaker 
and a moral hero, who, at his own cost, was pub 
lishing in Baltimore, in slave- holding Maryland, a 
small monthly called the Genius of Universal Eman 
cipation, then the only distinctively anti-slavery peri 
odical in America. 1 Mr. Lundy had come to Bos 
ton to solicit subscribers and to raise funds for the 
prosecution of his unequal war. These two men 
recognized in one another a kindred spirit, and Mr. 
Garrison s attention was now explicitly directed to 
the question of slavery. Soon after the young Mas- 



Johnson s New Universal Cyclopaedia, article "Lundy." 



64 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

sachusetts editor went to Bennington, in Vermont, 
to edit the village newspaper there (the Journal of the 
Times] in support of John Quincy Adams for the 
Presidency. Now he began to discuss slavery in 
earnest. Mr. Lundy again joined him while thus 
engaged and plead eo. with him to unite in the publi 
cation of the Baltimore organ. This he did in 1829. 
"""The partners did not agree in their views. Mr. 
Lundy was a gradual emancipationist, and favored 
the colonization of the slaves just as fast as they 
should be freed. Mr. Garrison, with intuitive sa 
gacity, saw the absurdity and impossibility of this 
scheme in his first study of the problem, and hit at 
once by a stroke of genius upon the only basis on 
which the moral war could be waged, viz., imme 
diate and unconditional emancipation. 2 He reasoned 
thus : Is slavery wrong anywhere ? Then it is 
wrong everywhere. Is it wrong for a day ? Then 
it is wrong for a year wrong to the end of time. 
Is the wrongdoer bound to do right anywhere and 
at any time ? Then he is bound to do right every 
where and instantly. So he hit upon his talisman 
and coined his war-cry. 

But how, with their different views, could these 
two edit the same paper ? Mr. Lundy proposed 
that each of them should sign his own contributions 
and feel free to publish his own doctrine. Thus the 
Genius of Universal Emancipation, like Cowper s Or 
ator Puff, had two tones to its voice. One was a 
tone of thunder, while the other was the tone of a 



1 These statements are summarized from " William Lloyd Garrison, 
by his sons, vol. i., pp. 36-137. 

2 See Wendell Phillips s " Eulogy of Garrison," published by Lee 
& Shepard, Boston. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 65 

zephyr. What was the result ? Mr. Lundy s teach 
ings had no result. Even Baltimore, the centre of 
the domestic slave-trade, gave no heed to his mild 
remonstrances. It was like bombarding Gibraltar 
with cologne water. When Mr. Garrison spoke the 
city was stirred as by an earthquake. He was 
speedily thrown into jail. At the end of forty-nine 
days his fine and bill of costs (he had been tried and 
found guilty of libel for denouncing a certain Mr. 
Todd for conducting an interstate slave-trade) were 
paid by Arthur Tappan, 1 of New York, an eminent 
merchant, then a colonizationist, but known soon 
after as among the most active of Abolitionists ; and 
the victim of free speech was set at liberty. 

This experience taught Mr. Garrison that he had 
selected the wrong scene for his crusade ; that a 
preliminary work needed to be done before slavery 
could be successfully assailed ; that the right to dis- ./ 
cuss the question must be first established. Free 
speech was now deemed treason by the State and 
condemned as heresy by the Church. Where should 
this central truth of liberty be vindicated ? Mani 
festly not in the midst of coffle-gangs and slave-pens, 
where his voice would be drowned by the rattle of 
shackles and the machinery of oppression in thunder 
ous operation. Hence, dissolving his partnership 
with Mr. Lundy, he set out upon a prospecting tour. 
In giving his experience, he wrote : 

" Every place that I visited gave fresh evidence 
of the fact that a greater revolution in public senti 
ment was to be effected in the free States (and partic 
ularly in New England) than at the South. I found 



" William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. i., p. 190. 



66 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

contempt more bitter, opposition more active, de 
traction more relentless, prejudices more stubborn, 
and apathy more frozen than among slave-holders 
themselves. Of course there were individual ex 
ceptions to the contrary. This state of things af 
flicted, but did not dishearten me. I determined, at 
every hazard, to lift up the standard of emancipation 
in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill, 
and in the birthplace of liberty." l 

Accordingly he returned to Boston and established 
the Liberator? This was in 1831. Supposing that 
he would have a certain ally in the churches if he 
could but win them to consider the question of 
slavery, Mr. Garrison became an itinerant mission 
ary and waited upon clergyman after clergyman. 
Being of the orthodox faith in those days, he began 
with the Rev. Dr Lyman Beecher. 

" No," said the divine, with a shake of the head ; 
" I have too many irons in the fire already. " 

Then," was the solemn reply, " you had better 
take all the rest out and put this in." 

The truth is, that Dr. Beecher was a colonization- 
ist. He preached immediate repentance to sinners, 
with a caveat in the case of slavery. Of all sug 
gested remedies for slavery colonization was the 
most preposterous. All the shipping of the world 
would not have sufficed to ferry the slaves back to 
Africa. And had that been possible, what hope was 
there that the masters would consent, or if they did, 
that the slaves would go ? The conviction is irre- 



" Garrison and his Times," by O. Johnson, pp. 41, 42. 

2 lb., p. 50. " William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. i., 
p. 219. 

3 " Garrison and his Times," p. 44. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 67 

sistible that many consciences, pinched by a sense 
of the sin of slavery, but unwilling to accept the 
only honest and adequate remedy, salved their aching 
with this fantasy. As regards Dr. Lyman Beecher, 
he did make vicarious atonement by the gift to Anti- 
Slavery, later on, of his son, Henry Ward Beecher, 
whose tongue became like the stone in David s sling 
to smite the Goliath-evil ; and of his daughter, Har 
riet Beecher Stowe, whose pen impaled it. The old 
man s loins were wiser than his head ! 

From Dr. Beecher, Mr. Garrison went to the 
Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing, the chief of the 
Unitarians, with no greater success. Dr. Channing 
sympathized, but would not act. Then he visited 
Jeremiah Evarts, the famous Secretary of the 
4< American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
Missions," and an able champion of the Indians. 
But he considered that there was a great difference 
between red and black. He admired the one color 
and disliked the other. Besides, many of the Cher- 
okees and Choctaws were themselves slave-holders ! 

Surprised but not dismayed, the editor of the 
Liberator continued his Diogenes-quest for an honest 
man. He flashed his lantern through the thick dark 
ness of Boston, of Massachusetts, of New England 
vainly ! Or if he met with any success, the excep 
tions were so few and so obscure that they only 
established the rule of indifference that deepened 
into vicious hostility. The clergy were against 
slavery in the abstract, but were clear that it ought 
not to be interfered with at the South. Abraham 
and Onesimus were constantly flung into the young 



1 "Garrison and his Times," by O. Johnson, pp. 45, 46. 



68 WEND7CLL THILLIPS. 

Abolitionist s face. This chapter in the history of 
American Christianity is fitted to wring tears from 
the eyes of angels. It was the age of the reign of 
Satan in the Kingdom of God. Behold an inherent 
defect in the voluntary system, which puts the pulpit 
at the mercy of the pews, and makes it martyrdom 
for the minister to preach what the parish disallows. 

Mr. Garrison next tried the Quakers, moved to it, 
perhaps, by his old relations with Mr. Lundy. They 
had been the immemorial friends of the oppressed, 
for had not the iron entered their own souls ? But 
now they were become rich and respectable. They 
were the sharpest of traders, and their greed choked 
their consciences. Their ears were stuffed with cot 
ton so that they could not hear the sighs of the 
bondmen. 

There was a time, as some one has said, when one 
Quaker was enough to shake the country for twenty 
miles around ; but now it required the country for 
twenty miles around to shake one Quaker ! 1 There 
were some bright exceptions among them, as among 
the other sects. John G. Whittier was one. He 
had already attuned his harp for freedom, and begun 
to sing a race into liberty and himself into immor 
tality. Arnold Buffum, of Lynn, in Massachusetts, 
was another, and he became the first President of the 
first Anti-Slavery Society in America that was es 
tablished on the principle of immediate emancipa 
tion. 3 There were others less well known. 

" Well, Perez, I hope thee s done running after 
the Abolitionists," said a high-seat friend to one of 



" Garrison and his Times," by Oliver Johnson, p. 21. 
2 /*., p. 94. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 69 

his humbler brethren. Verily, I have," returned 
Perez ; "I ve caught up with and gone just a little 
ahead of em !" * 

Meantime the Liberator continued to appear, and 
was supported as miraculously as was Elijah in the 
famine. How the money came or was to come God 
only knew. The heroic editor lived for many 
months on faith, and such material provender as he 
could procure from a neighboring bakery. 2 The 
office was in a garret. Everything about it," re 
marks Oliver Johnson, an eye-witness of and partici 
pator in the experience, " had an aspect of slovenly 
decay, and Harrison Gray Otis well characterized it 
as an obscure hole 

Yet there the freedom of a race began. 

The dingy walls ; the small windows bespattered 
with printers ink ; the press standing in one corner, 
the composing stands opposite ; the long editorial 
and mailing table, covered with newspapers ; the 
bed of the editor and publisher on the floor all 
these make a picture never to be forgotten." 3 

The publication of the sheet which issued from 
these sorry quarters made a sensation. Each week 
its appearance was an event. Boston at the outset 
shook with laughter. It was a new edition of " Don 
Quixote." The South recognized the danger at 
once. This voice was like its own resolute, com 
manding the only voice its instinct made it fear. 
Here were conviction, indomitable will and courage 
never to submit nor yield. 



" Garrison and his Times," by Oliver Johnson, p. 97. 
2 /<$., p. 51. 3 /^ pp< 



/O WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

In condemning slavery as a sin ; in demanding 
that it be repented of and forsaken immediately and 
unconditionally because sinful ; in asserting the 
humanity of the negro and his consequent fitness for 
freedom (a fact which the whole country discred 
ited, holding that a " nigger" was nothing but a 
type of cattle an impious notion which slavery had 
spawned) ; in speaking right out on these points, 
with the directness and emphasis of Nathan when 
he said to the royal transgressor, "Thou art the 
man !" Mr. Garrison made the Liberator a spear of 
Ithuriel, whose touch transformed slave-holders into 
man-stealers and forced the disguised devil to dis 
close himself. 1 

One by one friends sought out the editor. By 
and by there were enough of these to permit the 
organization of a " New England Anti-Slavery So 
ciety." Early in 1832 the association was formed, 
twelve apostles signing the constitution. 2 The meet 
ing Avas held in the school-room of the African Bap- 



1 " Him . . . they found 
Squat, like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, 
Assaying by his devilish art to reach 
The organs of her fancy, and with them forge 
Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams ; 
Him thus intent, Ithuriel with his spear 
Touched lightly, for no falsehood can endure 
Touch of celestial temper, but returns 
Of force, to its own likeness : up he starts, 
Discovered and surprised." 

Paradise Lost % B. iv. 

a Here are their names : William Lloyd Garrison, Oliver Johnson, 
Robert B. Hall, Arnold Buffum, William J. Snelling, John E. Fuller, 
Moses Thatcher, Joshua Coffin, Stillman B. Newcomb, Benjamin C. 
Bacon, Isaac Knapp, and Henry R. Stockton. Vide " Garrison and 
his Times," by O. Johnson, p. 86. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. /I 

tist Church in Belknap Street, Boston, thereafter a 
frequent refuge of the Abolitionists in storm and 
tempest. As the meeting- adjourned, and the twelve 
gentlemen stepped out into the dark night (it was 
snowing), Mr. Garrison remarked, impressively : 
44 We have met this evening in this obscure school- 
house ; our numbers are few and our influence lim 
ited ; but mark my prediction, Faneuil Hall shall 
erelong echo with the principles we have set forth. 
We shall shake the nation with their mighty power. V 1 
Surely he wore on that occasion the mantle of the 
old Hebrew prophet ! 

Toward the end of 1833 a great convention was 
held in Philadelphia, and the " American Anti- 
Slavery Society" was organized, 2 an achievement 
which unified the scattered forces of Abolition and 
challenged the attention of the nation. The example 
proved contagious. A number of State societies, 
and in some cases county and city societies, were 
formed soon after. The agitation became intense. 
Mr. Garrison could not hold forth any worldly con 
siderations to attract adherents. His case was like 
that of Garibaldi, who, desiring to liberate and 
unify Italy, went before a crowd of young men and 
appealed for recruits. 

4 What are your inducements ?" they asked. 

" Poverty, hardship, battles, wounds, and vic 
tory /" replied the hero. The Italians caught his 
enthusiasm and enlisted on the spot. In the same 
way did the Boston Abolitionist make headway. 

The alarmed South was loud-mouthed and threat- 



1 " Garrison and his Times," by O. Johnson, p. 88. 

2 " William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii., chap, xii., 

passim. 



72 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ening. The North, as usual, cringed and asked for 
orders. As an indication of the spirit of the slave 
oligarchy read this paragraph, clipped from the 
Richmond Whig: 

11 Let the hell-hounds at the North beware. Let them not feel 
too much security in their homes, or imagine that they who 
throw firebrands, although from, as they think, so safe a dis 
tance, will be permitted to escape with impunity. There are 
thousands now animated with a spirit to brave every danger to 
bring those felons to justice on the soil of the Southern States, 
whose women and children they have dared to endanger by their 
hell-concocted plots. We have feared that Southern exaspera 
tion would seize some of the prime conspirators in their very 
beds, and drag them to meet the punishment due their offences. 
We fear it no longer. We hope it may be so, and our applause 
as one man shall follow the successful enterprise." 

Here is another extract, taken from the Columbia 
Telescope, a prominent and influential journal in South 
Carolina : 

" Let us declare, through the public journals of our country, 
that the question of slavery is not and shall not be open to dis 
cussion ; that the very moment any private individual attempts 
to lecture us upon its evils and immorality, in the same moment 
his tongue shall be cut out and cast upon the dunghill." 

Taking their cue from such utterances as these 
(and these were only two solos in a diabolical 
chorus), Governor McDuffie, in a message to the 
Legislature of South Carolina, declared slavery the 
corner-stone of the Republican edifice ;" asserted 
that the laboring class of any community, " bleached 
or unbleached," was a "dangerous element in the 
body politic ;" predicted that within twenty-five 
years the white laboring people of the North would 
be virtually reduced to slavery, and ended by de 
manding that the laws should be so amended every- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 73 

where as to punish any interference with or discus 
sion of Southern institutions " with death without 
benefit of clergy." 

The Legislature of the State, responding to this 
message, promptly resolved, " That South Carolina, 
having every confidence in the justice and friendship 
of the non-slave-holding States, announces her con 
fident expectation, and she earnestly requests that 
the governments of these States will promptly and 
effectually suppress all those associations within 
their respective limits purporting to be Abolition 
societies." 2 

North Carolina, Alabama, and Virginia adopted 
similar resolutions. And these were forwarded to 
the Northern Governors. 3 How did they receive 
such insolent demands ? Precisely as the black 
slaves at the South received the whip. Most of 
them forwarded the communications to their respec 
tive legislatures with no comment at all. Two of 
them, however, viz., Governor W. L. Marcy, of 
New York, and Governor Edward Everett, of Mas 
sachusetts, outran the rest in the race of servility, 
echoed the demands of Governor McDuffie, of 
South Carolina, and recommended the legislatures 
of their respective States to make it a penal offence 
to speak or print against slavery. 4 Happily, the 
legislatures of New York and Massachusetts had 
more self-respect than their lackey-governors. The 
suggested legislation was attempted, but thanks to 
the efforts of the Abolitionists it did not carry. 6 



1 Vide " Garrison and his Times," by O. Johnson, pp. 213, 214. 

2 Ib., p. 214. 3 Ib. 
4 "William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii., pp. 75, 76. 

6 Ib. t p. 76. " Garrison and his Times," by O. Johnson, pp. 214-17, 



74 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

With such a domineering spirit at the South and 
with such servility in high places at the North, it is 
not surprising that the sidewalks were unsafe for 
Abolitionists to tread ; that public halls were denied 
to them for their meetings ; that their publications 
were excluded from the mails ; that it became in 
creasingly difficult for them to earn a livelihood in 
any line of trade ; that they were marked men, under 
the frown of State and Church, moral pariahs, invit 
ing abuse and regarded as fit for death. 1 To be an 
Abolitionist in free America was in popular estima 
tion, fifty years ago, what it was to be a Christian in 
the days of Nero, or what it is to be a Nihilist in 
Russia now. The very word embodied contempt 
and rage beyond expression. Anybody, everybody, 
felt free to kick and cuff, to damn and hang an 
Abolitionist. 

Theodore D. Weld, 2 who was an active partici 
pant in the scenes he describes, and who is remem 
bered as a Demosthenes of eloquence by the few 
survivors of that period, paints, as only he could, 
the treatment which he and others like him then 
received : 



1 See T. D. Weld s " Eulogy of Wendell Phillips," pp. 21-25. 

2 Mr. Weld was born in Massachusetts in 1803. He studied at 
Andover, and followed Dr. Lyman Beecher to Lane Seminary, in 
Ohio, when that divine took charge of the institution. Here he be 
came interested in the slavery question, abolitionized the seminary, 
took the field as an And- Slavery lecturer, and by his amazing 
eloquence speedily made his name and fame continental. Un 
happily his excessive labors and exposures caused the loss of his voice 
and did what slavery could not do silenced him. He is still living 
(1890), hale and hearty in a serene and honored old age, at Hyde 
Park, near Boston. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 75 

" Civilization presupposes a government of law. 
If law is abolished society sinks into barbarism. 
Sunk thus was this nation then in its relation to 
Abolitionists. Mobs had been for years everywhere 
in outburst against them. They were the victims 
of an indiscriminate ostracism. Everywhere they 
were doomed because they hated slavery and lived 
out that hate. In thousands of cases they were sub 
jected to personal assaults, beatings, and buffetings, 
with nameless indignities. They were stoned, 
clubbed, knocked down, and pelted with missiles, 
often with eggs, and, when they could be gotten, 
spoiled ones. They were smeared with filth, stripped 
of clothing, tarred, feathered, ridden upon rails, 
their houses sacked, bonfires made in the streets of 
their furniture, garments, and bedding, their vehicles 
and harnesses were cut and broken, and their do 
mestic animals harried, dashed with hot water, 
cropped, crippled, and killed. Among these out 
rages, besides assaults and breaches of the peace, 
there were sometimes burglaries, robberies, maim- 
ings, and arsons ; Abolitionists were driven from 
their homes into the fields and the woods and their 
houses burned. They were dragged and thrust 
from the halls in which they held their meetings. 
They were often shot, at and sometimes wounded. 
In one mob a number were thus wounded and 
one killed. For a quarter of a century our civiliza 
tion was sunk to barbarism. The law, which to 
others was protection, to Abolitionists was sheerest 
mockery. Yea, more, it singled them out as its vic 
tims. Professing to protect, it gave them up to rav 
age and beckoned the spoilers to their prey. Of the 
tens of thousands who perpetrated such atrocities 



/O WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

not one suffered the least legal penalty for those 
astounding violations of law !" 1 

While such was the reception of the Abolitionists 
here at the North and in their own homes, and when 
it was proposed to padlock their lips by law, slave 
holders might come into the free States with a ret 
inue of slaves as long as the triumphal procession 
of an old Roman emperor, and with a harem that sug 
gested the Turkish Sultan, with none to molest them 
or make them afraid. And from the centre of the 
indecent cortege the) denounced the Abolitionists 
as cut-throats. It was an outrage to attack slavery, 
but entirely correct to practice and defend it ! Op 
position was sin and defence was virtue ! 

Mr. Garrison, as the central figure in the accursed 
circle, was naturally the special target for conspira 
tors to aim at. Already a price had been set upon 
his head by the State of Georgia of $5000, 2 a stand 
ing bribe to any gang of ruffians to kidnap him and 
deliver the Samson of Abolition into the hands of 
the modern Philistines. That he was not seized on 
some dark night, hurried to the wharf near his office, 
and sent on some South-bound vessel to grind in the 
prison-house of the oppressors or make sport in the 
Temple of Dagon, is a miracle further proof of the 
existence and Providence of God. 

Such is a crayon sketch of the public situation at 
the hour when the broadcloth mob fell under the 
eyes of Wendell Phillips in 1835 the South omnip 
otent and imperious, the North its errand-boy and 
lick-spittle ; the Abolitionists few in number, unin- 

1 " Eulogy of Wendell Phillips," pp. 22, 23. 

2 See the legislative action of Georgia, quoted in "William Lloyd 
Garrison," by his sons, vol. i., pp. 247-49. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 77 

^*m 

fluential in position, despised as fanatics and hated 
as incendiaries, banned by the slave-masters and 
mobbed at home, outcasts for their humanity, as the 
negroes were on account of their skin. America 
was a synonym for helL 



VI. 

THE NEW CLIENT. 

THE intimacy of Wendell Phillips and Charles 
Sumner, as we have noted, commenced at the Boston 
Latin School, continued at college and in the Law 
School, and deepened with the lapse of time. They 
were often together. One day (it was early in 1836) 
they sat conversing in Mr. Phillips s office on Court 
Street, when a mutual friend, a Mr. Alford, burst in 
upon them. He informed them of his engagement 
to a Miss Grew, of Greenfield, in Massachusetts. 
Said he : 

I am going to Greenfield with my fiancee to 
morrow, and a cousin of hers, a Miss Ann Terry 
Greene, is to accompany us. Now you know that 
in my condition two s company/ etc., and I wish 
you would go, both of you, and take care of the 
other lady. She will require the two of you, for 
she is the aurora borealis in human form the clever 
est, loveliest girl you ever met. But I warn you 
that she is a rabid Abolitionist. Look out or she 
will talk you both into that ism before you suspect 
what she is at." 

After chaffing Alford, the two friends agreed to 
go. 

It is only fair/ remarked Mr. Sumner, " to help 
him out. Do as you d be done by, eh, Wendell ?" 

The next morning was furiously stormy. When 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 79 

Mr. Sumner got up and looked out he muttered, " I 
won t go on a stage ride (no railroads then) on such 
a day for any woman !" and ungallantly went back 
to bed. 

Mr. Phillips was more chivalrous he went. 
While his friend devoted himself to Miss Grew he 
made himself the cavalier of Miss Greene, who, true 
to the warning he had received, talked Abolition to 
him to the accompaniment of the rattling stage 
coach. What of that ? Who cares what a charming 
girl talks about, so that she only talks? Besides, 
Mr. Phillips was already deeply interested in the 
question of slavery. His Anti-Slavery convictions 
dated back to i83i/ the year of his graduation. 
True, he held them in an inactive, theoretical fash 
ion. But they were there, and they had been 
warmed into new life by the Garrison mob. The 
burning words of this fair enthusiast added fresh fuel 
to the slumbering fire. When Jean d Arc sounds to 
battle where is the soldier who can refuse to buckle 
on his armor ? All too soon did that stage-coach 
lumber into Greenfield ! 

Before they parted Mr. Phillips asked and obtained 
permission to continue the acquaintance. Miss 
Greene was a native, and resident of Boston. Her 
admirer learned that she was an orphan and an heir 
ess, 2 though for the heiress part of it he cared noth 
ing, for he was himself a man of independent for 
tune, and one who would not have been swayed 
by mercenar}^ considerations. Her home was not 
far from his own, with her uncle and aunt, Mr. and 



1 Weld s " Eulogy of Wendell Phillips," p. 20. 

2 Her father was Benjamin Greene, a wealthy trader of Boston. 



80 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

x 

Mrs. Henry G. Chapman, 1 who were warm friends 
and devoted adherents of Mr. Garrison. 2 The lady 
was beautiful, splendidly educated, a marvellous 
conversationalist, and possessed a rare moral nature. 
She had withal a singular power of insight, and after 
the manner of her sex, could get to the bottom of a 
subject by a flash of intuition, and so reach a con 
clusion which the male intellect might attain only 
by laborious reasoning. " Yes," confessed Mr. 
Phillips, in after years, " my wife made an out and 
out Abolitionist of me, and she always preceded me 
in the adoption of the various causes I have advo 
cated." 

No wonder the young man found the personal 
charms of such a woman, inspired and aglow with 
lofty moral purpose, irresistible ! He came to see 
her. came again, and then kept coming. Within the 
year when they first met their engagement was an 
nounced. 3 

It was at the Chapman s fireside that Wendell 
Phillips was introduced to Mr. Garrison 4 his final 
step toward Abolition. These two men, so unlike 
in family, training, worldly prospects, so at one in 
conviction, courage, devotion, were from the start 
attracted to each other. And thus began that won 
drous alliance which was to find its consummation 
and benediction in the rehabilitation of American 
^liberty. 

Yet it was a strange coalition. For Mr. Garrison 
was a plebeian, while Mr. Phillips was an aristo- 



1 " Ann Phillips," a Memorial Sketch, by Mrs. Alford, p. 3. 

2 Ib. 3 Ib. 
4 So Mr. Phillips told the writer. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 8l 

crat. The one was a self-made man ; the other was 
the consummate product of New England culture. 
The first had no grace, save the highest, that of 
God ; the second had that highest, and added to it 
every other grace of mind and person that can adorn 
a man. The genius of the printer was the home 
spun genius of intense moral conviction, that treads 
every obstacle under foot ; the genius of the lawyer 
>was the genius of Plato in the Academy and Burke 
in the Senate, with contagious morality enough 
thrown in to infect the continent. One of these two 
allies was to become the executive of the Anti-Slavery 
movement ; the other was to supply the eloquence 
that should melt the fetters from a race and trans- 
fbrm a nation. 

That meeting with Ann Terry Greene was a happy 
circumstance. As results of it the lady secured an 
ideal husband and won to a great reform its most 
powerful advocate. Mr. Phillips obtained a wife 
who became his perennial inspiration. Mr. Garri 
son gained his most renowned ally, and the blacks 
may date from it the auspicious beginning of a 
triumphant end. 

Not long after meeting Mr. Garrison , Wendell 
Phillips openly announced his adoption of Abolition 
principles and took his place among the " fanatics." 
The Rubicon was passed ! The boats, were burned ! 
On June I4th, 1837, he rode out to Lynn, ten miles 
away, for the first time to attend an Anti-Slavery 
Convention. 1 It was the quarterly meeting of the 
Massachusetts Society. His maiden speech in the 
hated cause made that session forever memorable, 



1 " William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii., p. 129. 



82 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

After reading a resolution which pledged the assem 
blage to " special consecration," he proceeded to 
enforce it in an address which " charmed and sur 
prised the audience," Naturally, his classic style 
and exquisite modulation could not fail to surprise 
and charm. One passage is prophetic in its aspira 
tion, and is characteristic, too, in its generous tribute 
to Mr. Garrison : 

" We would have ourselves the joy of seeing this work accom 
plished. Before our eyes are closed, we wish to see the happy 
day which shall proclaim liberty to the captive. If it be possi 
ble, let the shout of emancipated millions rise before his ear i? 
dust whose voice first waked the trumpet-note which is rocking 
the nation from side to side. To him (need I name him ?) with, 
at least equal truth may be applied the language of Burke to 
Fox : It will be a distinction honorable to the age, that the 
rescue of the greatest number of the human race from the great 
est tyranny that was ever exercised, has fallen to the lot of one 
with abilities and dispositions equal to the task ; that it has 
fallen to the lot of one who has the enlargement to comprehend, 
the spirit to undertake, and the eloquence to support so reat a 
measure of hazardous benevolence. " 2 

With this speech Mr. Phillips began his career as 
a reformer. He had -gained a new client. He "be 
came attorney for the people in the Court of Con 
science. Like the matchless sculpture of St. Martin 
sharing his cloak with a beggar, so he threw over 
the form of shivering humanity the warm protection 
of his gifts and advocacy. 

When it became knowiS 1 in Boston that the most 
talented of her young s6ris had become an Abolition 
ist, the town was horrified. His family, in all its 
branches, was torn between pity for their misguided 

1 "William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii., p. 129. 

2 Vide Liberator, vol. vii., p. 63. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 83 

/kinsman and a bitter sense of their own disgrace. 
His former classmates were for a space incredulous 
and then aghast. Beacon Hill rent its clothes and 
put ashes on its head. Everybody said : It is 
suicide political, professional, and social suicide." 
So it was. Boston was neither as large nor as dem 
ocratic then as it is now. The blue-blood feeling 
was marked and strong. It was as fatal to break 
caste in Boston fifty years ago as it would have been 
in India. Those old families were republicans in 
profession and aristocrats in practice. They prided 
themselves as much upon their descent as did the 
English nobility. And they resented as keenly any 
departure from conventional respectability as could 
the descendants of the Normans. It is at once 
laughable and pathetic to reflect that there was ever 
a time in republican and Christian America when 
a practical belief in the Declaration of Independence 
and the Sermon on the Mount was regarded as dis 
reputable, proof that one was either a knave or a fool ! 
Wendell Phillips soon found that it was so. The circle 
in which he moved cut him dead. Old acquaintances 
grew strangely near-sighted when they met him on 
the street. Doors which before had opened to give 
him eager welcome were shut in his face. The class 
from which his professional advancement was to 

"come withdrew their business from his hands. He 
saw all his bright prospects crumbling to the ground 
under his very eyes. He found himself an outcast 
in his native city deserted and avoided as though 
stricken with leprosy. He was an Abolitionist. And 
what was that but a movable pest corruption an 
imate death in life ? Any Abolitionist was despic 
able : he most of all, because by birth and breeding 



84 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

he was a gentleman. Therefore the respectability 
of Boston stayed only long enough to brand him as 
" the friend of niggers," and then turned away from 
him in unspeakable disgust. 

In all the older towns of this country Boston, 
New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, St. Louis- 
class distinctions were formerly rigid as the etiquette 
of the Court of St. James. One aristocracy always 
sympathizes with another. This feeling is the cement 
that held together the " best" families of the North 
and the " first" families of the South. .And this ex 
plains why these families, North as well as South, 
abhorred the Abolitionists, who, in attacking slav 
ery, were sapping caste itself. It was a new 
phase of the world-old contest between the classes 
and the masses. That one of their own order should 
go into the Abolition camp enraged the dons and 
donas. It was like deserting to the enemy in time" 
of war. Hence Wendell Phillips was looked upon 
as a social Benedict Arnold. The marvel is, not 
that they felt as they did, but that he felt as he did. 
The fact that he so soon and so completely emanci 
pated himself from the narrow prejudices of such an 
environment, is the best proof of his moral greatness. 

But did he not feel his outlawry ? How could he 
help it ? Remember his position. Think of his out 
look. But it doubly endears him to posterity that 
he never complained, never besought, never re 
treated an inch, nor filed down a principle, nor soft 
ened a phrase to regain his place and conciliate es 
teem. He had counted the cost. He regarded his 
forfeited distinctions, all possible advancement within 
his reach, as " dust in the measure and fine dust in 
the balance," when weighed against the honor of 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 85 

standing with God and befriending those who were 
ready to perish. What he lost he valued ; what he 
gained he held as an abundant compensation. It 
hurt him to feel that he had disappointed those who 
loved him. All the more resolutely did he turn for 
consolation to the service of the poor and miserable 
and blind and naked. No such sacrifices have been 
made by any other American. But he had and has 
his exceeding great reward. All this the poet Low 
ell has magnificently embalmed in a descriptive son 
net which he wrote not long afterward and dedicated 
to Wendell Phillips : 

" He stood upon the world s broad threshold : wide 

The din o f battle and of slaughter rose ; 
He saw God stand upon the weaker side, 

That sank in seeming loss before its foes ; 
Many there were who made great haste and sold 

Unto the coming enemy their swords. 
He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, and gold, 

And, underneath their soft and flowery words, 
Heard the cold serpent hiss ; therefore he went 

And humbly joined him to the weaker part, 
Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content 

So he could be the nearer to God s heart, 
And feel its solemn pulses sending blood 

Through all the widespread veins of endless good." 



VII. 

IN FANEUIL HALL. 

MR. PHILLIPS and Miss Greene were married on 
October I2th, 1837. He wedded an invalid a life 
long invalid, as it turned out. Through some defect 
of nervous organization 2 the lady, even as a child, 
was frequently shut up and closed in, being often, 
and as the time passed increasingly confined to her 
room. Beginning as lovers, they remained lovers 
to the end. Their honeymoon stretched from the 
altar to the grave. Because of his wife s ill-health 
the husband from the start added to the lover the 
tender nurse. And this function, also, was to find 
exercise until the final scene. Mrs. Phillips was in 
ordinately fond of reading. When, as was often the 
case, she was too sick to hold a book, Mr. Phillips 
would be her eyes. This was her greatest treat. 
Those who have heard him read will know why, for 
in this delightful, and, strange to say, rare accom 
plishment he had no rival. She had then and ever 
retained a singular transparent beauty blue eyes, 
magnificent long hair, Hebe s complexion, and the 
form of Juno. In the face of pain, and of the dep 
rivation that comes from pain, she was joyous in 



1 Miss Mary Grew, Mrs. Phillips s cousin and life-long intimate, 
confirms this date. 

2 So says Dr. David Thayer, the family physician. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. S/ 

disposition, with unfailing good spirits, and fond 
of fun and stories, in which respect her husband 
matched her, so that hilarity was with them an abid 
ing guest. "My better three quarters," was her 
favorite descriptive phrase of him. And, evidently, 
it had been love at first sight on her side as on his, 
for she confesses : " When I first met Wendell I 
used to think, It can never come to pass ; such a 
being as he is could never think of me. I looked 
upon it as something as strange as a fairy-tale." 

To a relative, on her first birthday after marriage, 
she further expresses her feelings with a na ive pen : 

" November 19. 1837. 

" Do you remember it is Ann Terry s birthday, and that I am 
so aged ? Only last year I thought I should never see another 
birthday, but must leave him in the infancy of our love, in the 
dawn of my new life ; and how does to-day find me ? the blessed 
and happy wife of one whom I thought I should never perhaps 
live to see. Thanks be to God for all His goodness to us, and 
may He make me more worthy of my Wendell. I cannot help 
thinking how little I have acquired, while Wendell, only two 
years older, seems to know a world more ; so 

" . . . that still the wonder grew, 
How one small head could carry all he knew. " 5 

In the midst of their new-born gladness, long be 
fore the orange-blossoms had time to shrivel, an 
event occurred which was the occasion of Mr. Phil- 
lips s dtbut as an orator, and which gave him the 
world for an audience. 

The essential blasphemy of slavery lay in this, 
that it broke into and desecrated the temple of the 
Holy Ghost by reducing a man to be a chattel. It 



" Ann Phillips," by Mrs. Alford, p. 5. * Ib., pp. 5, 6. 



88 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

dealt in men and women as a drover trades in cattle. 
It changed marriage into prostitution, and made 
every plantation a nest of brothels. It herded 
negroes together as swine herd. It sold their off 
spring as hogs are sold. John Wesley, after living 
two years in the midst of slavery in Georgia, shook 
the dust from his feet against it and sailed from 
Savannah back to England, crying out as he left, 
" Slavery is the sum of all villainies." The truest, 
tersest, strongest half dozen words ever tabled 
against it. Well he knew that language had no 
word that could fitly name such a system. So in 
despair of naming it, he could only define it. As he 
gazed at it no wonder his eyes filled, his sight grew 
dim, his brain grew dizzy. He listened till shrieks 
stunned him. He pondered the ghastly horror till 
the breath he drew steamed rank with scent of 
blood ! * We have learned in a previous chapter 
what befell the humane spirits who, in the land of 
liberty, ventured to repeat the definition of the great 
apostle of Methodism. Slavery now went a step 
further and proceeded from persecution to martyr 
dom. On November 7th, 1837, it murdered the 
Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, at Alton, in Illinois. The 
story of his death has been often told. It cannot be 
told too often. The fact and the lesson of it, Ameri 
cans are bound to reiterate in words of fire until 
"the deep damnation of his taking off" shall be 
burned into the indignant consciousness of every 
freeman. 

Mr. Lovejoy was a Presbyterian clergyman, a 
graduate of Waterville College, in the State of 



1 Weld s " Eulogy on Wendell Phillips," p. 25. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 89 

Maine, where he was born, and of Princeton The 
ological Seminary. He went to the West after com 
pleting his studies and made a home in St. Louis. 
Here his sect made him the editor of their local or 
gan, the Observer. He was not an Abolitionist. He 
had not grown up to that as yet. But he saw enough, 
heard enough, felt enough in that slave-holding com 
munity to make him hate shivery. One day a negro 
killed an officer in attempting to avoid arrest. He 
was seized in jail by a gang of lynchers, taken out, 
chained to a tree, and burned to death. Mediaeval 
barbarism ! Efforts were made to punish the mur 
derers. The judge (whose suggestive name was 
Lawless) charged the Grand Jury substantially as 
follows : " When men are hurried by some mysteri 
ous, metaphysical, electric frenzy to commit a deed 
of violence, they are absolved from guilt. If you 
should find that such was the fact in this case then 
act not at all. The case transcends your jurisdic 
tion ; it is beyond the reach of human law." Of 
course they did not bring in an indictment. Mr. 
Lovejoy commented in the Observer upon this out 
rageous charge as it deserved. Then the " mysteri 
ous, metaphysical, electric frenzy" again found ex 
pression, and his printing-office was gutted. The 
editor decided to remove his headquarters to Alton, 
in Illinois, ten miles up the Mississippi, on the free- 
soil side of the riv^er. He was now on free soil, but, 
alas, not among free men ! No sooner was his press 
landed than a mob destroyed it. He procured a new 
one. This also was ruined. 2 Then he appealed to 
the mayor for protection. This magistrate affirmed 



1 " Garrison and his Times," by Oliver Johnson, p. 223. 9 Ib. 



QO WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

his inability to shield the victim, saying : " I have 
no police force." To this Mr. Lovejoy replied : 
1 Very well, I will get another press, and with your 
consent I will enroll a special police force in the in 
terest of law and order." The mayor assented. 
The defenders were marshalled. The third press 
arrived. The next night the grog-shops vomited 
forth their bloats, the building where the press was 
sheltered was assailed with incendiary torches and 
seditious muskets, and in the act of protecting his 
property, with the mayor s sanction, Mr. Lovejoy 
was shot down like a mad dog. As he fell, his hud 
dle of supporters scattered amid a fusillade of bullets, 
the house was fired, and the press was for the third 
time flung into the Mississippi. 1 

The news from Alton convulsed the continent. 
The South openly exulted. The North condemned 
the mob, but lamented the " imprudence" of the 
victim ; which reminds one of the man down in 
Maine who, in speaking of the prohibitory liquor law, 
said, " He was in favor of the law, but agin its ex 
ecution !" Only the more thoughtful recognized the 
tragedy for what it was, and saw in it the burial of 
a bravo s dagger in the heart of liberty. 

Strangely enough Boston, which was farthest off, 
was most moved. It is greatly to the credit of the 
old town. A number of eminent citizens, headed by 
the Rev. Dr. Charming, applied for the use of Faneuil 
Hall in which to denounce the outrage ; not as 
Abolitionists, with whom few were affiliated, but as 
believers in free speech and a free press. The mayor 
and aldermen refused the hall on the ground that the 



" Garrison and his Times," by O. Johnson, p. 226. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 91 

country might regard the meeting "as the public 
voice of the city." This denial increased the agita 
tion. Dr. Charming appealed to Boston in an open 
letter, which resulted in another application, signed 
by an enlarged number of influential names. Now 
the municipal authorities heard and obeyed ; the hall 
was opened. 2 

What place could be so conspicuously fit for the 
rebuke of an attack on freedom as the " Cradle of 
Liberty ?" 

Faneuil Hall was built " at his own cost" and pre 
sented to Boston in 1742, by Peter Faneuil, a wealthy 
merchant of the city, whose Huguenot ancestors had 
been driven out of France by the tyranny of Louis 
XIV., when, at the instigation of a mistress, he re 
voked the Edict of Nantes ; 3 just as the Pilgrims 
had been exiled from England by the inquisitive 
despotism of the Stuarts. Boston, in accepting 
the gift, named it after the generous donor. 4 Hence 
it belonged to liberty in its very origin. It received 
a further consecration when, in the days which ush 
ered in the Revolution, the " Sons of Liberty" were 
wont to meet within its walls to cheer James Otis in 
his defiance of George III. and Lord North. " Cra- 



1 "Garrison and his Times," by O. Johnson, p. 227. 
3 Ib. With Mr. Johnson all other authorities agree. 

3 See a curious book, " Dealings with the Dead," published in 
Boston in 1856, in which the descent and life of Peter Faneuil are 
more elaborately traced than anywhere else. 

4 Ib. This was voted at a town meeting held in 1742. The hall 
was burned January I3th, 1761, nothing but the walls remaining. 
The town rebuilt it in 1762 P. Faneuil having died soon after its first 
erection. In 1806 it was enlarged, its area being doubled on the 
ground, and another story was added. Since then it has remained as 
it now stands. 



92 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

die of Liberty," indeed! And now about to rock 
the lusty child again, and to become the cradle of 
freedom, not for one race, but for all to rock the 
genius of universal emancipation. 

Having obtained the hall, the managers of the meet 
ing determined to use it in the daytime, their pru 
dence leading them to fear lest the Alton mob might 
reappear in Boston under cover of the congenial 
darkness. 1 The behavior of the Abolitionists, too, 
was admirable at this crisis. Although indignant 
beyond all others, their souls aflame, they carefully 
abstained from appearing in connection with the 
meeting, and their names were conspicuous only by 
their absence from the published call and the various 
preliminaries, like the images of Brutus and Cassius 
in the imperial procession in ancient Rome. 2 In fact, 
they had no wish to add to the prevailing excite 
ment, and were willing enough to have their places 
filled by more " respectable" citizens, if these would 
act. But they meant, of course, to go to Faneuii 
Hall. 

On December 8th, 1837, in the morning, the meet 
ing was called to order. The old hall, used to 
crowds, was full to suffocation. The throng was 
divided into three factions : one third being free dis- 
cussionists, among whom were sprinkled here and 
there an Abolitionist (the salt which was to give savor 
to the hour) ; another third being mobocrats, present 
to make mischief ; while the remaining third were 
indifferent, idle spectators, attracted by curiosity and 
swayed to and fro by each speaker in turn, but hold- 



1 " Garrison and his Times," p. 227. 

- "William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii., p. 189. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 93 

ing- the balance of power. 1 The proceedings opened 
quietly and decorously. The Hon. Jonathan Phil 
lips, a wealthy Bostonian, a warm friend of Dr. 
Charming, and a kinsman of Wendell Phillips, took 
the chair. Dr. Channing made a brief but impres 
sive address, speaking from a lectern set in front of 
the platform and well out toward the centre of the 
hall ; a position which he selected because he feared 
he might not be heard amid the rush and crush if 
farther back. 2 Resolutions drawn by Dr. Channing 
were next offered and read by the Hon. Benjamin 
F. Hallet. These were seconded by George S. Hil- 
lard, Esq., in an incisive speech. 

As Mr. Hillard concluded there was a stir, then 
an outburst of anticipatory applause, as the Attor 
ney-General of Massachusetts was seen to elbow his 
way down toward the great gilded eagle in the gal 
lery over the main entrance, with the evident pur- 
pose of making a speech not on the programme. 
Everybody knew this official James Tricothic Aus 
tin. He was a parishioner of Dr. Channing, a popu 
lar politician, and a master of the art of captivating 
the crowd. With a red face and a bullying manner, 
thunder in his voice and demagogism on his lips, 
he at once, with practised skill, began an harangue 
clearly intended and adroitly adapted either to break 
up the meeting in a row or array it against the ob- 



1 So writes Mrs. Chapman in a letter to Harriet Martineau, and 
quoted by her in an article in the Westminster Review, December, 
1838, on " The Martyr Age." 

2 Weld s " Eulogy," p. 34. There are no seats in Faneuil Hall. At 
great gatherings there the people stand. This, of course, increases 
the capacity of the hall, and also, in times of excitement, the difficulty 
of controlling the auditory. 



94 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ject of its callers. He claimed that there was "a 
conflict of laws" between Missouri and Illinois ; 
compared the slaves to a menagerie, " with lions, 
tigers, a hyena and an elephant, a jackass or two, 
and monkeys in plenty," and likened Lovejoy to one 
who should " break the bars and let loose the caravan 
to prowl about the streets ;" talked of the rioters of 
Alton as akin to the " orderly mob" which threw the 
tea into Boston Harbor in 1773, and declared their 
victim " died as the fool dieth ;" and in direct and 
insulting allusion to Dr. Channing closed by assert 
ing that a. clergyman with a gun in his hand, or one 
" mingling in the debates of a popular assembly, was 
marvellously out of place." J 

When he retired Faneuil Hall rocked indeed, but 
not in the old-time way. Hands of devils were 
rocking it. Friends of law and order were aghast. 
.The indifferent were drawn over by the infectious 
enthusiasm to the side of the apologist for murder, 
and joined Austin s myrmidons in their roar of 
triumph. The foes of freedom had captured the 
hall ! They were so sure of this that they did not 
care to precipitate a riot, but waited to vote down, 
the resolutions and thus turn the protest into an in 
dorsement. 

At this wild moment, under the very shadow of 
the impending catastrophe, Wendell Phillips, who 
was standing on the floor, a mere auditor, with no 
thought of speaking, 2 leaped upon the lectern and 



1 Vide the Boston journals of December gth, 1837. 

2 Mr. Weld, usually the most accurate of men, thinks he did intend 
to speak, though, of course, unaware of the need of replying to Aus 
tin. See his " Eulogy," p. 34. He is mistaken. The testimony is the 
other way. The speech itself is the proof, for it is throughout a reply 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

confronted the raging multitude, himself an embodied 
Vesuvius. But the fire was as yet smothered, the 
lava did not at once begin to flow ; the eruption was 
in reserve. His easy attitude, his calm dignity, the 
classic beauty of his face, challenged attention and 
piqued curiosity. Suddenly the turbulence hushed 
itself into silence. Then that marvellous voice, 
sweet as a song, clear as a flute, was heard for the 
first time by a vast audience and completed the 
charm which his masterful bearing had begun to 
work. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. It 
meant renown or discomfiture, with a nation for the 
witness. Would, could this stripling of twenty-six 
lift himself to the level of the lofty occasion and 
dominate the scene? All fears were soon and hap 
pily dispelled. Mr. Phillips, however, was too full 
of his subject to be self-conscious. He spoke not 
for fame, but for freedom. " My purpose," said he, 
in referring to the occasion, " was to secure the pas 
sage of Dr. Channing s resolutions." He com 
menced in that quiet, dulcet tone with which all 
America was erelong to become familiar : 

" MR. CHAIRMAN : We have met for the freest discussion of 
these resolutions, and the events which gave rise to them (cries 
of Question ! Hear him ! Go on ! No gagging ! etc.). 
I hope I shall be permitted to express my surprise at the senti 
ments of the last speaker surprise not only at such sentiments 
from such a man, but at the applause they have received within 
these walls. A comparison has been drawn between the events 
of the Revolution and the tragedy at Alton. We have heard it 
asserted here, in Faneuil Hall, that Great Britain had a right to 
tax the Colonies, and we have heard the mob at Alton, the 



to Austin. Of course he had thought deeply on the subject, so that, 
while speaking extemporaneously, he spoke out of knowledge as well 
as out of conviction. 



9$ WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

drunken murderers of Lovejoy, compared to those patriot fathers 
who threw the tea overboard ! (Great applause.) Fellow- 
citizens, is this Faneuil Hall doctrine ? ( No, no ! ) The mob 
at Alton were met to wrest from a citizen his just rights met 
to resist the laws. We have been told that our fathers did the 
same ; and the glorious mantle of Revolutionary precedent has 
been thrown over the mobs of our days. To make out their title 
to such defence, the gentleman says that the British Parliament 
had a right to tax these Colonies. It is manifest that, without 
this, his parallel falls to the ground ; for Lovejoy had stationed 
himself within constitutional bulwarks. He was not only de 
fending the freedom of. the press, but he was under his own roof, 
in arms, with the sanction of the civil authority. The men who 
assailed him went against and over the laws. The mob, as the 
gentleman terms it mob, forsooth ! certainly we sons of the 
tea-spillers are a marvellously patient generation ! the orderly 
mob which assembled in the Old South to destroy the tea were 
met to resist, not the laws, but illegal exactions. Shame on the 
American who calls the tea-tax and stamp-act laws ! Our 
fathers resisted, not the king s prerogative, but the king s usur 
pation. To find any other account, you must read our Revolu 
tionary history upside down. Our State archives are loaded 
with arguments of John Adams to prove taxes laid by the British 
Parliament unconstitutional beyond its power. It was not till 
this was made out that the men of New England rushed to arms. 
The arguments of the Council Chamber and the House of Repre 
sentatives preceded and sanctioned the contest. To draw the 
conduct of our ancestors into a precedent for mobs, for a right 
to resist laws we ourselves have enacted, is an insult to their 
memory. The difference between the excitement of those days 
and our own, which this gentleman in kindness to the latter has 
overlooked, is simply this : the men of that day went for the 
right, as secured by laws. They were the people rising to sus 
tain the laws and constitution of the province. The rioters of 
our day go for their own wills, right or wrong. Sir, when I 
heard the gentleman lay down principles which place the mur 
derers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy 
and Adams, I thought those pictured lips (pointing to the por 
traits in the hall) would have broken into voice to rebuke the 
recreant American the slanderer of the dead !" 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 97 

As Mr. Phillips hurled this thunderbolt at the At 
torney-General, and accompanied it with an electric 
glance and gesture, the arches of Faneuil Hall echoed 
with successive thunder-claps of approval, which the 
partisans of Austin were too dazed to do more than 
attempt to resent. As the plaudits subsided, the 
waiting orator, standing there in the attitude of fiery 
readiness, followed his last sentence and climaxed it 
with this volcanic flame-burst : 

" The gentleman said he should sink into insignificance if he 
condescended to gainsay the principles of these resolutions. 
For the sentiments he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the 
prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should 
have yawned and swallowed him up !" 

This was Vesuvius in full eruption, and as Pompeii 
was buried, so now the heaving earth seemed to 
swallow the patron of mobs and murderers. The 
scene beggars description. Men lost their reason. 
Enthusiasm became delirium. Anticipating defeat, 
as just before they had anticipated triumph, the 
riotous faction now attempted to precipitate vio 
lence. They pushed and howled vainly ; for Mr. 
Phillips had mesmerized the mere spectators who had 
cheered Austin s sophisms into complete sympathy 
with himself, and holding them under his eye and 
voice would not let them go. Waiting again with 
that serene composure always so characteristic of 
his style, and as marked at the start as at the close 
of his career, he paused only long enough to obtain 
so much of silence as might float his tones to the ears 
of the throng, and felt that then his voice and per 
suasions would enforce attention. In a moment 
those even, honeyed cadences once more filled the 
hall, and the crowd, entranced, bent with eagerness 



98 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

to hear. The gifted boy had conquered already, 
and from this point to the close he spoke without 
interruption, save such as punctuated his sentences 
with the approbation of the auditors. Having buried 
the Attorney-General out of sight, he proceeded to 
dissect his argument : 

" Allusion has been made to what lawyers understand very 
well the conflict ot laws. We are told that nothing but the 
Mississippi River runs between St. Louis and Alion ; and the 
conflict of laws somehow or other gives the citizens of the former 
a right to find fault with the defender of the press for publishing 
his opinions so near their limits. Will the gentleman venture 
that argument before lawyers ? How the laws of the two States 
could be said to come into conflict in such circumstances I ques 
tion whether any lawyer in this audience can explain or under 
stand. No matter whether the line that divides one sovereign 
State from another be an imaginary one or ocean wide, the 
moment you cross it the State you leave is blotted out of exist 
ence, so far as you are concerned. The Czar might as well 
claim to control the deliberations of Faneuil Hall, as the laws 
of Missouri demand reverence, or the shadow of obedience, from 
an inhabitant of Illinois. 

" Sir, as I understand this affair, it was not an individual pro 
tecting his property ; it was not one body o[ armed men assault 
ing another, and making the streets of a peaceful city run blood 
with their contentions. It did not bring back the scenes in 
some old Italian cities, where family met family, and faction met 
faction, and mutually trampled the laws under foot. No ; the 
men in that house were regularly enrolled under the sanction 
of the mayor. There being no militia in Alton, about seventy 
men were enrolled with the approbation of the mayor. These 
relieved each other every other night. About thirty men were 
in arms on the night of the 6th, when the press was landed. 
The next evening it was not thought necessary to summon more 
than half that number ; among these was Lovejoy. It was, 
therefore, you perceive, sir, the police of the city resisting rioters 
civil government breasting itself to the shock of lawless men. 
Here is no question about the right of self-defence. It is, in 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 99 

fact, simply this : Has the civil magistrate a right to put down 
a riot ? Some persons seem to imagine that anarchy existed at 
Alton from the commencement of these disputes. Not at all. 
No one of us, says an eye-witness and a comrade of Lovejoy, 
has taken up arms during these disturbances but at the com 
mand of the mayor. Anarchy did not settle down on that de 
voted city till Lovejoy breathed his last. Till then the law, 
represented in his person, sustained itself against its foes. 
When he fell, civil authority was trampled under foot. He had 
4 planted himself on his constitutional rights appealed to the 
laws claimed the protection of the civil authority taken refuge 
under the broad shield of the Constitution. When through 
that he was pierced and fell, he fell but one sufferer in a com 
mon catastrophe. He took refuge under the banner of liberty 
amid its folds ; and when he fell, its glorious stars and stripes, 
the emblem of free institutions, around which cluster so many 
heart-stirring memories, were blotted out in the martyr s blood. 

" If, sir, I had adopted what are called peace principles, I 
might lament the circumstances of this case. But all you who 
believe, as I do, in the right and duty of magistrates to execute 
the laws, join with me and brand as base hypocrisy the conduct 
of those who assemble year after year on the Fourth of July, to 
fight over the battles of the Revolution, and yet damn with 
faint praise, or load with obloquy, the memory of this man, 
who shed his blood in defence of life, liberty, property, and the 
freedom of the press ! 

" Imprudent to defend the liberty of the press ! Why ? Be 
cause the defence was unsuccessful ? Does success gild crime 
into patriotism, and want of it change heroic self-devotion to 
imprudence ? Was Hampden imprudent when he drew the 
sword and threw away the scabbard ? Yet he, judged by that 
single hour, was unsuccessful. After a short exile, the race he 
hated sat again upon the throne. 

" Imagine yourself present when the first news of Bunker Hill 
battle reached a New England town. The tale would have run 
thus : The patriots are routed ; the redcoats victorious ; War 
ren lies dead upon the field. With what scorn would that Tory 
have been received, who should have charged Warren with im 
prudence ! who should have said that, bred as a physician, he 
was out of place in the battle, and * died as the fool dieth ! 



100 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

{Great applause.} How would the intimation have been re 
ceived, that Warren and his associates should have waited a 
better time ? But, if success be indeed the only criterion of 
prudence, Respice finem wait till the end. 

* Presumptuous to assert the freedom of the press on Ameri 
can ground ! Is the assertion of such freedom before the age ? 
So much before the age as to leave one no right to make it be 
cause it displeases the community ? Who invents this libel on 
his country ? It is this very thing which entitles Lovejoy to 
greater praise, the disputed right which provoked the Revo 
lution taxation without representation is far beneath that for 
which he died. (Here there was a strong and general expres 
sion of disapprobation.) One word, gentlemen. As much as 
thought is better than money, so much is the cause in which 
Lovejoy died nobler than a mere question of taxes. James Otis 
thundered in this hall when the king did but touch his pocket. 
Imagine, if you can, his indignant eloquence had England 
offered to put a gag upon his lips. (Great applause.} 

" The question that stirred the Revolution touched our civil 
interests. This concerns us not only as citizens, but as im 
mortal beings. Wrapped up in its fate, saved or lost with it, 
are not only the voice of the statesman, but the instructions of 
the pulpit and the progress of our faith. 

" The clergy 4 marvellously out of place where free speech 
is battled for liberty of speech on national sins ? Does the 
gentleman remember that freedom to preach was first gained, 
dragging in its train freedom to print ? I thank the clergy here 
present, as I reverence their predecessors, who did not so far 
forget their country in their immediate profession as to deem it 
duty to separate themselves from the struggle of 76 the May- 
hews and the Coopers who remembered they were citizens 
before they were clergymen." 

Mr. Phillips closed with these words : 

" I am glad, sir, to see this crowded house. It is good for us 
to be here. When liberty is in danger, Faneuil Hall has the 
right, it is her duty, to strike the key-note for these United 
States. I am glad, for one reason,* that remarks such as those 
to which I have alluded have been uttered here. The passage 



WENDELL PHILLIP?. 

of these resolutions, in spite of this opposition, led by the At 
torney-General of the commonwealth, will show more clearly, 
more decisively, the deep indignation with which Boston regards 
this outrage." 

When the whirlwind of applause which followed 
the orator s conclusion had rolled away, the chair 
man put the resolutions, and they were carried by 
an overwhelming vote. 1 Thus was defeat turned 
into victory by the genius of Phillips, as, years after 
ward, that other defeat at Winchester was turned 
into victory by the magnetism of Sheridan. 

Where now and what was the Attorney-General ? 
Nowhere ,.and nothing. Transfixed by forked-light 
ning, sic exit Austin. Thus may all the foes of lib 
erty be buried in shame and sepulchred in ignominy ! 

Oliver Johnson, who was one of Mr. Phillips s 
auditors that morning, remarks : 

I had heard him once before (in his first Anti- 
Slavery speech at Lynn 2 ), as a few others in that 
great meeting probably had, and rny expectations 
were high ; but he transcended them all and took the 
audience by storm. Never before, I venture to say, 
did the walls of the old Cradle of Liberty echo to a 
finer strain of eloquence. It was a speech to which 
not even the cornpletest report could do justice, for 
such a report could not bring the scene and the 
manner of the speaker vividly before the reader. It 
was before the days of phonography, and the report 
er caught only a pale reflection of what fell from 
the orator s lips." 



1 So wrote Mr. Garrison to G. W. Benson on the following day. 
Mr. G. was present as an auditor. Vide his Life by his sons, vol. 
ii., p. 189, note. 

- Ante, p. 81. 3 " Garrison and his Times," p. 229. 



JO2 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Dr. Charming, too, then and ever afterward testi 
fied to his wonder and delight, and referred espe 
cially to the power which Phillips s voice exercised ; 
catching and enchaining the riotous throng from the 
moment its delicious cadences were heard. 1 

When we remember all the circumstances the 
momentous occurrence that led to the meeting, the 
public excitement, the mixed character of the throng 
in Faneuil Hall, the ability and reputation of the 
Attorney-General, who no doubt bellowed forth the 
real sentiments of the majority, the presence of his 
partisans there in great numbers for the purpose of 
breaking up or breaking down the protest, the youth 
of the orator and his lack of experience in handling 
a mob certainly the success of Wendell Phillips that 
day was marvellous. It revealed him to himself as 
well as to the world and fixed his destiny. The 
orator sprang into being in the full possession, as it 
should seem, of all his powers maturity in youth 
and experience ahead of knowledge like Minerva 
from the brain of Jove. Not in American history is 
there such another precocious and dramatic orator 
ical debut. 

From that hour Faneuil Hall was to be identified 
with Wendell Phillips, as until that hour it had been 
identified with James Otis. The eloquence of Otis 
blossomed in the Declaration of Independence. The 
eloquence of Phillips was to flower in the Proclama 
tion of Emancipation. 



1 "The Golden Age of American Oratory." By E. G. Parker. 
Noiice of Wendell Phillips. 



BOOK II. 



NOON. 

1838-1865. 



I. 

THE ABOLITIONISTS MEN AND MEASURES. 

THE decree of social outlawry pronounced in blue- 
blood circles against Wendell Phillips when he be 
came an Abolitionist, was confirmed and stamped 
with the unchangeableness of the laws of the Medes 
and Persians after the speech on Lovejoy s murder 
in Faneuil Hall. That was death ; this was burial. 
The young- man, however, refused to concede his 
decease, and certainly proved to be a lively corpse. 
More correctly, he did recognize his death to Fashion 
and rejoiced in his new life for Humanity. 

Upon looking around he found himself in congenial 
company few but fit. If the Abolitionists were not 
received in my lady s boudoir, they were eagerly 
welcomed by those ready to perish. If commerce 
averted its countenance from them and withheld its 
golden recompense, the great Proprietor of heaven 
and earth adopted them to be His heirs. If politics 
scorned and spat upon them in the thirties, the 
sycophant made haste to crown and then to kneel 
before them in the sixties. Great is Success, and 
Fashion is its prophet ! Bless you, there is all the 
difference in the world between the John Wesley of 
1729, whom the graceless scholars of Oxford nick 
named " methodist," and the pontifex maximus of 
the largest of the Christian sects in the nineteenth 
century. And there is the same difference between 



106 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

those whom 1837 pilloried as the "friends of the 
niggers," and 1863 garlanded as the " saviours of a 
race," and 1865 as the reconstructors of the conti 
nent. But our business at present is with the 
" friends of the niggers," not with the honored, be 
cause successful philanthropists. 

Who were some of these Abolitionists ? Chief 
among them was William Lloyd Garrison, least 
pliable, most persistent of men. His head was worth 
more than Georgia offered for it or than the South 
was able to give. A phrenologist would have pro 
nounced firmness the ruling elder in the circuit of 
his faculties. His manner, however, not as comba 
tive as his nature, was composed and conciliatory. 
Of all phases of the question to which he had dedi 
cated his life, he was a walking encyclopaedia. As 
an organizer he was unexcelled. And he had self- 
fed fire enough to thaw the ice of the moral North 
Pole, and melt out and down a passage to the tem 
perate zone to the conscience and heart of America. 
Such was the director of the Abolition Societas dc 
Propaganda Fide : not less protean than his namesake 
at Rome. 

Around Mr. Garrison were grouped < those who 
had already heard and heeded his bugle-call. There 
was the Rev. Samuel J. May, the St. John of the 
Garrisonians, 1 whose character is painted in that 
allusion to the apostle who learned his creed as he 
leaned on the breast of Jesus, a Unitarian clergyman 
who held and taught that man was more than money, 
and that Christianity was more important than creed. 



1 Mr. May was born, 1797 ; died 1871. Long settled in Syracuse, 
N. Y. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS, IO/ 

There was John G. Whittier, the poet of freedom, 
with the bashful manner of a girl and the moral cour 
age of a hero, his eyes flashing out from beneath a 
beetling crag of brow, sure to attract attention and 
as sure to decline it. There was Charles C. Bur- 
leigh, most unique of men, in person outre, with long, 
flowing hair, unshorn beard, and " high-water" 
pantaloons that dangled above his ankles an appear 
ance which made him the inevitable laughing-stock 
of every audience until he began to speak ; then his 
Niagara rush and weight of utterance changed ridi 
cule into admiration and carried opposition over to 
agreement. His life was an apostleship. 1 

" Called in his youth to sound and gauge 
The moral lapse of his race and age, 
And, sharp as truth, the contrast draw 
Of human frailty and perfect law ; 
Possessed by the one dread thought that lent 
Its goad to his fiery temperament, 
Up and down the world he went, 
A John the Baptist, crying Repent !" a 

There was Francis Jackson, a successful merchant, 
who sold his goods, not his principles, and who at 
the time of the Garrison mob had made his own 
house a sanctuary of liberty by opening it to the 
heroines whom Mayor Lyman had driven out of 
doors 3 a man unpretentious but magnificent, rich 
but philanthropic, a knight-errant of trade, and, like 
Bayard, sans peur et sans reproche. At his side stood 
another merchant, Henry G. Chapman (the cousin 



1 Mr. Burleigh was born in Connecticut, in 1801 ; died at Florence, 
Mass., in 1878. 

2 Whittier s " Preacher." Diamond edition, p. 306. 

3 Vide " Wendell Phillips s Speeches," p. 219. 



IOS WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

of Mrs. Wendell Phillips), who moved in the best 
society, dwelt in a ceiled house, and fared sumptu 
ously every day ; but who accepted the condemna 
tion of his pastor, Dr. Channing, and of his business 
and social intimates, in order to become the treasurer 
of theA bolition cause a moneyed man, but not a man 
of money. There were Ellis Gray Loring and Sam 
uel E. Sewall, a brace of conscientious lawyers, fitted 
by legal attainments and judicial spirit to adorn the 
bench, but who read over the entrance to their Anti- 
Slavery career Dante s motto of the Inferno : 

" All hope abandon, ye who enter here !" 

and entered notwithstanding. The brace of mer 
chants and the brace of lawyers were matched by a 
brace of Congregational ministers, the Rev. Moses 
Thatcher and the Rev. Amos Phelps, able and elo 
quent men, who felt for the slaves as though bound 
with them, and the latter of whom gave to the 
Abolitionists their earliest definition of slavery, viz., 
" Slavery is the holding of a human being as prop 
erty." 

Nor was Mr. Garrison the only editor in the 
humanitarian coterie. At his side stood David Lee 
Child, a strong writer, a Harvard graduate, yet an 
honest man. Even professional scholarship was 
represented in this contracted circle, notably repre 
sented by Charles T. C. Pollen, a liberty-loving Ger 
man, who occupied the chair of German Language 
and Literature at Cambridge, which he was soon 
driven to vacate because of his connection with the 
Abolitionists. Thus was the son of Luther, who 



" Garrison and his Times," p. 73. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. IOQ 

came to America in the same ship which bore Lafa 
yette to these shores in 1823, requited for his passion 
on behalf of freedom. 1 

The tragedy at Alton brought into the Anti- 
Slavery camp another recruit destined to become a 
mighty man of valor Edmund Quincy. His pres 
ence was especially welcome to Mr. Phillips, for he 
came out of the same social set, 2 snapped the same 
green withes of aristocracy, and showed the same 
heroic self-denial. He was the litterateur of Abolition, 
and wrote with the pen of Junius. Having gotten 
his eyes open he kept them open until he saw the 
glorious end. 3 

The women in those days, as in all days, averaged 
better than the men, and justified the saying of 
Luther : " I have oftentimes noted when women 
espouse a cause they are far more -fervent in faith, 
they hold to it more stiff and fast than men do ; as we 
see in the loving Magdalen, who was more hearty 
and bold than Peter himself." 4 So here there was 
no dearth of heroines. Each one wears the nimbus 
with which the old painters crowned the Virgin. 
Some of them we shall have occasion to mention as 
we proceed. At the outset two stood forth in beau 
tiful relief like the figures of saints in a cathedral. 
One of these was Lydia Maria Child, the wife of 
Editor David Lee Child, the earliest and most popu- 

1 May s " Anti-Slavery Recollections," p. 254. See also the " Life 
of Follen." He perished in the fire which destroyed the steamboat 
Lexington in the passage from New York to Stonington, January 
I3th, 1840. 

2 See p. 39 of this volume. 

3 Mr. Quincy was four years older than Mr. Phillips. He died in 
1877. 

4 " Table Talk," Bonn s edition, p. 367. 



I 10 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

lar of our female editors and authors ; than whom, 
remarks the North American Review, in an issue of 
the period, " few women, if any, have done more or 
better things in literature, whether in its lighter or 
graver departments." She did not hesitate to sacri 
fice her literary prospects on the altar of Abolition, 
and at the cost of fame and fortune lent her wizzard 
pen to the slave until he ceased to need it. 1 Mrs. 
Child made the splendid beginning of an Anti-Slavery 
literature in her famous " Appeal in Favor of that 
Class of Americans called Africans," a book fit to 

"... Create a soul 
Under the ribs of death ;" 2 

and which worked that miracle in thousands of cases, 
Wendell Phillips being one. 3 

The other of these bas-relief women was Maria 
Weston Chapman, the wife of Henry G. Chapman, 
and the cousin by marriage of Mrs. Wendell Phil 
lips. Of Mayflower lineage, dowered with woman s 
chief charm and snare beauty to which she added 
a rare intellect, which Europe had cultivated, she 
was the idol of the most exclusive circles and seemed 
certain to be a queen of fashion. When she espoused 
the righteous, but unpopular cause of the negro great 
was the amazement, unutterable the disgust of Bos 
ton. She at once made herself the alter ego of Mr. 
Garrison. 



1 This noble and gifted woman died in 1880. 

2 Milton s " Samson Agonistes," line 560. 

3 Mr. Phillips had his attention called to slavery by the " Appeal," 
before he openly espoused the Anti Slavery cause. This was one of 
his awakeners ; so says Mrs. Alford in her sketch of Mrs. Phillips. 
Vide p. 4. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. Ill 

As a writer she was only less gifted than Mrs. 
Child, and knowing the value of printers ink, she 
published her thoughts in prose and verse. Wise in 
counsel and fertile in resources, she suggested ways 
and means in the darkest hours. Her graces of 
person and gifts of mind were exerted in unfriendly 
coteries to conciliate and attract, and always with a 
single object the downfall of slavery. Lowell has 
hvmned it all in five lines of poetic photography : 

* A noble woman, brave and apt, 
Cumse s sibyl not more rapt, 
Who might, with those fair tresses shorn, 
The Maid of Orleans casque have vvorn 
Herself the Joan of our Arc." 

Surely, let Mrs. Gruncly sneer as she might, Wen 
dell Phillips, among these high souls, was not in the 
way greatly to miss estranged associates, who cut his 
acquaintance when he avowed himself the " friend of 
niggers. Such companionship was a moral tonic. 
Such a life-purpose fired his soul with generous as 
pirations. The service of God through the uplifting 
of man raised him above the frivolities which make 
the main business of what calls itself Society, freed 
him from the thraldom of petty pursuits, yardstick 
measurements and the selfish dicker in cotton and 
corn, and flashed a divine meaning into human life. 
As an intellectual stimulus and spiritual safeguard 
his new career was worth all he paid for it. Men 
unconsciously aggrandize themselves when they 
imitate the Christ. 

How did this magnificent band, smaller than Gid 
eon s army after it had been twice weeded, opposed 



1 Mrs. Chapman died in 1885. 






112 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

to every element that was potent in America, to 
State and Church, to trade and society, to law and 
learning, to politics and art, propose to fight their 
battle ? They deliberately chose the Christian meth 
ods. They distinctly disavowed carnal weapons and 
adopted moral suasion. They believed in reason, 
not passion ; in conscience, not force ; in ideas, not 
bullets. In the preamble to the constitution of the 
" New England Anti-Slavery Society" we find a 
statement of their principles : 

41 We, the undersigned, hold that every person, of full age 
and sane mind, has a right to immediate freedom from personal 
bondage of whatsoever kind unless imposed by the sentence of 
the law for the commission of some crime. We hold that man 
cannot, consistently with reason, religion, and the eternal and 
immutable principles of justice, be the property of man. We 
hold that whoever retains his fellowman in bondage is guilty of 
a grievous wrong. We hold that mere difference of complexion 
is no reason why any man should be deprived of any of his 
natural rights, or subjected to any political disability. While 
we advance these opinions as the principles on which we intend 
to act, we declare that we will not operate on the existing rela 
tions of society by other than peaceful and lawful means, and 
that we will give no countenance to violence or insurrection." ! 

In the constitution of the " American Anti-Slavery 
Society" these principles reappear in another form : 

"ARTICLE Two. The object of this Society is the entire 
abolition of slavery in the United States. While it admits that 
each State in which slavery exists has, by the Constitution of the 
United States, the exclusive right to legislate in regard to its 
abolition in said State, it shall aim to convince all our fellow- 
citizens, by arguments addressed to their understandings and 
consciences, that slave-holding is a heinous crime in the sight 
of God, and that the duty, safety, and the best interests of all 



" Garrison and his Times," p. 85. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 113 

concerned require its immediate abandonment, without expatria 
tion. The Society will also endeavor, in a constitutional way, 
to influence Congress to put an end to the domestic slave trade, 
and to abolish slavery in all those portions of our common 
country which come under its control, especially in the District 
of Columbia and likewise to prevent the extension of it to any 
State that may be hereafter admitted to the Union. 1 

" ARTICLE THREE. This Society shall aim to elevate the 
character and the condition of the people of color, by encourag 
ing their intellectual, moral, and religious improvement, and by 
removing public prejudice, that thus they may, according to 
their intellectual and moral worth, share an equality with the 
whites of civil and religious privileges ; but this Society will 
never, in any way, countenance the oppressed in vindicating 
their rights by resorting to physical force." 2 

These were the earliest organizations. The great 
family of similar bodies domiciled throughout the 
free States reproduced these distinctive features of 
their parents as one after the other they were born. 

Mr. Garrison was a non-resistant, as were many 
of his followers. Mr. Phillips was not. But he 
fully adopted the measures in vogue when he came 
into the movement, and his efforts for a quarter of a 
century were exerted persistently and consistently 
on the moral suasion platform, though when the war 
broke out he gave it a hearty support all the more 
hearty because of his long moral advocacy. 

Throughout this period the indictment of the 
Abolitionists had two contradictory counts. The 
slave-holders charged them with attempting to stir 
insurrection. Those who professed to abhor slavery, 
but who excused themselves from moving against it, 
accused them of impracticability. They answered 



1 The ultimate purpose of the Free Soil and Republican parties. 

2 " William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. i., p. 414. 



114 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

the charge of sedition by pointing to their standards 
of faith and practice. They responded to the ac 
cusation of impracticability by proving that they were 
acting under the inspiration of Jesus Christ, and that 
they were, therefore, just as practical as the genius 
of His system would permit them to be. Did the 
Master preach immediate repentance ? So did they 
preach immediate emancipation. Was it within the 
power of a sinner to let go of his sin ? So was it 
within the power of a slave-holder to free his slaves. 

Moreover, as a further and triumphant reply to 
this assertion that they were impracticables, they 
called attention to the recent success of the English 
Abolitionists, who, on the same basis, had assailed 
and at length abolished slavery in the British West 
Indies. 1 Why was not what had been practicable 
there, after years of agitation, equally practicable 
here ? Were Clarkson and Wilberforce, Buxton and 
Macaulay, Brougham and O Connell hotheads? 
Then they; too, were content to be known as fanat 
ics. Was there any peculiarity in the American 
moral climate which could hocus-pocus success in 
Palestine and triumph in England and the West In 
dies into failure in the United States ? Why should 
what was acknowledged to be statesmanship on one 
side of the Atlantic become fanaticism on this side ? 
The Abolitionists waited long for an answer to these 
questions. Those who survive are waiting still. 

Not at once did Mr. Phillips devote his whole 
time and attention to Abolition. He attended to 
what law business the Faneuil Hall meeting had left 
in his hands. Now, too, he commenced his wonder- 



On August ist, 1834, 800,000 slaves were set free. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I 15 

ful career as a public lecturer. From the moment 
he entered this field he was in continental demand. 
His literary productions, especially, were eagerly 
sought ; each new lecture was an event. These he 
valued as so many introductions to audiences which 
would not permit him to discuss slavery at first, but 
which, once under the spell of the magician, gave 
him carte blanche. Hence he kept constantly on hand 
an assortment of lectures on science, of which he 
was fond, and biography (a department in which he 
was an adept), and through these won a hearing for 
the cause which lay nearest his heart. It was in this 
way that he was led to prepare his famous lecture 
on " The Lost Arts." He began to deliver it in 
1838. Thenceforth and for forty-five years he gave 
it again and again over two thousand times in all 
to fascinated crowds from Portland to St. Louis, 
until it netted him $150,000, the largest sum ever 
earned by a similar production. 2 

The boards of the Lyceum he continued to tread 
through life. But by and by he made the Lyceum 
an Anti-Slavery rostrum, and the movement ab 
sorbed him. 



1 This is given in full in the Appendix. 

2 So he informed the writer in 1883. 



II. 

A CONUNDRUM. 

WOMAN is a conundrum which man is unwilling" to 
give up. We write her with an interrogation mark. 
Mrs. Mary A. Livermore used to deliver an enter 
taining lecture entitled " W^hat shall we do with 
our Daughters ?" Tis a serious question even now. 
Fifty years ago it was a hopeless question. It might 
have been reversed and put in this form : " What 
will our daughters do with us ?" 

Woman has always been the power behind the 
throne. There has been the difficulty. She has 
been behind it when she should have been on it. 
Hers has been power without the sobering sense of 
responsibility. She has had her way ; but in order 
to get it she has been obliged to cheat her male be 
longings into thinking they were having theirs. It 
has been finesse against force the fox against the 
Hon. In such a role there is no dignity and little 
credit. We have shut woman up in a doll- world, 
and then complained of her frivolity. Why are 
you women such fools ?" queried a crusty benedict. 
I suppose," was the quick reply of the bright 
woman he addressed, "it is because God made us 
to match the men !" 

As soon as the various Anti-Slavery societies, 
which now began to abound, were organized, they 
were confronted by a perplexity nearer and more 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I I/ 

exacting- than slavery itself woman ! The ladies 
composed two thirds of the membership and did 
three fourths of the work. Yet when it came to the 
election of officers and the shaping of policies they 
had no vote and no voice. Some of them resented 
this. They insisted upon recognition as an act of 
justice to themselves on the part of societies pledged 
to win justice for others. They wanted to help in the 
choice of their leaders. They desired to share in 
the maturing of measures and methods. A few went 
further they wished to go out and tell the com 
munity, as only women could, about the horrors of 
slavery, and to do this with the sanction and under 
the seal of one and another of the Anti-Slavery 
societies. 

Well, these demands made a great ado. Oriental 
notions then prevailed regarding woman s seclusion. 
The Shah of Persia would not have been more 
shocked by a protest on the part of one of his wives 
against plural marriage than were some of the Aboli 
tionists by such unheard-of claims. They were pro 
nounced "unwomanly" and 4< unsexing." Nowa 
days it is laughable. But let us remember that those 
ladies by their persistence made the happy social 
change which gives us the right to laugh. . They 
fought their battle bravely. They acknowledged 
their sex to be miraculously able, but said they did 
not go so far as to hold that one whom God had 
made a woman could make herself anything else. 
They begged to be informed why it was en regie for 
a woman to act on the stage and sing in public, but 
unwomanly for her to sit with men on committees 
and talk to a mixed company from the platform ? 
Yet many of those who held up their hands in hor- 



IlS WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ror at the thought of this proposed outrage upon 
propriety, paid fabulous prices to hear Jenny Lind 
sing and to see Rachel act. 

It is a suggestive fact that an effort at reform in 
one direction surely discloses the need of reform in 
other directions, and at the same time educates 
some who have acted in that one line to move in 
those other lines of amelioration. Thus it was that 
the crusade against slavery inevitably led first to the 
movement in behalf of woman and then to the move 
ment in behalf of labor. For numbers of the reform 
ers, their attention having been called to it, saw at 
once the reasonableness of the women s claim, and 
conceded it, Mr. Phillips among the foremost. In 
the matter of rights he could see no difference be 
tween a coat and a petticoat. Nor was he much dis 
turbed when certain of the brethren assured him 
that the Bible had closed woman s mouth in con 
ventions with a seal which bore the imprint of St. 
Paul. That bugaboo had been paraded so often in 
the case of slavery, through allusions to Abraham 
and Onesimus, it could no longer scare. " Since 
woman," said Mr. Phillips, "is interested equally 
with man in righting the wrongs of slavery ; since 
among the blacks she suffers vitally as wife and 
mother, as daughter and sister, just as he does as hus 
band and father, as son and brother ; why is she not 
entitled to utter her indignation anywhere, every 
where, and most of all in Anti-Slavery committee- 
rooms and upon Anti-Slavery platforms ?" 

This burning issue did not come up as an abstract 
question, but in an actual case. A couple of heroic 



So he writes in a letter to Arthur Tappan, in 1838 (MS.). 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. IIQ 

women, the sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke, 
daughters of a celebrated jurist of South Carolina, 
Judge John F. Grimke, no longer able to endure the 
horrors they witnessed in the house of bondage, 
shook off the dust from their feet against their native 
State and made a home in Philadelphia. They had 
been members of the Episcopal communion. Find 
ing it a hot-bed of Pro-Slavery sentiment, they came 
out again and united with the orthodox Quakers. 
Soon they began a house-to-house canvass among 
their own sex in the interest of Abolition. Their 
words were so incisive, their impeachment of slavery 
was so tremendous, their story of its immoralities 
was so pathetic, that the women who heard them 
were deeply moved. Presently the men, hearing of 
their successful advocacy, began to clamor for ad 
mission to these conferences, for women have no 
monopoly of curiosity. The surest way to attract a 
man anywhither is to bar him out especially if 
women are barred in ! Erelong, therefore, there 
was a demand for the public appearance of the Misses 
Grimke. Being Quakeresses they had no objection 
to a promiscuous audience. Accordingly, under 
the auspices of the various Anti-Slavery societies, 
they began to discuss slavery in public ; always to 
the conviction and conversion of those who listened. 
Indeed, they proved to be the most effective of 
speakers. 1 

Marking this, the conservatives made haste to do 
two things : First, to shut in their faces the doors of 
every church which they controlled the vast ma 
jority ; and, secondly, to fulminate against them a 



1 Johnson s " Garrison and his Times," p. 261. 



120 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Protestant "bull," in which the faithful were ex 
horted not to countenance such caricatures upon 
true womanhood. 

This "bull," which appeared in the summer of 
1837, called forth from Whittier one of his most 
pungent lyrics : 

"So this is all the utmost reach 

Of priestly power the mind to fetter ! 
When laymen think, when women preach, 

A War of Words a pastoral letter. 
But ye who scorn the thrilling tale 

Of Carolina s high-souled daughters, 
Which echoes here the mournful wail 

Of sorrow from Edisto s waters, 
Close while ye may the public ear, 

With malice vex, with slander wound them ; 
The pure and good shall throng to hear, 

And tried and manly hearts surround them." 2 

These last lines were prophetic. For the measures 
taken to suppress only enlarged their meetings. 3 
Other women began to exhort. More and more 
were the Anti-Slavery societies called upon to ac 
cord to the women the privileges enjoyed by men. 
More and more did Mr. Phillips insist that this be 
done ; in which Mr. Garrison and many others joined 
him. * The debate was hot. In various instances the 
rights demanded were accorded. 



1 This was the utterance of the General Association of the Massa 
chusetts orthodox churches, in session at Brookfield, which met June 
27th. The paper was drawn up by the Rev. Dr. Nehemiah Adams, 
of Boston, who soon earned for himself, by his truckling to the slave 
power, the sobriquet of " Southside Adams." 

2 " Whittier s Poems, The Pastoral Letter. " Diamond edition, 
p. 70. 

3 Angelina Grimke was married to Theodore D. Weld in 1838. 
She died some years ago. Sarah died earlier. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 121 

Reference is here made to this issue and to Mr. 
Phillips s position on it, because it belongs here in 
point of time ; because soon afterward it divided the 
Abolitionists into two camps ; and because in Eng 
land and at home our knight-errant of freedom was 
to break many a gallant lance as the champion of the 
ladies. 



III. 

"VALE." 

BOSTON has always been celebrated as an intellec 
tual headquarters. It was markedly so when Wen 
dell Phillips was young. There was then a circle of 
wide-awakes meeting at irregular intervals under 
the name of " The Friends," usually in the palatial 
apartments of Mr. Jonathan Phillips, a wealthy 
bachelor, who resided at the Tremont House, that 
relative of the orator who had presided over the 
gathering in Faneuil Hall where he spoke, and, like 
Byron, awoke the next morning to find himself 
famous. In this conclave the wits of the day were 
wont to discuss living questions of all sorts. 1 Here 
Dr. Charming might surely be found, and Bronson 
Alcott, a gentle philosopher with an orthodox train 
ing and a heterodox slant, and Theodore Parker, 
already known as an heresiarch, whose acquaintance 
Mr. Phillips thus early made at one of these sym 
posiums, for the young lawyer was another of the 
" Friends." What hairs did they split ! What fine 
distinctions between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee ! 
Mr. Phillips used to refer to it all as a rare school of 
dialectics. No doubt he often took occasion to re 
mind the circle that inequity should properly be 
spelled iniquity. 



" Life of Theodore Parker," by O. B. Frothingham, p. 96. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 123 

Early in 1839 ne was made General Agent of the 
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, of which Fran 
cis Jackson was the President and William Lloyd 
Garrison was the Corresponding Secretary. Into 
this work Mr. Phillips threw himself with the ardor 
of an enthusiast and the success of a man of affairs. 
He organized a school-house campaign, held meet 
ings from the sands of Cape Cod to the hills of Berk 
shire, made every cross-roads a hustings, created lec 
turers by the score, and set on two feet a protean 
discussion. He spoke himself here, there, and yon 
der, and became ubiquitous. He hung out a new 
lantern and started another Paul Revere s ride, to 
give warning of a more dangerous invasion than the 
old one by the redcoats. Soon he had the State 
agog, this aristocrat turned democrat who was not 
yet thirty ! 

To the perturbations of his official position (which 
he held without pecuniary recompense) 2 he added, 
in these early years of his married life, an increasing 
anxiety for his wife. She grew frail apace. The 
cradle of their happiness seemed destined to be its 
grave. As a dernier ressort the nonplussed physi 
cians advised a European trip. Mr. Phillips s family 
eagerly coincided, hoping that time and distance 
might cure him of his " fanaticism" and her of her 
ailment. The thought of withdrawal, even for a 
time, was a cross to both. Their hearts were at one 
in the Anti-Slavery crusade. But health and strength 
might come from the tonic of new scenes and experi 
ences, and so long years of usefulness. The unpalata 
ble medicine was worth a trial. They decided to obey. 



Vide Liberator , vol. ix., p. 95. 8 Ib. 



124 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

At this moment the annual meeting of the New 
England Anti-Slavery Society was held, the place 
being Boston, and the date May 3Oth, 1839. The 
Convention unanimously adopted a series of resolu 
tions referring in warm terms to Mr. Phillips s unself 
ish labors, and recommending him to the hospitality 
and confidence of Abolitionists on the other side of 
the water, as " a devoted, uncompromising and 
eloquent friend of the slave." 

After listening to this tribute he ascended the plat 
form, evidently much affected, and was received 
with round on round of hearty plaudits. Speaking 
with emotion, he said : 

" I thank you for your vote. I feel my responsibility as your 
representative abroad. I trust in the opinion of the civilized 
world whose thunder tones are beginning even now to sweep 
over the Atlantic, in the power of Christendom, awake, united, 
indignant, speaking in the voice of our fatherland and echoed 
by gallant and beautiful France. England has solved the vexed 
question, and proved that emancipation is both safe and expe 
dient, and has written that demonstration in letters emblazoned 
in lines of light 

1 On the blue vault of heaven, 
Twixt Orion and the Pleiades. 

" The Germans call enthusiasm Schwdrmerei, as if its origin 
were amid a swarm or assembly of people. Let us rather keep 
to the old Greek definition the God within us and go hence 
to work as earnestly as we have felt in this crowded Conven 
tion." * 

As Mr. Phillips resumed his seat the convention 
broke forth in a tornado of cheers. 

Soon after this valedictory address the managers of 



1 Liberator, vol. ix., 2d week in June. 2 //>. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 125 

the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society bade him an 
affectionate and appreciative farewell in an open 
letter, which recited in detail his birth, sacrifices, 
talents, and services, and commended him to the 
friends of humanity everywhere. These references 
were followed by a remarkable summing- up of the 
Anti-Slavery progress within a decade : 

" Ten years ago a solitary individual stood up as 
the advocate of immediate arid unconditional eman 
cipation. Now, that individual sees about him hun 
dreds of thousands of persons, of both sexes, mem 
bers of every sect and party, from the most elevated 
to the humblest rank in life. In 1829 not an Anti- 
Slavery society of a genuine stamp was in exist 
ence. In 1839 there are nearly two thousand such 
societies swarming- and multiplying in all parts of 
the free States. In 1829 there was but one Anti- 
Slavery periodical in the land. In 1839 there are 
fourteen. In 1829 there was scarcely a newspaper 
of any religious or political party which was willing 
to disturb the delicate question of slavery. In 
1839 there are multitudes of journals that either 
openly advocate the doctrine of immediate and un 
conditional emancipation, or permit its free discus 
sion in their columns. Then, scarcely a church made 
slave-holding a bar to communion. Now, multitudes 
refuse to hear a slave-holder preach, or to recognize 
one as a brother. Then, no one petitioned Congress 
to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. 
Now, in one day, a single member of the House of 
Representatives (John Quincy Adams) has presented 
one hundred and seventy-six such petitions in de 
tail ; while not less than seven hundred thousand 
persons have memorialized Congress on that and 



126 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

kindred subjects. . . . Tell our British brethren that 
the apathy which once brooded over the land like 
the spell of death is broken forever." 

Accompanied by these good wishes and with such 
credentials, the Phillipses said good-by to their 
country with tolerable composure, and set sail from 
New York for London in the packet " Wellington" on 
June 6th, 1839.* No steam, no electric lights, no 
hotels afloat at that time. But the * Wellington" was 
the best ship up to date on the vast ferry between 
the continents. Hence our travellers esteemed 
themselves fortunate in securing a passage on her ; 
and were so, for she carried them safely, and con 
quered Neptune as her namesake did Napoleon. 



Liberator, vol. ix., p. 95. * Ib. 



IV. 

SCENES AND EXPERIENCES IN EUROPE. 

THE two Bostonians reached London in July. 
Here they tarried only long enough to take their 
sea-legs off arid put their land-legs on. Their pur 
pose was to pass the approaching winter in Rome 
and to return to Great Britain for the summer of 
1840. Hence they did not regret the hasty exit, 
but realized the need of " movin on," like poor Joe 
in Dickens s story, since the long journey on the 
Continent must be made by easy stages and in the 
clumsy diligence, which represented the rapid transit 
of the period. In September they were in Lyons, 
whither they went from Paris en route for Italy. 
Before the snows fell they were in the Eternal City, 
whence Mr. Phillips wrote, under date of January 
5th, 1840, to a relative at home : 

" It seems useless to catalogue interesting objects, so numer 
ous are they here ; yet catalogues are more eloquent than de 
scriptions. The Caesars palace speaks for, itself. To stand in 
the Pantheon, on which Paul s eyes may have rested, what needs 
one more to feel ? We have been up Trajan s Pillar by the very 
steps the old Roman feet once trod ; rode over the pavement on 
which Constantine entered in triumph ; seen the Colosseum 
(I by moonlight, and heard the dog bay, though not beyond 
the Tiber that I know of) ; lost ourselves in that little world of 
dazzling, bewildering beauty, the Vatican, where the Laocoon 
breathes in never-ending agony, and eternal triumph beams 
from the brow of the Apollo. We have dived into Titus s baths 



128 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

and the half-buried ruins of Nero s golden house, where the 
frescoes are blooming and fresh after eighteen hundred years." l 

Amid these scenes they learned that a World s 
Anti-Slavery Convention had been called to meet in 
London, June I2th, 1840 ; that the Massachusetts and 
Pennsylvania societies had accredited a number of 
well-known men and women as delegates, themselves 
included, and that they were expected to report for 
duty there and then. Returning to England they 
duly reached the metropolis. Their letters of intro 
duction were an " open sesame." They met all the 
high mightinesses of the day the Duchess of Sunder- 
land, a great beauty and next in rank to the Queen, 
her daughter, afterward the Duchess of Argyle, 
Lady Byron, wife of the poet, Lord Brougham, and, 
best of all, Daniel O Connell, the Irish liberator, 
between whom and Mr. Phillips a great friendship 
sprang up. Now, too, the Phillipses first met George 
Thompson, the orator of the West Indian emancipa 
tion, who had been publicly crowned in the House 
of Commons as the foremost and most eloquent 
pleader for negro liberty in England, 2 but whom 
America had scorned and sought to crucify, when, 
on the invitation of Mr. Garrison, he had visited us 
in i834. 3 The meeting between these two was cor 
dial. Mr.- Thompson was a Scotsman, a resident of 
Edinburgh, a wit and a genius, now in the prime 
of life. " Ann and I," said Mr. Phillips, " went 
laughing through England and Scotland with this 
prince of raconteurs. One of his stories, especially, 



1 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," by Mrs. Alford, p. 7. 

" Garrison and his Times," p. 134. 
;i Jb. Also " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. i., pp. 43 2 ~ 6 7- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1 29 

always convulsed us, told as it was with inimitable 
drollery : The story of an East Indian Rajah who 
had been persuaded to take a seidlitz-powder by 
some wag, and to take it in sections, swallowing first 
the contents of the blue paper and instantly after 
ward the contents of the white, so that the efferves 
cence took place internally, throwing the astounded 
Rajah into volcanic eruption, with his mouth and 
nostrils for craters." 

In attendance upon the convention were a couple 
of Abolitionists to whom they were instantly drawn 
as by a kinship of soul. The first of these was Miss 
Elizabeth Pease, a young Quaker lady, of Darling 
ton, England, a lovely character, in whose society 
they spent many delightful days, and \vith whom 
they continued an intimate correspondence for years 
after their return to America. 2 The other was 
Richard D. Webb, of Dublin, a rich Quaker printer, 
one of the most genial and witty of men, whose Irish 
blood showed itself, spite of his Quakerism, in an 
unconscious and irrepressible love for a " scrim 
mage ;" as is evident from the fact that he struck 
off on his presses an edition of non-resistant pam 
phlets, " just to raise a little bit of a row !" 

The World s Convention opened on Friday, June 
1 2th, 1840, in Freemason s Hall, with five hundred 
delegates on the floor, 4 many of them Americans. 
In the preceding year the British and Foreign Anti- 
Slavery Society had been organized by an eminent 



1 Letter from Mr. Phillips to a relative (MS.). 

2 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," by Mrs. Alford, p. 7. 

3 Quoted from a letter written by Richard D. Webb to George 
Thompson, in "William Lloyd Garrison," vol. ii., p. 403. 

4 " William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii.. p. 367. 



130 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

member of the Society of Friends, Joseph Sturge. 1 
This body had issued a call for a General Conference 
and addressed it to " Friends of the slave of every 
nation and of every clime." 2 Accordingly, the vari 
ous American societies met and appointed delegates. 
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, in agreement with 
their recent rules, had, as we have stated, sent mixed 
delegations, among the men, William Lloyd Garri 
son, Wendell Phillips, and William Adam, Professor 
of Oriental Languages at Harvard College ; among 
the women, Harriet Martineau (who, though an 
Englishwoman and a non-resident of America, was 
an honorary member of the Massachusetts Anti- 
Slavery Society, and already on the ground), Mrs. 
Wendell Phillips, Mrs. Henry G. Chapman, and 
Lucretia Mott, by odds the ablest and most distin 
guished Quakeress in the world. 

These ladies were now in London, and they re 
quested Wendell Phillips to present their credentials. 
Upon doing so, a day or two before the first session 
of the Convention, he was waved off to the Execu 
tive Committee of the British and Foreign Society, 
which had assumed authority to determine who 
were eligible for membership. This cabal refused 
to admit women. From their star-chamber decision, 
Mr. Phillips appealed to the convention itself. As 
soon, therefore, as the venerable Thomas Clarkson, 
the father of the West India emancipation, who pre 
sided, had concluded his address of greeting, the 
young American rose and offered this resolution : 

" That a committee of five be appointed to prepare a correct 



1 "William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii., p. 352. 
8 Ib. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 13! 

list of the members of this Convention, with instruction to in 
clude in such list all persons bearing credentials from any Anti- 
Slavery society." 

The resolution stirred a hubbub. It shifted the 
question as to who should and who should not be 
considered as delegates from the committee-room to 
the Convention, and bluntly put the decision as to 
whether it was a self-constituting body where it be 
longed, with the body. When quiet was restored 
Mr. Phillips, calm, debonair, in London as in Boston, 
proceeded to argue the case : 

"When the call reached America, we found that it was an 
invitation to the friends of the slaves of every nation and of 
every clime. Massachusetts has for several years acted on the 
principle of admitting women to an equal seat with men in the 
deliberate bodies of Anti-Slavery societies. When the Massa 
chusetts Anti-Slavery Society received that paper, it interpreted 
it, as was its duty, in its broadest and most liberal sense. We 
stand here in consequence of your invitation ; and, knowing our 
custom, as it must be presumed you did, we had a right to inter 
pret friends of the slaves to include women as well as men. 
In such circumstances we do not think it just or equitable to 
that State, nor to America in general, that after the trouble, the 
sacrifice, the self-devotion, of a part of those who left their 
families and kindred and occupations in their own land, to come 
three thousand miles to attend this World s Convention, they 
should be refused a place in its deliberations." l 

English habits and customs felt outraged. Women 
sitting with men in a convention shocking ! They 
might sit together at home, in church, at theatres, 
in the ball-room, at a concert, in the public convey 
ances, anywhere, everywhere, except in a conven 
tion. In the interest of decency and in the interest 



1 " The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," by George L, 
Austin, p. 97, 



132 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

of harmony, the New Englander was besought on 
all sides to withdraw his motion. He rose again and 
said : 

" I would merely ask whether any man can suppose that the 
delegates from Massachusetts or Pennsylvania can take upon 
their shoulders the responsibility of withdrawing that list of 
delegates from your table, which their constituents told them 
to place there, and whom they sanctioned as their fit repre 
sentatives, because this Convention tells us that it is not ready 
to meet the ridicule of the morning newspapers, and to stand 
up against the customs of England ? In America we listen to 
no such arguments. If we had done so, we had never been 
here as Abolitionists. It is the custom there not to admit colored 
men into respectable society ; and we have been told again and 
again that we are outraging the decencies of humanity when we 
permit colored men to sit by our side. When we have sub 
mitted to brickbats and the tar-tub and feathers in New England 
rather than yield to the custom prevalent there of not admitting 
colored brethren into our friendship, shall we yield to parallel 
custom or prejudice against women in Old England ? 

" We cannot yield this question if we would, for it is a matter 
of conscience. But we would not yield it on the ground of ex 
pediency. In doing so, we should feel that we were striking 
off the right arm of our enterprise. We could not go back to 
America to ask for any aid from the women of Massachusetts if 
we had deserted them when they chose to send out their own 
sisters as their representatives here ; we could not go back to 
Massachusetts and assert our unchangeableness of spirit on the 
question. We have argued it over and over again, and decided 
it time after time, in every society in the land, in favor of the 
women. We have not changed by crossing the water. We 
stand here the advocates of the same principle that we contend 
for in America. We think it right for women to sit by our side 
there and we think it right for them to do the same here. We 
ask the Convention to admit them ; if they do not choose to 
grant it, the responsibility rests on their shoulders. Massa 
chusetts cannot turn aside or succumb to any prejudices or cus 
toms, even in the land she looks upon with so much reverence 
as the land of Wilberforce, of Claikson, and of O Connell. It 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 133 

is a matter of conscience, and British virtue ought not to ask us 

to yield." 

The result was that, after a gallant struggle, the 
ladies were denied admission to the floor as delegates 
and shunted off into the galleries as spectators. 2 
Negroes were admitted ; but women, gracious, no ! 
It was when Mr. Phillips left her to conduct this 
case that Mrs. Phillips addressed him in the oft- 
quoted words : 

" Wendell, don t shilly-shally." 3 

Well, he did not. And though immediately de 
feated, he opened then and there the broadest and 
profoundest of all agitations, that which contem 
plates the emancipation of the larger and better half 
of the human race. The World s Convention straight 
way shrank into a conclave of men a sex conven 
tion. It was its ironical fate to stand rather as a 
landmark in the history of woman s rights than in 
that of Abolition. * 

This action set tongues a-wagging from Land s 
End to John o Groat s house ; yes, and across the 
continent of America. It was a better advertise 
ment for fair play than a dozen unchallenged admis 
sions would have been. 

Unfortunately Mr. Garrison, detained by storms 
on the ocean, did not reach London until the Con 
vention was nearing its end. When he arrived he 
refused to enter the body, and took his place yonder 
in the galleries among the excluded and disfranchised 



1 " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips." by George L. Austin, 
pp. 98, 99- 

2 " Life and Letters of J. and L. Mott," in loco. 

3 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 8 

4 " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. 5i., p. 381. 



134 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

delegates. In a letter to the Liberator he gives his 
reason : 

" The Convention had but three days more to sit, and there 
fore we would not disturb it by renewing the agitation of the 
subject already decided, but so decided as to prevent us also 
from entering without renewing its discussion. Another reason 
was that, after having called every friend of the oppressed from 
all parts of the globe, the Convention was not an open one, but 
resolved itself into a delegated body. Another was that, being 
a delegated body, the delegates were not all received. Why, 
which of the delegates had the right to reject the rest ? As well 
might the women have conspired to vote out the men, as the 
men have undertaken to exclude the women." l 

The action of the World s Convention was pitiful ; 
all the more inexcusable because it was, in its incep 
tion, and largely in its management, a Quaker con 
ference, and, as everybody knows, the Quakers have 
given to women the largest recognition. Now they 
poured contempt upon their own traditions and bor 
rowed the manners of the " world s people." 

Two names stand out in honorable prominence 
upon the record. They are the names of two Roman 
Catholics one the foremost priest of his age, the 
other the most illustrious layman in the Pope s com 
munion. Father Mathew, the great apostle of tem 
perance, who revolutionized Ireland on that ques 
tion, expressed his deep regret at the exclusion of 
the women delegates. 2 And Daniel O Connell, in 
a letter to Lucretia Mott, dated London, June 2Oth, 
wrote : 

" I readily comply with your request to give my opinion as to 
the propriety of the admission of the female delegates into 
the Convention. 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. x., p. 165. * /., p. 139. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 135 

" I should premise by avowing, that my first impression was 
strong against that admission ; and I believe I declared that 
opinion in private conversation. But when I was called upon 
by you to give my personal decision on the subject I felt it my 
duty;to investigate the grounds of the opinion I had formed ; 
and upon that investigation I easily discovered that it was 
founded on no better grounds than an apprehension of the 
ridicule it might excite, if the Convention were to do what is so 
unusual in England to admit women to an equal share and 
right of discussion. I also, without difficulty, recognized that 
this was an unworthy, and, indeed, a cowardly motive, and I 
easily overcame its influence. 

" My mature consideration of the entire subject convinces me 
of the right of the female delegates to take their seats in the Con 
vention, and of the injustice of excluding them. I do not care 
to add, that I deem it also impolitic ; because, that exclusion 
being unjust, it ought not to have taken place even if it could 
also be politic. 

" I have a consciousness that I have not done my duty in not 
sooner urging these considerations on the Convention. My ex 
cuse is, that I was unavoidably absent during the discussion of 
the subject I" 1 

For their part in the Convention, the controlling 
spirits sent Messrs. Phillips and Garrison to Coven 
try. When a monster meeting was held in Exeter 
Hall, as a grand finale, neither of them was invited to 
speak, though one was the originator and the other 
was the orator par excellence of the Abolition move 
ment in America. Two lesser lights represented 
this country on the platform that night ; while 
O Connell spoke, as only he could, for Europe, 
gathering into one tremendous thunder-tone the old 
world s rebuke of the recreant Republic. This was 



1 Liberator, vol. x., p. 119. Compare " William Lloyd Garrison," 
vol. ii., p. 382. 



136 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

the occasion when the eloquent Irishman uttered the 
sentence which Phillips never tired of repeating : 

" I send my voice across the Atlantic, careering 
like the thunder-storm against the breeze, to tell the 
slave-holder of the Carolinas that God s thunder 
bolts are hot, and to remind the bondman that the 
.dawn of his redemption is already breaking !" 2 

In commenting upon this, Mr. Phillips said : 
1 You seemed to hear the tones come echoing back 
to London from the Rocky Mountains." 2 

He went with Garrison soon after to call on 
O Connell. The Irishman had just begun to agitate 
for the repeal of the union with England. He was 
to make a speech that night in the House of Com 
mons on that very issue. The two friends intruded 
with fear and trembling, expecting to find him in the 
throes of preparation. On the contrary, he was 
stretched upon a sofa enjoying one of Charles Dick- 
ens s novels ! 3 After the manner of great minds he 
sought recreation on the eve of conflict and left his 
opponents to do the agony. 

The Convention adjourned on June 23d. 4 There 
upon social enjoyments, which the session had inter 
rupted, resumed their sway. It was here, there, or 
yonder from daybreak to midnight, an unceasing 
round of fetes and pleasures. Into them Mrs. Phil 
lips entered as deeply as her strength would allow, 



1 See Phillips s lecture on O Connell in the Appendix of this volume. 

2 Ib. 

3 For one interesting parallel case the reader is referred to Edward 
Everett s account of Webster s manner the night previous to his 
crushing response to Hayne. Vide Everett s " Orations and 
Speeches," vol. iv., p. 205. 

4 "William Lloyd Garrison," vol. ii.. D. 373, note. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 137 

and often when she was spent she urged her devoted 
" better three-quarters," as she persisted in calling 
him, to go and represent the remaining quarter, 
finding it difficult, however, to enforce obedience in 
this from the usually submissive husband. What 
were scenes and experiences of gayety to him with 
her absent and in pain ? 

Finding that the social pace was harmful to her, 
and mindful of the purpose of their exile, he hurried 
off with her against the protests of his British friends, 
and in July, 1840, set out, by way of Belgium and 
the Rhine, for Kissingen, in Bavaria, in the vain 
hope that the medicinal waters of the spa would 
prove beneficial. In a letter to Miss Elizabeth Pease, 
written from Kissingen, in August, he gives a hint 
of what they saw : 

" To Americans it Was especially pleasant to see at Frankfort 
the oldest printed Bible in the world and two pairs of Luther s 
shoes, which Ann would not quit sight of till I had mustered 
German enough to ask the man to let the little girl feel of 
them. So, after being permitted to hold the great man s slippers 
in her own hands, the man watching to see she did not vanish 
with them, the delegate from Massachusetts was content to 
leave the room. But she ll speak for herself." 

Then, in the same letter, Mrs. Phillips adds : 

" We are settled down in this quiet little village, and strange 
indeed it is after the busy London hours. How much we en 
joyed there ! Even I have a world to look back upon, though 
I was able to take but little share in the rich feast of heart and 
mind. It was the remark of the great physician Hunter that he 
should be happy through eternity if God would but let him muse 
upon all he had seen and learned in this world. So what a 
never-ending store of recollections you will have in this visit 
from those you have so long known (though not face to face). 
How hallowed will be to you the memory of those hours of com- 



138 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

munion with such a being as Garrison ! I thought you could 
not but love him." l 

As Kissingen did not answer their expectations, 
they next tried Briickenau, another Bavarian spa. 
Meeting with continued disappointment, they de 
voted the autumn, which was a delightful one, to 
leisurely travel in Switzerland and Northern Italy. 
Leaving Germany ma Heidelberg, they visited in 
succession the Falls of the Rhine, Zurich, Lucerne, 
Berne, Interlaken ("over that gem of a lake by 
Thun"), the Staubbach and Wengern Alps, and Lau 
sanne, and in October they crossed the Simplon to 
Milan. 2 On reaching Florence, which they did in 
November, Mr. Phillips wrote : 

" After a fortnight of glorious weather, we came hither by 
Bologna, that jewel of a city, . . . for she admits women to be 
professors in her university, her gallery guards their paintings, 
her palaces boast their sculptures. I gloried in standing beside 
a woman-professor s monument set up side by side with that of 
the illustrious Galvani." 3 

At the same time he wrote an interesting descrip 
tive letter to his wife s cousin and his own devoted 
friend, Miss Mary Grew, of Philadelphia, who had 
been among the rejected delegates at the World s 
Convention, one of the most gifted and indefatigable 
of the Anti-Slavery band : 

" FLORENCE, ITALY, November 19, 1840. 

" DEAR COUSIN : I have remembered well my promise to 
write to you, but a thousand things have pushed the August 
which should have been into the November which stares at me 
rather reproachfully from my dating. This, however, is not the 
only plan for this second year abroad which has not come to 



" Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 9. 2 Ib.\ p. 10. 3 Ib. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 139 

reality ; and, though we are very happy, and mean to be under 
all circumstances, still, when we look back on all the things we 
meant to do sights to see, scenes to explore, curiosities to gloat 
over, we feel something as Johnson did when, after printing the 
glorious plan he had at first drawn for his dictionary, he ludi 
crously says, Such were the dreams of a poet destined to awake 
a lexicographer. 

" We had dreamed of seeing all the Alps, Chamouni, climb 
ing hundreds of hills, roaming over the Simplon and the Spliigen 
and lakes innumerable, being drenched in the mist of every 
waterfall which boasts a name, and topping off with Venice 
half-Eastern, half-Gothic, and all romance. But such were the 
dreams of a traveller destined to awake an invalid. 1 I ll not 
stop to tell you of the London days after you left us. You shall 
go on board with us and sail over that rough, chopping Channel 
to Ostend ; passing mournfully, because too rapidly, by those 
rich old places full of pictures and churches and town halls 
(these last the scenes of the first struggle of municipal freedom) ; 
i.e., by Liege, Brussels, Namur, Aix-la-Chapelle, we come to 
spend Sunday at Cologne. I do not deem myself ill employed 
in spending some few hours in wandering around that miracle of 
art, that half-finished cathedral, number one in Gothic architec 
ture the world over ; and staring rather stupidly at that romance- 
known and queer old chapel which boasts of having the skulls 
of the three kings who saluted Mary and the Child. I would I 
could stop to catalogue the strange list of relics they pretend to 
show in Catholic shrines, from the Saviour s blood downward. 
It is certainly shocking, the manner in which they have ran 
sacked the Gospel and marked the slightest things and some 
times ludicrous, though the blind devotion which they inspire 
can only and always be melancholy. But, if you trust them, you 
can see almost any article named in Holy Writ, and sometimes, 
unfortunately, two of the same things. 

" The next day we launched on the Rhine river ever-vary 
ing, always grand and noble ; while we just set foot for the 
night at Coblenz. Come with me, and I ll show you the house 
where Metternich was born ; and in that little church yonder 
the sons of Charlemagne met to divide his empire. 

1 This refers to his wife. 



140 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

" In the Frankfort library, they show you the first printed 
Bible, 1450 or 1455, by Gutenberg, at Mayence (no date in it, 
though), on paper which is as rare as many of these earliest prints 
were on parchment perhaps the oldest printing in the world, 
and seen almost in its cradle. We have seen here, at Florence, 
many ancient stamps for pottery, etc., made of one piece of iron, 
and with over thirty letters cut upon them, just like a stereotype 
plate, to stamp the maker s name on bread or burned ware. 
Strange that they were thus in sight of this glorious invention 
only one step, and to take that step cost fifteen hundred years ! 

" Look here, and you may take into your hands the very shoes 
Luther wore (always provided the librarian holds on to the other 
end to see you do not vanish with them), just such sandals as 
one sees now every day on the monks feet in Italy. Tis 
strange how alike the human mind is, all nations and both 
sexes through. I have found one vein of defect running through 
Catholicism into Quakerism. For instance, the monks dress in 
the fashion of five hundred years ago ; these shoes might be 
mated in any Italian town now, and could have been in the days 
of Petrarch. 

* Yet St. Benedict, when he laid down the rules of his order, 
commanded only plainness, and cautioned against singularity. 
How like broad-brim and straight collars ! 

" But a truce to prosing. Like the Scotsman back agen, 
we came to Frankfort, made acquaintance with Mr. Wood- 
bridge a very pleasant one he was very civil and kind, as 
Americans always ought to be to each other in strange coun 
tries ; and then down to Switzerland, to Schaffhausen, with its 
falls, the boast of Europe ; so-so to an American, though, to be 
sure, they are beautiful. But when [ see falls here, I always 
think of the story of a cockney who was visiting in the country, 
and on being requested to observe a fine river exclaimed, Yes, 
fine, very fine for a country river. So it is with the European 
falls ; not so, though, with the beautiful shoot of the Staubbach, 
which falls some eight or nine hundred feet into a fearful valley 
hemmed in by precipices of black rock on both sides thousands 
of feet high ; on one side the falls, and on the other, peering 
over the lowering black rocks, you see the glistening white of 
the eternal snow of the glaciers reflecting the sunset. Oh, 
those glaciers ! surely next to the ocean they are the sublimest 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 141 

natural objects in the world. Perhaps I ought to except Niagara, 
but am not sure. Winter not in the lap of spring, but of sum 
mer ; roses at your feet, blue-cold ice, dazzling snow over your 
head ; and, far up in the sky, towering above the barren piles of 
rock, perfect wildernesses of snow heaps on heaps. 

" At Milan we received a letter from Elizabeth Pease. She is 
a noble woman, worth coming to a World s Convention, and 
not finding one, to make her acquaintance. 

" Remember us and pray for us, that we may be kept forever 
watching the will of God and doing it with hearts pure and 
raised above every worldly motive or temptation. 
" Yours most truly, 

"WENDELL PHILLIPS." 

Wendell Phillips in Florence ! The swift radical 
for once at rest among conservatives ! The archi 
tect of the future in the city of the past ! The con 
trast was sharp. Yet there was in him a singular 
combination of radicalism and conservatism. Men 
tally he believed in and worked for a nobler to-mor 
row. In sentiment he was reminiscent, and delighted 
to think and speak of the fated yesterday. Hence, 
he found Florence a place of enchantments. 

Such landscapes as might be viewed 

" At evening from the top of Fesole, 
Or in Val darno ;" 

such dark piles of mediaeval architecture as frowned 
down upon him on every side, a romance in each 
stone ; such museums filled with the medals and 
coins of every age, and populous with the breathing 
marbles and the inspired canvas of the master artists ; 
such libraries stored with the choicest texts of ancient 
letters ; such gardens rose, orange, pomegran 
ate, myrtle bewitching the air with fragrance 



142 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

where else would a scholar so willingly live or 
die? 1 

Many and lingering were his visits to the Church 
of Santa Cruce ; to the house of Michel Angelo ; to 
the stone where Dante stood to gaze on the Cam 
panile. Nor did this latest struggler for truth omit 
to go where Milton, also a wanderer amid these 
kindling scenes, went, to the house where Galileo 
lived and died half-villa and half-prison, where the 
English poet (another of those " of whom the world 
was not worthy") found the great Italian, who first 
beheld the heavens through a telescope and saw 
Venus crescent like the moon, grown old and blind, 
and held a " prisoner to the Inquisition for thinking 
on astronomy otherwise than as the Dominican and 
Franciscan licensers thought." 

From Florence the Phillipses turned with a sigh 
of regret and sought Leghorn for the sea-breezes. 
Here they welcomed the birth of the year i84i. 3 
Here, too, they learned of another birth, that of a 
young son of Mr. Garrison, away off in Boston, 
whom the parents had honored one of the wanderers 
by naming Wendell Phillips. 4 Writing from Leg 
horn in recognition of it, he says to a relative : 
" What shall I say of William Lloyd Garrison s 
touching mark of kindly feeling ? I ask you to thank 

1 These points are variously touched in letters which he wrote and 
which we thus summarize. 

3 " Milton s Prose Works," vol. i., p. 313. 

3 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 10. 

4 This gentleman has reflected credit up>n his name. He was 
educated (by his namesake) at Harvard College, and has been for 
years prominent and useful in connection with the New York press ; 
and latterly has given to the world a consummate record of his father s 
life and work, aided by a brother. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 143 

him for this new token of his love and to pet the 
little one until I return to do it I" 1 

Three months later the travellers reached Naples, 
ascended Vesuvius, wandered through the once- 
buried Pompeii and Herculaneum, " adored the 
bay," and laughed at the lazy lazzaroni as they 
sunned themselves at full length on the sidewalks. 
On April I2th Mr. Phillips wrote to Mr. Garrison, 
with Naples for a writing-desk. 

His letter is so characteristic and reveals his artis 
tic and humanitarian instincts two selves in one so 
remarkably, that we must quote some portions of 
it : 

11 Tis a melancholy tour, this through Europe ; and I do not 
understand how any one can return from it without being, in 
Coleridge s phrase, a sadder and a wiser man. Every reflect 
ing mind must be struck at home with the many social evils 
which prevail ; but the most careless eye cannot avoid seeing 
the powerful contrasts which sadden one here at every step ; 
wealth beyond that of fairy tales, and poverty bare and starved 
at its side ; refinement face to face with barbarism ; cultiva 
tion, which hardly finds room to be, crowded out on all sides by 
such debasement. . . . Europe is the treasure-house of rich 
memories, with every city a shrine. Mayence, the mother of 
printing and free trade ; Amalfi, with her Pandects, the foun 
tain of law her compass of commerce her Masaniello of 
popular freedom ; Naples, with her buried satellite of Pom 
peii ; Florence, with her galaxy of genius ; Rome, whose 
name is at once history and description, must ever be the 
1 Meccas of the mind. One must see them to realize the bound 
less wealth, the refinement of art, the luxury, to which the an 
cients had attained. The modern world deems itself rich when 
it gathers up only the fragments. 

" But all the fascinations of art and the luxuries of modern 
civilization are no balance to the misery which bad laws and 



" Wil.Uoi Lloyd Garrison," vol. ii., p. 413, note. 



144 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

bad religion alike entail on the bulk of the people. The Apollo 
himself cannot dazzle one blind to the rags and want which sur 
round him. Nature is not wholly beautiful. For even when 
she marries a matchless sky to her Bay of Naples the impression 
is saddened by the presence of degraded and suffering humanity. 
When you meet in the same street a man encompassed with all 
the equipage of wealth and the beggar on whose brow disease 
and starvation have written his title to your pity, the question is 
involuntary, Is this a Christian city ? To my mind the answer 
is, No. In our own country the same contrasts exist, but they 
are not yet so sharply drawn as here. I hope the discussion of 
the question of property will not cease until the Church is con 
vinced that, from Christian lips ownership means responsibility 
for the right use of what God has given ; that the title of a 
needy brother is as sacred as the owner s own, and infringed 
upon, too, whenever that owner allows the siren voice of his 
own tastes to drown the cry of another s necessities. . . . 

" The moral stagnation here only makes us value more highly 
the stirring arena at home. None know what it is to live till 
they redeem life from monotony by sacrifice. There is more 
happiness in one such hour than in dwelling forever with the 
beautiful and grand which Angelo s chisel has shaped and vital 
ized from the marble chaos, or the pencil of Raphael has given 
to immortality. . . . 

" Nothing brings home so vividly to Ann as the sight of an 
occasional colored man in the street ; and so you see we are 
ready to return to our posts in nothing changed. ... In one 
way, I have learned to value my absence. I have found diffi 
culty in answering others however clear my own mind might 
be when charged with taking steps which the sober judgment 
of old age would regret, with being hurried recklessly forward 
by the enthusiasm of the moment and the excitement of heated 
meetings. I am glad, therefore, to have had this space aside, 
this opportunity of holding up our cause, with all its bearings 
and incidents, calmly before my mind of having distance of 
place perform, as far as possible, the part of distance of years 
of being able to look back from other scenes and studies upon 
the course we have taken the last few years. Having done so, 
I rejoice now to say, that every hour of such thought convinces 
me, more and more, of the overwhelming claims our cause has 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 145 

on the lifelong devotion of each of us of the rightfulness and 
expediency of every step we have taken ; and I hope to return 
to my place prepared to urge its claims with more earnestness, 
and to stand fearlessly by it without a doubt of its success. 

"Paul s appeal to Caesar brought him into this Bay of 
Naples, and he must have seen all its fair shores and jutting 
headlands covered with baths and villas, imperial palaces and 
temples of the gods. A prisoner of a despised race, he stood in 
the presence of the pomp and luxury of the Roman people. Even 
amid their ruins, I could not but realize how strong the faith of 
the Apostle to believe that the message he bore would triumph 
alike over their power and their religion. Struggling against 
priests and people may we cherish a like faith." 

The travellers returned to England by way of Paris 
(another city which charmed them both a second 
visit), and went thence again to London, where they 
spent the last fortnight in June with Elizabeth 
Pease. 2 Mr. Phillips found his friend George 
Thompson busily engaged in organizing a British- 
India agency for the cultivation of cotton, the object 
being to compete with the South in the markets of 
the world, in the hope of superseding slave labor in 
the production and sale of that staple. He wrote 
and published an open letter to Mr. Thompson, from 
which we quote : 

" How shall we address that large class of men to whom 
dollars are always a weightier consideration than duties, prices 
current stronger argument than proofs of Holy Writ ? Our 
appeal has been entreaty ; for the times in America are those 
pursy times when, 

" Virtue itself of Vice must pardon beg, 

Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good. 

" But from India a voice comes clothed with the omnipotence 



1 Published in Liberator, vol. xi., p. 87. 

2 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 10. 



146 WENDELL PIIlLLirS. 

of self-interest ; and the wisdom which might have been slighted 
from the pulpit, will be to such men oracular from the market 
place. Gladly will we make a pilgrimage and bow with more 
than Eastern devotion on the banks of the Ganges, if his holy 
waters shall be able to wear away the fetters of the slave. God 
speed the progress of your society ! May it soon find in its 
ranks the whole phalanx of scarred and veteran Abolitionists 
no single divided effort, but a united one to grapple with the 
wealth, influence, and power embattled against you ! Is it not 
Schiller who says, Divide the thunder into single tones, and it 
becomes a lullaby for children ; but pour it forth in one quick 
peal, and the royal sound shall shake the heavens ? So may it 
be with you ! And God grant that, without waiting for the 
United States to be consistent, before we are dust, the jubilee of 
emancipated millions may reach us from Mexico to the Potomac, 
and from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains." 

No lasting 1 good resulted from the British-India 
endeavor, which enlisted the co-operating efforts of 
American Abolitionists, 2 though for a space it threw 
the Pro-Slavery interest into spasms of apprehen 
sion. 3 

Alter an absence of a little more than two years 
the Phillipses embarked from Liverpool for home on 
July 4th, 1841,* crossing by steamer, then thought 
hazardous, but taken, notwithstanding, by these 
friends of progress. Unhappily their chief purpose 
was not achieved, the wife returning as she had de 
parted, a chronic sufferer. But they had seen and 



1 Vide " Wendell Phillips and his Times," by George L. Austin, 
pp. 103, 104. 

2 Compare a letter written by William Lloj d Garrison to Joseph 
Pease (brother of Elizabeth), of Darlington, England, on the same sub 
ject, in " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. ii., pp. 391-94. 

:! " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. ii., p. 393, note. 

- 1 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 10. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 147 

felt much, storing- a wealth of new emotions and 
bearing back a mass of classic spoil as the criteria of 
endless comparison and illustration. In so far as the 
completion of his outfit as a reformer and orator is 
concerned, Wendell Phillips could not have spent 
those years more admirably. 



V. 

NO. 26 ESSEX STREET. 

THE Phillipses reached Boston about the middle 
of July. 1 Their return was commemorated by a 
formal reception and collation, at which the entire 
Abolitionist community was present, with the grate 
ful colored people in the role of host. Slavery and 
salads were discussed with equal gusto ; and the 
absentees were told how sadly they had been missed 
and how gladly they were welcomed back. 2 Hav 
ing been thus dined (but not wined), they went to 
the summer house of Mr. Phillips s mother in Nahant, 
a resort of the Jlite, within half an hour of town, 
where they passed two or three months, meanwhile 
arranging for a home of their very own. Mrs. Phil 
lips paints their temporary refuge in one of the rare 
letters traced by her pen, and addressed to her dear 
friend in England, Miss Elizabeth Pease : 

" Picture to yourself a great wooden house, with doors and 
blinds as usual, a mile from any other habitation, little grass 
and fewer trees, and you have Phillips s Cliff. The village of 
Nahant is about a mile from our house ; there Dame Fashion 
struts about three months of the summer, but we have the bless 
ing of being out of her way and doing as we please. Here 
dwells, in summer, Wendell s mother ; one of her daughters, 
with five children, one side of the house, we with her in the 



1 On the iyth. 

a " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. Hi., pp. 17, 18. See note also. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 149 

other. What with fifteen children and twenty grandchildren at 
intervals dropping in upon her, you see she is not alone. We 
rise about seven, breakfast at half-past. Wendell rows the boat 
for exercise ; bathes. I walk with him in the morning ; dine at 
two ; in the afternoon we ride with mother ; tea at seven ; in 
the evening we play chess or backgammon with her, or some 
brother or sister comes to pass the night, and we dispute away 
on the great questions. We are considered as heretics and 
almost infidels, but we pursue the even tenor of our way undis 
turbed. Sometimes Wendell goes off abolitionizing for two or 
three days, but I remain on the ground." 

Mrs. Phillips had inherited from her father a tiny 
brick house of the English basement style on Essex 
Street, No. 26. Here the young couple decided to 
make their home. A dining-room and a kitchen on 
the ground floor ; a double parlor facing south (un 
like the occupants), small, but suitable for a literary 
workshop, on the second floor ; front and back cham 
bers (destined to form Mrs. Phillips s realm) on the 
third floor, with attic accommodations for the ser 
vants ; such, in its ensemble, was the snuggery in 
which they were to reside for forty years. 1 It was 
as contracted as their sympathies were expanded. 
Knowing their own social gravitation, they selected 
this robin s nest precisely in order to make enter 
tainment impossible. It was to be the abode of an 
invalid a domestic sanitarium. 

The house stood, however, in the midst of the 
Anti-Slavery colony the Garrisons, the Chapmans, 
the Jacksons, the Lorings, within five minutes 
walk. 2 It was a time when companionship was 
needed. Abolitionists might well huddle together 
for association, as the early settlers used to for pro 
tection when the Indians were prowling about. 

1 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," pp. 10, n. 2 Ib., p. 18. 



ISO WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Just as soon as they were settled Mr. Phillips 
wrote to Miss Pease : 

" November 25, 1841. 

" I am writing in our own parlor wish you were in it on 
4 Thanksgiving Day. Did you ever hear of that name ? Tis 
an old custom in New England, begun to thank God for a prov 
idential arrival of food from the mother-country in sixteen hun 
dred and odd year, and perpetuated now wherever a New Eng- 
lander dwells, some time in autumn, by the Governor s appoint 
ment. All is hushed of business about me ; the devout pass the 
morning at church ; those who have wandered to other cities 
hurry back to worship to-day where their fathers knelt, and 
gather sons and grandsons, to the littlest prattler, under the old 
roof-tree to shall I break the picture ? cram as much turkey 
and plum-pudding as possible ; a sort of compromise by Puritan 
love of good eating for denying itself that wicked papistrie, 
Christmas." 

A humorous account follows of the first trials of 
the young housekeepers with unpromising servants, 
and there is a mention of a friend s calling and find 
ing him sawing a piece of soapstone : 

" I set to work to fix a chimney, having a great taste for car 
pentering and mason-work. (When I set up for a gentleman, 
there was a good mechanic spoiled, Ann says.) . . . Ann s 
health is about the same. She gets tired out every day trying 
to oversee the keeping house, as we Americans call it when 
two persons take more rooms than they need, buy double the 
things that they want, hire two or three others, just, for all the 
world, for the whole five to devote themselves to keeping the 
establishment in order. I long for the time when there ll be no 
need of sweeping and dusting, and when eating will be for 
gotten." l 

A little later Mrs. Phillips gives the same friend 
" some little insight into indoor life at No. 26 Essex 
Street:" 



" Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 12. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. !$! 

" There is your Wendell seated in the arm-chair, lazy and 
easy as ever, perhaps a lit.tle fatter than when you saw him, still 
protesting how he was ruined by marrying. Your humble ser 
vant looks like the Genius of Famine, as she always did, one of 
Pharaoh s lean kine. She laughs considerably, continues in 
health in the same naughty way, has been pretty well, for her, 
this winter. Now what do you think her life is ? Why, she 
strolls out a few steps occasionally, calling it a walk ; the rest 
of the time, from bed to sofa, from sofa to rocking-chair ; reads, 
generally, the Standard and Liberator, and that is pretty much 
all the literature her aching head will allow her to peruse ; 
rarely writes a letter, sees no company, makes no calls, looks 
forward to spring and birds, when she will be a little freer ; is 
cross very often, pleasant at other times, loves her dear L and 
thinks a great deal of her ; and now you have Ann Phillips. 

" Now I ll take up another strain, This winter has been 
marked to us by our keeping house for the first time. I call it 
housekeeping ; but, alas ! we have not the pleasure of entertain 
ing angels, awares or unawares. We have a small house, but 
large enough for us, only a few rooms furnished just enough 
to try to make me more comfortable than at board. But then 
I am not well enough even to have friends to tea, so that all I 
strive to do is to keep the house neat and keep myself about. 
I have attended no meetings since I helped fill * the negro pew. 
What Anti-Slavery news 1 get, 1 get second-hand. I should not 
get along at all, so great is my darkness, were it not for Wen 
dell to tell me that the world is still going on. . . . We are very 
happy, and only have to regret my health being so poor and 
our own sinfulness. Dear Wendell speaks whenever he can 
leave me, and for his sake I sometimes wish I were myself 
again ; but I dare say it is all right as it is." 1 

And now, with a fireside of his own, and so far, 
tried by the most orthodox canons, a " respectable" 
and responsible citizen, the " vagabond Abolitionist" 
was ready to buckle on his armor. 

1 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 13. 



VI. 

THE IRISH ADDRESS. 

DURING Mr. Phillips s long absence the contro 
versy over the status of women in the Anti-Slavery 
societies 1 had torn these bodies asunder, so that, like 
the patriarch Jacob, Mr. Garrison could say : " With 
my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am 
become two bands." National, State, county, city 
bodies all were divided, and everywhere there were 
two instead of one. a The doubling of names, how 
ever, did not denote a doubling of forces. When 
the schism occurred, the Garrisonians, having out 
voted the schismatics, retained possession of the 
original organizations. But they lost their national 
organ, which eloped with the retiring faction, so that 
they were compelled to establish a new one, the 
Standard, which was published in New York and 
was a sort of twin of the Liberator, Mr. Garrison s 
personal mouthpiece. 

Among the Garrisonians the women were enfran 
chised, and continued to render the most unselfish 
and successful service. Being free now from dis 
turbing elements they compacted themselves and 
reaffirmed their purpose to conduct a purely moral 



1 Ante, p. 116 sqq. 

2 See this whole question elaborately treated in " William Lloyd 
Garrison," vol. \\., passim. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 153 

war against slavery, avowing their confidence in 
conscience and reason and discussion as the surest 
means wherewith to pull down the strongholds of 
oppression. 1 On the other hand, the seceding 
brethren tended increasingly to adopt political meth 
ods, and were soon drawn into parties which rallied 
to stone slavery with ballots. 

As all the world knows, Mr. Phillips sided in this 
division with the Garrisonians and remained to be 
their attorney-general. In common with Abolition 
ists of every faction, he was incensed at this hour 
by the recent action of Congress in denying the 
right of petition a right as old as Anglo-Saxon lib 
erty and embalmed in the Magna Charta. Congress 
had been bombarded for years with petitions for 
emancipation in the District of Columbia. In Jan 
uary, 1841, the- House of Representatives passed a 
gag law : 2 " That no petition praying the abolition 
of slavery in the District of Columbia or any State 
or any Territory, or the slave trade between the 
States or Territories of the United States, in which 
it now exists, shall be received by this House." 
The obsequious Senate made haste to concur. 3 Nor 
was this all. Ex-President John Quincy Adams, a 
Representative of Massachusetts, who had been hon 
orably active in presenting these petitions, and who 
in eminence and value of public service was easily 
the foremost statesman in America, was menaced 
with expulsion for his " impudence./ 



1 "William Lloyd Garrison," vol. ii., p. 391. 

2 By a vote of 114 yeas to 108 nays. A close vote. But slavery 
could say with Mercutio, in the play : " Tis not so deep as a well, 
nor so wide as a church door ; but tis enough." 

3 Vide " Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," by Henry Wilson. 



154 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

In the autumn alter his return from Europe an 
event occurred which Mr. Phillips eagerly seized 
and used as a sword with which to smite this defiant 
aggression, this twofold assault upon freedom. 

There came from Ireland a monster appeal signed 
by seventy thousand Irishmen, with Daniel O Con- 
nell and Father Mathew at their head, condemning 
slavery and urging the Irish in America to identify 
themselves with the Abolitionists. 1 At this crisis 
the Irish were, almost without exception, on the side 
of slavery. They belonged to the laboring class. 
They were thus brought into competition with the 
negroes. Their freedom and their color alone dis 
tinguished those from these. All the more strongly, 
therefore, did they prize and seek to emphasize the 
marks of distinction. Moreover, finding, as they 
did, the wealth and fashion and political power of 
the country arrayed against the Abolitionists, and 
hungry themselves for the flesh-pots of Egypt, they 
naturally hurrahed for Pharaoh and went where 
they could fill their stomachs and their pockets. It 
is only a saint who can prefer a lean right to a fat 
wrong, truth out-at-the-elbow to error in broad 
cloth. 

The Abolitionists hailed the Irish petition with en 
thusiasm. They hoped it might prove the fulcrum 
on which to rest their Archimedes-lever and move 
over the Irish in America from that side to this. 
They secured Faneuil Hall. They opened it on the 
evening of January 28th, 1842, and filled it as it had 
not been filled since the Lovejoy meeting in 1837. 
Wendell Phillips now as then was the orator of the 



Vide Liberator, vol. xii., p. 39, for the full text. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 155 

occasion. Fresh from the old world, with the rich 
Irish brogue of O Connell still in his ears, he mounted 
the rostrum and delivered an address which capti 
vated the assemblage, the Irish, especially, who 
were present in crowds, going wild over it. This is 
what he said : 

" I hold in my hand, Mr. Chairman, a resolution expressive of 
our thanks to the seventy thousand Irishmen who have sent us 
that token of their sympathy and interest, and especially to those 
high and gallant spirits who lead the noble list. 1 must say 
that never have I stood in the presence of an audience with 
higher hopes of the rapid progress and success of our cause than 
now. I remember with what devoted earnestness, with what 
unfaltering zeal, Ireland has carried on so many years the 
struggle for her own freedom. It is from such men whose 
hearts lost no jot of their faith in the grave of Emmet, over 
whose zeal the loss of Curran and Grattan could throw no damp, 
who are now turning the trophies of one field of victory into 
weapons for new conquests, whom a hireling press and prej 
udiced public could never sever a moment from O Connell s side 
it is from the sympathy of such that we have a right to hope 
much. 

"The image of the generous isle comes to us, not only 
crowned with the spoil of every science, and decked with the 
wreath of every muse, but we cannot forget that she lent to 
Waterloo the sword which cut the despot s shattered sceptre 
through ; and, to American ears, the crumbled walls of St. 
Stephen s yet stand to echo the eloquence of her Burke, when, 
at the foot of the British throne, he took his place side by side 
with that immortal rebel (pointing to the picture of Washing 
ton). 

" From a priest of the Catholic Church we might expect superi 
ority to that prejudice against color which freezes the sympathies 
of our own churches when humanity points to the slave. I re 
member that African lips may join in the chants of the Church, 
unrebuked, even under the dome at St. Peter s ; and I have seen 
the colored man in the sacred dress pass with priest and student 
beneath the frowning portals of the Propaganda College at 



156 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Rome, with none to sneer at his complexion, or repulse him 
from society. 

" I remember that a long line of popes, from Leo to Gregory, 
have denounced the sin of making merchandise of men ; that 
the voice of Rome was the first to be heard against the slave- 
trade, and that the bull of Gregory XVI , forbidding every true 
Catholic to touch the accursed thing, is yet hardly a year old. 

* Ireland is the land of agitation and agitators. We may 
well learn a lesson from her in the battle for human rights. Her 
philosophy is no recluse ; she doffs the cowl and quits the 
cloister, to grasp in friendly effort the hands of the people. No 
pulse beats truer to liberty, to humanity, than those which in 
Dublin quicken at every good from Abolition on this side of the 
ocean. There can be no warmer words of welcome than those 
which welcome the American Abolitionists on their thresholds. 
Let not any one persuade us, Mr. Chairman, that the question 
of slavery is no business of ours, but belongs entirely to the 
South. 

" I trust in that love of liberty which every Irishman brings to 
the country of his adoption, to make him true to her cause at the 
ballot-box, and throw no vote without asking if the hand to 
which he is about to trust political power will use it for the 
slave. When an American was introduced to O Connell in the 
lobby of the House of Commons, he asked, without putting out 
his hand, Are you from the South ? Yes, sir. A slave 
holder, I presume ? Yes, sir. Then, said the great liber 
ator, I have no hand for you ! and stalked away. Shall his 
countrymen trust that hand with political power which O Con 
nell deemed it pollution to touch ? 

" We remember, Mr. Chairman, that, when a jealous disposi 
tion tore from the walls of the City Hall of Dublin the picture of 
Henry Grattan, the act but did endear him the more to Ireland. 
The slavocracy of our land thinks to expel that old man elo 
quent, with the dignity of seventy winters on his brow (pointing 
to a picture of J. Q. Adams), from the halls of Congress. They 
will find him only the more lastingly fixed in the hearts of his 
countrymen. 

" Mr. Chairman, we stand in the presence of at least the name 
of Father Mathew. We remember the millions who pledged 
themselves to temperance from his lips. I hope his countrymen 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 157 

will join with me in pledging here eternal hostility to slavery. 
Will you ever return to his master the slave who once sets foot 
on the soil of Massachusetts ? ( No, no, no ! ) Will you ever 
raise to office or power the man who will not pledge his utmost 
effort against slavery ? ( No, no, no ! ) 

" Then may we not hope well for freedom ? Thanks to those 
noble men who battle in her cause the world over. The ocean 
of their philanthropy knows no shore. Humanity knows no 
country ; and I am proud, here in Faneuil Hall, fit place to re 
ceive their message, to learn of O Connell s fidelity to freedom 
and of Father Mathew s love to the real interests of man." J 

Amid thunders of applause Mr. Phillips retired 
and the meeting adjourned. Many Irishmen drew 
their first Anti-Slavery breath as the result of that 
speech, and threw themselves thenceforward into 
the movement with the ardor of their race. When 
O Connell read it he pronounced it the most classic 
short speech in the English language, and said : 4< I 
resign the crown. This young American is without 
an equal." 2 

On this occasion resolutions denouncing Congress 
for tolerating the existence of slavery under the 
shadow of the Capitol, and demanding its abolition 
in the District of Columbia, were adopted with a 
roar which might have moved the envy of Niagara 
a genuine Irish roar. 

" Well," remarked Mr. Phillips, as he left the hall, 
11 we will send our resolution to Washington spite 
of the gag law. And we say, as Patrick Henry did 
in the House of Burgesses, when he spoke to George 
III. across the ocean : If this be treason, make the 
most of it! " 3 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xii., p. 18. 

2 Letter from George Thompson to Wendell Phillips (MS.). 

3 Letter to a relative (MS.). 



158 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The purpose of O Council and Father Mathew 
was not accomplished by their address. The Irish 
press in America unanimously condemned it. The 
hierarchy here, through the lips of Bishop Hughes, of 
New York, impugned its genuineness ; and, genuine 
or not, declared it the duty of every naturalized 
Irishman to resist and repudiate it with indignation 
as a foreign interference.- The various Irish repeal 
associations, although organized to interfere in Brit 
ish affairs from this side of the water, with character 
istic inconsistency echoed the tone of Bishop Hughes 
toward O Council and Mathew for their interfer 
ence in American affairs from the other side. To 
illustrate by a current reference, the Irish address 
met precisely the fate which a similar appeal would 
meet to-day headed by Parnell, and urging the Irish 
in the United States to abjure the " spoils system," 
and adhere to the civil service reformers. 1 Indi 
viduals here and there heard and heeded. The race 
continued to cheer for slavery and " damn the 



" William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iii., p. .45. 



VII. 

A NEW BATTLE OF CONCORD. 

THE town of Concord, some twenty miles distant 
from Boston, and the twin scene with Lexington of 
the first battle in the Revolution, was a stronghold 
of conservatism in the forties. Half a dozen 
prominent and elderly squires dominated it, inso 
much that it was known far and wide as Squireville. 
The squirocracy naturally sympathized with the 
slavocracy. In the winter of 1842-43 the Lyceum 
out there invited Wendell Phillips to come and give 
his lecture on " Street Life in Europe" an outcome 
of his travels. He did so, confining himself in the 
main to sights abroad, but managing to give slavery 
a number of sharp thrusts as he trod along. These 
passing references piqued curiosity, and he was in 
vited to come again the next winter and speak on 
slavery. He gladly accepted, and the date fixed 
was January i/th, 1844. On January loth a promi 
nent citizen moved in the Lyceum (which then met 
weekly for debate), that Mr. Phillips be asked to 
choose some other topic, adding that his sentiments 
on slavery, expressed the year before, were " vile, 
pernicious, and abominable." A large majority 
voted to hear him on slavery and nothing else. So 
he came according to agreement, January i/th, and 
spoke for an hour and a half in a strain of invective 
eloquence very galling to the squires, especially to 



160 WENDELL PHILLIPS, 

two of them, Squire Kcyes and Squire Hoar father 
of the present Senator Hoar. He charged the sin 
of slavery upon the religion of the country, with its 
twenty thousand pulpits, all dumb, or advocating the 
iniquity. The church, he said, had accused the Gar- 
risonians of infidelity, and there was some truth in 
it ; they were infidels to a religion that sustained 
human bondage. As for the State, the curse of 
every honest man should be upon its Constitution ; 
could he say to Jefferson, Adams, and Hancock, 
after the experience of fifty years : " Look upon the 
fruits of your work !" they would bid him crush the 
parchment beneath his feet. 

These utterances were worse than those of the 
year before, and so the next week the conservatives 
in the Lyceum began to debate Phillips s lecture and 
to denounce him. Word had been sent to Phillips 
by his friends, and he came into the meeting while 
Squire Keyes was jeering at him for " leading cap 
tive silly women." Squire Hoar then took up the 
testimony against the audacious " stripling" who 
had proclaimed such monstrous doctrines, compli 
mented him on his eloquence, but warned the young 
against such insidious and exciting oratory. About 
nine o clock Phillips stepped forward from the rear 
of the hall and asked permission to reply. He said : 

"I do not care for criticisms upon my manner of assailing 
slavery. In a struggle for life it is hardly fair for men who are 
lolling at ease to remark (hat the limbs of the combatants are 
not arranged in classic postures. I agree with the last speaker 
that this is a serious subject ; had it been otherwise I should not 
devote my life to it. Stripling as I am, 1 but echo the voice of 
the ages, of our venerable forefathers of statesmen, poets, 
philosophers. The gentleman has painted the dangers to life, 
liberty, and happiness that would be the consequence of doing 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. l6l 

right. These dangers now exist by law at the South. Liberty 
may be bought at too dear a price ; if I cannot have it except by 
sin, I reject it. But I cannot so blaspheme God as to doubt my 
safety in obeying Him. The sanctions of English law are with 
me ; but if I tread the dust of law beneath my feet and enter the 
Holy of Holies, what do I find written there ? 4 Thou shalt not 
deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped to thee ; 
he shall dwell with you, even among you. I throw myself then 
on the bosom of Infinite Wisdom. Even the heathen will tell 
you, Let justice be done though the heavens fall ; and the old 
reformer answered when warned against the danger of going to 
Rome, It is not necessary that I should live ; it is necessary 
that I go to Rome. But now our pulpits are silent whoever 
heard this subject presented until it was done by silly women 
and striplings ? The first speaker accused me of ambition ; 
let me tell him that ambition chooses a smoother path to fame. 
And to you, my young friends, who have been cautioned against 
exciting topics and advised to fold your hands in selfish ease, 
I would say, Not so throw yourselves upon the altar of some 
noble cause ! To rise in the morning only to eat and drink, and 
gather gold that is a life not worth living. Enthusiasm is the 
life of the soul." 

Never was an oratorical triumph more complete. 
The audience applauded heartily ; the meeting, 
which was to vote Phillips down, was hastily ad 
journed, and from that day forward he was the 
favorite speaker in Concord, it was in the next year 
(March, 1845) that he gave the thrilling address there 
which Thoreau has commemorated, containing a 
prayer which concluded, says Thoreau, " Not like 
the Thanksgiving proclamations, with God save the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but with God 
dash it into a thousand pieces, till there shall not 
remain a fragment on which a man who dare not tell 
his name can stand. The reference here was to 
Frederick Douglass, who had then newly escaped 
from slaver) -, who in Boston was in momentary 



1 62 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

danger of arrest and rendition, and whose liberty 
was conditioned upon his denial of his identity. 

This was the day of extreme statements, for in 
that same year 1845 Emerson said, in an emanci 
pation address at Waltham (one of his earliest) : 

" If the Creator of the negro has given him up to stand as a 
victim of the white man beside him, to stoop under his pack and 
to bleed under his whip if that be the doctrine, then I say, If 
He has given up his cause, then He has also given up mine, who 
feel his wrong and ours, who in our hearts must curse the 
Creator who has undone him. " l 

Of course in these utterances Emerson did not 
mean to curse the Creator, nor did Phillips mean 
to curse civil government. In both cases it was the 
pretence of God and the pretence of law that was 
denounced that worst form of atheism, which wor 
ships the devil in the name of Christ. The real in 
fidels of those days were in the churches, and the 
real anarchists were in office at Washington. 

All professional lecturers meet with some humor 
ous and comical incidents which relieve some of the 
drudgery of their work. Perhaps a larger propor 
tion fell to the lot of Anti-Slavery lecturers than to 
others. Certainly Mr. Phillips had a keen sense of 
humor. Shortly after the Concord episode he was 
invited to lecture before a Lyceum in a neighboring 
country town. Arriving at the place he went di 
rectly to the church in which the Lyceum was as 
sembled, and was ushered into a pew with the Presi 
dent and Secretary. The latter asked him if he had 
brought his lecture on Europe, and he replied that 
he had. This information the Secretary imparted 



" Recollections of Wendell Phillips," by F. B. Sanborn (MS.). 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 163 

to the President, who received it with an intimation 
of displeasure, and he, turning to Mr. Phillips, 
asked : " Did we invite you here to lecture on 
Europe?" "No/* replied Mr. Phillips, "you in 
vited me here to lecture. The subject was not speci 
fied. I told the Secretary that I brought my lec 
ture on Europe with me. I carry all my lectures in 
my head." " Didn t the Secretary write to you 
that we wanted a lecture on slavery ?" 

" No, he did not," rejoined Mr. Phillips. The 
somewhat irate President took his official seat, and 
calling the meeting to order announced that the 
Lyceum had instructed its Secretary to write to Mr. 
Phillips to lecture to them upon the subject of 
slavery, and added, " There s Mr. Phillips, and he 
says he was not invited to lecture on any specified 
topic ; and there s the Secretary." Whereupon the 
Secretary responded : " I wasn t going to have Anti- 
Slavery crammed down my throat !" " Nor," re 
joined the President, "are we going to have you 
crammed down our throats !" 

The members of the Lyceum then discussed the 
question, and by a large majority decided to have 
an Anti-Slavery lecture. The most amusing part of 
the discussion, to him, was a remark made by a 
member that he " supposed Mr. Phillips would as 
lief lecture on slavery if he were paid the same." 



Recollections of Miss Mary Grew (MS.). 



VIII. 

THE " COVENANT WITH DEATH." 

IN following to an end the Concord incident we 
have stolen a march upon time. We must now re 
trace our steps and go back to the autumn of 1842, 
and to the succeeding months, in order to observe 
certain occurrences of a broader and more essential 
nature events in which Mr. Phillips was far more 
vitally concerned. 

In October a mulatto named Laiiinej:_cam e to 
Boston from Norfolk, Va. He was arrested and 
thrown into jail on a charge of theft. Presently it 
was shown that he was indeed a thief he had stolen 
himself ! Friends rallied to his side and demanded 
a trial by jury. " No," replied Judge Shaw, " he 
is a fugitive slave. The Constitution of the United 
States authorizes the owner of such an one to arrest 
him in any State to which he may have fled." 

The city was wild with excitement. The Aboli 
tionists thronged to Faneuil Hall the trysting-place 
of liberty. It w r as on a Sunday night. No matter. 
Did not Christ maintain that acts of mercy were acts 
of worship ? And what act of mercy so supreme as 
the rescue of a man from slave-hounds ? Mr. Phil 
lips spoke. Referring to Judge Shaw s ruling, he 
exclaimed : " We presume to believe the Bible out- 



Sec the ruling in the Massachusetts court records of the period. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 165 

weighs the statute-book. When I look on those 
crowded thousands and see them trample on their 
consciences and on the rights of their fellowmen, at 
the bidding of a piece of parchment, I say, my curse 
be on the Constitution of these United States I" 1 
This was his first direct collision with the Consti 
tution. The case of Latimer opened his eyes to a 
clear perception of the fact that in advocating the 
rights of the blacks his real antagonist was the 
Union. It was a moment like that when Luther 
realized that in undertaking to reform the Romish 
Church he was assailing the Papacy ; like that when 
the Revolutionary sires were startled to find that in 
defending their charters they were committing 
treason an earthquake experience full of destiny. 
But as Luther composed himself and said : " Here 
I must stand ; God help me, I can do nothing else !" 
as the fathers said : " If this be revolution, let it 
come !" so he said : " If I must choose between the 
Union and liberty, then I choose liberty first, Union 
afterward !" 

Happily Latimer was saved, an offer being made 
and accepted to pay four hundred dollars for his re 
lease, with free papers ; whereupon the " chattel" 
became a man, and the free papers were surrendered 
instead of the fugitive. 2 But ,from this moment 
Wendell Phillips began to denounce the Constitution, 
that old Pro-Slavery Constitution which the Civil 
War so magnificently amended. He went further. 
He personally seceded from the Union and refused 
all voluntary action under it. His law office this 
he closed, for an attorney had to take an oath to 



1 ViJe Liberator, vol. xii., p. 178. 2 /., p. 205. 



l66 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

support the Constitution. The ballot-box this he 
forswore, for a voter was an active participant in 
governmental affairs. Thus he stood until the out 
break of the Rebellion, which changed the whole situ 
ation a man without a country. He became a 
political Ishmael, his hand against every man and 
every man s hand against him. Whatever may be 
thought of his wisdom, no one can deny his self- 
sacrifice. It was an act of conscience as sublime as 
Luther s, as heroic as the penmanship of John Han 
cock on the Declaration of Independence, which 
George III. read and understood across the Atlantic. 

Nor did Mr. Phillips take this step in a passion. 
He took it calmly, soberly, as he did everything 
else, and with a perfect knowledge of what and all 
it meant. He deliberately counted the cost. " He 
chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of 
God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season" 
a modern version of Moses quitting the palace of 
Pharaoh for the brick-yard. The contemporary 
world hissed both, but heaven and history commend. 
Anyhow, what is the opinion of man compared with 
a good conscience and the approbation of God ? 

When he came to study the Constitution, and, more 
significantly, when he analyzed it in the light of its 
consistent interpretation for half a century, he 
straightway discovered that it was a " covenant 
with death and an agreement with hell." It erected 
the negation of God into a system of government. 
For consider, here was the clause which legalized 
the slave-trade for twenty years from the date of its 
adoption ; here was the clause which allowed the 
slave-masters to count three fifths of their slaves in 
the basis of national representation ; and here was 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 167 

the clause which made provision for the return of 
fugitives throughout the Union a trinity of evil as 
satanic as the orthodox trinity was divine. Then, 
when he lifted his eyes from the parchment, and 
looked back into the Convention which framed it, he 
saw what ? Why, that these provisions expressed 
the exact purpose of its authors. 1 And when he 
glanced at the successive administrations since that 
time, at the decisions of the courts, at the practice 
of the country, at the existing situation, he was 
driven to the conclusion that consistent Abolitionism 
was impossible under that document, and that slavery 
was intrenched in the fundamental law of the na 
tion. 

Accordingly, he was indignant but not surprised 
to observe that the liberty of speech and the freedom 
of the press were not tolerated in the Southern half 
of the Union, and were only exercised in the North 
ern half at the peril of the free speakers and free 
printers ; that the right of trial by jury was denied 
to any colored man in any State who might be 
claimed as a slave ; 2 that the right of petition was 
struck down on the floor of Congress ; 3 that slavery 
was declared to be the supreme law of the land. 

Mr. Phillips was amazed at his own blindness in 
not sooner discovering all this. Well, he saw it 
now, and without waiting to ask what others would 
do, he did as his Puritan ancestors had done under 
the despotism of Charles I. and Archbishop Laud- 
he came out. 



1 Vide the Proceedings of the Convention. Compare " The Consti 
tution a Pro-Slavery Compact," by Wendell Phillips. 

2 Case of Prigg vs. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 

3 Ante^ p. 153. 



168 , WENDELL PIIILLirS. 

Soon he was gratified to find that he was not 
alone. Others of the Abolitionists saw what he saw, 
felt as he felt, acted as he acted. There was a band of 
come-outers, among them his friends and co-laborers, 
Garrison and Quincy. The months that followed 
were weary, anxious, tumultuous. There was a 
pang in every hour. This question was the topic of 
debate at every Anti-Slavery meeting, in every Anti- 
Slavery society. In 1843 the Massachusetts Society 
adopted " come-outer" resolutions. 1 In 1844 the 
New England and National societies did likewise. 2 
One by one the kindred organizations throughout 
the free States wheeled into line. 3 Soon the entire 
Garrisonian phalanx presented a united front. In 
the consciences and the platforms of these bodies the 
Pro-Slavery Union was dissolved. But these few 
sentences coldly, feebly summarize convulsive de 
bates and torturing deliberations. How can Guten 
berg s types depict heart agonies ? Remember what 
that old Constitution was : the ark of the political 
covenant, as sacred in the reverence of the Ameri 
can people as its prototype was in the feelings of the 
ancient Israelites. Reflect upon the prejudices of 
education and habit which these men had to conquer 
in themselves. Recall the rage which their renunci 
ation and denunciation provoked in the North as 
well as in the South, the blasphemy they were 
charged with, and then estimate the depth of their 
regard for those who were bound, and their passion 
for liberty ! 

They were true to their convictions. They cried 



Liberator, vol. xiii., p. 19. 2 //$., vol. xiv., pp. 82 and 91. 

" Garrison and his Times," p. 338. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 169 

aloud and spared not. The Anti-Slavery organs in 
Boston and in New York displayed in bold head-lines 
the obnoxious motto : " No Union with Slave-hold 
ers." The resolutions at Anti-Slavery meetings 
bristled with aggressive defiance. 

Meantime those Abolitionists who had withdrawn 
in 1 840 from the Garrisonian organizations, because 
they could not believe that a coat and a petticoat 
had equal rights, now made haste to identify them 
selves with a political movement just started, and 
called the " Liberty party." 1 This party partici 
pated in State and national elections with all the 
machinery of Conventions and candidates. It was 
small but well organized, earnest and alert. Pro 
fessedly it was actuated by the same motives as the 
Garrisonians. In reality it was 

" cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in 

To saucy doubts and fears," 

by the inevitable limitations of politics. More, the 
" Liberty party," as an Anti-Slavery party, was 
fatally hampered by the compromises of the Consti 
tution. It could only propose such measures as the 
Constitution would sanction. When the National 
Government had exhausted its whole power, that 
which the Abolitionists hated and meant to destroy, 
the slave system, would remain intact. Under a Pro- 
Slavery Constitution what chance had an Anti- 
Slavery crusade ? 

Recognizing this difficulty, the Liberty party 
claimed sometimes that the Constitution had been 
fatally misinterpreted, that the text was blameless, 

1 Vide Richard H. Dana s article on the Republican party, in 
Johnson s New Universal Cycl.<firdia, in loco. 



I/O WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

that it was, in fact, an Abolition document. This was 
the view of William Goodell, and Gerrit Smith, and 
George B. Cheever honest and able men. At other 
times, and by other exponents, it was asserted that 
the Constitution could be amended and made Anti- 
Slavery if it were not so. At all times the political 
Abolitionists derided and belittled the moral-suasion 
school and cried for action. Many haters of slavery 
became impatient and wanted to grapple the evil in 
a hand-to-hand encounter gladiator fashion with 
the ballot-box for an arena. With revolution in the 
air they esteemed an agitation that was educative 
and moral alone as inadequate. This it was that 
led Whittier and Sumner and Wilson and Hale and 
Chase to adopt political expedients. 

All through these years a fierce controversy was 
carried on between these two wings of the Abolition 
host the moral suasionists and the political action- 
ists, each appealing for recruits on the ground of 
superior facilities, each emphasizing the defects of 
the other, but both doing a grand work for truth 
and righteousness, though in different, and, as it often 
appeared, antagonistic ways. 

Mr. Phillips, of course, participated in the discus 
sions of the hour. Indeed, he was preternaturally 
active a White Plume of Navarre in this Ivry. It 
was largely owing to his skill as an organizer, and 
even more to his eloquence on the platform, that the 
Garrisonians had been held together, despite the 
disintegrating influence of the Liberty party, and 
were led to take and hold the tremendous posi 
tion of disunion. In 1845 ne wrote and published 
an argument entitled^ " The Constitution a Pro- 
Slavery Compact." With masterly and unanswcr- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I/I 

able logic he proved what everybody now admits, 
and what the amendments, which the Civil War 
made possible, conclusively avouch that the Consti 
tution as it then stood was the Gibraltar of human 
bondage. He also published anonymously in the 
same year a pamphlet, " Can Abolitionists Vote or 
take Office under the United States Constitution ?" 
Here he marshalled the pros and cons in successive 
order under the title of objections and answers. 
The brochure is a model of argumentative skill, and 
is full of wit and pat applications. As it was in 
tended to defend and elucidate his position as a 
" come-outer, " let us blow the dust from it and 
sample it ; no danger of falling asleep in the task ! 

" My object," he says, " in becoming a disunionist is to free 
the slave, and meantime to live a consistent life. I want men 
to understand me. And I submit that the body of the Roman 
people understood better and felt more earnestly the struggle 
between the people and the princes, when the little band of 
democrats left the city and encamped on Mons Sacer, outside, 
than while they remained mixed up and voting with their mas 
ters. Dissolution is our Mons Sacer. God grant it may become 
equally famous in the world s history as the spot where the right 
triumphed." 

To the objection that his course was Pharisaical, 
he replied : 

" Because we refuse to aid a wrongdoer in his sin we by no 
means proclaim that we think our whole character better than 
his. It is neither pharisaical to have opinions nor presumptuous 
to guide our lives by them. He would be a strange preacher 
who should set out to reform his circle by joining in all their 
sins. This reminds me of the tipsy Duke of Norfolk, who, see 
ing a drunken friend in the gutter, hiccoughed : My dear 
fellow, I can t help you out, but I ll do better I ll lie down by 
your side ! " 



1 72 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

In noticing the objection that by the payment of 
taxes he recognized and supported the State practi 
cally while renouncing it in theory, he answered : 

" We are responsible only so far as our ability and willing 
ness go. Any evil which springs from our acts incidentally, 
without our ability or will, we are not responsible for. Such re 
sponsibility reminds me of that principle of Turkish law which 
Dr. Clark mentions in his travels, and which they call homicide 
by an intermediate cause. The case he relates is this : A 
young man in love poisoned himself because the girl s father 
refused his consent to the marriage. The Cadi sentenced the 
father to pay a fine of eighty dollars, saying : If you had not 
had a daughter, this young man would not have loved ; if he 
had not loved, he had never been disappointed ; if he had not 
been disappointed, he would not have taken poison. It was the 
same Cadi, possibly, who sentenced the island of Samos to pay 
for the wrecking of a vessel, because, if the island had not been 
in the way, the vessel would not have been wrecked ! " 

He thus refers to the assertion that the Constitu 
tion, though Pro-Slavery now might be amended, 
and that he could vote meanwhile in that hope : 

" It is necessary to swear to support it as it is. What it may 
become we know not. We speak of it as it is and repudiate it 
as it is. We will not brand it as Pro-Slavery after it has ceased 
to be so. This objection to our position reminds me of Miss 
Martineau s story of the little boy who hurt himself and sat cry 
ing on the sidewalk. Don t cry, said a friend, it won t hurt 
you to-morrow. Well, then, whimpered the child, I won t 
cry to-morrow ! 

To the common statement that his position was 
that of a hot-head and a zealot, he responded : 

" History, from the earliest Christians downward, is full of in 
stances of men who refused all connection with government and 
all the influences which office could bestow rather than deny 
their principles or aid in wrong-doing. Sir Thomas More need 
never have mounted the scaffold, had he only consented to take 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1/3 

the oath of supremacy. He had only to tell a lie with solemnity, 
as we are asked to do, and he might not only have saved his 
life, but, as the trimmers of his day would have told him, 
doubled his influence. Pitt resigned his place as Prime Minister 
of England rather than break faith with the Catholics of Ire 
land. Should I not resign a ballot rather than break faith with 
the slave ?" 

Further, and in the same connection, he adds : 

" An act of conscience is always a grand act. Whether right 
or wrong it represents the best self of our nature. While an 
under-clerk in the War Office, Granville Sharp, that patriarch 
of the Anti-Slavery enterprise in England, sympathized with 
America in our struggle for independence. Orders reached his 
office to ship munitions of war to the revolted Colonies. If his 
hand had entered the account of such a cargo it would have con 
tracted, in his eyes, the stain of innocent blood. To avoid this 
pollution, he resigned his place and means of subsistence at a 
period of life when he could no longer hope to find lucrative 
employment. As the thoughtful clerk of the War Office takes 
down his hat from the peg where it had hung for twenty years, 
methinks I hear one of our critics cry out : Friend Sharp, you 
are absurdly scrupulous ; you may innocently aid Government 
in doing wrong. While the Liberty party yelps at his heels : 
* My dear sir, you are losing your influence ! And indeed it is 
melancholy to reflect how, from that moment, the mighty under- 
clerk of the War Office (!) dwindled into the mere Granville 
Sharp of history ! the man of whom Mansfield and Hargrave 
were content to learn law, and Wilberforce philanthropy." 

These are hap-hazard snatches made in turning the 
pages of Mr. Phillips s "Anti-Slavery Catechism." 
Those who would get a clear insight into the moral 
situation in the forties should read it from cover to 
cover. It is more than a polemic it is a picture. 



IX. 

INFIDELITY IN THE FORTIES. 

AT the period now under review, with one or two 
small but honorable exceptions, like the Freewill 
Baptists and the Free Presbyterians, the churches 
were all the apologists and often the defenders ol 
man-stealing 1 . Thus the Christianity of America 
was three thousand years behind the Judaism of 
Moses, which denounced man-stealing. Individual 
pulpits and individual church-members, shining 
lights in this dreary midnight, were found in all the 
historic denominations refusing to quench their 
beams. But exceptions do not break they prove 
the rule. As organized bodies, the churches ad 
mitted slave-holders to their communion, installed 
them in their pulpits, and screened their sin with 
palliative resolutions. At the same time they 
branded the Abolitionists as fanatics, meddling with 
what did not concern them, and anathematized them 
as infidels, assaulting the administration of Provi 
dence. 

For example, the Rev. Wilbur Fisk, the leader of 
New England Methodism, declared that " the gen 
eral rule of Christianity not only permits, but in sup- 
posable circumstances enjoins a continuance of the 
Master s authority." A New England Methodist 
bishop maintained that the right to hold slaves is 
founded on this dictum: " Therefore all things 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 175 

whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do 
ye even so to them. 

The Inquisitors used to torture their victims into 
confessing whatever they chose to extort. But the 
worst instance of Inquisitorial torture on record is 
this which wrings a justification of slavery from the 
Golden Rule. Oh sapient commentator, go into 
history as Bishop Columbus, for you discovered 
what no one else ever dreamed of, that the Golden 
Rule, which seems to teach that men should do as 
they would be done unto, teaches instead the right 
of men to do as they would not be done unto ! 

The Rev. Dr. Wayland, President of the Brown 
University, the Coryphaeus of the Baptists, pub 
lished a book in which he taught that " the people 
of the North are in such relation to the people of the 
South that they ought not to - agitate the question of 
slavery, and that it would be an act of bad faith for 
Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Co 
lumbia." Among the Congregationalists Professor 
Moses Stuart, at Andover Seminary, and President 
Lord, at Dartmouth College, were the thick and 
thin defenders of slavery ; while their most prominent 
and influential pulpits were occupied by pastors who 
preached Christ at the North so as not to offend the 
devil at the South. The Presbyterians, the Epis 
copalians, the Unitarians, the Universalists, the 
Quakers, wide apart as the poles, and swearing 
prayers at one another, on other points, were cor 
dially at one in this, and in the contemplation of the 
Southern " form of economic subordination" were 
drawn into a brotherhood of wonder and delight. 

If such was the feeling among the churches in the 
free States, the situation in the slave States may be 



176 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

imagined. There, with absolutely no exceptions, 
pastors and -laymen preached and practised the 
Gospel according to St. John C. Calhoun. A cer 
tain prominent pulpiteer of South Carolina died one 
day for even slave-holding saints were not immortal 
his estate was sold at auction, and was advertised 
in the following terms : 

" A plantation on and in Wateree Swamp (a good 
place for a slave plantation) ; a library, chiefly theo 
logical ; twenty-seven negroes, some of them very 
prime ; two mules, one horse, and an old wagon." 

Well, in these circumstances, as the Abolitionists 
had not hesitated to attack the State, so neither did 
they hesitate to attack the Church. They recog 
nized in these twain one flesh. It was the Siamese 
twins over again. The State was Chang and the 
Church was Eng. Many of the Anti-Slavery apos 
tles, who had set out in orthodox standing, were dis 
gusted into unbelief, Garrison himself among the 
rest. Mr. Phillips held fast to his ancestral faith. 
He denounced the Church as it existed precisely as 
he denounced the State. But he saved his Christian 
creed by making a distinction which will bear ex 
amination, and which may be needed again some 
time. He distinguished between Christianity and 
Churchianity. While he held that the one was 
divine, he perceived that the other was human. 
Christ was God manifest. The Church was an insti 
tution which accepted so much of His spirit and 
works as it could or would embody. As Pharisee- 
ism, when the Nazarine was in Judea, had formal- 



1 See this whole subject treated in detail in " Garrison and his 
Times, "passim, but particularly in chap. xiv. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. . 1/7 

izcd the life out of religion and represented the show, 
not the substance of the divine in the human, so 
now he held that the nominal Christianity around 
about him was a body out of which the soul had 
gone. And he comforted himself with the reflection 
that the true Church, always and everywhere, is 
composed of those who are likest and nearest to 
Christ. Hence he made a solitude in his own heart 
and set up an altar and worshipped there apart. 1 
Meanwhile he drew his ideals and borrowed his 
methods from Jesus of Nazareth, "in whom lives 
the moral earnestness of the world." 2 He said: 
The men who have learned of him most closely 
Paul, Luther, Wesley have marked their own age 
and moulded for good all after-time." 3 

Holding these views he was nothing disturbed by 
the charges of infidelity with which the churches 
pelted him, no more than he was by the State s in 
dictment of him as a traitor. Treason to a Pro- 
Slavery Constitution and infidelity to a Pro-Slavery 
religion he considered the highest patriotism and 
the truest Christianity. As James Otis thundered 
against the despot in England, so he thundered 
against the tyrant in America. As the Master Him 
self smote Phariseeism eighteen hundred years ago, 
so he " spoke daggers" against the Pharisees of the 
nineteenth century. Thus, in one of his most tren 
chant speeches, he exclaimed : 

" When the pulpit preached slave-hunting, and the law bound 

1 For Mr. Phillips s own statement of his religious convictions, 
see pp. 431-439- 

9 " Sketches and Reminiscences of the Radical Club," by Mrs. 
J. T. Sargent, p. 81. 

3 ^ , P. 147- 



I 78 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

the victim, and Society said, Amen ! this will make money, 
we were fanatics, seditious, scorners of the pulpit, 
traitors. Genius of the past, drop not from thy tablets one of 
those honorable names ! We claim them all as our surest title- 
deeds to the memory and gratitude of mankind. We, indeed, 
thought man more than Constitutions, humanity and justice of 
more worth than law. Seal up the record ! If America is 
proud of her part, let her rest assured we are not ashamed of 
ours !" l 



1 The Sims Anniversary, " Speeches and Lectures," pp. 75, 76. 



X. 

THE AGITATOR. 

MR. PHILLIPS was nnwjjifi loneliest mnn on the 
continent almost as " solitary" as LJEL_R. James s 
famous horseman in the novel. _He had discarded 
the State and had left the Church, not, like some of 
his friends, because of any disagreement with the 
philosophy of Government, or of any quarrel with 
Christianity, to which he stoutly adhered, but as a 
protest against the prostitution of State and Church 
to wicked ends and unholy uses. 

In reflecting upon his ways and means of life and 
usefulness in these days, he was obliged to acknowl 
edge that all the old arenas were closed against him 
the Court, the State House, the Sanctuary. Prov 
identially he had an independent income, so that 
poverty was not an added discomfort. But desiring 
and fitted to influence the world for good, along 
what lines should he exert himself ? Surrounded by 
mountainous oppositions, how should he level them ? 
Face to face with triumphant majorities on the wrong 
side, how could he swing them over to the right 
side? 

These self-communings led Mr. Phillips to invent 
and adopt his characteristic method of agitation. 
He was the first and greatest American agitator. 
He made a platform outside of the State, outside of 
the Church, untrammelled by any limitations save 



180 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

those which inhere in human nature, with no politi 
cal and no ecclesiastical creed to guard, a platform 
devoted to the freest, broadest, most critical discus 
sion of questions and issues ; and this platform he 
put on wheels and moved from Maine to California, 
himself its central and commanding figure. This 
was his place of business, his Senate, his Rialto, his 
temple. And he made a business of summoning 
parties, sects, trades, social usages, for judgment to 
his peripatetic Faneuil Hall. Others for a special 
purpose dipped into agitation, as a bather wades 
into the surf, and then returned to their wonted 
vocations. He had no other calling, but trod the 
platform as king in a realm unique. 

Mr. Phillips expected that the throne he first 
founded and filled would survive him and find an 
endless succession of occupants, because he claimed 
for this function of outside observation and criticism 
an essential and permanent place in American life, 
and he based this claim upon a profound philosophy. 
This philosophy embraced five cardinal principles. 
Let us consider these principles, for a clear under 
standing of them is necessary in order to an in 
telligent appreciation of his character and ca 
reer : 

i. He believed absolutely in the supreme power 
of ideas. Charge these with the dynamite of right 
eousness and conscience and they would blow any 
and every form of opposition to atoms. The man 
who launches a sound argument," he said, " who 
sets on two feet a startling fact and bids it travel 
across the continent, is just ascertain that in the end 
he will change the government, as if to destroy the 
Capitol he had placed gunpowder under the Senate 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. l8l 

Chamber." 1 Hence he discountenanced force in a 
republic. Why resort to bayonets when ideas are 
stronger ? He had no patience with anarchy and 
anarchists. " Agitation," said he, " is an old word 
with a new meaning. Sir Robert Peel defined it to 
be the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to 
mould its laws/ It is above-board no oath-bound 
secret societies like those of old times in Ireland and 
of the Continent to-day. Its means are reason and 
arguments ; no appeal to arms. Wait patiently for 
the slow growth of public opinion. The French 
man is angry with his government : he throws up 
barricades and shots his guns to the lips. A week s 
fury drags the nation ahead a hand-breadth, reaction 
lets it settle half-way back again. As Lord Chester 
field said, a hundred years ago : You Frenchmen 
erect barricades, but never any barriers. An Eng 
lishman is dissatisfied with public affairs : he brings 
his charges, offers his proofs, waits for prejudice to 
relax, for public opinion to inform itself. Then 
every step taken is taken forever ; an abuse once 
removed never reappears in history. 2 

2. Next to ideas Mr. Phillips believed in the peo 
ple in the average common-sense and capacity of 
the millions. He never wearied of appealing from 
the people ill-informed to the people well-informed. 
This was the root of his republicanism, and the reason 
why he claimed for the most ignorant the ballot and 
the school, and all other educational appliances. 
Listen to him on this point : 

" Vox populi, vox Dei. I do not mean this of any single 



1 Speech on Public Opinion, " Speeches and Lectures," p. 45. 

2 Lecture on Daniel O Connell, see Appendix. 



1 82 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

verdict which the people of to-day may record. In time the self 
ishness of one class neutralizes the selfishness of another. The 
people always mean right, and in the end they will do right. 
I believe in the twenty millions not the twenty millions that 
live now, necessarily to arrange this question of slavery, which 
priests and politicians have sought to keep out of sight. They 
have it locked up in the Senate Chamber ; they have hidden it 
behind the communion-table ; they have appealed to the super 
stitious and idolatrous veneration for the State and the Union 
to avoid this question, and so have kept it from the influence of 
the great democratic tendencies of the masses. But change all 
this, drag it from its concealment, and give it to the people ; 
launch it on the age and all is safe. It will find a safe harbor. l 

3. These words suggest another point in Mr. Phil- 
lips s philosophy of agitation, viz., the moral timidity 
of men under free institutions. He remarks : 

" It is a singular fact that, the freer a nation becomes, the 
more utterly democratic the form of its institutions, this outside 
agitation, this pressure of public opinion to direct political action, 
becomes more and more necessary. The general judgment is, 
that the freest possible government produces the freest possible 
men and women, the must individual, the least servile to the 
judgment of others. But a moment s reflection will show any 
man that this is an unreasonable expectation, and that, on the 
contrary, entire equality and freedom in political forms almost 
inevitably tend to make the individual subside into the mass and 
lose his identity in the general whole. Suppose we stood -in 
England to-night. There is the nobility and here is the Church. 
There is the trading-class and here is the literary. A broad 
gulf separates the four, and provided a member of either can 
conciliate his own section, he can afford in a very large measure 
to despise the judgment of the other three. He has to some ex 
tent a refuge and a breakwater against the tyranny of what we 
call public opinion. But in a country like ours, of absolute 
democratic equality, public opinion is not only omnipotent, it is 
omnipresent. There is no refuge from its tyranny ; there is no 



1 "Speeches and Lectures," pp. 45, 46. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 183 

hiding from its reach ; and the result is that, if you take the old 
Greek lantern and go about to seek among a hundred you will 
find not one single American who really has not, or who does 
not fancy at least that he has, something to gain or lose in his 
ambition, his social life, or his business from the good opinion 
and the votes of those around him. And the consequence is 
that, instead of being a mass of individuals, each one fearlessly 
blurting out his own convictions, as a nation, compared with 
other nations, we are a mass of cowards. More than all other 
people we are afraid of each other." 

The great agencies through which public opinion 
here finds expression are, the pulpit, parties, and the 
press. These he thought inadequate to deal with 
what the French call " burning questions," like 
slavery, woman suffrage, temperance, and labor, 
with issues ahead of public opinion, partly from pre 
occupation, but chiefly because, in the nature of the 
case, they voice and are bound by the average sen 
timent. Hear him again : 

" The pulpit, for instance, has a sphere of its own. It is too 
busy getting men to heaven to concern itself with worldly duties 
and obligations. And when it tries to direct the parish in polit 
ical and social ways, it is baffled by the fact that among its 
supporters are men of all parties and of all social grades, ready 
to take offence at any word which relates to their earthly pur 
suits or interests, and spoken in a tone of criticism or rebuke. 
As the minister s settlement and salary depend upon the unity 
and good-will of the people he preaches to, he cannot fairly be 
expected, save in exceptional and special cases, to antagonize 
his flock. If all clergymen were like Paul, or Luther, or Wesley, 
they might give, not take orders. But as the average clergyman 
is an average man he will be bound by average conditions." 2 



1 Lecture on O Connell, see Appendix. 

2 Extract from a lecture on Agitation which Mr. Phillips delivered 
far and wide for many years, but of which no extended report is now 
available. 



1 84 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The defect thus indicated in the Church, Mr. Phil 
lips also discovered in parties and the press : 

" If you were a caucus to-night and I were your orator, none 
of you could get beyond the necessary and timid limitations of 
party. You not only would not demand, you would not allow 
me to utter one word of what you really thought and what I 
thought. You would demand of me and my value as a caucus- 
speaker would depend entirely on the adroitness and the vigi 
lance with which I met the demand that I should not utter one 
single word which would compromise the vote of next week. 
That is politics. So with the press. Seemingly independent, and 
sometimes really so, the press can afford only to mount the 
cresting wave, not go beyond it. The editor might as well 
shoot his reader with a bullet as with a new idea. He must hit 
the exact line of the opinion of the day. I am not finding fafult 
with him ; I am only describing him. Some three years ago I 
took to one of the freest of the Boston journals a letter, and by 
appropriate consideration induced its editor to print it. As we 
glanced along its contents and came to the concluding state 
ment, he said: Couldn t you omit that? I said, No ; I 
wrote it for that ; it is the gist of the statement. Well, 1 said 
he, it is true ; there is not a boy in the streets who does not 
know that it is true ; but I wish you could omit that. I insisted, 
and the next morning, fairly and justly, he printed the whole. 
Side by side he put an article of his own in which he said : 
We copy in the next column an article from Mr. Phillips, and 
we only regret the absurd and unfounded statement with which 
he concludes it. He had kept his promise by printing the 
article ; he saved his reputation by printing the comment. And 
that, again, is the inevitable, the essential limitation of the press 
in a republican community. Our institutions, floating un- 
anchored on the shifting surface of popular opinion, cannot 
afford to hold back or to draw forward a hated question, and 
compel a reluctant public to look at it and to consider it. Hence, 
as you see at once, the moment a large issue, twenty years ahead 
of its age, presents itself to the consideration of an empire or of 
a republic, just in proportion to the freedom of its institutions is 
the necessity of a platform outside of the press, of politics, and 
of the Church, whereon stand men with no candidate to elect, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1,35 

with no plan to carry, with no reputation to stake, with no ob 
ject but the truth, no purpose but to tear the question open and 
let the light through it." 1 

4. Another principle in Mr. Phillips s theory 
touched the reign of public opinion in a republic like 
ours, whose sceptre is at once omnipotent and irreso 
lute : 

" Each man here, in fact, holds his property and his life de 
pendent on the constant presence of an agitation like this of 
Anti-Slavery. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty ; power 
is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popu 
lar liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living 
sap of to-day outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand 
intrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or 
esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by 
continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented 
from hardening into a despot ; only by unintermitted agitation 
can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let 
liberty be smothered in material prosperity. . . . 

" Some men suppose that, in order to the people s governing 
themselves, it is only necessary, as Fisher Ames said, that the 
Rights of man be printed and that every citizen have a copy ; 
as the Epicureans two thousand years ago imagined God a being 
who arranged this marvellous machinery, set it going, and then 
sunk to sleep. Republics exist only on the tenure of being con 
stantly agitated. The Anti-Slavery agitation is an important, 
nay, an essential part of the machinery of the State. It is not 
a disease nor a medicine. No ; it is the normal state the nor 
mal state of the nation. Never, to our latest posterity, can we 
afford to do without prophets like Garrison, to stir up the mo 
notony of wealth and reawake the people to the great ideas that 
are constantly fading out of our minds to trouble the waters 
that there may be health in their flow." a 

5. Mr. Phillips s final axiom as an agitator was. 



1 Lecture on O Connell, see Appendix. 

2 " Speeches and Lectures," p. 52, 53. 



I 86 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
truth." That is, he acted on the platform as a wit 
ness acts who is put under oath to testify in a case 
at law. " No concealing- half of one s convictions 
to make the other half more acceptable ; no denial of 
one truth to gain a hearing for another ; no compro 
mise ; or, as O Connell phrased it, Nothing is politi 
cally right which is morally wrong : " such was his 
dictum. Under this rule he used a plainness of 
speech which appalled because it was unusual. He 
was the one outspoken man in a nation of euphem- 
izers. He called a spade a spade, not " an agricul 
tural instrument." He insisted that debts were 
debts, not " pecuniary obligations." He said slavery 
is slavery, not " a form of economic subordination." 
The wisdom of this is clear when we remember how 
a soft name softens a sin, and how the bare, hard 
name reveals and brands a sin and sometimes alarms 
and convicts the sinner. Said he : 

" What is the denunciation with which we are charged ? It 
is endeavoring, in our faltering human speech, to declare the 
enormity of the sin of making merchandise of men of sepa 
rating husband and wife, taking the infant from its mother, and 
selling the daughter to prostitution of a professedly Christian 
nation denying, by statute, the Bible to every sixth man and 
woman of its population, and making it illegal for two or three 
to meet together except a white man be present ! What is this 
harsh criticism of motives with which we are charged ? It is 
simply holding the intelligent and deliberate actor responsible 
for the character and consequences of his acts. Is there any 
thing inherently wrong in such denunciation or such criticism ? 
This we may claim we have never judged a man but out of his 
own mouth. We have seldom, if ever, held him to account, 
except for the acts of which he and his own friends were proud. 
All that we ask the world and thoughtful men to note are the 
principles and deeds on which the American pulpit and Ameri- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1 87 

can public men plume themselves. We always allow our oppo 
nents to paint their own pictures. Our humble duty is to stand 
by and assure the spectators that what they would take for a 
knave or a hypocrite is really, in American estimation, a Doctor 
of Divinity or Secretary of State." 1 

In vindicating Daniel O Connell s kindred plain 
ness of speech at a later day, he applies his words to 
his own position : 

" O Connell has been charged with coarse, violent, and intem 
perate language. The criticism is of little importance. Stupor 
and palsy never understand life. White-livered indifference is 
always disgusted and annoyed by earnest conviction. Protes 
tants criticised Luther in the same way. It took three centuries 
to carry us far off enough to appreciate his colossal proportions. 
It is a hundred years to-day since O Connell was born. It will 
take another hundred to put us at such an angle as will enable 
us correctly .to measure his stature. Premising that it would 
be folly to find fault with a man struggling for life because his 
attitudes were ungraceful, remembering the Scythian king s 
answer to Alexander, criticising his strange weapon : If you 
knew how precious freedom was, you would defend it even with 
axes, we must see that O Connell s own explanation is evidently 
sincere and true. He found the Irish heart so cowed and Eng 
lishmen so arrogant, that he saw it needed an independence 
verging on insolence, a defiance that touched the extremest 
limits, to breathe self-respect into his own race, teach the aggres 
sor manners, and sober him into respectful attention. It was the 
same with us Abolitionists. Webster had taught the North the 
bated breath and crouching of the slave. It needed with us an 
attitude of independence that was almost insolent ; it needed that 
we should exhaust even the Saxon vocabulary of scorn, to fitly 
utter the righteous and haughty contempt that honest men had 
for man-stealers. Only in that way could we wake the North to 
self-respect, or teach the South that at length she had met her 
equal, if not her master. On a broad canvas meant for the 
public square the tiny lines of a Dutch interior would be invisi- 



" Speeches and Lectures," pp. 107, 108. 



1 88 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ble. In no other circumstances was the French maxim, You 
can never make a revolution with rose-water, more profoundly 
true. The world has hardly yet learned how deep a philosophy 
lies in Hamlet s 

1 Nay, and thou lt mouth, 
I ll rant as well as thou. " l 

Thus, as far as possible, in the Agitator s own lan 
guage have we outlined his philosophy of agitation. 
It cannot be denied that he gave a reason for the 
faith that was in him, and that he opened a school 
whose influence was continental when he was at the 
head of it. Whether it shall last, as he supposed it 
would, it is for the future to decide. 



See the Address on O Connell in the Appendix. 



XI. 

EGERIA. 

IT was the peculiar good fortune of Mr. Phillips, 
in his public isolation, to have a congenial home. 
The modest dwelling on Essex Street was more than 
his castle as the British orator declared every Eng 
lishman s house to be it was his sanctuary. When 
Numa, the second King of Rome, undertook to 
pacify the turbulency and refine the manners of the 
ancient city (so runs the legend), he visited a secret 
grotto and held converse with a hidden goddess 
named Egeria, whom he proclaimed his counsellor 
and inspiration and by whose authority he reinforced 
his own. The wife of the democratic monarch of 
the American forum was his Egeria. Few saw her 
almost as invisible, through illness, as the old 
Roman divinity. The world felt her through him. 
Among his intimates Mr. Phillips was never tired of 
quoting her wise opinions and clever sayings. He 
proudly acknowledged his dependence upon her for 
moral guidance and initiative. Thus, in a letter to 
Elizabeth Pease, he writes : 

" Ann is as usual : little sleep ; very weak ; never goes down 
stairs ; interested keenly in all good things, and sometimes, I tell 
her, so much my motive and prompter to everything good that I 
fear, should I lose her, there d be nothing left of me worth your 
loving." 



Memorial of Ann Phillips," pp. 14, 15. 



1 90 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Never was there a more genial and intellectual 
atmosphere than that in the chamber of the charm 
ing Egeria of Wendell Phillips. Her broad, mod 
ern culture, joined to a deep knowledge of classic 
lore, and stored in a brilliant mind, made her com 
panionship an education to the favored few who 
penetrated into that rare sick-room, and, as he was 
always avowing, an inspiration to her husband. 

Strange to say, considering the nature and length 
of the sufferer s complaint, the tone was never mor 
bid at this fireside. Comedy, not tragedy, held the 
stage there, for these t\vo were famous laughers. 
It was a saying of his that " there was more sun 
and fun in Essex Street than anywhere else in Bos 
ton." Of course the laugh faded into seriousness 
when deep topics were considered, when she was to 
be comforted in pain and he was to be strengthened 
for duty. Unceasing were their mutual thoughts, 
constant their acts of self-sacrifice for one another, 
never-ending the counsel they took. She habitually 
discussed with him, before he left home to attend a 
convention or to deliver an important address, those 
aspects of current questions which she thought he 
ought specially to urge or emphasize. 2 The two 
were united in their views, or only so much at differ 
ence as gave added charm and piquancy to their 
intercourse. And he cared more for her approval 
than for all the plaudits of the admiring thousands 
who thrilled beneath his electric speech. 3 

To a relative who was familiar with the household 
economy of the Phillipses, we are indebted for a 

1 So says Dr. Samuel A. Green, ex-Mayor of Boston, an old <Y ; rn.l 
and neighbor of Mr. Phillips. 

* " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 6. 3 Il>. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 19! 

glimpse into it, as attractive as an interior by Rem 
brandt : 

" To those whom Mrs. Phillips admitted to visit her freely 
there was seldom any symptom of depression or despondency 
visible. The sunny south chamber, having an outlook down 
Harrison Avenue, was bright with flowers, of which the invalid 
was passionately fond. In midwinter she would have nastur 
tiums, smilax, and costly exotics, later the brilliant tulips, and 
then the blossoms of spring, the May-flowers and anemones, 
until the garden rose and svveetbrier appeared. All these were 
supplied by loving hands and caused her unceasing delight. 
Nor did her personal appearance often betoken invalidism. She 
had a good color, a strong voice, and a hearty laugh, so that it 
was difficult to think her ill. Conversation never flagged. She 
was eager to hear about and discuss the news of the day, espe 
cially in Anti-Slavery and reformatory lines ; she took the 
warmest interest in the affairs of her friends, and to the poor 
and needy, who brought stories of sorrow and suffering and 
wrongs endured, her sympathy and aid were freely given, as 
were her husband s. There was no lack of cheer and merri 
ment and sparkling humor from husband and wife, when two or 
three chosen friends were gathered in the sick-room, and shouts 
of laughter from it resounded through the house. Gay as the 
gayest bird is Ann T. Greene, was written of her by a rhyming 
schoolmate when she was a girl, and she continued to merit the 
characterization. She was very fond of music, as was her father 
before her, and, debarred from going to concerts, she found 
pleasure in listening to the strains of the hand-organs which 
were frequently played beneath her window." l 

When Mr. Phillips was going out his wife habit 
ually said : 

Wendell, don t forget the organ money !" 

This was as surely left, and as confidently expected 
by the musical mechanic who ground out the arias of 
sunny Italy in these daily serenades, as the sunrise. 2 



1 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," pp. 15, 16. . . 

* So the author was told by Mrs. Bannard, of Long Branch, N. J. 



192 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Mr. Phillips personally visited the markets every 
morning- in search of delicacies to gratify the in 
valid s appetite, and might be seen wending his way 
homeward with his hands full of parcels " for Ann." 1 
In the Phillips snuggery the meals were always 
served in the wife s apartment, he on this side she on 
that of a tiny table. 

We eat in French," said Mr. Phillips, referring 
I to a habit they had of always conversing at such 
I time in the language of Moliere. 

He was a good eater and a good sleeper, capital 
sanitary points, and the secret, no doubt, of his ex- 
. cellent health and spirits. He often quoted and 
commended the saying of Cobbctt, the English 
political economist, that " the scat of civilization is 
the stomach ;" to which he would tack on by way 
of climax, " add an easy conscience and a pillow 
steeped in poppy juice." 

As the colonial women abjured tea in the pre- 
Revolutionary days and discountenanced the king 
by banishing the teapot, so Mrs. Phillips would use 
neither cane sugar on her table nor employ cotton 
fabrics in her household, so long as these were the 
product of slave labor. This was what she called 
an argumentum ad Iwminem logic that would per 
colate through the pockets into the heads of the 
labor-stealers. 

Mr. Phillips was constantly out in the thick and 
throng of the world. He saw everybody ; had all 
sort of adventures. As his wife could not share his 
experiences at first hand, he made her his companion 
at second-hand. He was eyes and ears for her, and 



" Memorial," p. 16. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 193 

retailed at home what he got at wholesale abroad. 
No story ever lost anything- in his telling of it, and 
in this way he twice enjoyed the manifold events of 
his stirring life. 

Both were passionately fond of children. De 
prived of any of their own, they adopted the children 
of their friends, with whom their house often ran 
over. Mrs. Phillips would see them when she de 
nied herself to their elders. And Mr. Phillips had a 
rare faculty of opening or preparing his mail, and 
even of conducting his reading, while simultaneously 
carrying on an animated conversation with these 
little friends, always adapting himself to their level 
of interests and pursuits. 1 There are many now in 
middle life who held the love of this couple from 
early childhood, and whose gratitude for thebestow- 
ment grows with the lapse of time. That they were 
wise counsellors, the following half-sportive lines, 
written by Mr. Phillips at a later day, on the cars, 
while he was returning with a party from a visit to 
New York, will attest. They were pencilled on the 
fly-leaf of a little book for children called " Specta 
cles for Young Eyes," which had been requested as 
a souvenir of the jaunt by him (now an honorable 
and useful man) to whom the lines were addressed : 

TO F. H. S. 

Frank 

Better loves to read 

Than to play. 

Hear him with mother plead, 
" Bring me a book from far away. ; 
Books 



1 Mrs. Bannard is authority for this. 



194 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The mind s food 
Are good. 
But never clutch 
Too much. 
Good soul, sound stomach, sound brain, 

These are the chain 
Which holds the world in your hand, 

And govern the land. 

These serve God the best, 

" Till He gives you rest." 

If you d fill life with true joy, 

My boy, 
While you use these " Spectacles 

For Young Eyes," 
Remember to get strong 
As well as wise. 1 

In the summer the town house was invariably ex 
changed for two or three months of country air and 
green meadows and bright birds, and the time was 
devoted to experimenting with various methods of 
treatment for Mrs. Phillips, all of which proved 
futile. 2 One of these was mesmerism, and, refer 
ring to the difficulty of securing a good operator and 
to her husband s being the best she had, the Avife 
writes humorously to her English friend, Miss 
Pease : 

" January 31, 1846. 

" So the poor, devoted Wendell is caught one hour of his busy 
day and seated down to hold my thumbs. I grow sicker every 
year, Wendell lovelier ; I more desponding, he always cheery, 
and telling me f shall live not only to be fat and forty, but fat 
and scolding at eighty !" 



1 Given to the writer by Mrs. J. T. Sargent, whose son is the one 
referred to. 

8 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 16. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. IQ5 

The letter concludes : 

" Dear Wendell has met with a sad affliction this fall in the 
death of his mother, who left us in November. She was every 
thing to him indeed, to all her children ; a devoted mother and 
uncommon woman. ... So poor unworthy I am more of a 
treasure to Wendell than ever, and a pretty frail one. For his 
sake I should love to live ; for my own part I am tired, not of 
life, but of a sick one." 1 

On the same sheet Mr. Phillips speaks of his be 
reavement : 

" Dear Ann has spoken of my mother s death. My good, 
noble, dear mother ! We differed utterly on the matter of 
slavery, and she grieved a good deal over what she thought was 
a waste of my time and a sad disappointment to her ; but still 
I am always best satisfied with myself when I fancy I can see 
anything in me which reminds me of my mother. She lived in 
her children, and they almost lived in her, and the world is a 
different one now she is gone." 2 

With such a mother and such a wife, no wonder 
Wendell Phillips thought highly of women. A 
man s judgment of women is the infallible index not 
only of his own refinement, but even more of the 
character of his feminine belongings. A mother 
moulds her son, a wife moulds her husband either 
into respect or into disrespect for her whole sex. 
Motive how powerful for lofty thought and a life 
above frivolity ! 

On the death of his mother, Mr. Phillips installed 
in a place of honor among the servants in his house, 
the dearly loved nurse of his childhood.* who now 
became his cook. This woman loved him in return 
with a passionate devotion. She habitually left the 



" Memorial of Ann Phillips," pp. 16, 17. 
a /., p. 17. 3 Ante, p. 12. 



196 WENDELL 

door into the kitchen open that she might hear him 
pass and repass, and said : 

" Bless him, there is more music in his footfall 
than in a cathedral organ !" 

Long afterward when she was too old for work he 
placed her in a home of her own, went to see her 
every Saturday with his arms full of remembrances, 
and took care of her until she died. 1 

Affairs in this house moved with the precision of 
machinery. At ten o clock all was whist. When, 
as was often the case, a lecture engagement or a 
public meeting kept him out beyond that hour, he 
let himself in quietly and soon retired. Rising at 
seven in the morning, breakfast was ready at half- 
past seven, dinner was served at two o clock, and a 
plain supper relieved the kitchen at half-past six. 

Mr. Phillips was never happier than when engaged 
in tinkering. His mechanical tastes nave been 
already referred to. When a door was to_be_eased, 
a fireplace to be overhauled, a window to be tight 
ened, he went about hammer or saw in hand su 
premely satisfied. Of the kitchen, however, he 
stood in awe, never intruding there. Nor did he 
meddle with the " help." Characteristically he was 
on hand for service, never for interference. He was 
always amiable and easy about the house. No one 
ever heard him scold a gentleman off as well as on 
parade, and he was appreciative of all that was 
done for him and was never exacting. Hence the 
servants idolized him and remained for years. He 
paid the best wages of anybody in the neighborhood, 
and contended that this was the best policy, as it 



1 Recollections of Mrs. John T. Sargent (verbal). 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

promoted contentment and secured a prompt re 
sponse to all calls. " Good pay, good service," was j 
his oracular remark. 

Mrs. Phillips was a fitful sleeper. Her husband 
occupied a room just back of hers, and she frequently 
aroused hirrflTdozen times in the course of the night. 
The family physician testifies^ that when calling in 
the early morning he often counted fifteen burned 
matches strewn about, mute witnesses to the number 
of her calls and his answers ! And this continued 
more than forty-six years without a murmur on his 
part ! 

He was not a great talker at home. Indeed, Mrs. 
Phillips used to say that " Silence would reign at 26 
Essex Street unless she broke it." When he came 
in from without, however, and had a budget of news 
to open, he would be all animation. These were the 
occasions when " laughter, holding both his sides," 
made the house merry. 

Mr. Phillips was a constant student. When he was 
not with his wife, or was not engaged in one or an 
other of those pottering excursions, he was busy with 
his books or devouring the newspapers, of which he 
took a vast number of all shades of opinion. In pre 
paring his speeches he went down to the second 
floor, entered his "den," as he called the room 
where he kept his intellectual belongings, locked the 
door, and denied himself to every one, sometimes 
for days, only emerging -to eat and sleep. His favor 
ite position when so engaged was to lie on the sofa, 
where on his back he thought his way through and 



1 So Dr. David Thayer, of Boston, the physician referred to, in 
formed the writer. 



I 9 6 

y WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

d 

out. 1 He disliked the pen, and a letter from him was 
a supreme token of his regard. " Writing," he used 
to say, " is a mild form of slavery a man chained 
to an ink-pot." 

Such was the orator at home. 



1 The author had these details from the lips of one who passed 
many years under Mr. Phillips s roof. 



XII. 

CONCERNING A SINGULAR EPIDEMIC. 

IT is the judicious remark of one of the annalists 
of the Anti-Slavery movement, that " at the bottom 
of all the wretched casuistry by which men silenced 
the demands of justice in their hearts was this one 
fact the slaves were black ; or, to use the word 
more deeply freighted with atheistic contempt of 
human nature than any other, niggers. If by a 
miracle the slaves had been suddenly made white, 
all excuses for slavery would have been overthrown, 
and the whole people would have risen up as one 
man to demand its instant abolition. The primary 
fault of the Abolitionists, in popular estimation, was 
their belief in the absolute humanity of the negroes." 1 

Colorphobia was now epidemic. A black skin de 
humanized the wearer of it. Negroes were held to 
be cattle, and they were treated like cattle. If a 
black presumed to take the position of a man, or to 
claim any human rights at a hotel, in travelling, in 
business, or even at church, he was pelted back with 
insults and trampled down with oaths. " Jim Crow" 
cars were set apart for them on the railroads, and 
" negro pews" in the house of Him who said, " God 
hath made of one blood all nations of men to serve 
Him." 



1 " Garrison and his Times," pp. 36, 37. 



200 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The author just quoted tells the following stor} T : 

" A colored merchant from Liberia, a man of intelligence as 
well as wealth, and highly esteemed by Colonizatiomsts, being 
on a visit to Boston, took the opportunity of making the ac 
quaintance of the Abolitionists As he wished to hear Dr. 
Beecher preach, I invited him, as an act of courtesy to a distin 
guished foreigner, to take a seat in my pew. On my way out 
of church I encountered the indignant frowns of a large number 
of the congregation, but it was amusing to witness the change 
of countenance that fell upon the advocates of colonization as 

I introduced to them Mr. , of Liberia. They really seemed 

to think his odor was not quite so offensive, after all, as they 
had suspected. The air of Liberia was such a powerful disin 
fectant ! The slave-holders used to think the atmosphere of 
their home was perfectly delectable when slaves in kitchen, 
dining-room, parlor, and boudoir were as all-pervading as flies ; 
but there was no odor so offensive to them as that imparted to a 
negro when he was set free ; and Northern people in the days 
of slavery, while they required the free negro to occupy a sepa 
rate apartment on steamboat and rail-car, as being personally 
offensive to white olfactories, never thought of remonstrating 
when the slave-holders (in the hot summer weather, too !) 
claimed for their slaves all the privileges of first-class travellers. 
Strange that in a republican country freedom was so offensive, 
while slavery was so fragrant !" 1 

All this was infinitely hateful to Wendell Phillips. 
He set himself to resist it by word and deed with 
tireless energy. Emerson," remarks Mr. Higgin- 
son, " while thoroughly true to the Anti-Slavery 
movement, always confessed to feeling a slight in 
stinctive aversion to negroes ; Theodore Parker 
uttered frankly his dislike of the Irish. Yet neither 
of these had distinctly aristocratic impulses, while 
Phillips had. His conscience set them aside so im 
peratively that he himself hardly knew that they 



" Garrison and his Times," pp 100, 101. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 2OI 

were there. He was always ready to be identified 
with the colored people ; always ready to give his 
oft-repeated lecture on O Connell to the fellow- 
countrymen of that hero ; but in these and all cases 
his democratic habit had the good-natured air of 
some kindly young prince ; he never was quite the 
equal associate that he seemed. The want of it 
never was felt by his associates ; it was in his deal 
ings with antagonists that the real attitude came out. 
When he once spoke contemptuously of those who 
dined with a certain Boston club which had cen 
sured him, as men of no family, the real mental 
habit appeared. And in his external aspect and 
bearing the patrician air never left him the air that 
he had in college days, or in that period when, as 
Edmund Quincy delighted to tell, an English visitor 
pointed out to George Ticknor two men walking 
down Park Street, and added the cheerful remark, 
4 They are the only men I have seen in your country 
who look like gentlemen. The two men were the 
Abolitionists Quincy and Phillips, in whose personal 
aspect the conservative Ticknor could see little to 
commend." 

To return to Mr. Phillips s treatment of the satanic 
caste spirit of those days : he brought the question 
before the School Committee of his native city in 
1846. Colored children were not allowed to study 
the three R s with white children, but were sent off 
into hovels and herded in exclusion, to catch their 
learning from the lips of inferior teachers. The very 
text-books seemed to protest against this wicked 
ness ; for they were printed on white paper in black 



1 Obituary notice of Wendell Phillips, p. 15. 



202 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ink every one of them an object- lesson on the sub 
ject of equality. To the petition he stirred, and 
which prayed for abolition of the caste schools, the 
Committee returned a brutal denial. They were in 
discreet enough to assign what they called their 
"reasons," which were utterly unreasonable, and 
the city solicitor accompanied their response with a 
confirmatory opinion. This gave Mr. Phillips an 
opportunity which he eagerly embraced to dissect 
the attorney s argument, and to rub red pepper in 
the wounds made by his knife. 1 Nor did he permit 
the matter to rest here. He brought it up again 
and again, made it the " Banquo s ghost" of the 
School Committee, until a few years later they were 
driven to yield the point, and the free schools of 
Boston became free indeed. At the annual meeting 
of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, which 
occurred soon afterward, the pertinacious Abolition 
ist published his victory in this resolution : 

"Resolved, That this society rejoices in the abolition of the 
separate colored schools in the city of Boston as the triumph of 
law and justice over the pride of caste and wealth, and recog 
nizes in it the marked advance of the Anti-Slavery sentiments 
of the State." 2 

At the same time he appealed to the Legislature 
of Massachusetts to compel the railroads as common 
carriers to admit colored men to the cars their tickets 
demanded, and, in the end, with equal success. 
Meanwhile, he made it a habit to share with any 
black man in whose company he found himself what 
ever accommodations the unfortunate was forced to 
occupy. Frederick Douglass mentions several in- 



Vide Liberator, vol. xv. 2 /<*., vol. xxv. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 203 

stances in which he had this gracious companion 
ship : 

" On one occasion, for instance, after delivering a lecture to 
the New Bedford Lyceum before a highly cultivated audience, 
when brought to the railroad station (as I was not allowed to 
travel in a first-class car, but was compelled to ride in a filthy 
box called the Jim Crow car), he stepped to my side in the 
presence of his aristocratic friends, and walked with me straight 
into this miserable dog-car, saying, * Douglass, if you cannot 
ride with me, I can ride with you. On the Sound, between 
New York and Newport, in those dark days a colored passenger 
was not allowed abaft the wheels of the steamer, and had to 
spend the night on the forward deck, with horses, sheep, and 
swine. On such trips, when I was a passenger, Wendell Phil 
lips preferred to walk the naked deck with me to taking a state 
room. I could not persuade him to leave me to bear the burden 
of insult and outrage alone." J 

Acts like these admit us to look into Mr. Phillips s 
soul and reveal his moral grandeur. 



1 Oration on Wendell Phillips, delivered before the colored people 
of Washington, D. C, in 1884. 



XIII. 

MR. CALHOUN S IDEA OF EQUILIBRIUM. 

MR. GARRISON happily named John C. Calhoun 
The Napoleon of Slavery," and he also foretold 
his Waterloo. 1 The great South Carolinian was a 
man of irreproachable private and infamous polit 
ical character. He was not a demagogue. He 
never blustered ; and he had the courage of his con 
victions. A believer in slavery, he claimed for it a 
divine warrant, and, with far more reason, a Consti 
tutional sanction. His theory of the Union made it 
a mere confederacy formed by sovereign States for 
certain specified purposes, the States continuing to 
be sovereign and reserving all rights not expressly 
delegated. 2 Out of this doctrine, under which the 
South was conscientiously tutored, came secession. 
He spelled Nation with a small n, while the two 
other members of the historic senatorial trio Clay 
and Webster spelled it with a capital an orthog 
raphy which the march of Sherman to the sea and 
the success of Grant at Appomattox eventually en 
forced. 

But while Mr. Calhoun lived he did two things. 



1 " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. Hi., p. 217. 

2 For an admirable summary of his theory see the article on Calhoun 
by the late Vice-President of the defunct Southern Confederacy, Mr. 
A. H. "Stephens, in Johnson s New Universal Cyclopedia. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 2O5 

He provided the South with a Constitutional door 
of escape from the Union, in case it should lose its 
supremacy. Meanwhile he strove, with magnificent 
energy, to hold the balance of power where it was 
in the hands of the slave-masters. Had the Repub 
lic been confined to the thirteen States which formed 
it, this had been an easy task. But it was constantly 
and variously acquiring new Territories of vast ex 
tent and beyond the original limits. These Terri 
tories were rapidly peopled, and would surely in the 
near future exert a controlling influence in national 
affairs. What should be the character of the new 
States into which they were to be mapped out ? 
Should they be slave States or free States ? From 
the very start this issue forced itself into Congres 
sional discussion. It became angrier and angrier 
with the lapse of time and the development of sec 
tional interests. Efforts were always being made to 
quiet and end the discussion, and always vainly, be 
cause always by compromise rather than by justice. 
Thus, when the immense domain, then known as 
Louisiana, was acquired from France, just as soon as 
the portion of it which had St. Louis for a capital, 
had been colonized by slave-holders, it applied for 
admission into the Union under the name of Missouri, 
with a State constitution which not only established 
slavery, but prohibited its abolition. The free States 
protested. The strife raged during two bitter years. 
The South won the battle, but tossed to the sulky 
North a sop of comfort in the shape of the " Mis 
souri Compromise," by which slavery was prohibited 
in so much of the outlying French purchase as lay 
north of latitude 36 30 , historically known as " Ma 
son and Dixon s line." 



206 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

That was in 1820. For a quarter of a century it 
secured for the oligarchy the undisputed possession 
of the Government. All this while, however, immi 
gration was pouring into the Northern States, in 
creasing their population and wealth, which were 
further enlarged by natural growth, while the do 
mestic economy of the Southern States cramped them 
and kept them stationary. Moreover, the Terri 
tories were constantly pre-empted, mainly from the 
more enterprising North and by settlers who had no 
objection to slavery in the South, but did object to 
the introduction of the system into their new abode, 
because it brought them, as working people, into 
juxtaposition with a servile class. This again trans 
formed the Territories into a debatable ground. The 
South feared that the North would soon predomi 
nate. To preserve the political equilibrium (a con 
venient phrase which meant the concentration of 
power in the slavocracy), Mr. Calhoun began to 
scheme for the addition of new slave territory, and 
Texas, an empire in itself, was demanded. 

The North, and the Whig party in particular, pro 
tested. Conventions were held here, there, every 
where. The annexation of Texas was pronounced 
unconstitutional and revolutionary. Statesmen like 
John Quincy Adams, merchants like Abbott Law 
rence, asserted that the success of the plot would be 
equivalent to a dissolution of the Union, and advised 
forcible resistance. 1 Conservatives suddenly became 
radicals and Unionists clamored for contingent dis 
union. The nation was a great debating society, 



1 Vide Morse s " Life of John Q. Adams," in loco, and Hill s 
Memoir of Abbott Lawrence," p. 21. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 2O/ 

and the subject which no one was to talk about 
became everybody s theme. 

At this crisis the Abolitionists were neither silent 
nor idle. Their presses struck off tons of matter. 
Their meetings attracted universal attention. Their 
speeches were cheered to the echo. Their aggres 
sive spirit, their policy of carrying the war into 
Africa, their logical position, in noble contrast with 
the contortions of professional politicians, blowing 
hot and blowing cold, extorted the admiration of 
their bitterest opponents. They were the only per 
sons at the North who clearly saw the nature of the 
contest, who recognized the impossibility of lasting 
union on the present basis, and who distinctly an 
nounced their purpose never to intermit their efforts 
until slavery, the prolific cause of all the disturb 
ance, should be overthrown. 

"As to disunion," remarked Mr. Phillips, "it 
must and will come. Calhoun wants it at one end 
of the Union, Garrison wants it at the other. It is 
written in the counsels of God. Meantime, let all 
classes and orders and interests unite in using the 
present hour to prevent the annexation of Texas." 
For he knew that if Texas was not admitted the 
South would secede and thus relieve the North from 
all complicity. And he hoped that if Texas were 
admitted, the North would act as it now talked and 
declare the Union at an end. This was the motive 
of his course at this moment. Besides, the very 
controversy was a public education. The country 
was awakened to see the drift of affairs. Every 
speech on either side was another nail driven in the 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xv., p. 177. 



208 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

coffin of the system he hated. For tne one thing 
that slavery could not abide was examination. There 
was a widespread feeling at the North that the South 
would retreat before the storm of words which beat 
open the plot and the plotters. Perhaps this was 
the explanation of the brave attitude of the Whig 
leaders they did not believe they would be called 
to transmute words into deeds. They little knew 
the South ! 

Mr. Phillips did know it. Being swayed by posi 
tive convictions himself, he recognized the conscien 
tious deviltry of Mr. Calhoun. Men of positive con 
victions die they never yield. Therefore, judging 
the Southern leader by himself, he foresaw his per 
sistence and foretold his success. He had the power, 
why should he not have his way? Early in 1845 
Mr. Phillips wrote Elizabeth Pease : " Well, Texas 
you ll see is coming in. We always said it would 
and were laughed at." 

The prophecy was fulfilled. On* the last day of 
February, only a few days after the date of Mr. 
Phillips s letter, Mr. Calhoun, having failed to carry 
the Treaty of Annexation through the Senate by the 
requisite two-thirds majority, accomplished his pur 
pose by admitting the new slave State by the uncon 
stitutional expedient of a joint resolution of the two 
Houses of Congress, and provided, besides, that it 
should have the option of subdividing its immense 
area into four slave States as soon as it should have 
sufficient population. Nay, while this legislation 
was pending, and in the face of the intense adverse 
feeling in the North, he engineered the admission of 



Quoted iii " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iii., p. 137. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 2OQ 

Florida into the Union, side by side with Iowa, a 
slave State paired with a free State, and saw to it 
that the constitution of Florida, like that of Mis 
souri, twenty-five years before, should contain a 
clause making slavery perpetual. 

So, then, that had occurred which the chiefs of 
the Whig party had declared a sufficient reason for 
leaving the Union; nay, as ip so facto 2^ act of dis 
solution. What did they do ? They backed down 
and bowed their way out of the mighty presence 
with Eastern salaams. They ate their words, and 
went in for an era of " good feeling." Despite this 
craven behavior of trusted men, the agitation had 
aroused the North. The apparent success of the 
South was another step toward its ultimate destruc 
tion. It was a Bunker Hill victory. The Aboli 
tionists gained and held a larger following than 
ever before. Mr. Phillips was almost as content 
with Mr. Calhoun s maintenance of his equilibrium 
as he would have been with his failure. For 
the new settlement would not stay settled. The 
war with Mexico followed the annexation of Texas. 
As the result additional Territories were ac 
quired. 1 These at once raised the eternal question 
of Pro-Slavery and Anti-Slavery. Mr. Wilmot, 
of Pennsylvania, moved and carried through the 
House of Representatives a proviso (hence called 
the " Wilmot proviso") that slavery should never 
exist in any part of the domain just wrung from 
Mexico, which, however, the Senate refused to 
adopt. 2 In opposing the bill in this latter body, Mr. 
Calhoun rose and pointed out that the slave States 



Viz., New Mexico and California. * In February, 1847. 



210 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

were now in a minority in the Lower House and in 
the Electoral College, and that in the Senate they 
were evenly balanced against the free States four 
teen to fourteen. He added : 

" Sir, the clay that the balance between the two sections of 
the country the slave-holding States and the non-slave-holding 
States is destroyed, is a day that will not be far removed from 
political revolution, anarchy, civil war, and widespread disaster. 
The balance of this system is in the slave-holding States. They 
are the conservative portion, always have been the conservative 
portion, always will be the conservative portion, and, with a due 
balance on their part, may, for generations to come, uphold this 
glorious Union of ours. But if this policy should be carried out, 
woe, woe I say, to this Union !" 

Apparently this was the North s opportunity. 
Had the free States then stood together, one of two 
things would have happened : either the South would 
have precipitated secession, or slavery would have 
been hopelessly confined within the limits it then 
occupied. In one case the North would not have 
been ready for the issue ; in the other, slavery would 
have been, as Charles II. apologized for being, "an 
unconscionable time in dying, "and the whole nation 
would have been convulsed by its death-throes for a 
hundred years. Hindsight is better than foresight. 
God is wiser than man. The Almighty ruled and 
overruled, prolonging the struggle until the North 
was ripe for the tremendous crisis, and then admin 
istered to the hoary iniquity the death-stroke. 

Hence the " f arioso" utterance of Calhoun fright 
ened the mercantile and political classes of the North 
into their wonted servility. They cringed and 
begged pardon, reminding one of Sterne s donkey, 



Vide Liberator, vol. xvii., p. 34, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 211 

whose attitude invited abuse, and seemed to say, 
" Don t kick me ! but if you will you may ; it is per 
fectly safe." But the renewed agitation rendered 
further service to liberty ; it made more Abolition 
ists, and incensed many into the ranks of the rising 
political Anti-Slavery parties. There were indica 
tions that there would one day be a North. 



XIV. 

INCIDENTS. 

THROUGH the years whose more public history 
we have outlined in the previous chapter, Mr. Phil 
lips was variously active. As often as any fresh 
occurrence gave him a text he preached a sermon 
whose conclusion was sure to be Delenda est CatJiar- 
go ! For instance, his whilom opponent at Con 
cord, Squire Hoar, 1 had been sent by Massachusetts 
to South Carolina to test in the Federal courts in 
that State the constitutionality of a statute under 
which colored seamen of Massachusetts had been 
flung" into jail for presuming to land at Charleston. 
When Mr. Hoar appeared on the scene he was in 
sulted and expelled as though he had been himself a 

nigger. " Mr. Phillips thereupon urged the Bunker 
Hill State to demand of the President an enforce 
ment of Mr. Hoar s plain constitutional right to re 
side in the Fort Moultrie State : in default of which 
he asked the Legislature to authorize the Governor 
to proclaim the Union at an end, recall the Congres 
sional delegation, and provide for the State s foreign 
relations. 2 Instead of adopting this heroic remedy, 
Massachusetts was content to bluster and do noth 
ing. 

But alas ! the State which did nothing officially to 



1 Ante, p. 129, sqq. 2 Vide Liberator, vol. xv., p. 19, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 213 

resent an indignity, did much through certain of her 
recreant sons to aid and comfort the slave-masters. 
Slaves were constantly making their way to the 
North in ways which, if we could trace them, would 
transform these pages into martyrology. One of 
these black heroes secreted himself, in 1846, on board 
a Massachusetts vessel bound from New Orleans for 
Boston. He was discovered, chained, brought on 
to the Puritan City transferred there to another 
Massachusetts ship, bound South, carried back to 
New Orleans, and remanded to slavery. Massachu 
setts vessels, Massachusetts ship-owners, and Massa 
chusetts captains playing the part of slave-hounds ! 1 
But if the State had sons to stain, it also had sons 
to vindicate its outraged honor. Faneuil Hall was 
secured. The Abolitionists filled it. The venerable 
John Quincy Adams presided. The philanthropist, 
Dr. S. G. Howe, recited the abhorrent facts. John 
A. Andrew (afterward the great war governor) pre 
sented ringing resolutions. Charles Sumner (now 
enlisted for the war against slavery) made one of the 
speeches ; and Wendell Phillips followed, and gib 
beted the names of the miscreants, John H. Pierson, 
the owner, and James W. Hannum, the captain, to 
eternal infamy. " Let us proclaim," said he, " that 
law or no law, Constitution or no Constitution, 
humanity shall be paramount in Massachusetts. I 
would send a voice from Faneuil Hall that should 
reach every hovel in South Carolina, and say to the 
slaves, Come here and find in Massachusetts an 
asylum. " 3 



1 Austin s " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," pp. 130 131. 

2 Ib. t pp. 131, 132. 



214 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Daniel Webster was horrified at this. " You that 
prate of disunion," he said, " do you not know that 
disunion is Revolution?" 

" Yes," retorted the Agitator, " we do know it, 
and we are for a revolution a revolution in the char 
acter of the American Constitution !" 1 Well, it 
came. 

The Church then said this was heresy, and the 
State then said this was treason. To-day both 
Church and State pronounce it magnificent Chris 
tianity and patriotism combined. 

Mr. Phillips found time amid these exciting hap 
penings for other activities. One day he went, with 
Mr. Garrison, before a committee of the Legislature 
to argue against capital punishment. His speech is 
a masterpiece on that side of the question. 2 He 
believed with Bulwer, that " the worst use you can 
put a man to is to hang him. " Another day, he bore 
witness to the superiority of phonography (then just 
come into use) over the old method of reporting : 
phonography, which snatched the words verbatim 
from his lips, 3 and then bade the telegraph flash the 
lightning he spoke around the globe. In the first of 
his speeches thus reported (a speech delivered on 
December 29th, 1846, at the Anti-Slavery Bazaar, in 
Faneuii Hall) occurs a passage in which he scores 
the Church : 

"Is the pulpit forever to dwell in the graves of the Jews ? 
The scepticism of Athens is not found in America that special 
scepticism which Paul attacked, when he stood on Mars Hill. 
He directed his words against living sins. We ask of the suc- 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xvii., p. 7. 

2 /., vol. xiv., p. 23 ; xv.. p. 3. 3 Ib. t vol. xvii., p. 7. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 215 

cessors of Paul that they take his thunderbolt and hurl it, not at 
the graves of the Pharisees, but at the palaces of the tyrant" 

He quotes approvingly the saying of Dr. Arnold 
that the Church exists " to put down all moral evils 
within or without her own body ;" and then pro 
ceeds : 

" Anti-Slavery societies ought not to have any raison d etre. 
The Church should do our work. But she will have nothing to 
do with current sins. She has the sword of the Spirit, but glues 
it in the scabbard ! She puts on the breastplate of righteous 
ness, but never goes into battle ! She has her feet shod with the 
Gospel of peace, but will not travel !" l 

In January, 1847, Theodore Parker took a house 
in Essex Place, directly in the rear of Mr. Phillips s 
residence a happy occurrence for both. They dif 
fered radically in their religious views ; Parker being 
an ultra-Unitarian, while Phillips clung to the old 
faith. But they had much in common. With both 
liberty was a passion. They were alike, too, in their 
devotion to letters ; and still nearer akin in their 
pitiful ministry to every form of suffering and sor 
row. Parker was a polyglot man spoke or read 
fifteen languages. A wit of the day speaks of cer 
tain learned men " who know everything except 
how to apply it." Parker knew how to apply what 
he knew. He had a luxurious library and was never 
happier than when throned among his books save 
when he was at work among and for his fellows. 
He was fond of animals they were a hobby. Bears 
were his special pets. He said they were great, 
humorous children [Did he think them fit to hug?] ; 
and imagined they had a wary Scotch vein in them. 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xvii., p. 7. 



2l6 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

His home was full of bears in plaster, ivory, wood 
(from Berne), and in seal metal. It was a short and 
economical way to his heart to fetch him an odder 
bear than usual. Mr. Phillips gave him a French 
caricature of the Revolution of 1848, represent 
ing the chief characters in the shape of bears 
which he straightway raised conspicuously over his 
bureau. 1 

The intimacy between these men became as close 
as though they had been joined in the marriage re 
lation there was a union of souls. Mr. Phillips has 
told how often, as he looked from his own chamber 
window late at night, when some lecture engage 
ment had brought him home in " the wee sma hours 
ayont the twal ," he saw the unquenched light burn 
ing in Parker s study " that unflagging student ever 
at work." Then he would turn away, murmuring : 
The trophies of Miltiades will not let me sleep !" 2 
Ah, Mr. Phillips, go to bed without envy in your 
heart ! Those midnight carousals with books finally 
killed Theodore Parker. Late hours arc as poison 
ous to students as the hemlock was to Socrates. 

In the spring of the year when Parker became his 
neighbor, Mr. Phillips, at his own expense, published 
a pamphlet in which he reviewed with great acute- 
ness and a lavish display of legal learning, an able 
book by Mr. Lysander Spooner, on " The Uncon 
stitutionally of Slavery." This was his third im 
portant contribution to the current discussion of the 



1 " Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker," by John Weiss, 
vol. i., p. 287. 

2 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 18. 

3 This pamphlet may be found in the Boston Public Library the 
author s own copy. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 2 I/ 

character of that compact. 1 The large edition was 
soon disposed of, and others followed. Simultane 
ously his addresses treated the same issue, but in a 
less technical and more popular manner. As the 
ancients had a saying that all roads led to Rome, so 
now his utterances, whether from the press or the 
platform, all ended with the slogan : " No Union 
with Slave-holders." 

It was at this period, also, that Mr. Phillips met 
Eliza Garnaut. She Avas one of those angels in 
human form who sometimes (alas ! not often) come 
into our experience to renew our confidence in our 
kind, and to show us how nearly allied the human 
may be to the divine. This lady was of Welsh 
birth. She had married a Frenchman, and came 
with him to Boston. He soon died, leaving her 
with an only child, a girl. Without means, she man 
aged to support herself and daughter ; and in addi 
tion gave time and money to the destitute around 
about her made herself a common mother. Wher 
ever there was poverty, misfortune, grief, down 
fall there she stood, a modern good Samaritan. 
Some of the noblest people in Boston made her their 
almoner. Mr. Phillips loved her as a sister and 
looked up to her as a saint. He was always helping 
her with counsel and cash. When, in 1849, Sue ^ 
a victim to the cholera, through her unselfish devo 
tion to others, he adopted her daughter as his own, 
and Phoebe Garnaut became for a few delightful 
years to all concerned, Phoebe Phillips. 2 A relative 



1 Ante, pp. 143 sqq. 

2 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 18. For a beautiful tribute to 
Mrs. Garnaut, from the pen of Mr. Phillips, see Liberty Bell for 1851. 



2l8 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

of Mrs. Phillips speaks of the welcome the child, then 
twelve years old, met with : " She was a constant 
joy to both Ann busies herself with lessons and 
French exercises as when she herself went to school/ 
wrote Mr. Phillips ; who himself took pleasure in 
directing the girl s education, and found in her a 
bright and loving companion, until marriage took 
her away to another city, and finally to a foreign 
land." l 

The hatred then felt for the Abolitionists among 
those who did not and would not understand their 
motives and aims is now incredible. After nearly 
twenty years of effort, and notwithstanding the 
always rising tide of Anti-Slavery sentiment, these 
pioneers of progress carried their lives in their hands 
within the shadow of their own homes. One day as 
Mr. Phillips turned the corner and walked toward 
his house, he passed two gentlemen they seemed 
such in dress and carriage. One remarked to the 
other in a tone evidently meant to be overheard and 
with a jerk of his head in the direction of the orator : 

I would like to put a bullet through that man s 
heart !" 

Benevolent, wasn t it?" was his comment in 
mentioning it to a friend. 2 

Adhering as he did to the religion of Christ, and 
feeling the need of communion with the divine Liber 
ator, he was wont at this time to meet on Sundays 
with a few like-minded men and women in private 



1 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 18. Miss Garnaut married, in 
1860, Mr. George H. Smalley, the well-known London correspondent 
of the New York Tribune. 

2 The Rev. A. J. Gordon, of Boston, in New York Independent, 
April lyth, 1884. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 21Q 

houses, after the apostolic example, to observe the 
holy service of the Lord s Supper, 1 this infidel ! 
Thus he got fresh strength and courage to battle 
against overwhelming odds in behalf of the Golden 
Rule. 

In 1848 an address to America against slavery came 
from Scotland, signed by forty thousand women. 
It played a prominent part in the various Anti- 
Slavery gatherings of the year. On one of. these 
occasions, Mr. Phillips paid a -tribute to this noble 
host, and, incidentally, as well to the faithfulness of 
their sisters on this side of the water : 

" It was from a woman s lips (referring to Elizabeth Herrick) 
that the Abolitionists of the old world first heard the doctrine 
and learned the lesson of immediate emancipation. Women s 
voices, God bless them ! have ever been clear in animating for 
the conflict and in pointing out the way." 2 

In January, 1849, Mr. Phillips made an aggressive 
speech at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts 
Anti-Slavery Society in which he reviewed the local 
history of the cause since his adhesion to it. He 
alluded to a gathering in Faneuil Hall, in 1837, 
which provoked the Garrison mob, when Harrison 
Gray Otis said that he had heard the Abolitionists 
in their madness, put the Bible above the Statute- 
book, and when Peleg Sprague endeavored to create 
Pro-Slavery feeling by pointing to the portrait of 
Washington, and calling him "that slave-holder." 
He referred to the encouragement given to the mur 
derers of Lovejoy, at Alton, by " that infamous 

1 Vide Joseph Cook in his Monday lecture on Wendell Phillips, 
Boston, February I4th, 1884. Reported in New York Independent, 
February I4th, 1884. 

2 Vide Liberator, vol. xviii., p. 19. 



220 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

attorney-general, James Tricothic Austin." He 
then proceeded to call the roll of the Boston 
churches : 

" Where is Hubbard Winslow ? Teaching that a minister s 
rule of duty, as to what he should teach and preach, is what 
the brotherhood will allow and protect. Where is the pulpit of 
the Old South ? Sustaining slavery as a Bible institution. 
Where is Park Street ? Refusing to receive within its walls, for 
funeral services, the body of the only martyr the Orthodox Con- 
gregationalists of New England have had, Charles T. Torrey, 1 
and of whom they were "not worthy. W T here is Essex Street 
church ? Teaching that there are occasions when the Golden 
Rule is to be set aside. Where is Federal Street church ? 
Teaching that silence is the duty of the North with respect to 
slavery, and closing its doors to the funeral eulogy of the Aboli 
tionist Follen, the bosom friend of the only man who will make 
Federal Street pulpit to be remembered, William Ellery Chan- 
ning. And I might ask, where are the New South and Brattle 
Street ? but they are not /" 2 

This speech made a sensation. It stabbed the 
ecclesiastical traitors to liberty with interrogation 
marks no wonder they gasped out their rage. 

The annexation of Texas and the successful war 
against ill-used Mexico had enlarged, actually and 
even more prospectively, the area of the South, and 
the value of the slaves was enhanced. According 
to the Richmond Enquirer, male negroes were now 
worth " seven hundred dollars around." When 
seven hundred dollars funded in ebony took to its 
heels and ran away, the slave-masters felt in their 



1 Mr. Torrey was a Northern clergyman and Abolitionist who had 
been imprisoned and martyred at the South for aiding slaves to 
escape. 

2 Vide Liberator, vol. xix., 2d week in February. 

3 Compare Liberator, vol. xxvii., p. i. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 221 

pockets a vacuum which they, like nature, ab 
horred. Their two-footed property kept doing this. 
And when the seven hundred dollars worth of flesh 
and blood reached the North, the Abolitionists saw 
only the man or woman and could not see the prop 
erty no, not with a magnifying-glass. This ten 
dency of this peculiar kind of value to scoot (always 
Northward), coupled with the poor eyesight of 
growing numbers up here, which disabled them from 
seeing the flight, kept the lords of the plantation in 
a condition of chronic fretfulness. Worse yet, there 
was a regular " underground railroad" in the North, 
with stations, conductors, and free cars, operated (so 
the South learned) for the very purpose of spiriting 
away as many embodiments of the aforesaid seven 
hundred dollars as cared to ride on it. Toward the 
end of May, 1849, several of these " chattels per 
sonal" suddenly appeared in Boston, en route for 
Canada, and stopped for refreshments at Faneuil 
Hall the restaurant of liberty. One of these was 
" Box" Brown; so called, because he had escaped 
from Virginia in a box as merchandise not a proper 
method of shipping live stock, for it nearly proved 
his coffin. Two others were William and Ellen 
Craft, husband and wife. She being almost white, 
had disguised herself in male attire as an invalid 
seeking medical treatment at the North, while her 
darker husband figured in the role of her negro 
" boy" all of which was quite orthodox and consti 
tutional, as it should seem. Well, Wendell Phillips 
fed them in Faneuil Hall, and amid thunders of ap 
proval cried : 

" We say in beha ? f of these hunted beings, whom God created, 
and whom law-abiding Webster and Winthrop have sworn shall 



222 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

not find shelter in Massachusetts, we say that they may make 
their little motions, and pass their little laws, in Washington, but 
that Faneuil Hall REPEALS them, in the name of humanity and 
the old Bay State !" J 

With which defiance we ring down the curtain. 



Vide Liberator, vol. xix., p. 90. 



XV. 

THE DEVIL S GOSPEL. . 

MR. PHILLIPS commenced the year 1850 by the 
delivery of a lecture before the Mercantile Library 
Association of Boston, on the " Philosophy of Re 
form." The audience was immense ; the subject 
one with which the lecturer was en rapport ; the re 
sult, the introduction of his sentiments where they 
had not been heard before. 1 

At this date the national situation may be thus 
summarized : 

California stood knocking at the door of the Union 
for admission as a free State a new danger to Mr. 
Calhoun s equilibrium. The " Free Soil party," 
child and successor of the old Liberty party, the 
latest political coalition against the extension and 
domination of slavery, had come into the field in 
1848, when it cast an ominous vote for its Presiden 
tial candidate, and was now vigorously preparing to 
better the record in the approaching canvas of 1852. 
The Whig party was divided into two warring fac 
tions, the "Conscience" Whigs, who were unalter 
ably opposed to the further spread of the " peculiar 
institution," and the " Cotton" Whigs, who put the 
desire to make money in the place of conscience, and 
went up and down crying " Peace, peace" when 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xx., p. 7. 



224 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

there was no peace. The Democratic party was 
animated and controlled by the South, and was com 
posed of the slave-holders, booted and spurred to 
ride, and of donkey Northerners, saddled and bridled 
to be ridden. The Abolitionists were still few, but 
made up for their lack of numbers by their sleepless 
activity. They were the only consistent and un 
compromising foes of slavery, the only ones who 
contended not only for its restriction but for its de 
struction ; which they were enabled to clo because 
they stood outside of all parties, untrammelled by 
Constitutional limitations ; and they were hated and 
feared because of their position on the morals of the 
case. The plantation barons were sulky. Their 
biped "property" had mastered enough astronomy 
to distinguish the North Star, and had mustered 
enough manhood to run for it. Meanwhile, large 
sections of the free States covertly co-operated with 
the fugitives, and openly refused to return them to 
the house of bondage. The scene was one of be 
wildering confusion dizzy as a dance of dervishes. 

In these circumstances, Mr. Clay stole a leaf from 
the devil s gospel he proposed a compromise. 
This was the unfailing resource of the " Artful 
Dodgers" who substituted expedients for justice, 
and who imagined that statesmanship was shown by 
trimming. As though God could be hoodwinked 
by men ! As though the crater of Vesuvius could 
be stuffed up with a tuft of cotton ! Either Calhoun 
was right or Phillips was right. If Calhoun was 
right, slavery was a benign institution, and had a 
claim to be domesticated everywhere like the cotton 
it produced. If Phillips was right, slavery was " the 
sum of all villanies, " and had no claim to be tolerated 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 225 

anywhere. Between these two positions there was 
no logical standing-place. The turmoil of fifty years 
originated in the inability or unwillingness of this 
country to recognize this plain fact in the attempt 
to make two and two count five instead of four. In 
questions of mere expediency, compromise is what 
Macaulay termed it, " the essence of politics." All 
parties agree to give up something to carry a com 
mon point. But when fundamental right and wrong 
are involved, compromise is a compounding of 
felony. It is like promising the burglar who has 
broken into your house and slain your children, that 
you will not prosecute him for murder if he will re 
store the family plate. 

Mr. Clay s programme was, substantially, this : to 
admit California as a free State ; to organize the 
Territories stolen from Mexico without raising the 
question of slavery, leaving them to decide that ques 
tion for themselves ; to gratify Northern sentiment, 
not by abolishing slavery in the District of Colum 
bia, but by forbidding the sale of slaves in the Wash 
ington markets ; and to satisfy Southern cupidity by 
the passage of a stringent law for the return of fugi 
tive slaves. Like any other vendor of patent nos 
trums, he expatiated on the advantage of such a 
measure : It would kill the Free Soil party ; for they 
only claimed what .was now conceded, the abolition 
of the slave-trade under the shadow of the Capitol, 
and the non-extension of slavery into the Territories 
under Governmental auspices ; it would quiet the 
South ; for their property was secured at the North 
as well as at home, while there were no exclusive 
fences in the Territories. 

The great compromiser, after the habit of his kind, 



226 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

forgot that God was not dead. He also ignored the 
Abolitionists, who were as hot against slavery in the 
slave States as they were against its introduction 
into the Territories. Of course, therefore, Mr. Phil 
lips scouted the juggle. Nor was Mr. Calhoun 
much better pleased with it ; for Mr. Clay s panacea 
did not preserve his equilibrium. With California 
admitted, there would be sixteen free, and only fifteen 
slave States. Besides, believing that slaves were 
legitimate property, he held, logically enough, that 
this kind of possession should go wherever a horse 
or a plough or a bond might be carried had a right 
to the same protection. But before the uncompro 
mising Southerner could develop his opposition, 
death snatched him away. 1 

While Clay s legislation was pending, all eyes were 
turned upon Daniel Webster. Would he throw the 
weight of his great name in the scale of compro 
mise ? Would he now lead the Conscience" Whigs 
and create a North ? It was an hour of hope and of 
fear. On March /th, 1850, Mr. Webster slowly rose 
in the Senate, faced South instead of North, and, 
speaking with the ponderous deliberation character 
istic of his oratory, advocated the Kentuckian s bill 
without an if or an and, and especially announced 
his purpose to carry out the fugitive-slave clause 
" with all its provisions, to the furthest extent." 

It was the completest, saddest, most disastrous 
surrender ever made. The favorite son of New 
England thought to secure the Presidency by this 
act. In reality he committed both moral and politi 
cal suicide. True, his advocacy carried the corn- 



Mr. Calhoun died March 3ist, 1850. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 22/ 

promise measure through the Senate and through 
the House and made it law. True, he was thanked 
for his course by the representatives of Massachu 
setts commerce, letters, theology, and law, in an 
open letter which Rufus Choate, William Appleton, 
George Ticknor, W. H. Prescott, Professor Moses 
Stuart, and the Rev. Dr. Leonard Woods, signed, 
with seven hundred other dousrh faces. 1 But he dis- 

O 

gusted the South itself, which refused to give him 
even the empty honor of a nomination at the Whig 
Convention, a year or two later. And he alienated 
those Anti-Slavery Whigs who had believed in him 
and followed him, but who now swore at him instead 
of by him. Clothed with shame and gnawed by 
chagrin, he died not long afterward, and was sepul 
chred in dishonor. By a striking coincidence, his 
colleague in infamy, Henry Clay, less enlightened and 
therefore less guilty, by a few months preceded 
him to the grave. 2 Unhappily their juggle " still 
lived." 

But the measure intended to quench only inflamed 
the fire. It was popularly known by its most famous 
(and infamous) provision, as the " Fugitive Slave 
Law." This was the special feature that aroused 
the wrath of the North. For this made slave-hunt 
ing a duty and sought to transform every freeman 
into a slave-catcher. It placed the liberty of any 
colored man who might be claimed and seized any 
where at the mercy of any commissioner, marshal, 
or clerk of any Federal court ; nay, of any collector 
of customs, or any postmaster. It affixed to the res- 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xx., pp. 55, 57, 62. 

2 Webster died October 24th, 1852 ; Clay, June 2gth, 1852. 



228 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

cue, or attempted rescue, or even to the harboring, 
of such an one, a fine of one thousand dollars, to 
gether with six months imprisonment. 1 

This atrocious statute, and Mr. Webster s connec 
tion with it, were indignantly condemned in Faneuil 
Hall, on March 25th, 1850, by a vast concourse of 
citizens. The Hon. Samuel S. Sewall presided. 
Theodore Parker spoke, and was followed by Wen 
dell Phillips, who riddled the recreant New England 
statesman, as years before in the same hall he had 
the smaller renegade who defended the Alton mur 
derers. 2 

But the Abolitionists did not have it all their own 
way. The legislation at Washington resurrected 
the mob spirit, and 1850 repeated 1835. The annual 
meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, held 
in New York, in May, is an illustration. Its advent, 
was heralded by a satanic outburst from the press 
of the city, invoking riot and instigating violence. 
A crowd of roughs, headed by one Captain Rynders, 
a typical bully, took possession of the galleries of 
the Broadway Tabernacle, where the opening ses 
sion was held, and set disorder afoot. Amid con 
stant interruptions and to an accompaniment of in 
sults spiced with profanity the earlier speakers inter 
jected their words. Then uprose a seedy-looking 
mobocrat, who undertook to prove that the negroes 
were not men but monkeys. Frederick Douglass, 
came forward and said : 

" The gentleman who has just spoken has under 
taken to prove that the blacks are not human beings. 



1 The law is given in the Liberator, vol. xx., p. 153. 

2 Vide Liberator, vol. xx., ist week in April. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 22Q 

He has examined our whole conformation, from top 
to toe. I cannot follow him in his argument. I will 

O 

assist him in it, however. I offer myself for exami 
nation. Am la man ?" 

The audience responded with a thunderous affirm 
ative, which Captain Rynders sought to break by 
exclaiming : " You are not a black man ; you are 
only half a nigger." " Then," replied Mr. Doug 
lass, turning upon him with the blandest of smiles, 
and an almost affectionate obeisance, " I am half- 
brother to Captain Rynders !" He would not deny 
that he was the son of a slave-holder, born of South 
ern " amalgamation ;" a fugitive, too, like Kossuth 
" another half-brother of mine" (to Rynders). He 
spoke of the difficulties thrown in the way of indus 
trious colored people at the North, as he had himself 
experienced this by way of answer to Horace 
Greeley, who had recently complained of their in 
efficiency and dependence. Criticism of the editor 
of the Tribune being grateful to Rynders, a political 
adversary, he added a word to Douglass s against 
Greeley. I am happy," said Douglass, " to have 
the assent of my half-brother here," pointing to 
Rynders, and convulsing the audience with laugh 
ter. After this Rynders, finding how he was played 
with, took care to hold his peace ; but some one of 
Rynders s company in the gallery undertook to in 
terrupt the speaker. " It s of no use," said Mr. 
Douglass, " I ve Captain Rynders here to back me. 
We were born here," he said, finally, " we are not 
dying out, and we mean to stay here. We made 
the clothes you have on, the sugar you put into your 
tea. We would do more if allowed." " Yes," said 
a voice in the crowd, " you would cut our throats 



230 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

for us." "No," was the quick response, "but we 
would cut your hair for you. 

Douglass concluded his triumphant remarks by 
calling- upon the Rev. Samuel Ward, editor of the 
Impartial Citizen, to succeed him. " All eyes," says 
an eye-witness, " were instantly turned to the back 
of the platform, or stage, rather, so dramatic was the 
scene ; and there, amid a group, stood a large man, so 
black that, as Wendell Phillips said, when he shut 
his eyes you could not see him. As he approached, 
Rynders exclaimed : Well, this is the original nig 
ger ! I ve heard of the magnanimity of Captain 
Rynders, said Ward, but the half has not been 
told me ! And then he went on with a noble voice, 
and his speech was such a strain of eloquence as I 
never heard excelled before or since. The mob had 
to applaud him, too, and it is the highest praise 
to record that his unpremeditated utterance main 
tained the level of Douglass s, and ended the meet 
ing with a sense of climax demonstrating alike 
the humanity and the capacity of the full-blooded 
negro." 

The session ended before Mr. Phillips could speak. 
The fears of the owners of the building closed it 
against the Abolitionists thereafter, and they were 
mobbed out of the hall of the Society Library, 
whither they had betaken themselves for refuge. 
" Thus," remarked the New York Tribune the next 
morning, " closed Anti-Slavery free discussion in 
New York for 1850." 



1 The above account is taken from the report of the meeting writ 
ten by the Rev. W. H. Furness, of Philadelphia, an eye-witness, and 
quoted in " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. Hi., pp. 294, 295. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 231 

It was on this occasion that the Rev. Henry_Ward_ 
Beecher, not then an Abolitionist, performed one^of 
the" bravesFlufts of his life^vjgpening Plymouth 
Church to Wendell Phillips, and appearing with him 
on the platform, to signify his appreciation of free 
speech. " I was amazed," wrote he, referring to it, 
" at the unagitated Agitator, so calm, so fearless, so 
incisive, every word a bullet. I never heard a more 
effective speech than Mr. Phillips s that night. He 
seemed inspired, and played with his audience (tur 
bulent, of course) as Gulliver might with the Lilipu- 
tians. He had the dignity of Pitt, the vigor of Fox, 
the wit of Sheridan, the satire of Junius, and a grace 
and music all his own. Then for the first time did 
Plymouth Church catch and echo those matchless 
tones. I mean it shall not be the last time." l 

At the anniversary of the New England Anti- 
Slavery Society, held in Boston, two weeks later, 
an attempt was made to re-enact the scenes in New 
York with but partial success ; for Parker, Garri 
son, and Phillips all had their say in splendid fashion, 
though their remarks were punctuated in a manner 
which no printer would have sanctioned. 2 

Mr. Phillips tossed out some of his most pungent 
sentences: this, for example: "Abolitionists risk 
bankruptcy for obeying commands which the pul 
pits preach, and then fine us for practising." 

And this : " We have had here, in Massachusetts, 
Ellen Craft, a fugitive from slavery, and now Daniel 
Webster, a fugitive into slavery." * 

He issued during this year a pamphlet in which 



1 Letter of Mr. Beecher to Oliver Johnson (MS.). 

2 Vide Liberator, vol. xx., pp. 89, go. 3 /#., p. 98. 



232 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

he examined from the successive standpoints of law, 
ethics, history, and humanity, the position of Mr. 
Webster, and reached the conclusion which Whittier 
announced in the terrible title of his poem on the 
moral suicide Ichabod." 

On September i8th, in this memorable year, Millard 
Fillmore, who succeeded to the Presidency on the 
death of General Taylor, 2 signed the Fugitive Slave 
Bill, which thus became a law. Happy Taylor, re 
lieved from this dreadful guilt ! Unhappy Fillmore, 
pilloried forever in the curses of mankind ! 

The venerable Josiah Quincy 8 headed a call for a 
meeting in Faneuil Hall to consider the condition of 
the fugitive slaves and other colored people under the 
new statute. The meeting was held on October I4th, 
amid intense excitement. Charles Francis Adams 
(the son of John Quincy Adams, who had died in 
1848) took the chair. Richard H. Dana, Jr., offered 
the resolutions which demanded the repeal of a 
measure repugnant to moral sense, promised to de 
fend the colored people, and advised them to remain 
where they were. Theodore Parker, Frederick 
Douglass, and Wendell Phillips spoke in no uncer 
tain tone, vocalizing and manufacturing public 
opinion. 4 

The result was seen in November, when the Whig 
party was snowed under by Massachusetts ballots ; 
and yet more emphatically the next year, when 
(Webster having been called into President Fill- 
more s Cabinet) Charles Sumner was elected to re- 



1 The pamphlet is in the Boston Public Library. 

2 On July gth, 1850. *Ante, p. 22. 
4 Vide Liberator, vol. jc^. , p. l6. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 233 

place him in the Senate 1 the high-water mark thus 
far of Anti-Slavery sentiment. 

The following extract from a speech which Mr. 
Sumner delivered in Faneuil Hall upon the Fugitive 
Slave Law sharply contrasts the new senator with 
the old one, and bravely helped to lift him into the 
seat of Webster : 

" The soul sickens in the contemplation of this legalized out- 
rage. In the dreary annals of the past, there are many acts of 
shame there are ordinances of monarchs, and laws, which have 
become a byword and a hissing to the nations. But, when we 
consider the country and the age, I ask fearlessly, What act of 
shame, what ordinance of monarch, what law can compare in 
atrocity with this enactment of an American Congress ? (None.) 
I do not forget Appius Claudius, the tyrant Decemvir of ancient 
Rome, condemning Virginia as a slave ; nor Louis XIV., of 
France, letting slip the dogs of religious persecution by the 
revocation of the Edict of Nantes ; nor Charles I., of England, 
arousing the patriot-rage of Hampden by the extortion of ship- 
money ; nor the British Parliament, provoking, in our own 
country, spirits kindred to Hampden, by the tyranny of the Stamp 
Act and the Tea Tax. I would not exaggerate ; I wish to keep 
within bounds ; but I think no person can doubt the condemna 
tion now affixed to all these transactions, and to their authors, 
must be the lot hereafter of the Fugitive Slave Bill, and of every 
one, according to the measure of his influence, who gave it his 
support. (Three cheers -were here given.} Into the immortal 
catalogue of national crimes this has now passed, drawing after 
it, by an inexorable necessity, its authors also, and chiefly him, 
who, as President of the United States, set his name to the bill, 
and breathed into it that final breath without which it would 
have no life. (Sensation.) Other Presidents maybe forgotten ; 
but the name signed to the Fugitive Slave Bill can never be for 
gotten. (Never /) There are depths of infamy, as there are 
heights of fame. (Applause.) I regret to say what I must ; but 



1 By a vote of 193 out of 286 just enough to elect, and after a 
long struggle. 



234 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

truth compels me. Better for him had he never been born ! 
(Renewed applause.} Better far for his memory, and for the 
good name of his children, had he never been President !" (Re 
peated cheers.) 1 

With Phillips under Bunker Hill monument and 
Sumner in Washington, Massachusetts had reason 
to feel proud. 



1 Vide Works of Charles Sumner, speech on Fugitive Slave Law. 



XVI. 

THE WOMEN, AND A MAN. 

THE feelings of Mr. Phillips with regard to women 
have been indicated, his respectful admiration for 
them, his chivalrous espousal of their cause when 
any Rebecca needed an Ivanhoe, his profound belief 
in their capacity for a wider life than custom ac 
corded them. Holding such views, he gave a warm 
indorsement to a proposal for a Women s Rights 
Convention, which was made in the summer of 1850, 
at one of the Anti-Slavery meetings, and with Mrs. 
Phillips signed the call. It was always a gratifica 
tion to him that this cause should have been the issue 
of the Abolition movement as Eve was taken from 
the side of Adam. 

The Convention met at Worcester, in Massachu 
setts, on October 23d and 24th, 1850, year of won 
ders ! The attendance was large, the women being 
in the majority, but the men having fit representatives 
in Phillips and Garrison and Douglass, who stood for 
the Anti-Slavery interest, and in Sargent and Chan- 
ning, from the liberal pulpit. No phonographic re 
port of the proceedings was made. But enough is 
known of what was said and done to justify the state 
ment that those present consciously and worthily 
launched the most magnificent reform ever under- 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xx., p. 142. 



236 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

taken, an effort in behalf, not of a race (like Anti- 
Slavery), nor of a nation (like the revolt of the colo 
nies), but of a sex. 1 The immediate result was the 
perfecting of an organization on a national basis, 
with the appointment of a central committee, of 
which Mr. Phillips was made treasurer. 2 Europe, 
too, answered to America. The Westminster Review 
noticed the Convention in an elaborate article writ 
ten by Mrs. John Stuart Mill, and indorsed it : so 
that the women s cause dates in Old England as in 
New England from this gathering at Worcester. 

The wits of the pot-house and the what-nows of 
society were equally and mightily amused. Those 
twanged their bow-strings and sped their arrows of 
ridicule at so plain a target. These coughed under 
the handkerchief, and ogled behind the door, and 
lamented the immodesty of " such brazen women." 
The " Hen Convention" was the name given it by 
the press. A certain Universalist clergyman (whose 
name it would be cruel to give) announced from his 
pulpit a meeting at which Lucy Stone was to speak 
in these words : " To-night, at the Town Flail, a hen 
will attempt to crow." This was wit in 1850 as the 
word " nigger" was humanity ! 3 

Early in the following year, Mr. Phillips wrote an 
account of his experiences at Worcester to his friend, 
Miss Pease, across the water : 

" You would have enjoyed the Women s Convention. I think 
I never saw a more intelligent and highly cultivated audience, 
more ability guided by the best taste on a platform, more deep, 
practical interest, on any occasion. It took me completely by 



Vide Liberator, vol. xx., p. 1 8 1. 2 Ib. 

3 Remarks of Mrs. H. H. Robinson, quoted in Austin s " Life and 
Times of Wendell Phillips," p. 155. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 237 

surprise ; and the women were the ablest speakers, too. You 
would have laughed, as we used to do in 1840, to hear dear 
Lucretia iWott answer me. I had presumed to d.ffer from her, 
and asserted that the cause would meet more immediate and pal 
pable and insulting opposition from women than from men and 
scolded them for it. She put, as she so well knows how, the 
silken snapper on her whiplash, and proceeded to give me the 
gentlest and yet most cutting rebuke. Tvvas like her old fire 
when London Quakers angered her gentleness and beautifully 
done, so that the victim himself could enjoy the artistic perfec 
tion of his punishment." 1 

Mr. Phillips adhered to his opinion, nevertheless ; 
and time has shown that he was correct. Women 
themselves have been the most heated and the most 
influential opponents of their own cause. Were 
they a unit, they could carry it to success in a week. 

On October 29th, George Thompson, 2 the English 
orator, landed in Boston his second visit to Ameri 
ca. The first was in 1835, when he was mobbed out 
of the country for his Abolitionism. He found affairs 
much as he left them ; so that he might have rubbed 
his eyes and asked himself whether he had really 
been absent for fifteen years. 3 At a reception given 
him by the Abolitionists in Faneuil Hall, on Novem 
ber 1 5th, a throng of rowdies made themselves 
masters of ceremonies and howled so lustily that no 
one could get a hearing ; not more Wendell Phillips 
than George Thompson himself. 4 " No matter," 
said Mr. Phillips ; " the truth will float farther on the 
hisses of a mob than the most eloquent lips can carry 
it." 

Shouted down in Boston, the Abolitionists with 



1 Quoted in " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iii., p. 312, note. 

2 Ante, p. 102. 

3 " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iii., p. 305. 4 /<., p. 306. 



238 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

their guest went to Worcester appealed from the 
pocket to the heart of the commonwealth. Here 
they enjoyed a feast of reason and a flow of soul. 
Thompson spoke magnificently, to sympathetic thou 
sands, and so did Phillips. It was on this occasion 
that the latter uttered the famous sentence in which 
he laid a hand on the most prominent features of 
American geography. After referring to the failure 
of the European revolutionary movements in 1848, 
he burst forth : 

" The Carpathian Mountains may shelter tyrants. The slopes 
of Germany may bear up a race more familiar with the Greek 
text than with the Greek phalanx. For aught I know, the wave 
of Russian rule may sweep so far westward as to fill once more 
with miniature despots the robber castles of the Rhine. But of 
this I am sure : God piled the Rocky Mountains as the ramparts 
of freedom. He scooped the Valley of the Mississippi as the 
cradle of free States. He poured Niagara as the anthem of free 
men." 1 

In the first month of the new year 2 there was a 
soiree in Chochituate Hall, in Boston, to celebrate 
the twentieth anniversary of Mr. Garrison s paper, 
the Liberator. It was an occasion of rare interest, 
and rallied the entire social and oratorical strength 
of local Abolitionism. In the course of the evening, 
George Thompson presented to Mr. Garrison a gold 
watch appropriately inscribed ; and amid delightful 
chat, interspersed with addresses from the various 
sons of thunder present, the hours sped. Mr. Phil 
lips paints the scene again for the delectation of 
Elizabeth Pease : 

" You would have enjoyed the soirte, perfectly extempore so 
much so that E. Q. did not know he was to be chairman until I 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xx., p. 195. l January 24th, 1851. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 239 

moved it, and then he filled the chair with the wit and readi 
ness that is possessed by all the Quincys. It was unique the 
heartiest Anti-Slavery gathering I ever saw. Thompson had 
been very ill in the country and was looking quite ghastly, fit for 
a sick-bed, but spoke gloriously ; and his presence was, in a 
great degree, an inspiration to the rest. Add to that. Garrison 
in tears the occasion and the company scarred with many a 
struggle and you will easily see that we should feel deeply, 
and, like all times of deep feeling, it should be mingled of mirth 
and profound emotion. Such hours come rarely in life." 1 

From Mr. Phillips s own speech, which was largely 
in a sportive vein, we subjoin a serious sentence or 
two, as significant of his appreciation of the Liberator 
and of its editor : 

"How many owe their reform alphabet to the Liberator ! 
John Foster used to say, that the best test of a book s value was 
the mood of mind in which one rose from it. To this trial I 
am always willing the most eager foe should subject the Liber 
ator. I appeal to each one here, whether he ever leaves its col 
umns without feeling his coldness rebuked, his selfishness shamed, 
his hand strengthened for every good purpose ; without feeling 
lifted, for a while, from his ordinary life, and made to hold com 
munion with purer thoughts and loftier aims ; and without being 
moved the coldest of us for a moment, at least, with an 
ardent wish that we, too, may be privileged to be co.-workers 
with God in the noble purposes for our brother s welfare which 
have been unfolded and pressed on our attention ? Let critics 
who have time settle, after leisurely analysis, the various faults 
which, as they think, have marred our friend s course, and de 
nounce, as suits them, the other topics which he has chosen to 
mingle with his main subject ; enough for us, in the heat of our 
conflict, to feel that it has always been good for us to have 
been with him. How can we ever thank him for the clear at 
mosphere into which he has lifted us ! If of the Abolitionists it 
may be said, with such exceeding measure of truth, that they 
have broken the shackles of party, thrown down the walls of 



Compare " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. Hi., p. 313. 



240 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

sect, trampled on the prejudices of their land and time, risen to 
something like the freedom of Christian men, something of 
that perfect toleration which is the fruit only of the highest intel 
lectual and moral culture how much is all this owing to the in 
fluence of such a leader ! My friends, if we never free a slave, 
we have at least freed ourselves in the effort to emancipate our 
brother-man. {Applause.} From the blindness of American 
prejudice the most cruel the sun looks on ; from the narrowness 
of sect ; from parties, quibbling over words ; we have been re 
deemed into full manhood taught to consecrate life to some 
thing worth living for. Life ! what a weariness it is, with its 
drudgery of education ; its little cares of to-day, all to be lived 
over again to-morrow ; its rising, eating, and lying down only 
to continue the monotonous routine ! Let us thank God that 
He has inspired any one to awaken us from being these dull and 
rotting weeds revealed to us the joy of self-demotion taught 
us how we intensify this life by laying it a willing offering on 
the altar of some great cause !" 1 

How did Mr. Thompson fare in America, beyond 
the congenial circle which bade him welcome ? Mr. 
Phillips shall tell us, as he told Miss Pease, in a letter 
to that lady, from which we once more quote : 

" His visit has had a wonderful effect ; calling out into some 
thing of activity some who were alive during his former stay, 
but had fallen off, or fallen asleep, in the long and hard trials 
of the years since ; and some who were awkwardly conscious of 
having ratted when trouble lowered, and longed for some occa 
sion that would open the door for a return without imposing too 
palpable a confession of repentance. Then his name gathers 
immense audiences, the fame of his former achievements still 
haunting our towns, the plebeians of the cause (the converts 
since 1835) hankering after the sound of that voice whose echoes 
had reached them in the stirring tales of the nobles of earlier 
conversion. The rage, too, of opposition raises him into an 
object of universal attention. 

" It is generally voted that he has not grown a day older since 



Compare " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iii., pp. 319, 320. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 241 

1835. though the dissentients are not few. Then many scold, 
nure laugh, at his snuff ; hut his vivacity, brilliancy, and variety 
of accomplishments in private life charm every one that has the 
good luck to get near him. He is a universal idol. His project 
of lecturing upon general topics would, in my opinion, have 
been a failure even had no disturbance intervened to prevent it. 
Your English mode of lecture is so totally different from ours 
that, lacking the impetus of being abused, he would have goi 
on but poorly in his voyage. As it is, he has delivered his 
course on British India in five or six towns, and with toler 
able success, owing to the extra exertion of friends, and the wish 
of many to hear the 4 Great Unheard without compromising 
their dignity by being seen in an Abolition meeting. In our 
Anti-Slavery gatherings his speeches have been grand and elo 
quent beyond all description. We hope that his visit will not 
have been wholly vain to him in a pecuniary point of view." 1 

Mr. Thompson, who was now a member of the 
British Parliament, prolonged his stay on these 
shores until his constituents began to murmur. 
Called home by these indications of English discon 
tent, he sailed from Boston on June 26th, 1851, not, 
however, before his American friends (with Mr. 
Phillips among them) had feted him at a farewell 
soiree at which a thousand plates were laid. 2 

Upon reaching England he addressed his constitu 
ents in explanation of his tarry. We clip a passage 
from his speech, as a specimen of his style : 

" Allow me to say, that had I remained for ease, leisure, 
emolument, recreation, I should have condemned myself before 
I had appeared to receive your censure. I was not botanizing 
on the Himalayas ; I was not pursuing antiquarian researches 
on the banks of the Nile ; I was not gazing upon the sublimities 
of the Alps or the Andes ; I was not putting my legs under the 
tables of the bloated planters of the South, or truckling politi 
cians of the North, of America. I was facing labors, perils, per- 

1 Vide Liberator, vol. xx., p. 18. 9 /<., vol. xxi., pp. 98, 101. 



242 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

secutions, and obloquy, in the cause of the most oppressed and 
degraded of the human race. . . . 

" Of all institutions of personal slavery, looked at in connec 
tion with its safeguards and its origin, of all the institutions of 
slavery on the face of the earth, there are none so unmitigatedly 
bad, so inexcusably atrocious, so colossal in their felonious 
aspect, so diametrically opposed to the professions and practices 
of the people that encourage and support them, as the institution 
of slavery in the United States of America. There is no repub 
licanism in America while slavery exists. The cause of liberty 
throughout the world is maimed and bleeding while slavery re 
mains there. We preach democracy in vain in England while 
a Tory or Conservative can point us to the opposite side of the 
Atlantic, and say : There are nineteen millions of the human 
race, free, absolutely ; every man heir-apparent to the throne ; 
governing themselves the government of all, by all. for all ; 
but, instead of being a consistent republic, it is one widespread 
confederacy of free men for the enslavement of an entire nation 
of another complexion. While that institution lasts, the experi 
ment of men to govern themselves has not been proved to be a 
successful one ; for there is no virtue in loving freedom for our 
selves." l 

While the Englishman was in this country, Mr. 
Phillips was with him as much as possible. The two 
orators spoke together on slavery at various places 
in the vicinity of Boston. What a pair ! What a 
treat ! Some who yet live remember to have heard 
them as they swung around this circle, and recall it 
as an experience of intellectual epicureanism. 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xxi., p. 135. 



XVII. 

DISJECTA MEMBRA. 

AN ominous Pro-Slavery invasion of this country 
had been going on steadily through five decades. 
For it began in the administration of Jefferson, with 
the acquisition of Louisiana. It proceeded in con 
stant encroachments, whose successive mile-stones 
were the Missouri Compromise, the annexation of 
Texas, the Mexican War, and now the Fugitive 
Slave Law. Thus far the inroads had been con 
ducted by legislation. The South was soon to sub 
stitute rifles for constables. 

Meantime, under the latest device of slavery, the 
condition of the colored people, even in the free 
States, was pitiable. They were without recourse. 
The Declaration of Independence was treason, and 
the Golden Rule was heresy. Senator Sumner esti 
mated within a few months after the passage of the 
Fugitive Slave Law that " as many as six thousand 
Christian men and women, meritorious persons, a 
larger band than that of the escaping Puritans, pre 
cipitately fled from homes which they had estab 
lished, to Canada. 1 

In Boston, on February I5th, 1851, Shadrach, a 
colored waiter in a coffee-house, was seized as an 
escaped slave. The court-room whither he had been 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xxxiv., p. 70. 



244 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

hurried was filled with a crowd of his own color, 
and, suddenly, Shadrach disappeared among them ! 
Washington went into convulsions. 

The head and front of the offending, in this 
instance what is it?" asked Mr. Garrison a week 
later. " A sudden rush of a score or two of un 
armed friends of equal liberty an uninjurious de 
liverance of the oppressed out of the hands of the 
oppressor the quiet transportation of a slave out of 
this slavery-ruled land to the free soil of Upper 
Canada ! Nobody injured, nobody wronged, but 
simply a chattel transformed into a man, and con 
ducted to a spot whereon he can glorify God in his- 
body and spirit, which are his !" 2 

At this moment the authorities of the underground 
railroad resolved themselves into a Vigilance Com 
mittee for the purpose of giving aid and comfort to 
the flying bondmen. Mr. Phillips was a prominent 
stockholder in this corporation of humanity. Writ 
ing on March 9th, 1851, to Miss Pease, he gives that 
fair correspondent a graphic description of the oper 
ations of the Vigilance Committee : 

" In Boston, all is activity never before so much since I knew 
the cause. The rescue of Shadrach has set the whole public 
afire. We have some hundreds orTugitives among us. The 
oldest are alarmed. I had an old woman of seventy ask my ad 
vice about flying, though originally free and fearful only of being 
caught up by mistake. Of course, in one so old and valueless 
there was no temptation to mistake ; but in others it is horrible 
to see the distress of families torn apart at this inclement season, 
and the working head forced to leave good employment, and 
seek not employment so much as the chance of it in the narrow, 
unenterprising, and overstocked market of Canada. Our Vigi 
lance Committee meets every night. The escapes have been prov- 



1 Vide Liberator^ vol. xxi., p. 30. 2 2b, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 245 

idential. Since Shadrach s case, nigh a hundred have left the 
city. The way we get news of warrants is surprising. One 
officer was boasting to one of our members, whom he did not 
know to be such, that now they had a fellow in sight, and he 
would be arrested by one o clock. Our friend lounged care 
lessly away, told what he d heard, and by twelve the poor fellow 
described was steaming it on iron lines to Canada. Another, at 
work on a wharf, came out of his employer s store, saw his old 
master before him, heard him whistle, thought that was as 
much of such music as he cared for, dived into the cellar, up the 
back door, and has not been heard tell of, as Baillie Nocol 
Jarvie says, since. 

" There have been several as close escapes as that, and there 
are still quite a number of Southerners here. It is said privately 
that all they want is one from Boston, to show the discontented 
ones at home that it can be done ; and our merchants groan at 
the trade they lose by the hatred the South bears us because she 
has not yet brought Boston under. Our business streets are 
markedly quiet. But we hope the same spirit is alive as laughed 
to scorn the mother country shutting up our harbor to starve us 
into compliance. Webster, too (like your Lord North), the in 
famous New Hampshire renegade, threatens to line our streets 
with soldiers. We ve seen none, opposed to us, since the red 
coats ; the Government, which wishes to succeed to the hatred 
they earned for their employers, had better send us their suc 
cessors. 

" I need not enlarge on this ; but the long evening sessions 
debates about secret escapes plans to evade where we can t re 
sist the door watched that no spy may enter the whispering 
consultations of the morning some putting property out of their 
hands, planning to incur penalties, and planning also that, in 
case of conviction, the Government may get nothing from them 
the doing, and answering no questions intimates forbearing 
to ask the knowledge which it may be dangerous to have all 
remind one of those foreign scenes which have hitherto been 
known to us, transatlantic republicans, only in books. Yet we 
enjoy ourselves richly, and I doubt whether more laughing is 
done anywhere than in Anti-Slavery parlors." * 



Quoted in " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iii., pp. 323. 324. 



246 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The next fugitive-slave case in Boston did not end 
so happily as had that of Shadrach. Thomas Sims, 
a colored refugee, was arrested, hustled into the 
court-house (which was surrounded by chains) ; and, 
with the police of the city and the militia of the 
State for an escort, was carried thence on shipboard 
and returned to Savannah. 1 

The better part of the community (but not the 
" respectability") bitterly opposed the atrocity. 
Bells were tolled in the country towns. In Boston, 
meeting after meeting was held, at which Phillips, 
Parker, Garrison, and Quincy spoke ; and there was 
a monster demonstration on the Common, where the 
orator addressed acres of excited people, and invoked 
the curse of the Almighty upon institutions which 
protected tyrants and immolated victims. 

New York City being at this time dominated by 
Captain Rynders, the American Anti- Slavery Society 
was denied a hall there in 1851 in which to hold its 
annual May meeting, and found shelter in Syracuse, 
where Gerrit Smith, a Free Soil leader, bade it wel 
come. 2 The health of Mrs. Phillips was so precari 
ous that her husband was held at home, and made 
himself notable at the session by his absence. He 
was able, however, to slip down to Worcester, on 
August ist, to take part in the celebration, in that 

1 Vide Liberator, vol. xxii., p. 62. " Sims was severely whipped 
after arriving at Savannah, and for two months was kept closely con 
fined in a cell. He was then sent to a slave-pen in Charleston, and 
thence to a slave-pen at New Orleans. He was purchased by a brick 
mason, and taken to Vicksburg, whence, in 1863, he escaped to the 
besieging army of General Grant, who gave him transportation to the 
North." Austin s "Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," p. 141, 
note. 

2 Ib., vol. xxi., p. 8 1. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 247 

town, of West Indian emancipation. His speech was 
the feature of the day, and was devoted to a keen 
analysts of the condition of affairs in America. 1 

In October the second National Women s Rights 
Convention met, also in Worcester. Those who 
had attended it the previous year were present in 
1851. Mr. Phillips there delivered the most elabo 
rate and best-known of all his speeches on this theme. 
He sounded the depths and fixed the latitude and 
longitude of the reform with an accuracy which 
left no need for amendment. This was the powerful 
presentation of which George William Curtis has 
said : "In the general statement of principle nothing 
has been added to it ; in vivid and effective elo 
quence of advocacy it has never been surpassed. 
All the arguments for independence echoed John 
Adams in the Continental Congress. All the pleas 
for applying the American principle of representa 
tion to the wives and mothers of American citizens 
echo the eloquence of Wendell Phillips at Worces 
ter." 2 Happily, the x address was harvested, and is 
easily accessible in the collected speeches of the 
orator. Those who would study this masterpiece 
are referred to it there.* 

When Mr. Phillips met Theodote^Parker, after re 
turning from the Women s Rights Convention, the 
clergyman said to him : 

Wendell, ~wHy do you make a fool of yourself ?" 
Theodore," was the reply, " this is the greatest 
question ot the ages ; you ought to understand it." 

1 Vide Liberator, vol. xxii., p 130, for a full report. 

2 "Wendell Phillips. A Eulogy," by George William Curtis, 
P- 32. 

3 l\Je " Speeches and Lectures," by Wendell Phillips, pp. 11-34. 



248 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Before the year had passed Parker had espoused 
the cause, and he preached four sermons upon it in 
warm advocacy of the whole claim. 1 

In December, 1851, Louis Kossuth came to Ameri 
ca, seeking- the intervention of the United States in 
behalf of Hungary, torn and bleeding in the talons 
of the Austrian eagle. This remarkable man had 
mastered the English language so completely that 
he could say with " Hamlet :" 

I am a native here, 
And to the manner born." 

Unfortunately, he had also acquired something else 
American the national habit of ignoring slavery, 
and eulogizing our eagle as though it were not as 
cruel as the Hapsburg bird of prey. Slave-holders 
invited him here; slave-holders entertained him 
while he remained ; and slave-holders profited by 
his silence regarding their sin and by his laudations 
of their government. 

This was a bitter mortification to the Abolitionists. 
They were among his most ardent admirers. ^They 
deeply sympathized with his poor country. But as 
they watched his triumphal course, and saw him de 
liberately sacrifice the negro to aid the Hungarian, 
their indignation flamed. At the Anti-Slavery 
Bazaar, 2 in Boston, on December 2/th, 1851, Wendell 
Phillips rebuked the illustrious Magyar in a Mont 
Blanc utterance, down whose side he shook loose 



1 Mrs. Lucy Stone is the authority for this story. 

2 An Anti-Slavery bazaar was annually held in Boston almost 
throughout the struggle against slavery ; at which articles contributed 
at home and abroad were offered for sale for the benefit of the Anti- 
Slavery treasury ; and at which Mr. Phillips and others were wont to 
make addresses. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 249 

avalanche after avalanche of condemnation. He told 
who Kossuth was a fugitive from Austrian law ; he 
described this country, madly sensitive to foreign 
criticism, and hanging- breathlessly upon the great 
fugitive s lips to catch what he should say ; he showed 
that Kossuth had been informed of the condition of 
the American struggle before he left the old world, 
so that he could not plead ignorance of the atrocities 
enacted here ; he quoted the unstinted eulogies pro 
nounced by the nation s guest upon our institutions, 
with never a whispered exception of anything objec 
tionable ; he contrasted this selfish patriotism of the 
Magyar, which consented to help Hungary at the 
expense of one sixth part of the population of Ameri 
ca, meeted and peeled under iron heels which made 
Austria s seem merciful in comparison, with the 
broad humanity of O Connell, of Victor Hugo, of 
Lafayette, pleading not for one race but for all ; he 
disclaimed the expectation that the visitor would 
take a pronounced Anti-Slavery stand, but asserted 
that he might justly be called upon to guard his 
words and withhold such wholesale laudation ; and 
ended by quoting the words of Fletcher of Saltoun : 
11 I would do much to help my country, but I would 
not do a wicked thing to save her !" l 

The speech was made in Mr. Phillips s loftiest 
vein. It makes one s blood tingle even to read it. 
And it was prodigiously effective. In the delivery, 
the orator broke through his usual repose of manner. 
He seemed to feel the paradox involved in such a 
challenge of one reformer by another. He was de- 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xxii., p. 3, for a full report of this speech, not 
elsewhere accessible. 



250 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

clamatory beyond precedent. It was like one of 
Wagner s tenor robustos in " Lohengrin," singing 
with a full brass band accompaniment. 

Kossuth s mission was a failure and deserved to 
be. He asked the United States to do, what he dis 
tinctly refused to do interfere in the domestic affairs 
of a foreign country. After parading as a nine days 
wonder, he crept back to Europe to bury himself 
alive in chagrin, leaving behind him here only the 
memory of his marvellous oratory. 



XVIII. 

GOOD WORKS. 

IN Boston, as in all large cities, there are many 
girls half or two thirds grown, women in their pas 
sions, children in their knowledge and self-control, 
afloat on the streets, whom idleness and vagrant 
habits expose to devilish temptations. The} 7 are in 
danger of becoming rotten before they are ripe. 
Mr. Phillips always interested himself in this class. 
With Theodore Parker, he assisted early in 1852 in 
the formation of a moral reform society for the res 
cue of such as had gone astray and for the protection 
of those as yet unf alien. The object of the organi 
zation was twofold : to instruct these waifs in the 
means of earning an honest livelihood, and then to 
remove them into a more wholesome environment 
beyond the town. One of Mr. Phillips s closest 
friends, the Rev. John T. Sargent, a gentleman of 
wealth and social prominence, a noble spirit, ac 
cepted the agency of the society, while Phillips 
and Parker were Aaron and Hur to hold up his 
hands. 1 

The anniversary of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery 
Society always occurred in January. On the 28th 
of that month, Mr. Phillips addressed the Society in 
one of the ablest of his speeches, that on " Public 



" Life of Theodore Parker," by O. B. Frothingham, p. 365. 



252 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Opinion." It is remarkable for its epigrammatic 
point, and also because of the absolute faith the 
speaker expressed in the republican principle in the 
competency of the people, and in their ultimate cer 
tainty to right every wrong. 

The sessions covered two days. In the evening 
of the third day, the soth, the Abolitionists met 
in Faneuil Hall, and on this congenial platform the 
orator spoke upon the recent surrender of Sims." 
Though opened by his friends, the hall was crowded 
by his foes. The meeting was stormy. Speaker 
after speaker was shouted down. Mr. Phillips him 
self had to fight for a hearing. Every mention of 
the exciting occurrences of the hour was hissed, 
every name he ventured to censure was cheered. 
But his wit, his satire, his repartee, so turned the 
laugh upon the interrupters that at last they were 
cowed into quietude. He mobbed the mob ! 3 

It was in March, 1852, that Mrs. Harriet Beecher 
Stowe s " Uncle Tom s Cabin" appeared not so 
much a book as an event. Douglas Jerrold said, 
" the soil in Australia was so fertile that if you 
tackled it with a hoe it laughed with a harvest." 
" Uncle Tom" fell upon prepared ground. The 
crop of readers was wonderful striking proof of the 
success of the Abolitionists in creating Anti-Slavery 
sentiment. Richard Hildreth s " White Slave," an 
equally dramatic work, first published in 1835, made 
no sensation because born out of due time. Mrs. 
Stowe s book, on the contrary, appearing seventeen 



1 Vide his " Speeches and Lectures," pp. 35-55. 

* //>., pp. 55-70. 

3 Vide Higginson s " Wendell Phillips," p. 13. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 253 

years later, had the advantage of a ripened public 
conscience wide awake enough to read if not to 
act. Twenty thousand copies of Uncle Tom s 
Cabin" were sold within three weeks after it left the 
press. Eighty thousand copies were disposed of 
within three months. 1 Its success was even greater 
in England. George Thompson wrote Mr. Garri 
son, in the autumn of 1852, from London : 

44 Uncle Tom is doing a great work here. Between four 
and five hundred thousand copies (varying in price from sixpence 
to seven and sixpence) are already in circulation. Two of our 
metropolitan theatres are nightly crowded to overflowing by per 
sons anxious to witness a representation of its striking scenes on 
the stage. Behold the fruit of your labors and rejoice." 2 

Not long afterward the book was dramatized in 
this country. In Boston and in New York, as in 
London, it proved a gold mine to the theatres ; and 
slaves shot their hunters to slow music and loud 
applause. 

God makes "the wrath of man to praise Him." 
Even the rendition of a fugitive slave created Anti- 
Slavery opinion. Realizing this (though sickened 
by the experience) and encouraged by the phenom 
enal popularity of Mrs. Stowe s novel, the Abolition 
ists decided to observe the anniversary of Thomas 
Sim s surrender.^ Accordingly, on April I2th, 1852, 
a great meeting was held in Boston, at which Mr. 
Phillips pronounced another of his masterpieces 3 
the third since the year broke. This is equal to 
either of the others ; not in brilliancy, perhaps, but 
in a certain grave splendor and sustained majesty of 



1 t4 William Lloyd Garrison," vol. Hi., p. 362. 

2 lb. t pp. 362, 363. 3 Phillips s " Speeches," pp. 71-97. 



254 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

diction. It illustrates the variety arid fertility of his 
style. 

Mr. Phillips journeyed to Central New York in 
May, 1852, to attend the annual meeting- of the 
American Anti-Slavery Society, which convened in 
Rochester. 1 He was warmly welcomed and eagerly 
listened to. Like Dante, exiled from Florence and 
driven to Ravenna, the absence of the Abolitionists 
from New York City made anniversary week stupid 
there, and raised the interior town into national 
prominence during the tarry of the Convention. 

The nation was now in the throes of a Presidential 
canvass. Three parties divided the field the Demo 
cratic, the Whig-, and the Free Soil. When the votes 
were cast and counted in November, Franklin Pierce 
was chosen, the Whig party was routed never to rally 
again, and the Free Soilers were distanced in the 
race. It is a singular fact that, spite of the immense 
constituency of " Uncle Tom," the Anti-Slavery bal 
lots only numbered one hundred and fifty-six thou 
sand out of three millions an actual falling off since 
1848, when the Free Soil vote was two hundred and 
ninety thousand ! And what did the election of 
Franklin Pierce mean ? It meant the approval of 
the Pro-Slavery propaganda. It meant the dis 
avowal of the Anti-Slavery protest. It showed how 
superficial the opposition to the lords of the planta 
tion was, and how complete was their ascendency. 
The despotism of the Czar in Russia, the throne of 
the Flapsburgs in Austria, the privileges of the Brit 
ish aristocracy, did not seem as impregnable in 1852 
as did the slave power in America. 



1 Vide Liberator, vo! xx!i., pp. 82, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 255 

As for Mr. Phillips, the result of the election only 
confirmed his views. As Milton said, " new pres 
byter is but old priest writ large," so he thought 
this latest and completest triumph of the South was 
but a new demonstration of old truth. The slave 
Union must be broken. There was no hope for lib 
erty while it intrusted itself to slavery. It was 
"Little Red Riding-hood" led by the wolf. No 
man can serve two masters neither can a country. 
What could be more unnatural than such a coalition ? 
Freedom coffle gangs ; the nineteenth century the 
twelfth century ; republican institutions despotism ; 
ideas ignorance ; the Golden Rule satanic self 
ishness ; law self-will ; progress stagnation ! And 
these opposites and contradictions existing under one 
government, and administered by the worser part ! 
Such a Union what was it but the union of the 
shark with its prey ? Therefore he redoubled his 
efforts to dissolve the Union, to persuade the North 
to withdraw from such a hopeless partnership, to 
win that section which furnished the strength and 
paid the bills to shake off the South and form a new 
Union, like attracting like. 

Standing in isolation, with no party collar around 
his neck, and no sectarian padlock on his lips, he 
enjoyed the luxury of expressing his thought with un 
compromising candor. He summoned the men and 
measures around him to judgment. He criticised 
freely and sharply. The Democratic arid the Whig 
parties were the right and left hands of slavery. 
The Free Soil party, like its predecessor, the Liberty 
party, was inefficient because inconsistent. It was 
fatally hampered by the necessary limitations of a 
Pro-Slaverv Constitution. The Free Soilers hated 



256 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

slavery, yet were forced as politicians to disclaim 
any purpose to interfere with it where it already ex 
isted. They wanted freedom throughout the Union, 
yet were obliged to content themselves with claim 
ing it in the free States and the new Territories. 
They objected to engaging in a slave hunt, yet had 
to acknowledge that the return of fugitives was a 
Constitutional duty. 

Mr. Phillips rejoiced in any increased Anti-Slavery 
sentiment which an enlarged political opposition to 
Calhounism might show. He recognized the good 
intentions and often the valuable services of the 
chiefs of political Anti-Slavery. 1 At the same time 
he remorselessly exposed their inconsistencies, and 
emphasized the inevitable limitations of their position 
inside of a slave Union. For himself, he kept re 
affirming his purpose to oppose slavery not less in 
the slave States than in the Territories. While it 
actually existed anywhere in America it possibly ex 
isted everywhere. He hated the system, not merely 
the extension of it. Did the Constitution protect it ? 
Then the Constitution must be revolutionized. Was 
the Union its bulwark ? Then the Union must be 
overthrown, and a new Union must be constructed 
a nineteenth-century Union a Christian Union a 
Union of liberty a Union of progress a Union in 
which the Declaration of Independence should not 
be treason, and in which the Golden Rule should not 
be heresy a Union whose national emblem should 
no longer be a grand slave hunt, with the President, 
as the foremost hound of the pack. 

Such was Mr. Phillips s position throughout these 



Vide his " Speeches," pp. 120-48, passim, for instances. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 257 

years. Radical ? Yes. Unpopular ? Certainly. 
But logical, consistent, easily understood. The 
South said : " We will carry our slaves everywhere. " 
Political Anti-Slavery said : " You must not take 
them into the Territories." Mr. Phillips said : " You 
shall hold slaves nowhere." He met the South in its 
own spirit, and replied to it with uncompromising 
boldness. He liked Southerners, personally. And 
politically, he admired their courage and- directness. 
These qualities he likewise embodied, met frankness 
with frankness, and said " No" in the same tone in 
which Calhoun said " Yes." 

Of course, the eloquent Abolitionist did not make 
many converts ; that is, he did not persuade many 
to take his extreme position. But he leavened the 
whole lump. He made slavery hateful. He won 
multitudes to start on the crusade for freedom. He 
prepared the North to abolish slavery just as soon 
as it saw the way and got the opportunity. This he 
did. For the rest, he recognized the limitations of 
his own position. He was content to be a sower of 
seed. He knew, none better, that unless some one 
held up a high ideal, the loftiest and most outside 
conception of justice, in such an evil age, the situa 
tion would be hopeless. It was a part of his phi 
losophy not to aim at immediate results, at carrying 
the jury by a coup de main ; but to educate public 
opinion. " My dear John," he wrote to a friend, 
" if we would get half the loaf, \ve must demand the 
whole of it." 1 These words summarized his philoso 
phy of agitation. He looked at to-day from the 



1 Letter to Rev. John T. Sargent (MS.). 



258 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

vantage-ground of to-morrow. lie asked, not What 
is expedient ? but What is right ? He could afford 
to wait. He knew the world would catch up 
to him, sooner or later. So he kept ahead, made 
moral pioneering his function, and cried, " Excel 
sior." 



XIX. 

PORTRAITS. 

THE rising tide of Anti-Slavery feeling was attrib 
uted, by those unfriendly to the Abolitionists, to 
anybody and everybody save Mr. Phillips and his 
colaborers. They were reckless, denunciatory, un 
reasonable, and obstructed the cause they professed 
to serve. Charles Sumner, Mrs. Stowe, Henry 
Ward Beecher, were the real influences that moved 
the swelling flood such was the assertion. 

At the meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery 
Society, on January 2/th, 1853, Mr. Phillips consid 
ered these statements, which had just been ably re 
peated in detail in one of the English journals as a 
criticism upon the methods of the reformers. He 
went over the whole ground, staked out the boun 
daries between truth and falsehood, and mapped 
down the facts, luminously and voluminously. This 
speech he called " The Philosophy of the Abolition 
Movement." It is, perhaps, the most exhaustive 
of all his efforts, and deserves the careful study of 
those who would see to the bottom of the subject. 
Personally, the orator was the least vain of men. 
He claimed nothing for himself, except the wish and 
purpose to do his duty. But he did feel the slight 
to the veterans who surrounded him, covered with 
honorable scars ; and, most of all, the attempt by 

1 " Speeches and Lectures," by Wendell Phillips, pp. 98-153. 



2CO WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

recent converts still in the " awkward squad," to 
court-martial Mr. Garrison. Said he : 

"We are perfectly willing I am, for one to be the dead 
lumber that shall make a path for these men into the honor of 
the country. Use us, freely, in any way, for the slave. When 
the temple is finished the tools will not complain that they are 
thrown aside, let who will lead up the nation to put on the top- 
stone with shoutings. But while so much remains to be done, 
while our little camp is beleaguered all about, do nothing to 
weaken his influence, whose sagacity, more than any other single 
man s, has led us up hither, and whose name is identified with 
that movement which the North still heeds, and the South still 
fears the most." J 

As one result of this vindication, Mr. Phillips be 
came involved in a prolonged controversy with Hor 
ace Mann, then a Free Soil member of Congress 
from Massachusetts. This gentleman was a promi 
nent driller in the "awkward squad," and, with a 
brand new uniform on, set up for a veteran. He was 
a sharp fighter on paper, and with his pen for a 
sword was a formidable foe. The combat was fierce 
and angry on his part, calm and self-possessed on 
the part of Mr. Phillips. It was fought over the 
whole field of difference between the Free Soilers 
and the Abolitionists. It were needless at this late 
day to detail the respective thrusts and parries. 
Suffice it to say that it ended much as a certain 
famous duel in France did, between Floquet and 
Boulanger with Mr. Phillips in the role of the 
former, and with Mr. Mann hors de combat^ like the 
" brav general." * 

In the midst of this controversy, Mr. Phillips found 

1 Phillips s "Speeches," p. 138. 

9 For the ipsissima vcrba vide Liberator^ vol. xxiii., pp. 42, 46, 54, 
58, 66, 70. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 26l 

time to address a Committee of the Constitutional 
Convention of Massachusetts, then in session, in ad 
vocacy of a numerously-signed petition of the w/>men 
of the State asking- for equal political rights with 
men. The Convention heas^-ifre orator, and then 
threw the petition into the waste-basket. 1 It was too 
far ahead/ There was soft solder enough among 
those tinkers in the Convention but they applied it 
to the women with their tongues and worked away 
at the Constitution with a calking-iron. 

The month of May, 1853, found Mr. Phillips in 
New York City, whither the American Anti-Slavery 
Society had returned for its anniversary after its 
exile of two years. Baron Munchausen tells a story 
of a musician who, playing a tune in Russia, had it 
frozen, and who, being in Italy the following sum 
mer, was surprised to hear the balance of the tune 
come pealing forth thawed out in that mild climate. 
So the orator resumed his speech at the point where 
Captain Rynders had stopped it, and poured it out 
triumphantly. In the course of his remarks, he re 
ferred to the offer of the Rev. Dr. Orville Dewey, 
an eminent Unitarian clergyman, to return (or as he 
afterward amended it, to consent to the return of) his 
mother into slavery if that were necessary to save 
the Union. Thereupon a hurricane of cheers and 
hisses, long-continued, broke forth. He paused 
blandly, and when the storm had subsided, said 
quietly : " For once I have the whole audience with 
me ; some of you are applauding me, and the rest 
are hissing Dr. Dewey !" This sally was followed 
by great laughter and loud cheers no hisses ! * 

1 Austin s " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," p. 159. 
z Vide Liberator, vol. xxiii., last week in May. 



262 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The Woman Suffragists, who were in session at 
the same time, were not so fortunate as the Aboli 
tionists. Their Convention was transformed into a 
Bedlam, their speakers derided, their proceed 
ings parodied, theif^c-^/iest made a jest. Wendell 
Phillips spoke on their platform ; but against a tem 
pest and in interjections. 1 

In an address which he delivered in Boston, two 
weeks later, he gave a fine definition of the respec 
tive functions of the reformer and the politician. It 
is worth noting : 

" The reformer is careless of numbers, disregards popularity, 
and deals only with ideas, conscience, and common-sense. He 
feels, with Copernicus, that as God waited long for an inter 
preter, so he can wait for his followers. He neither expects nor 
is over-anxious for immediate success. The politician dwells 
in an everlasting Now. His motto is Success his aim, votes. 
His object is not absolute right, but, like Solon s laws, as much 
right as the people will sanction. His office is, not to instruct 
public opinion, but to represent it. Thus, in England, Cobden, 
the reformer, created sentiment, and Peel, the politician, stereo 
typed it into statutes." 2 

It was in 1833, and in Philadelphia, that the Amer 
ican Anti-Slavery Society was organized. 3 It was 
now 1853 and the Abolitionists determined to cele 
brate the twentieth anniversary. Accordingly, they 
sped from all directions Quaker-Cityward and jubi 
lated, with the pioneers to tell the story of yesterday, 
and with Phillips to speak for to-day. 4 In the 
matter of voting," remarked Mr. Phillips, " I will 
be Mordecai at the gate." In another year the so- 



1 Austin s " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," pp. 148-51. 

2 Vule Liberator^ vol. xxiii., p. 97. 

3 Ante, p. 71. 4 Vide Liberator, vol. xxiii., p. 192. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 263 

ciety would be twenty-one old enough to vote ! 
Phillips might get up and cast a ballot. But he 
never did, until he rose to see Haman hung ! 

In those times of excitement, the Anti-Slavery 
Convention, naturally enough, attracted cranks, as 
a magnet draws iron filings. A character of this 
sort was a certain Abigail Folsom. She was a harm 
less soul, sane on most subjects, but a monomaniac 
regarding free speech which she esteemed a right 
on her part to silence everybody else in order to 
have her say in season and out of season. Emerson 
wittily nicknamed her " the flea of conventions." 
She was often removed from the halls she infected 
and afflicted by gentle force. As she was a non-re 
sistant, she never struck back, save with her tongue, 
which was keen enough. One day, Mr. Phillips, 
with two others, placed her in a chair and were 
carrying her down the aisle through a crowd, when 
she exclaimed : 

" I m better off than my Master was ; He had but 
one ass to ride I have three to carry me !" 

Abigail Folsom was with, not of, the Abolitionists. 
Oddities, however, abounded among them men and 
women of the most original type. Individualism 
ran mad. There, for example, was Parker Pills- 
bury, who started for the pulpit, and brought up on 
the platform ; who set out orthodox, and ended in 
unbelief ; who had broad shoulders surmounted by 
an enormous head ; who carried " a crater in each 
eye," and rumbled like a human ytna. 

By his side stood a couple yet more unique 
Stephen S. Foster and Abby Kelley, his wife. She, 



1 " Garrison and his Times," p. 304. 



264 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

a "Judith turned Quakeress," he, a non-resistant 
in profession and a gladiator in practice, who smote 
his opponents with the olive branch ; she, courage 
ous with the bravery of an indomitable purpose, he, 
brave, too, but, like the Irishman at " Donnybrook 
Fair," carrying a chip on his shoulder which he 
dared any one to knock off, and inviting a row ; she, 
charged with the collection of the Abolition revenues, 
he, by his pugnacious utterances, angering the half- 
friends who might have given into the wish to knock 
him down rather than contribute. Lowell, who 
knew and coworked with both, has portrayed them 
with exquisite fidelity. Of Abby he says : 

" No nobler gift of heart or brain, 
No life more white from spot or stain, 
Was e er on Freedom s altar laid 
Than hers the Simple Quaker maid." 

Mr. Foster he hits off with rare humor : 

" Hard by, as calm as summer even, 
Smiles the reviled and pelted Stephen ; 
Who studied mineralogy 
Not with soft book upon the knee, 
But learned the properties of stones 
By contact sharp of flesh and bones, 
And made the experimentum cruets 
With his own body s vital juices ; 
A kind of maddened John the Baptist, 
To whom the harshest word comes aptest, 
Who, struck by stone or brick ill-starred, 
Hurls back an epithet as hard, 
Which, deadlier than stone or brick, 
Has a propensity to stick." 

It was remarked of a well-known Baptist clergy 
man, of a controversial temper, that he baptized his 
converts in hot water. So did many of the Garriso- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 26$ 

nians. As the chronic invalid, when asked how he 
was, always said " he enjoyed poor health," so they 
seemed, some of them, to enjoy their unpopularity, 
and to court it. 

There were those among the Garrisonians, too, 
who had adopted every ism of the day. These they 
sifted into their Anti-Slavery utterances, and thus 
produced the impression that Abolitionism was the 
nucleus of every scatter-brain theory and Utopian 
enterprise. Mr. Garrison himself was a sinner in 
this respect. He had now given up all his earlier 
religious views was an anti-Bible man, an anti- 
Sabbatarian, a no-government exponent, as well as 
an Abolitionist. Because he held and taught such 
doctrines, the community naturally concluded that 
these were a normal part of Abolitionism all the 
more because he mixed them. Of course, Mr. Gar 
rison had a right to his opinions. But it was not 
good generalship to load down a cause already suffi 
ciently odious by identifying it with other and unre 
lated issues which were yet more unpopular. " One 
war at a time," as Lincoln said. He should have 
emphatically distinguished between what was Aboli 
tionism and what was not, in expressing his convic 
tions, and should have made the line of demarkation 
broad as Boston Bay, high as Bunker Hill monu 
ment unmistakable. 

Mr. Phillips did not share in the vagaries of some 
of his friends. Nevertheless, he fyad to bear the 
odium ; which he did uncomplainingly too uncom 
plainingly. It was the glory of the Anti-Slavery 
platform that it made room for both sexes, all colors, 
and every creed. There was the more reason, there 
fore, that each should define his own position. But 



266 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

the cosmopolitan character of the Abolitionists was 
magnificent and sensible. If a general should call 
for volunteers to go into a forlorn hope, as one and 
another slipped out from the ranks, it would not 
occur to him to inquire into the religious ideas of 
this, and the home relations of that, and the financial 
condition of the other. In building railroads or or 
ganizing banks, Episcopalians, Baptists, Quakers, 
Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Roman Catholics, 
and atheists combine. They surrender nothing of 
their individual belief in doing so. They come 
together for a specific cause, and, reserving their 
separate interests for other hours, unite for the pros 
ecution of the common purpose. Precisely so with 
the Abolitionists. Members of all sects and of none 
might consistently join in a movement against slav 
ery. As soon, however, as a sifting in of outside 
opinions began, there was a necessity laid upon 
everybody to protest and define ; while the result 
enabled the Pro-Slavery spectators to identify Anti- 
Slavery with Bedlam. We repeat, it was a disas 
trous error, and it robbed the Garrisonians of influ 
ence and a following which they might otherwise 
have held. 

The contrast between Mr. Phillips and some of his 
confreres was so striking that audiences familiar with 
them but which had never heard him, were amazed 
when he appeared before them. His patrician bear 
ing, his unobtrusive but self-evident scholarship, his 
common-sense uttered in such gorgeous sentences, 
made him as " Hyperion to a satyr/ 



XX. 

EXCITEMENT. 

IN 1854 Congress passed the Nebraska Bill an 
apple of contention thrown by the goddess of dis 
cord. In effect, it repealed the Missouri Compro 
mise, which had dedicated to freedom whatever ter 
ritory lay north of Mason and Dixon s line, and rele 
gated to the inhabitants themselves the question as 
to whether slavery should be domesticated in the 
vast lands included under the name of Nebraska. 
That is to say, Kansas, Montana, and parts of 
Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado, were opened to 
slavery, provided the South could colonize them. 
The section immediately concerned was Kansas, 
which the slave-holders had already entered in great 
numbers, and which might soon be expected to be 
come a State. The other sections were, as yet, un 
populated, but were certain to be arenas of strife as 
last as they were reached. The Compromise meas 
ures of 1850 had foreshadowed that which the Ne 
braska Bill made the permanent policy and deliber 
ate practice of the Union. Such was the doctrine 
known as " Squatter Sovereignty." 

To say that it revived and intensified sectional 
rivalry, is like speaking of the Civil War as an " un 
pleasantness." The country was aflame. A stupen 
dous race into Kansas began in the South, and from 
the North, and Kansas itself was straightway trans- 



268 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

formed into a bloody battleground the opening 
skirmish of the impending revolution. 

With a host of others, Mr. Phillips exerted himself 
to expose and defeat the Nebraska Bill ; and when it 
passed, he redoubled his efforts with voice and purse 
to hasten Northern immigration to Kansas in order 
to secure it for freedom. He no longer stood alone. 
His views of the Union, of its Pro-Slavery char 
acter and tendency, were widely adopted, and his 
remedy was more and more seriously considered. 
In February, 1854, he visited New York City and 
spoke in the Broadway Tabernacle on " Squatter 
Sovereignty," and in doing so treated the whole 
question of slavery. " Straws show which way the 
wind blows." That it was now blowing North is 
shown by the following notice of his lecture, taken 
from the conservative Evening Post : 

"The distinguished orator of Abolitionism, Mr. Wendell 
Phillips, held forth on his favorite topic on Tuesday evening to 
an audience which completely crowded the Tabernacle, and it 
must be admitted that in all respects a more desirable audience 
could not have been selected from the population of the city. It 
marks a great change in the public sentiment, when a gathering 
like that of Tuesday night can sit for two hours and a quarter 
and listen, not merely with patience, but with manifest delight 
to a presentation of unadulterated Abolitionism. Mr. Phillips 
is certainly an orator of the highest order. In addition to rhe 
torical accomplishments that outrival (hose of Mr. Everett, he 
exhibics a sincerity and naturalness which his compeer is obliged 
to counterfeit. The lecture was a felicitous recast of Mr. Phil- 
lips s familiar views ; but the untiring enthusiasm and graceful 
eloquence of the speaker constantly evoked expressions of ap 
proval from the listeners." 

We know now, what men only surmised then, that 
the Southern leaders were confederated to rule or 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 269 

ruin. They were ruling at present. They were 
also deliberately preparing to ruin on the first evi 
dence that the sceptre would depart from Judah. 
Meantime they omitted no opportunity to exasperate 
Northern sentiment. The Fugitive Slave Law Avas 
enforced with special and diabolical thoroughness, 
as a master measure of provocation. 

The Anthpny Burns. ase occurred in May, 1854. 
Burns had escaped from Richmond, Va., in the pre 
ceding February, and was now hiding in Boston. 
At eight o clock in the evening he was arrested, on 
a false charge, as usual in such cases, hurried to the 
court-house and concealed no one being admitted 
to see him but the slave-claimant, the United States 
Marshal, and the police. 1 The next morning, the 
fugitive, ignorant, confused, trembling, friendless, 
was hustled before the United States Commissioner, 
Edward G. Loring, who was also a Massachusetts 
Judge of Probate. This heartless judge was about 
to deliver him to his master (not God, but one Col 
onel Seattle), when by accident Richard H. Dana, 
Jr., entered the court-room. Grasping the situa 
tion, he rose, protested against the indecent haste, 
and secured an adjournment of the hearing for two 
days. 8 

It was anniversary week in Boston. The city was 
full of strangers in attendance upon the Anti Slavery, 
the Women s Rights, and other conventions. The 
news circulated like wild-fire. " Since the Revolu 
tion," wrote Mr. Garrison in the Liberator of that 
week, " Boston has never witnessed such a popular 
excitement, the commonwealth has never been so 



Phillips s " Speeches," p. 185. " /<., pp 186-92. 



2/0 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

convulsed." Faneuil Hall was flung open and 
thronged. Phillips and Parker were the orators, 
and their words were thunderbolts. " I do not be 
lieve in Squatter Sovereignty in Kansas," declared 
the former, " and I hold Kidnapper Sovereignty to 
be more infamous in the streets of Boston." 2 He 
went on to quote the saying of Judge Harrington, 
of Vermont, away back in the first decade of the 
century, who, when asked to return a runaway 
slave, refused on the ground of insufficient evidence. 
What would you regard as sufficient?" asked the 
claimant. " Nothing short of a bill of sale from 
Almighty God !" was the reply. 3 

While the " Cradle of Liberty" was being rocked, 
an effort was simultaneously made by an excited 
crowd to rescue Burns, but failed through a mis 
understanding and the lack of concert. Parker knew 
of it Phillips did not. 4 

In the meanwhile President Pierce and the Mayor 
of Boston concentrated all the military and civic 
powers within reach to overawe the New England 
capital just as Lord North had done two gener 
ations before ; Commissioner Loring delivered the 
unhappy black to his alleged owner ; and an army 
carried him down State Street, over the very ground 
where Crispus Attucks, a colored man, fell as the 
first victim of British tyranny in resisting the red 
coats ; and Burns was flung manacled into the hold 
of a vessel bound for Virginia, the latest, and, 
thank God ! the last victim in Boston of American 
law. 5 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xxiii., p. 86 8 Ib. 

4 Higginson s " Obituary Notice of Wendell Phillips," p. 9. 
6 Vide Liberator, vol. xciii.. p. 91. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 2/1 

The Liberator painted the scene and called atten 
tion to the fact that the whole city hissed and jeered 
the infamous procession the most conservative, 
even ; a great change in public opinion since the 
Sims case. 1 There was not yet enough Anti-Slavery 
feeling to prevent the rendition ; but the Abolition 
ists had been successful in making it despicable. 
Further proof of this was given when Wendell Phil 
lips, who had been absent from the sessions looking 
after Burns, came into the Anti-Slavery Convention 
on the night of May 3Oth, and was received with 
tumultuous cheers, which were repeated again and 
again after he had spoken in the strains of his Faneuil 
Hall address. 2 

The Abolitionists were in the habit of celebrating 
the Fourth of July in a lovely grove, at Framing- 
ham, just out of Boston. At their gathering this 
year, Mr. Phillips related an incid ent in connection 
with the Burns case, which shows how much more 
strongly some men are influenced by sectarian than 
by humanitarian motives : 

" I met a man a week after Burns was surrendered, and he 
asked me : Mr. Phillips, was Burns really a Baptist exhorter, 
regularly licensed ? Said I : He was, sir, a Baptist exhorter, 
regularly licensed. Well, said he, I didn t take much inter 
est in the case : but when I heard that Major-General Edmunds 
had sent back a brother Baptist, I couldn t sleep ! He took no 
interest in the man it was the Baptist. He heard the mere 
fact of a human being surrendered as a chattel and went about 
his business. But when he learned that one Baptist had surren 
dered another Baptist, // disturbed his slumber /" 3 

The Phillipses passed that summer in Milton : 
" One of the most delightful of our country towns 

1 Vide Liberator, vol. xxiii., p. 91. 2 /., p. 94. 3 Ib. 



2/2 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

(wrote the orator, on August /th, to Miss Pease). 
Ann s brother has a place here, and we are with 
him." 1 He goes on to open his heart to his lair 
sympathizer : 

" I would say something on the Burns case if I did not know 
you saw the Standard and Liberator, from whose columns you 
get so many particulars that a note like this can add little. 
Twas the saddest week 1 ever passed. Men talked of the good 
we might expect for the cause, but I could not think then of the 
general cause, so mournful and sad arose ever before me the 
pleading eyes of the poor victim, when he sat and cast his case 
on our consciences, and placed his fate in our hands. I could 
not forget the man in the idea, Time has passed since, and I 
begin to think more of the three millions and less of the indi 
vidual. The effect of his surrender under this infamous law has 
been, like Uncle Tom and all such spasms, far less deep and 
general than thoughtless folks anticipated. We always gain at 
such times a few hundred and the old friends are strengthened, 
but the mass settle down very little different from before. 

" Indeed, the Government has fallen into the hands of the 
slave power completely. So far as national politics are con 
cerned, we are beaten there s no hope. We shall have Cuba 
in a year or two, Mexico in five ; and I should not wonder if 
efforts are made to revive the old slave trade, though perhaps 
unsuccessfully, as the Northern slave States, which live by the 
export of slaves, would help us in opposing that. Events hurry 
forward with amazing rapidity : we live fast here. The future 
seems to unfold a vast slave empire united with Brazil, and 
darkening the whole West. I hope I may be a false prophet, but 
the sky was never so dark. Our Union, all confess, must sever 
finally on this question. It is now with nine tenths only a ques 
tion of time." * 

In the autumn, after safely bestowing his wife at 
No. 26 Essex Street, " dear, delightful, dusty spot," 
the Agitator went off on a lecturing tour, travelling 



" Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 14. 
2 "William Lloyd Garrison," vol. Hi., p. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 2/3 

through Central New York as far West as Detroit, 
Mich., and returning by way of Philadelphia. He 
spoke everywhere to enthusiastic multitudes. 1 His 
tone may be caught from these lines, penned by one 
of the fathers of Anti-Slavery, the Rev. Samuel May, 
of Syracuse, and published in the Liberator : 

" Wendell Phillips delivered to a crowded audience in our 
Ciiy Hall, the ablest speech I ever heard, even from him which 
is equivalent to saying the ablest I ever heard. He showed that 
we have little to hope from parties, but much from the moral 
and religious sentiment, which must be aroused to abhor slavery, 
as we abhor sheep-stealing, piracy, and murder." 2 

When he got home from this trip, Mr. Phillips 
was arrested. History has much to say of the 
" brace of Adamses," and nothing unworthy. Bos 
ton, in theseyears, held another brace, a brace of 
Bens, suggestive of the first only by dishonorable 
contrast, Benjamin R. Curtis, of the United States 
Supreme Court, and Benjamin F. Hallett, United 
States District-Attorney. The two Bens were will 
ing (for a consideration) to figure as legal hounds in 
the national slave hunt. Accordingly, they indicted 
Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker for " ob 
structing the process of the United States," meaning 
the Fugitive Slave Law. It is not probable that 
they expected to accomplish much as against the de 
fendants. They only wished to impress the Admin 
istration with a due sense of their official activity, 
and to secure preferment by licking the hand that 
could bestow it. Personally, they put the indict 
ment on the ground of patriotism forgetful of Dr. 
Johnson s apothegm : " Patriotism is the last refuge 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xxiii., p. 183. 2 Jb. t vol. xxiv., p. 194. 



2/4 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

of a scoundrel." So Wendell and Theodore were 
each held in $1500 to answer. They were not much 
troubled to get bail. Phillips s sureties were six, 
viz., George William Phillips (his brother), the Rev. 
Samuel May, William I. Bowditch, Francis Jack 
son, Robert E. Althorp, and Charles Ellis. 1 
* Parker, in a letter to Charles Sumner, jots down 
all this, and adds : " John Hancock was also once 
arrested by the British authorities, in October, 1768. 
Great attempts were made to indict Sam Adams, 
and Edes, and Gill, patriotic printers : but no grand 
jury then would find a bill." 

Sumner dashed back from Washington these lines 
in reply : " I regard your indictment as a call to a 
new parish with B. R. Curtis and B. F. Hallett as 
deacons, and a pulpit higher than Strassburg stee 
ple." 3 At the same date he wrote to Mr. Phillips : 

" Well, Wendell, your Faneuil Hall speech anent poor Burns, 
and your treasonable efforts to humanize those whom the United 
States chattelizes, have at last, it should seem, overtaxed the 
mercy of a long-suffering Government ; and Franklin Pierce, 
by the worthy proxies of B. R. C. and B. F. H., has struck back. 
You are indicted ! What a small mouse for so big a mountain 
tobringforth and after such prolonged travail, too. All right. 
Everything helps us. " 4 

These cases never came to trial. Through tech 
nical defects, the indictments were quashed. 5 The 
brace of Bens had shown the South that they proudly 
wore the collar, their object was attained, they 
were now in the line of promotion. 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xxiv., p. 203. 

2 Weiss s " Life of Theodore Parker," vol. ii., p. 144. 3 Ib, 
4 Letter to Wendell Phillips. December (MS.), 

6 Weiss s and Frothingham s biographies of Theodore Parker, in 
loco. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 275 

On December 2ist Mr. Phillips lectured in Boston. 
Let the Courier, the most servile Pro-Slavery journal 
in Massachusetts, describe it : 

" Tremont Temple was crowded to its utmost capacity on 
Thursday night. Wendell Phillips was the orator of the even 
ing. His subject was The Nature and Extent of the Anti- 
Slavery Feeling in New England, and never were the splendid 
abilities of this most accomplished and able fanatic more amply 
displayed than on this occasion. Sentiments the most repug 
nant to the feelings of every patriot were absolutely applauded 
when clothed in -the magnificent diction of the Anti-Slavery 
Cicero. No pen can describe the gross injustice of the matter, 
nor the exquisite felicity of the manner of the Abolition orator." 

This extract suggests Balaam, who set out to curse 
Israel, and blessed it instead. 



XXI. 

GREAT EVENTS. 

ANTI-SLAVERY Massachusetts had now two objects 
at heart. One was the removal from the Probate 
Judgeship of Edward G. Loring, who as_ United 
States Commissioner~~rTad returned Anthony Burns 
to Virginia. The other was the making suchjicts 
impossible within her borders in future. Petitions 
praying for legislative intervention choked the mails 
and reached the State House in vast numbers, with 
signatures from Cape Cod to the Berkshire hills. 
Who should present them ? Who should mature 
I the needful action ? The popular choice instinctively 
selected the fittest man alive Wenddl_Phj]iips. 

It was a task quite to his liking. On February 
20th, 1855, he went before a designated committee 
of the Legislature, with the commonwealth for a 
client, and pleaded for the removal of Judge Loring. 
Competent legal critics pronounced his argument 
worthy to rank with the impeachment speeches of 
Burke and Sheridan, when Warren Hastings was 
on trial in Westminster Hall with the loftiest fo 
rensic efforts of Brougham and Erskine. 1 Rufus 
Choate, a political opponent, said : It is outra 
geously magnificent." * As it lies in the printed vol- 



1 Lawyers, for example, like Sumner, Richard H. Dana, Jr., Ed 
ward L. Pierce, arid Samuel H. Sewall. 

2 His remark lo Senator Sumner. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 277 

umc of the orator s speeches, 1 it is unnecessary to 
attempt a summary. The effect was electric. The 
Legislature voted to remove the disgraced official. 2 
Temporarily the Governor checkmated the will of 
the people by a veto ; 3 ultimately, the measure was 
signed and sealed, and Loring, judge no longer, 
stepped down and out. 4 

Simultaneously with these proceedings, Mr. Phil 
lips presented and argued the question of a " Per 
sonal Liberty Act." It is enough to say of this 
argument that it takes rank with the other. It is 
remarkable for the same passion for freedom, the 
same profound knowledge of the law, the same ex 
haustive marshalling of authorities, the same lumi 
nous reasoning. This, too, was successful the act 
was adopted with an hurrah. 6 What were its pro 
visions ? Read : 

11 Habeas Corpus was secured to the alleged fugitive ; no con 
fessions of his were admissible, but the burden of proof was to 
be upon the claimant, and no ex parte affidavit was to be re 
ceived. For a State office-holder to issue a warrant under the 
law was tantamount to a resignation ; lor an attorney to assist 
the claimant was to forfeit his right to practice in the State 
courts ; for a judge to do either was to make himself liable to 
impeachment or removal by address. No United States Com 
missioner under ihe Fugitive Slave Law should hold any State 
office. No sheriff, jailer, or policeman should help arrest a 
fugitive, no jail receive him. The militia should not be called 
out on the claimant s behalf. The Governor should appoint 



1 Vide " Speeches," pp. 154-212. 

2 Vide Liberator, vol. xxv. f p. 82. 8 Ib. 

4 Ib., vol. xxviii., pp. 42, 46, 50. The removal was finally made in 
the spring of 1858. 

" Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts," p. 924. 



2;8 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

County Commissioners to defend fugitives and secure them a 
fair trial." l 

Thorough ? Of course was not Mr. Phillips sub 
stantially its author? Efficacious? Yes no fugi 
tive slave was ever afterward remanded from the 
old Bay State. And the example proved contagious. 
State after State made haste to copy it. 2 

The various Anti-Slavery societies held their an 
niversaries in New York and Boston in the May 
of 1855, the prevalent excitement and the famed 
vigor of their speakers making them the events of 
the week. 

" The people," wrote Mr. Phillips to a friend, " never tire of 
listening to and applauding the most radical of our number. 
The Scotch proverb runs : 

The king said, " Sail !" 
The wind said, " No !" 

No need to ask whether there was a voyage. So now when 
slavery says, Sail ! let liberty say, No ! " 3 

An occurrence which interested him greatly was 
the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the 
Garrison mob ; which took place in October, in the 
very hall (Stacy Hall) out of which Mayor Loring 
had driven the women of Boston who had assembled 
there to discuss the peculiar institution. Many of 
the heroines of 1835 were present in 1855. The 
scene was solemn and historic. Francis Jackson in 
the chair (the brave merchant who had made his 
house the asylum of free speech when the city 
tabooed it) ; Garrison on the platform ; Phillips 
inside now, instead of on the street ; 4 sympathy, in 

1 " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iii., p. 416. 2 Ib., pp. 459, 460. 

3 Letter from Wendell Phillips to Henry Ward Beecher (MS.). 

4 Ante, p. 57. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 2/9 

place of riot ; what a change ! Mr. Phillips for the 
benefit of posterity, recited the story of the mob, 
and did it as only he could, in words that fell at first 
in a golden shower, deepening at last into a rain of 
fire. 

"I thank these women," he said, in closing, "for all they 
have taught me. I had read Greek and Roman and English 
history ; I had by heart the classic eulogies of brave old men 
and martyrs ; I dreamed, in my folly, that I heard the same tone 
in my youth from the cuckoo lips of Edward Everett ; these 
women taught me my mistake. They taught me that down in 
those hearts which loved a principle for itself, asked no man s 
leave to think or speak, true to their convictions, no matter at 
what hazard, flowed the real blood of 76, of 1640, of the hem 
lock-drinker of Athens, and of the martyr-saints of Jerusalem. 
I thank them for it ! My eyes were sealed, so that, although I 
knew the Adamses and the Otises of 1776, and the Mary D>ers 
and Ann Hutchinsons of older times, I could not recognize the 
Adamses and Otises, the Dyers and the Hutchinsons, whom I 
met in the streets of 35. These women opened my eyes, and I 
thank them and you (turning to Mrs. Southwick and Miss Hen 
rietta Sargent, who sat upon the platform) for that anointing. 
May our next twenty years prove us all apt scholars of such 
brave instruction !" l 

The autumn of 1855 was devoted by Mr. Phillips, 
after his custom, to lecturing. The Lyceum system 
was at its noon that remarkable institution which 
gathered audiences throughout the free States to sit 
at the feet of the great speakers of the country. It 
was a kind of church without a creed, and with a 
constant rotation of clergymen ; a kind of party 
without a platform, and with orators of every opinion 
neutral ground ; so that he who could give the 
best reason carried off the most honor. Beginning as 



" Speeches and Lectures," by Wendell Phillips, pp. 226, 227. 



280 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

a literary recreation, it became a continental rostrum 
where questions of any and every sort were dis 
cussed. The political issues of the period were per 
petually introduced. The utterances of the lecturers 
compromised no one save the lecturers themselves, 
and as the various lyceums endeavored to give all 
sides a hearing, the system filled an important place 
in American life. This was the special realm of 
Wendell Phillips. Here he was king ; and his min 
isters of state were Chapin, Beecher, Gough, Curtis, 
and no end of others, a motley and often an insur 
gent multitude. The collision of opinions, the con 
sequent sharpening of wits, and the toleration which 
resulted from hearing all sides, spiced these uncon 
ventional assemblies, made them amazingly popular, 
and gave them rare educational value. 

The New Englanders, then as now, were in the 
habit of observing the landing of the Pilgrims and 
kissing the Yankee Blarney-stone. William H. 
Seward was the orator at Plymouth in December, 
1855. His oration was a worthy tribute to the 
founders of empire on this side of the water. Phil 
lips was present as a guest of the Plymouth Society, 
and spoke brilliantly at the dinner-table. Here is 
an illustrative story which he told : 

"The Phillipses, Mr. President, did not come from Plym 
outh ; they made their longest stay at Andover. Let me tell 
you an Andover story. One day, a man went into a store there, 
and began telling about a fire. There had never been such a 
fire/ he said, in the county of Essex. A man going by Deacon 
Pettingill s barn saw an owl on the ridge-pole. He fired at the 
owl, and the wadding somehow or other, getting into the shingles, 
set the hay on fire, and it was all destroyed, ten tons of hay, 
six head of cattle, the finest horse in the country, etc. The 
deacon was nearly crazed by it. The men in the store began 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 28 1 

exclaiming and commenting on it. What a loss ! says one. 
Why, the deacon will well-nigh break down under it, says an 
other. And so they went on, speculating one after another, and 
the conversation drifted on in all sorts of conjectures. At last, 
a quiet man, who sat spitting in the fire, looked up, and asked, 
Did he hit the owl? (Tumultuous applaitse.} That man 
was made for the sturdy reformer, of one idea, whom Mr. Seward 
described." J 

Events hurried. Alter a parliamentary struggle 
prolonged through two months, on February 2d, 
1856, the free States elected N. P. Banks Speaker 
of the Lower House of Congress " the first gun at 
Lexington of the new revolution," said Mr. Garri 
son. 2 This victory was soon followed by an act 
which made a universal spectacle of the barbarism 
that masqueraded as chivalry by transplanting to 
Washington the manners and habits of the planta 
tion. In May, Senator Sumner spoke in the Senate 
on " The Crime against Kansas." On the 22d of 
the month, for words spoken in debate, Preston S. 
Brooks, a representative from South Carolina, as 
saulted him. The attack was a blow at liberty ; the 
manner of it was an exposure of Southern " gallan 
try." While Sumner sat at his desk engaged in 
writing, Brooks crept up behind him, and, without 
warning, struck him again and again upon the head 
with a heavy gutta-percha cane. The senator, half 
stunned by the blows, strove to rise and free himself 
from the restraint of the desk. He succeeded in 
wrenching it from the floor to which it was screwed, 
but fell unconscious in the endeavor to rise. Keitt, 
Douglass, Toombs, and other members of Congress 



1 Phillips s " Speeches and Lectures," pp. 236, 237. 

2 Vide Liberator, vol. xxvi., p. 23. 



282 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

looked on in silence in that kind of silence \vhich 
gave consent. Sumner s fall saved his life. Had 
he risen and turned, Brooks, who was armed, would 
have shot him. Mason, of Virginia, Jefferson Davis, 
of Mississippi, leading senators, the Southern press, 
and sections of the Northern, applauded the deed. 1 

So, then, the debate was to be one of bludgeons. 
The man-stealers and woman-whippers introduced 
into the halls of Congress their familiar home meth 
ods of discussion. 

The wrath of the North was wide and hot. Indig 
nation meetings abounded. Mr. Phillips regarded 
them with disgust. He held that the proper reply 
of Massachusetts would be to call home her repre 
sentatives. 2 He spent many years in trying to per 
suade the North to adopt the remedy for the terrific 
evil of which such acts were the inevitable symp 
toms, that the Civil War at length forced upon it 
the remedy of non-complicity. In a statement of the 
attendant circumstances of the case, he notes it as 
a significant fact, suggestive of the extent to which 
Southern sympathy had infected the wealthy and 
fashionable circles in the North, that the leading 
citizens of Boston itself refused to take part in the 
gatherings to rebuke the deed ; and he adds : " When 
Mr. Sumner returned to Boston, November 3d, 1856, 
though received by crowds in the streets and by the 
State authorities, the windows of every house in 
Beacon Street (the Mite quarter)^ through which he 
passed, except those of Prescott and Samuel Apple- 



1 Phillips s Sketch of Sumner, in Johnson s New Universal Cyclo* 
p<zdia t in loco. 

* Vide his various speeches of the period in the Liberator. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 28j 

ton, had their blinds closed to show indifference or 
contempt." 

Treading close upon the heels of the assault upon 
Sumner, came that history-making Convention at 
Philadelphia which organized the Republican part} 7 . 
The Free Soil party was now only a name. The 
Whig party was nothing but a memory 

" Wicked but in will, of means bereft," 

its Pro-Slavery elements had been absorbed in the 
Democratic party, which the South had selected for 
its perfect service. Its Anti- Slavery constituents 
made overtures to the Free Soil chiefs and suggested 
a union. Recognizing the propriety of not requir 
ing either to join the other, both suggested a new 
party with a new name. At the Quaker City, on 
June 1 7th, the -fusion was consummated and the 
name was coined the Republican party commenced 
its career. Amid unbounded enthusiasm the plat 
form was adopted. It welcomed all, without regard 
to past differences, who were opposed to the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, all who were against 
the extension of slavery into the Territories, all who 
favored the admission of Kansas as a free State. 3 
John-C. Fremont was nominated for the Presidency, 
and Jessie, his wife, became the rallying cry of the 
ne\v political crusade. The enthusiasm of the Con 
vention soon communicated itself to the country. 
Who that witnessed it can ever forget the canvass 
that followed, the " wide-awake" clubs, the torch 
light processions, the frenzied meetings, the hur- 



1 Johnson s New Universal Cyclopedia, Phillips s Notice of Sumner. 

2 /., Dana s article on the Republican party. 



284 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

rying to and fro, the bombarding- press, the pas 
sion of words, the war of ballots ? The recollec 
tion of those thrilling- scenes lives side by side with 
the outbreak of the Rebellion itself, of which, in 
deed, they were the prelude. 

James Buchanan was elected ; but by a narrow 
majority. The South forecast the future. The 
slave-holders drew their heads closer together and 
multiplied their conferences and their plots. 

Mr. Phillips welcomed the advent of the Republi 
can party. He regarded its canvass as a public edu 
cation. But he was too much of a seer to believe 
in its competency, with its avowed principles, to 
effect a cure of the national distemper. It afforded 
alleviation nothing more. The Republican party 
clamored for the non-extension of slavery. He 
sought its death. The Republican party said, " Lo 
calize it. " He knew that even though localized it 
would, in the very nature of things, continue to dis 
tract and convulse. The Republican party said, 
" Slavery must let go of Kansas." He retorted, 
" Slavery must set every bondman free." The 
Republican party said, Bind the maniac." lie 
advised, " Cast out the devil." 

Presently God vindicated the wisdom of Mr, Phil 
lips. 

With such convictions, he signed the call for a 
Disunion Convention, to be held in Worcester, 
Mass., in January, 1857. The Convention met on 
the 1 5th inst. with a large attendance. 1 Charles 
Francis Adams, Joshua R. Geddings, Amasa Walker, 
Henry Wilson, and other prominent men, sent let- 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xxvii., pp. 14, 27. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 285 

ters, all in sympathy with the object of the Aboli 
tionists, but in opposition to their methods. 1 Mr. 
Garrison spoke at length, and in advocacy of his 
familiar maxim of " No Union with slave-holders." 
Mr. Phillips made two speeches, in which he criti 
cised the limitations of the Republican propaganda ; 
reaffirmed his unalterable purpose to contend, not 
for the non-extension of slavery, but for its destruc 
tion ; emphasized the fact that the Union of the free 
States with the slave States brought these into neces 
sary complicity with those, by tying them together 
under a Pro- Slavery Constitution, by mortgaging 
the wealth and power of the North to the South, 
and by exposing liberty in one section to the demor 
alizing influences of slavery in the other ; recited the 
history of the past in proof of it ; asserted the ability 
of the free States to form an unstained Union that 
should be strong as well as free ; and ended by de 
claring his belief that the mere act of withdrawal 
would win the plaudits of civilization and go far to 
carry emancipation down to the Gulf. a 

The tone of these speeches is calm, logical, phil 
osophical. They are keen as the maxims of Roche- 
loucauld, racy as any pages of Dean Swift, sugges 
tive as an essay by Emerson, and uncompromising 
as Wendell Phillips. The South," said he, " is 
eternally crying : Give us our way, or we will 
break up the Union ! Let us reply : Free your 
slaves, or we will dissolve it ! This position had 
one supreme advantage : it met the slave-holders on 
their own ground, answered them in their own tone 
everybody could understand it. 



1 Vide Liberator, vol. xxvii., p. 15. 5 Ib., pp. 18, 32. 



286 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The Disunion Convention had hardly adjourned, 
when the oligarchy, speaking- this time through the 
Supreme Court of the United States, announced a 
decision which emphasized the declarations of Mr. 
Phillips touching the Pro-Slavery character of the 
Union. Dred Scott, a negro slave, had been carried 
by his master, an army officer, into a free State, 
Here he married the slave woman of another officer. 
Both were sold and returned to Missouri ; where 
Scott sued for their freedom, alleging that their 
transportation into a free State had ipso facto worked 
their emancipation. The case was decided adversely 
in the State courts, was appealed to the Supreme 
Court of the nation, and now, Chief Justice Taney 
decided, in brief, that the Constitution recognized 
no distinction between slaves and other property ; 
that slaves, therefore, might be taken wherever other 
property might be taken ; that the Union was bound 
to protect property-owners against all assailants ; 
and that the black race, as beings of an inferior 
order, " had no rights which white men were bound 
to respect." 

Thus did the South put back of the various laws 
of Congress on the questions at issue, and back of 
the Constitution, the authoritative interpretation of 
the tribunal of last appeal. Slavery was sustained. 
The free State laws discriminating slave property 
from other property were unconstitutional and \ 7 oid. 
Slavery was national freedom was sectional. 

Well," commented Mr. Phillips, as he finished 
reading the dictum of Chief Justice Taney, " on all 
the legal points involved, the Supreme Court sus- 



Vide Liberator^ vol. xxvii., p. 45. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 287 

tains my claims for a dozen years. It is infamous. 
But it is the law of the United States. How now 
about the Pro Slavery character of the Union ? Am 
I not right in seeking- to withdraw ?" 

The Dred Scott decision opened the eyes of the 
Northern leaders. For the m first time they saw, 
what the Abolitionists had seen since 1843 the ever 
lasting impossibility of mixing oil and water, fire and 
snow, life and death. The South had recognized it, 
too ; and had been striving with magnificent audacity 
for years and years to nationalize slavery, to sup 
plant freedom, with only such resistance at the North 
as a little band of " fanatics" could make. Now, 
the Rip-Van-Winkle North awoke from its long 
sleep, rubbed its eyes, and realized that twice two 
are four ! Thus, Abraham Lincoln, in a speech at 
Springfield, 111., on June i;th, 1858, exclaimed : 

4 A house divided against itself cannot stand. I 
believe this Union cannot endure permanently half- 
slave and half-free." These words made the polit 
ical fortune of Mr. Lincoln. Three years earlier, 
William Lloyd Garrison had uttered precisely the 
same words and they fell on deaf ears. 3 

In the same strain spoke William H. Seward, on 
October 25th, 1858, at Rochester, N. Y. : " Shall I 
tell you what this collision means ? They who think 
it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested 
and fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, 
mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible 
conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and \ 



Letter to Theodore Parker (MS.). 

Vide Arnold s " Lincoln/ p. 114. 

" William Lloyd Garrison," vo). Hi., p. 420. 






288 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

it means that the United States must and will, sooner 
or later, become either entirely a slave-holding na 
tion or entirely a free-labor nation." 1 

This idea of an " irrepressible conflict" was as 
trite as the multiplication table to Mr. Phillips. He 
had been proclaiming it almost from the start, and 
had outlined the only adequate remedy the de 
struction of slavery. Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward 
had now reached the proclamation. They were still 
several years on the other side of the remedy. 

Hume, a Tory historian, thanks the Puritans for 
saving" liberty in England. An American Hume 
will one day thank the Abolitionists for saving it 
here. 



1 Quoted in the Liberator, vol. xxviii., p. 177. 



XXII. 

IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 

LIKE a calm morning which scowls by and by in 
cloud and storm, so broke the year 1859, A ^ ew ^ 
the weather-wise ones scanned the horizon and dis 
cerned the signs of the approaching tempest. Most 
listened incredulously, and trod on about their busi 
ness. The disorders continued in Kansas. It was 
civil war in miniature. But the country had grown 
used to that. The South, complacent over the Dred 
Scott decision, and intrenched behind three lines of 
fortification, the White House, Congress, and the 
Supreme Court, was resting on its arms. At the 
North, the Republicans were recruiting and drilling 
for the Presidential campaign of 1860. 

The great anniversaries were held as usual, the 
meetings crowded, the speakers trenchant, the 
discussions touching this and that phase of current 
affairs. On May I2th, Mr. Phillips spoke at a turbu 
lent session of the National Women s Rights Con 
vention, in New York City. One after the other, 
the orators of the occasion were driven off the plat 
form by cat-calls and yells, until he took it and for 
two hours did as he would with the mocking crowd. 
In closing he said : 

" I have neither the disposition nor the strength to trespass 
any longer upon your attention. The subject is so large, that it 
might well fill days instead of hours. It covers the whole sur 
face of American society. It touches religion, purity, political 



290 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

economy, wages, the safety of cities, the growth of ideas, the 
very success of our experiment. If this experiment of self-gov 
ernment is to succeed, it is to succeed by some saving element 
introduced into the politics of the present day. You know this : 
your Websters, your Clays, your Calhouns, your Douglases, 
however intellectually able they may have been, have never 
dared or cared to touch that moral element of our national life. 
Either the shallow and heartless trade of politics had eaten out 
their own moral being, or they feared to enter the unknown land 
of lofty right and wrong. 

" Neither of these great names has linked its fame with one 
great moral question of the day. They deal with money ques 
tions, with tariffs, with parties, with State law ; and if, by 
chance, they touch the slave question, it is only like Jewish 
hucksters trading in the relics of saints. The reformers the 
fanatics, as we are called are the only ones who have launched 
social and moral questions. I risk nothing when I say, that the 
Anti-Slavery discussion of the last twenty years has been the 
salt of this nation : it has actually kept it alive and wholesome. 
Without it our politics would have sunk beyond even contempt. 
So with this question. It stirs the deepest sympathy ; it appeals 
to the highest moral sense ; it inwraps within itself the greatest 
moral issues. Judge it, then, candidly, carefully, as Americans ; 
and let us show ourselves worthy of the high place to which God 
has called us in human affairs." l 

Two weeks later, Mr. Phillips addressed the New 
England section of the same reform. We subjoin 
two paragraphs : 

" Many a young girl, in her early married life, loses her hus 
band, and thus is left a widow with two or three children. Now, 
who is to educate them and control them ? We see, if left to 
her own resources, the intellect which she possesses, and which 
has remained in a comparatively dormant state, displayed in its 
full power. What a depth of heart lay hidden in that woman ! 
She takes her husband s business, guides it as though it were a 
trifle ; she takes her sons, and leads them ; sets her daughters 



1 Austin s " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," pp. 164, 165. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 2QI 

an example ; like a master-leader she governs the whole house 
hold. That is woman s influence. What made that woman ? 
Responsibility. Call her out from weakness, lay upon her soul 
the burden of her children s education, and she is no longer a 
girl, but a woman. 

" Horace Greeley once said to Margaret Fuller, If you should 
ask a woman to carry a ship around Cape Horn, how would she 
go to work to do it ? Let her do this, and I will give up the 
question. In the fall of 1856 a Boston girl, only twenty years 
of age, accompanied her husband to California. A brain fever 
laid him low. In the presence of mutiny and delirium, she took 
his vacant post, preserved order, and carried her cargo safe to 
its destined port. Looking in the face of Mr. Greeley, Miss 
Fuller said, Lo ! my dear Horace, it is done. Now, say, what 
shall woman do next ? " {Cheers.} 1 

So passed the morning, so passed the noon of 1859. 
In the afternoon of the year Massachusetts did some 
thing that stirred Mr. Phillips to protest. The State 
permitted the statue of Webster to be placed in the 
State-House yard, with ostentatious ceremonies 
Edward Everett eulogizing the recreant statesman 
who had gone over to the South in the " battle of 
the giants," and had bidden the commonwealth 
" smother its prejudices" and consent to hunt slaves. 

A few weeks later, on October 4th, Mr. Phillips 
opened the " Fraternity" lecture course the most 
popular Lyceum platform in Boston. The result 
was his lecture on " Idols," which, as a specimen of 
rhetoric and invective, is unexcelled. Referring to 
the statue, he said : 

" No man criticises when private friendship moulds the loved 
form in 

Stone that breathes and struggles, 
Or brass that seems to speak. 

1 Austin s " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," p. 166. 



292 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Let Mr. Webster s friends crowd their own halls and grounds 
with his bust and statues. That is no concern of ours. But 
when they ask the State to join in doing him honor, then we 
claim the right to express an opinion. . . . We cannot but re 
member that the character of the commonwealth is shown by 
the character of those it crowns. A brave old Englishman tells 
us the Greeks had officers who did pluck down statues if they 
exceeded due symmetry and proportion. * We need such now, 
he adds, to order monuments according to men s merits. In 
deed we do ! When I think of the long term and wide reach of 
his influence, and look at the subjects of his speeches, the mere 
shells of history, drum-and-trumpet declamation, dry law, or 
selfish bickerings about trade, when I think of his bartering 
the hopes of four millions of bondmen for the chances of his 
private ambition, I recall the criticism on Lord Eldon, No 
man ever did his race so much good as Eldon prevented. 
Again, when I remember the close of his life spent in ridiculing 
the Anti-Slavery movement as useless abstraction, moonshine, 
mere rub-a-dub agitation, because it did not minister to trade 
and gain, methinks I seem to see written all over his statue 
Tocqueville s conclusion from his survey of French and Ameri 
can democracy, The man who seeks freedom for anything 
but freedom s self, is made to be a slave ! " 1 

The echo of these sentences had hardly died 
away when others were heard, sharper, fiercer, 
more deadly the echoes of John Brown s rifles 
among" the hills of Virginia ! 

John Brown was a regular Cromwellian dug up 
from Naseby and Marston Moor. He was an Old 
Testament Christian, whose war-cry was, The 
sword of the Lord and of Gideon." Going to Kan 
sas, he had come in collision there with the " border 
ruffians" who swarmed across the boundaries of Mis 
souri as the agents of slavery, and as a free-State 



^ Speeches and Lectures," by Wendell Phillips, pp. 254, 259, 
260. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 293 

chieftain had won fame as a Marion or Sumter. He 
was a devout guerilla of freedom. In person, tall, 
spare, farmer-like, he was built for roughing it. 1 

In order to understand this man, we must acquaint 
ourselves with his character and surroundings. 
Those marchings and countermarchings, yonder on 
the wild frontier, the skirmishes in Kansas, inter 
spersed with occasional forays across the border into 
Missouri to snatch slaves into liberty, had taught 
him to feel that war already existed, and had sug 
gested the invasion of the South at other and unsus 
pecting points. Accordingly, he came East in 1858, 
for the purpose of enlisting the co-operation of 
friends here in his plans. He saw Parker, Higgin- 
son, Sanborn, and secured their aid. Garrison was 
a non-resistant ; hence an impossible confidant. 
Phillips was conducting a movement on the basis of 
moral suasion ; therefore not likely to exchange 
ideas for rifles. 2 These two he met, but he shut 
them out from his confidence. Having secured men 
and material in modest measure, John Brown went 
into the neighborhood of Harper s Ferry, and on the 
night of October i6th, 1859, pounced upon the town, 
seized the United States Armory, and, with eighteen 
comrades, held the place for twenty-four hours. 
Then he was fought back into an engine-house, 
wounded, and finally captured by a file of United 
States marines sent from Washington, and com 
manded by Colonel Robert E. Lee, afterward gen 
eral of the Confederate armies. Eight of his band 
were killed, six were captured, four escaped. 3 



1 Vide " The Life of John Brown," by F. B. Sanborn. 
9 /* 8 



P- 552. 



294 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

What followed ? Everybody knows. John Brown 
was indicted for " murder and other crimes," tried, 
convicted, and, on December 2d, 1859, hung. 
Thus ended the Bunker Hill of the second Revolu 
tion. 

Between the e meute and the execution many and 
stirring scenes were enacted. The slave-holders 
were naturally affrighted. Their thoughts by day, 
their dreams by night were haunted by spectres of 
insurrection. Northern sentiment was divided. The 
coolness and bravery of " old Ossawatomie," as he 
was called, after the town in Kansas where he dwelt, 
his self-sacrifice for a hated race, his tenderness, as 
shown in the caress of a negro child on the way to 
the scaffold, a dozen stories told of his prudence, 
skill, and courage on the border, made him the 
hero of the hour. Nor did his scheme appear so 
insane at last as it did at first. For he entered Vir 
ginia why ? He told his captors in the wonderful 
address which he delivered to the court : 

" I deny everything but what I have all along admitted the 
design on my part to free the slaves. I intended, certainly, to 
have made a clean thing of the matter, as I did last winter, when 
I went into Missouri, and there took slaves without the snapping 
of a gun on either side, moved them through the country, and 
finally left them in Canada. I designed to have done the same 
thing again, on a larger scale. That was all I intended. I 
never did intend murder, treason, or the destruction of prop 
erty, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insur 
rection." 

He had succeeded in Missouri ; why not in Vir 
ginia ? There he was sane enough ; why crazy 
here? 



1 Sanborn s " Life of John Brown." 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 295 

Comedy and tragedy are close akin. In the midst 
of the drama, it was laughable to hear the various 
comments. " What a pity he did not succeed !" 
" Why didn t he march off with his victory during 
the first twenty-four hours?" What an outrage, 
to try a man while wounded and lying on a pallet !" 
Such were the utterances of all sorts of people in the 
streets, on the cars, at the fireside indicative of 
widespread sympathy. 1 The truth is, the South 
had been attacking the North on John Brown s prin 
ciple, for years in Kansas, for example, and in the 
blow at Sumner. This was only tit for tat. The 
North widely recognized it. Even conservatives 
felt a silent satisfaction, which was occasionally and 
grudgingly expressed as in the remark of a promi 
nent Democrat in New York City : " I hope it will 
teach the South that playing with fire is danger 
ous." 3 

Although Mr. Phillips had not been in John 
Brown s secret, he was profoundly stirred by his 
heroism. The orator had spent his life .in the en 
deavor to avoid the need of precisely such methods. 
He now realized that a new phase of the struggle 
was at hand. On November ist, 1859, ne lectured 
in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, dnd tQgjT** Harer^s 
Ferry" for a text. The lecture was as sensational 
as the occasion. It is sensational even as read to-day 
in the seclusion of the library. Turn over a leaf or 
two : 

" Has the slave a right to resist his master ? I will not argue 
that question to a people hoarse with shouting ever since July 



1 " Speeches and Lectures," by Wendell Phillips, p. 286. 

2 So said the Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson to John F. Dix, afterward 
Governor of New York. 



296 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

4th, 1776, that all men are created equal, that the right to liberty 
is inalienable, and that resistance to tyrants is obedience to 
God. But may he resist to blood with rifles ? What need of 
proving that to a people who load down Bunker Hill with gran 
ite, and crowd their public squares with images of Washington ; 
ay, worship the sword so blindly that, leaving their oldest states 
men idle, they go down to the bloodiest battle-field in Mexico to 
drag out a President ? But may one help the slave resist, as 
Brown did ? Ask Byron on his death-bed in the marshes of 
Missolonghi. Ask the Hudson as its waters kiss your shore, 
what answer they bring from the grave of Kosciusko. I hide the 
Connecticut Puritan behind Lafayette, bleeding at Brandywine, 
in behalf of a nation his rightful king forbade him to visit. 

" But John Brown violated the law. Yes. On yonder desk lie 
the inspired words of men who died violent deaths for breaking 
the laws of Rome. Why do you listen to them so reverently ? 
Huss and Wickliffe violated laws ; why honor them ? George 
Washington, had he been caught before 1783, would have died 
on the gibbet, for breaking the laws of his sovereign. Yet I 
have heard that man praised within six months. Yes, you say, 
but these men broke bad laws. Just so. It is honorable, then, 
to break bad laws, and such law-breaking history loves and God 
blesses ! Who says, then, that slave laws are not ten thousand 
times worse than any those men resisted ? Whatever argument 
excuses them, makes John Brown a saint." 1 

In the midst of this excitement, Mr. Phillips, who 
had been in Philadelphia a few days before, where a 
threatened mob did not act, wrote to Miss Grew : 

" These are stirring times and hopeful for the cause. I am 
glad the mobocrat 2 liked me, though some radical might think 
his liking an equivocal compliment ; but I accept it heartily. It 
comports with my philosophy. I have become so notorious 



" Speeches and Lectures," pp. 279 sq. 

2 The " mobocrat" was a highly distinguished leader of riots in 
Philadelphia, who was, on one occasion, so entirely captivated by 
Mr. Phillips s eloquence that he sat quietly through his lecture, and 
held in restraint the men whom he had led thither for the purpose of 
breaking up the meeting. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 297 

that at Albany, Kingston, and Hartford, the Lyceum could not 
obtain a church for me ; and the papers riddled me with pellets 
for a week ; but that saved advertising and got me larger houses 
gratis. At Troy they even thought of imitating Staten Island 
and getting up a Homoeopathic mob, but couldn t." l 

Mr. Phillips s marvellous power of rapid thought 
combined with peerless expression, is well known to 
those who frequently heard him in lectures or de 
bate. It was illustrated on the occasion referred to 
in the letter just quoted, when he delivered in Phila 
delphia his lecture on " Toussaint L Ouverture. " 
The execution of the death-sentence of John Brown 
was near at hand. Mr. Phillips, on his arrival in the 
city, in the morning, was told that his evening audi 
ence would expect him to speak of that appalling 
fact. He replied that it had no connection with the 
lecture which he had been invited to deliver ; that 
an interpolated passage upon another subject was 
scarcely to be thought of. But he was assured that, 
whether it belonged to the lecture or not, the de 
mand was imperative ; speak upon it he must. 

From the time of his arrival in the city, in the 
morning, until his appearance upon the platform, in 
the evening, with the exception of some fifteen min 
utes, he was surrounded by his friends, and occupied 
with social converse. Yet he introduced into that 
lecture an eloquent and thrilling passage concerning 
John Brown, which so marvellously fitted into it 
that it might have been an original portion of it. 

While John Brown lay in prison awaiting execu 
tion, a meeting was held in Boston to raise funds for 
the relief of his impoverished family. John A. An- 

1 Letter to Miss Grew (MS.). An attempt was made to mob him on 
Staten Island about this time, but failed. 



298 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

drew presided. Emerson represented New Eng 
land letters. Phillips stood for the negro race, on 
whose behalf the hero was condemned. The Rev. 
J. M. Manning, of the " Old South " Church, said : 

I am here to represent the church of Sam Adams 
and Wendell Phillips ; and I want all the world to 
know that I am not afraid to ride in the coach when 
Wendell Phillips sits on the box." 

When she had strangled the soul out of it, Vir 
ginia delivered the body of John Brown to his 
friends. They took it reverently and laid it in the 
grave at North Elba, his old home, with the Adiron- 
dacks for a monument. Mr. Phillips met the cortdge 
in New York City, and journeyed thence to the final 
resting-place. Standing by the grave he pronounced 
the burial address, from which we give an extract : 

14 Marvellous old man ! ... He has abolished slavery in 
Virginia. You may say this is too much. Our neighbors are 
the last men we know. The hours that pass us are the ones we 
appreciate the least. Men walked Boston streets, when night 
fell on Bunker Hill, and pitied Warren, saying, Foolish man ! 
Thrown away his life ! Why didn t he measure his means bet 
ter ? Now we see him standing colossal on that blood stained 
sod, and severing that day the tie which bound Boston to Great 
Britain. That night George III. ceased to rule in New England. 
History will date Virginia emancipation from Harper s Ferry. 
True, the slave is still there. So, when the tempest uproots a 
pine on your hills, it looks green for months, a year or two. 
Still, it is timber, not a tree. John Brown has loosened the 
roots of the slave system ; it only breathes, it does not live, 
hereafter." 2 

This was a long look ahead. It was prophecy 
then and history at last. Philosophers love to trace 



1 Reminiscences by Charles W. Slack, of Boston. 

2 " Speeches and Lectures," p. 290. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 299 

the result to the cause, to find the result in the 
cause. Phillips did this at North Elba. In the act 
ual John Brown he saw a million possible ones ; and 
in the possibility he beheld the end. 

There was a Star-Cham ber inquiry at Washington 
for the men who had aided and abetted John Brown. 
Theodore Parker, T. \V. Higginson, F. B. Sanborn, 
and others, were suspected ; but no papers could be 
found. They existed ! Mr. Phillips brought a bud 
get of them from North Elba, which he placed for 
safe keeping in the hands of Governor John A. An 
drew, and which at a later day the Governor re 
turned to the respective writers. 1 Had these been 
discovered, John Brown would not have hung alone. 



Recollections of F. B. Sanborn (MS.). 



XXIII. 

THE WINTER OF SECESSION. 

IN Macbeth, the witch stirs the pot and utters her 

incantation : 

" Black spirits and white, 
Red spirits and gray." 

So now all kinds of spirits, good, bad, nondescript, 
materialized, each paramount in turn. Over all, 
however, was the Spirit of Providence ! 

The spirit of sorrow, an unbidden guest, sat at 
many hearthstones when, on May loth, 1860, Theo 
dore Parker died. Stricken with consumption, he 
had gone to Europe in search of health, and reaching 
Florence, expired within sight of the cathedral 
whose doors Michel Angelo said were fit to be the 
gates to paradise. Mr. Phillips went heavy-hearted 
and sober-faced for many a day. That home in the 
rear of his own residence would be broken up was 
broken up. That light in the study over there was 
quenched at last, like the brighter light of intellect 
and goodness that had kindled and outshone it. 

In their grief, the congregation of Theodore 
Parker turned to Mr. Phillips. They were not in 
theological sympathy, but they were in personal and 
moral accord ; and through the fall and winter of 
1 860-61 the orator frequently occupied their plat 
form, delivering from it several of his most cele 
brated orations, and having on it some of his most 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 3<DI 

thrilling experiences as we shall sec. The society 
of Mr. Parker worshipped in the Music Hall. A 
tender commemorative service was held there when 
the sad news came from Italy, at which Mr. Phillips 
spoke with great sweetness and beauty. 

On November i8th, he pronounced before the same 
society a notable discourse on " The Pulpit." The 
utterance is interesting and important, because it 
gives his conception of its functions and scope. At 
the outset, Phillips expressed his appreciation of the 
essential idea of the Church, viz., the stated expres 
sion of devotional feeling. Then he urged the pulpit 
to recognize its duty and preach to life. He believed 
the Gospel should be applied to daily affairs. He 
criticised the silence of the ministry on living ques 
tions, and declared this fatal to the permanent influ 
ence and usefulness of the sacred office. The func 
tion of the pulpit, he said, was to awake and instruct 
the moral nature. He then proceeded : 

" Politics takes the vassal and lifts him into a voter. The 
press informs him concerning the happenings of the day. The 
school gives him elementary instruction. We need in addition 
a pulpit moral initiative. I value the Sunday for this : it gives 
opportunity for such instruction. The devil invented work 
forced it. When we clutched a day and gave it to the soul, we 
redeemed one seventh of the time from the devil and gave it to 
God. The pulpit should use the day and opportunity for the 
training of the community in the whole encyclopaedia of morals 
social questions, sanitary matters, slavery, temperance, labor, 
the condition of women, the nature of the Government, responsi 
bility to law, the right of a majority, and how far a minority 
may yield, marriage, health, the entire list. For all these are 
moral questions and they are living questions, not metaphysics, 
not dogmas. Hindostan settled these thousands of years ago. 
Christianity did not bury itself in the pit of Oriental metaphysics ; 
neither did it shroud itself in the hermitage of Italian doctrine. 



302 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The pulpit, as seen in the North of Europe and in this country, 
is not built up of mahogany and paint. It is the life of earnest 
men, the example of the community ; a forum to unfold, broaden, 
and help mankind. That is the pulpit. If this were recognized 
and acted upon, people would not desert the Church, as they 
tend to do ; or go, if at all, from a mere sense of duty ; but 
would be drawn to the pulpit as they are to the press and the 
theatre, by a felt want." 1 

The spirit of discord rent the Democratic party 
in twain on. the eve of the election, in 1860 ; one fac 
tion insisting upon a committal of the party to the 
doctrine of the equal right of slave property to enter 
all the Territories, while the other held out for a ref 
erence of the whole question to the Supreme Count 
which had just decided it affirmatively in the Dred 
Scott case ! The result was the nomination of 
Stephen A. Douglas by the Northern, and of John 
C. Breckenridge by the Southern, Democrats. This 
insured the election of the Republican candidate. 
The truth is that the slave-holders had matured and 
were now ready to precipitate secession. They de 
liberately engineered the disruption of the Demo 
cratic party in order to secure Republican success 
and thus gain a pretext for disunion. But this was 
God s way of providing a plentiful contingent of war 
Democrats presently, when they should be needed. 

The spirit of wisdom guided the. Republican Con 
vention to the choice of Abraham Lincoln as Presi 
dent, instead of William H. Seward, whom every 
one expected to win the nomination. This was 
God s way of providing the man for the hour. 

The spirit of fun called into being a " Union" 
party, which served to introduce an element of hu- 



1 Vide " The Pulpit," a pamphlet in the Boston Public Library. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 303 

mor into the canvass, keeping the country in good 
temper before it went quite mad. This was God s 
way of easing up the nation before subjecting it to 
the impending strain. 

Mr. Lincoln was elected. In the evening of the 
day after the election, while the streets were noisy 
with paraders, Mr. Phillips lectured in Boston. 

" For the first time in our history," said he, " the slave has 
elected a President. In 1760 what rebels felt, James Otis spoke, 
George Washington achieved, and Everett praises to-day. 
The same routine will go on. What fanatics now feel, Garrison 
prints, Lincoln will achieve, and, at the safe distance of half a 
century, some courtly Everett will embalm in matchless pane 
gyrics. You see exactly what my hopes rest upon. Growth ! 
The Republican party have undertaken a problem the solution 
of which will force them to our position." 1 

Mingling with the spirits mentioned, yet solitary, 
was another, hot from below and sulphureous, the 
mob spirit now abroad, and never fiercer. The 
Abolitionists were its special victims, and Boston, as 
being their headquarters, its prominent theatre. On 
December 2d, 1860, a meeting was announced in the 
Tremont Temple to discuss the abolition of slavery. 
It was the anniversary of John Brown s execution. 
The mayor turned mobocrat and thrust the discus- 
sionists out of doors. The Belknap Street colored 
church was their asylum ; a roof that deserves to 
be held in honor by every lover of free speech ; for 
here lips were ungagged when they were padlocked 
elsewhere for thirty years. 2 

" Mr. Phillips," writes a participant, " spoke that night with 
regal magnificence and dauntless courage ; while the court-way 
beside the church, and the street in front, were filled with angry 

" Speeches and Lectures," pp. 294, 314. 2 Ante, p. 70. 



304 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

and yelling rioters. They thought Phillips could not emerge 
without passing through their ranks, and they were prepared 
for violence toward him. But there was a rear passage-way, 
very narrow, from the meeting-house through to South Russell 
Street ; and out by that avenue, single file, walked Phillips and 
his friends, and thence up the hill to Myrtle, and so to Joy, Street, 
and across the Common to Mr. Phillips s Essex Street residence. 
When the mob heard that Mr. Phillips had escaped, they rushed 
up the hill, and overtook his escort just as it had descended the 
stone steps leading to the Beacon Street mall. They found a 
cordon of young men, forty or more in number, who, with locked 
arms and closely compacted bodies, had Phillips in the centre 
of their circle, and were safely bearing him home. Timidity, 
or a conviction that an assault would be fruitless, prompted 
them to take satisfaction at the discovery only in yells and ex 
ecration." 1 

Two weeks later Theodore Parker s church in 
vited the orator to fill their pulpit. The Pro-Slavery 
sentiment of the city registered an oath that he 
should not speak. He concluded that he would. 
And he selected for his theme the men who had at 
tempted to muzzle free speech on December 2d : 

" That morning," says one of the officers of the church, " saw 
a crowd within its walls never exceeded since. Mr. Phillips 
was on hand in due course, calm as nature on a spring morning. 
Whoever heard that discourse never will forget it. It was, from 
beginning to end, one terrible arraignment of the mob-spirit in 
America. He used no rose-water flavor in describing the rioters 
of the Tremont Temple gathering, but in the most scathing lan 
guage made personal issue with the well-known social and polit 
ical leaders on that occasion. As he poured out his blistering 
anathemas, I sat trembling lest I should hear the snap of a pistol 
that should send a ball into his glowing and pulsating form. 
But there was no violence attempted. His sympathizers fully 
equalled the malecontents ; and the mayor, on the appeal of the 
directors of the hall, had the audience interspersed with police- 



1 " Reminiscences of Charles W. Slack." 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 305 

men in plain clothes. When the services were over, and Mr. 
Phillips withdrew from the hall by the Winter Street entrance, 
court and street were found to be filled by the baffled rioters 
ready for assault. Just then two sections of young men, double 
file, took Mr. Phillips, with a friend on each side of him, be 
tween them, and escorted him up Washington Street to his resi 
dence in entire safety. This escort was fully armed, and it 
would have been a sad day for the mob had Mr. Phillips been 
assaulted. For nearly a week after, a portion of these young 
men remained on duty at Mr. Phillips s house for his protec 
tion." * 

In a letter to Miss Mary Grew Mr. Phillips thus 
refers to these experiences : 

" I hardly know what to say to you about our mob. It was 
not the murderous mob of 1835. Still there were dangerous 
elements in it. The police think, and so do many friends, that 
I should not have got home, Sunday, alive, without the protec 
tion of the police ; but though there were some fists doubled, 
and pistols seen, still there were twenty stanch men around me, 
armed ; and even without the police, I think, we should have 
made our own way. The Monday evening meeting, I regretted 
to hold where we were compelled to, as it left the colored people 
exposed all night to the remains of the mob. But we are all 
safe, and I suppose nothing more will trouble us till our annual 
meeting in January. They boast, in State Street, that we shall 
not hold any Anti-Slavery meetings this winter. We ll see. 

"You know the owners of Music Hall refused us the hall. 
The Fraternity offered bonds for $50,000 ; then the trustees said 
they would consent if another speaker could be substituted. 
Had our mayor been here we should not have got the hall. But 
Heaven took him to Washington. So Mr. Clapp was acting 
mayor. He behaved nobly and secured, probably, the casting 
vote which, at half-past eleven P.M., obtained for us the hall. 

" The Brothers Hallowell are on hand on all occasions. The 
eldest had my right arm as we came home from the Music 
Hall ; his brother in front of me. The pleasantest item is, the 



M Reminiscences of Charles W. Slack. 



306 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

German Turners held a meeting Sunday evening, and voted 
to protect free speech and free speakers ; and a squad of them 
has watched our house every night since, though I never heard 
of it till days after. That s worth being mobbed for. There s 
some good in the world, spite of original sin." ! 

On the day previous to the scene in Music Hall, 
South Carolina seceded. The other Gulf States 
soon followed seven in all. The Border States 
lingered. Then the North went on its knees ; of 
fered the South carte blanche ; would she only deign 
to name her terms and remain in the Union ? Lib 
erty bills were rescinded. Congress passed an 
amendment to the Constitution by the requisite two- 
thirds majority, forbidding the abolition of slavery 
and any interference with the return of " persons 
held to labor." A " Peace Congress" assembled in 
Washington and outran the Congress that sat in the 
Capitol in the race of subserviency " anything, 
everything, only stay !" The Gulf States had gone. 
They looked on with amused disdain. The Border 
States still hesitated. 

Mr. Phillips spent these three weeks trying to per 
suade the North to rise from its knees and let the 
South go. He thought, rightly, that the attitude 
of the free States was the most shameful in the long 
history of servility. He welcomed peaceable dis 
union, and said the North could afford to pay mill 
ions to be rid of such neighbors. On January 2oth, 
1861, he was announced to occupy Theodore Parker s 
pulpit again and his subject was published Dis 
union !" On the iQth inst. Garrison penned these 
lines to Oliver Johnson, in New York City : 



1 Letter to Miss Grew (MS.). 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 307 

" It will be a fortnight, to-morrow, since I have been out-of- 
doors. It is on this account I have not replied to your letter 
giving me an extract of a plot in embryo for a murderous assault 
upon our dear and noble friend, Wendell Phillips. I thought it 
best, on the whole, to say nothing to him about it ; but that his 
precious life is in very great danger, in consequence of the 
malignity felt and exp r essed against him in this city since the 
John Brown meeting, there is no doubt among us. Hence, we 
are quite sure of a mobocratic outbreak at our annual meeting 
on Thursday and Friday next ; and, though some of us may be 
exposed to personal violence, Phillips will doubtless be the object 
of special vengeance. The new mayor, Wightman, is bitterly 
opposed to us, refuses to give us any protection, and says if 
there is any disturbance he will arrest our speakers, together 
with the trustees of Tremont Temple ! What a villain ! I 
should not wonder if blood should be shed on the occasion, for 
there will be a resolute body of men present, determined to main 
tain liberty of speech. Whether an attempt will be made to 
break up the Anti-Slavery Festival at Music Hall, on Wednes 
day evening, remains to be seen. But all will work well in the 
end. 

" Phillips is to speak at the Music Hall to-morrow forenoon, 
before Mr. Parker s congregation, and another violent demon 
stration is anticipated. Mayor Wightman refuses to order the 
police to be present to preserve order. This makes the per 
sonal peril of Phillips greater than it was before." l 

Mr. Phillips spoke, and never more calmly, never 
more powerfully. The mob, as before, occupied the 
hall, and the approaches to it. 5 And, as before, he 
was escorted to his home by a self-appointed body 
guard. 3 

On the 24th inst, the annual meeting of the Mas 
sachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (referred to as im 
pending by Mr. Garrison in his letter to Mr. John- 



1 " William Lloyd Garrison, " vol. iv., p. 3. 

2 " Speeches and Lectures," by Wendell Phillips, p. 343. 3 Ib. 






308 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

son) was held. At least one session was held. Of 
this Mrs. Lydia Maria Child has left a graphic pen- 
and-ink sketch. Addressing a friend, she writes : 

" I would rather have given fifty dollars than attend the meet 
ing, but conscience told me it was a duty. I was excited and 
anxious, not for myself, but for Wendell Phillips. Hour after 
hour of the night I heard the clock strike, while visions were 
passing through my mind of that noble head assailed by mur 
derous hands, and I obliged to stand by without the power to 
save him. 

" I went very early in the morning, and entered the Tremont 
Temple by a private labyrinthine passage. There I found a 
company of young men, a portion of the self-constituted body 
guard of Mr. Phillips. They looked calm, but resolute and 
stern. I knew they were all armed, as well as hundreds of 
others; but their weapons were not visible. The women friends 
came in gradually by the same private passage. It was a sol 
emn gathering, I assure you ; for though there was a pledge 
not to use weapons unless Mr. Phillips or some other Anti- 
Slavery speaker was personally in danger, still nobody could 
foresee what might happen. The meeting opened well. The 
Anti-Slavery sentiment was there in strong force, but soon the 
mob began to yell from the galleries. They came tumbling in 
by hundreds. The papers will tell you of their goings-on. Such 
yelling, screeching, stamping, and bellowing I never heard. It 
was a full realization of the old phrase, All hell broke loose. 

" Mr. Phillips stood on the front of the platform for a full 
hour, trying to be heard whenever the storm lulled a little. 
They cried, Throw him out ! Throw a brickbat at him ! 
Your house is afire ; don t you know your house is afire ? 
Go put out your house. Then they d sing, with various bellow 
ing and shrieking accompaniments, Tell John Andrew, tell 
John Andrew, John Brown s dead ! I should think there were 
four or five hundred of them. At one time they all rose up, 
many of them clattered down-stairs, and there nas a surging 
forward toward the platform. My heart beat so fast I could 
hear it ; for I did not then know how Mr. Phillips s armed friends 
were stationed at every door, and in the middle of every aisle. 
They formed a firm wall, which the mob could not pass. At 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 309 

last it was announced that the police were coming. I saw and 
heard nothing of them, but there was a lull. Mr. Phillips tried 
to speak, but his voice was again drowned. Then, by a clever 
stroke of management, he stooped forward, and addressed his 
speech to the reporters stationed directly below him. This tan 
talized the mob ; and they began to call out, Speak louder ! 
We want to hear what you re saying ; whereupon he raised his 
voice, and for half an hour he seemed to hold them in the hol 
low of his hand. But as soon as he sat down, they began to yell 
and sing again, to prevent any more speaking." l 

In the afternoon the mayor once more interfered, 
and by his command the hall was not opened at 
night. 2 

Was Mr. Phillips silenced ? Oh, no ! On Feb 
ruary i /th, he re-entered Parker s pulpit and spoke 
on " Progress," still serenely, still uncompromis 
ingly, still with the mob for an audience, and a pha 
lanx of armed friends for a rampart. While he was 
speaking a string of fifty or more rioters pushed into 
the hall and surged toward the desk. They were 
soon stayed by the protecting cordon in front of the 
orator. Here they stood and listened, and listening 
were touched, so that at last they broke with the 
rest of the audience into wild applause ! Phillips 
was always proud of this proof of his persuasive 
powers rioters transformed into sympathizers ! 



" Letters of Lydia Maria Child," pp. 147. 149. 

2 Vide Liberator, vol. xxxi., p. 17. What Mr. Phillips said to the re 
porters was : " While I speak to these pencils, I speak to a million of 
men. What, then, are those boys ? We have got the press of the 
country in our hands. Whether they like us or not, they know that 
our speeches sell their papers- With five newspapers we may defy 
five hundred boys. . . . My voice is beaten by theirs, but they can 
not beat types. All hail and glory to Faust, who invented printing, 
for he made mobs impossible . " Ib. 



310 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

His family physician and firm ally, Dr. David Thayer, 
who was present, relates that as the band entered, 
one of them addressed a bystander, supposing him 
to be a malcontent, and pulling a noosed rope half 
out of his overcoat pocket, said in a whisper, " See ! 
we are going to snake him out and hang him with 
this on the Common." The person addressed drew 
out a revolver, pushed it into the eyes of the ruffian, 
and cried : " God d n you, if you don t get out of 
this hall, I ll blow your brains out !" He got out in 
a hurry. He had mistaken his man. Dr. Thayer 
said he thought it justifiable profanity. 1 When the 
address was ended, the brave doctor spirited Mr. 
Phillips into his waiting buggy, and drove him home 
at a two-forty pace the city ordinance to the con 
trary, notwithstanding. For days, that house was 
an arsenal. Friends encamped within, well armed. 
The police stood without, while the mob transformed 
the vicinity into a pandemonium. 

" If those fellows had broken in, would you have 
shot them, Mr. Phillips ?" asked a lady friend. 

" Yes," was the quiet answer,- " just as I would 
shoot a mad dog or a wild bull !" 

" During all this time," remarks Mr. T. W. Hig- 
ginson, an eye-witness, " there was something pecul 
iarly striking and characteristic in his demeanor. 
There was absolutely nothing of bull-dog combative- 
ness ; but a careless, buoyant, almost patrician air, 
as if nothing in the way of mob- violence were worth 
considering, and all the threats of opponents were 
simply beneath contempt. He seemed like some 



1 The writer had this from Dr. Thayer s own lips. 
3 Told by Mrs. Eleanor F. Crosby. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 311 

English Jacobite nobleman on the scaffold, carelessly 
taking snuff, and kissing his hand to the crowd, 
before laying his head upon the block." 

So passed, for Mr. Phillips, the winter of seces 
sion. He ran a gauntlet of mobs three months long 
unhurt. This was God s way of vindicating free 
speech by the freest speaker in the world. 



XXIV. 

UNDER THE FLAG. 

DURING the months whose history has just been 
traced as it was localized in the experience of Mr. 
Phillips, the country was vexed and tormented, rent 
and crazed, like the demoniac in the Scriptures, by 
devils. The Gulf States gone ; the Border States 
still balancing- ; party feeling so belligerent that men 
and women of opposite politics talked bullets when 
they met ; the press voicing and increasing the prev 
alent perplexity and animosity ; business demoral 
ized ; a horrible uncertainty, more appalling than 
the most dreadful assurance, populating the conti 
nent with rumors, but how describe the indescrib 
able ? 

Out of this chaos certain facts stalked into the con 
sciousness of the North. It was known that the dis 
graceful administration of James Buchanan was 
about to end. It was the avowed intention of the 
lingering Catilines of secession to effect a coup d etat 
and take possession of the Capital. It was openly 
asserted that Abraham Lincoln should never be in 
augurated. The South was united. The North- 
it was Ishmael multiplied into twenty million. 

Time passed. The confusion deepened. The 
President-elect stole disguised into Washington. 
Buchanan left the White House. Lincoln entered 
it and assumed the government. General Winfield 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 313 

Scott, faithful among the faithless, held the Capital 
in the name of the nation. The new Executive de 
livered his inaugural conciliatory in tone, yet self- 
possessed and courageous ; offering to enforce the 
Fugitive Slave Law, and recommending the States 
to ratify the Constitutional amendment just passed 
by Congress, making the abolition of slavery impos 
sible ; but affirming the purpose to uphold and vin 
dicate the supreme authority of the nation. 

This was the South s opportunity. God inter 
vened and made the slave-holders deaf. He meant 
to destroy the monster iniquity. The secessionists 
were convinced that the North would not fight that 
it could not. For was it not hopelessly divided ? 
Did not Jefferson Davis have in his pocket a letter 
from ex- President Franklin Pierce, in which the re 
creant New Englander declared that if there should 
be war the fighting would not be in the South but 
in the North ? 1 Was there not every reason to be 
lieve that the Pro-Slavery sympathizers here would 
find occupation for Mr. Lincoln at home, should he 
move toward coercion ? Moreover, the treasury 
had not that been emptied by the pilferers who held 
office for this purpose under the late Administration ? 
The navy was not that artfully scattered in distant 
seas ? The army was not that reduced to a cor 
poral s guard ? Had not the arsenals been despoiled 
of arms, which the Confederates now handled ? 
What could the President do, if he would ? Why, 
he had been robbed of all means precisely with a 
view to this emergency. 

The secessionists laughed at Lincoln s overtures. 



1 Greeley s " American Conflict," vol. i., p. 513. 



3 H WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Suppose they returned, how could legislation muz 
zle Northern sentiment ? Had they not tried that 
for fifty years ? It was the type of society in the 
North that they dreaded. It was from this that they 
wished to separate themselves. One thing-, how 
ever, gave them anxiety. They desired the adher 
ence of the Border States to the Confederacy. To 
secure this they decided to " fire the Southern 
heart" never imagining the shot which did that 
would also fire the heart of the North. This was 
their supreme, but natural, blunder. Had the flag 
been left unassailed there would have been a peace 
able dissolution of the Union. God again interfered. 

On April I2th, 1861, Fort Sumter was bombarded ! 

The result was unimaginable. It did, indeed, have 
the expected effect in the Border States, most of 
which made haste to secede. 

But at the North, instead of being a signal for a Pro- 
Slavery insurrection, it stirred a protest of indignant 
patriotism from the very graveyards. There was 
" such an uprising in every city, town, and hamlet, 
without distinction of sect or party, as to seem," 
wrote Mr. Garrison, " like a general resurrection of 
the dead." In the first fierce moment of arousal, 
all talk of compromise ceased. The empty exchequer 
was filled by a national loan. A navy was extem 
porized, as if by magic. Canada and Europe were 
ransacked for arms. And in response to the Presi 
dent s call for volunteers to suppress the rebellion, 
every farm, every workshop, every counting-room, 
every fireside transformed citizens into soldiers and 
made Washington a camp. 



Vide Liberator^ vol. xxxi., p. 66. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 315 

In a moment the whole situation changed. With 
corresponding rapidity, the attitude of individuals 
altered. Senator Douglas ceased to be a dough-face 
and became a patriot. Benjamin F. Butler, up to 
this moment a Northern man with Southern prin 
ciples, experienced a change of heart and was born 
again. Garrison " remembered to forget" that he 
was a non-resistant and made the Liberator over from 
a Quaker gun into a columbiad. 

Mr. Phillips veered with the rest. He had been a 
Disunionist for freedom s sake since 1843. All 
winter he had been advising the North to let the 
South go in peace. Now he, too, favored war and 
wished to save the Union. Was he not inconsis 
tent ? No, he changed, not his principles, but his 
methods. He had been aiming at what ? The 
emancipation of the negro race and the liberation of 
the North from slave-holding domination. He now 
saw, with intuitive quickness, that the war for the 
Union was the Providential way of attaining both 
objects. As slavery lay at the bottom of the differ 
ence between the sections, it was clear that slavery 
must be abolished in order to final union. Two 
ideas, therefore, took possession of him now and 
shaped his course, viz., free the blacks as a war 
measure, and then enfranchise them. This policy 
he urged throughout the war and throughout the 
period of reconstruction, and finally harvested it in 
the Proclamation of Emancipation and in the three 
amendments to the Constitution. To those who 
criticised his present position and accused him of 
inconsistency his triumphant reply was : 

" People may say this is strange language for me, a Dis 
unionist. Well, I was a Disunionist, sincerely, for twenty years. 



316 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

I did hate the Union, when union meant lies in the pulpit and 
mobs in the streets, when union meant makirg white men hypo 
crites and black men slaves. {Cheers ) I did prefer purity to 
peace, I acknowledge it. The child of six generations of Puri 
tans, knowing well the value of union, I did prefer disunion to 
being the accomplice of tyrants. But now when I see what the 
Union must mean in order to last, when 1 see that you cannot 
have union without meaning justice, and when I see twenty mill 
ions of people, with a current as swift and as inevitable as 
Niagara, determined that this Union shall mean justice, why 
should I object to it ? I endeavored honestly, and am not 
ashamed of it, to take nineteen States out of this Union, and con 
secrate them to liberty, and twenty millions of people answer 
me back, We like your motto, only we mean to keep thirty- 
four States under it. Do you suppose that I am not Yankee 
enough to buy union when I can have it at a fair price ?" 1 

Learning of Mr. Phillips s change of views, and 
on fire themselves with the enthusiasm of the hour, 
Theodore Parker s society invited the orator to 
occupy their desk on Sunday, April 2ist, nine days 
after the firing of " the shot heard round the world." 

" They dressed their pulpit," remarks one of their number, 
" in the national colors. Over the occupant s head was an arch 
of bunting, decked with laurel and evergreen. Thousands 
crowded into the hall. Mr. Phillips was promptly on hand, vuth 
for the first time in his public career an audience wholly in 
sympathy with his expected speech. The atmosphere was 
charged with patriotism. Men s faces, especially those of the 
old Abolitionists, were aglow with a confident hope. Again was 
Mr. Phillips equal to the occasion ! He welcomed the national 
outbreak as the sure precursor of the death of human slavery in 
republican America. He built up his magnificent expectancy 
of the results of the war, sentence by sentence, thrilling the 
audience with grand and noble aspiration. He yielded, in the 
furnace of his patriotic and humane warmth, all his old-time pre 
dilections, and stood, disinthralled, for the Union and the flag, 



1 Vide " Speeches and Lectures," p. 440. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 317 

the Constitution of the fathers, and its future interpretation in 
the interest of liberty on this continent. How the audience 
applauded ! How they cheered ! The men who were there to 
mob him three months before, now were his strongest indorsers. 
They crowded the platform to congratulate him when he closed, 
and joy and satisfaction beamed on every countenance. It had 
been a Pentecostal season ; and the divine outflow of humanity, 
justice, and the rights of man, had baptized every one of that 
immense throng ! It required no phalanx of armed men to es 
cort Mr. Phillips home that day ; for he was almost, figuratively, 
borne in the arms of a grateful citizenship to his modest 
abode !" 

From this famous speech we extract a few sen 
tences to indicate its trend : 

" All winter long, I have acted with that party which cried for 
peace. The Anti-Slavery enterprise to which I belong started 
with peace written on its banners. We imagined that the age 
of bullets was over ; that the age of ideas had come ; that thirty 
millions of people were able to take a great question, and decide 
it by the conflict of opinions ; that, without letting the ship of 
state founder, we could lift four millions of men into liberty and 
justice. We thought that if your statesmen would throw away 
personal ambition and party watchwords, and devote themselves 
to the great issue, this might be accomplished. To a certain 
extent it has been. The North has answered to the call. Year 
after year, event by event, had indicated the rising education of 
the people, the readiness for a higher moral life, the calm, self- 
poised confidence in our own convictions that patiently waits 
like the master for a pupil for a neighbor s conversion. The 
North has responded to the call of that peaceful, moral, intellect 
ual agitation which the Anti-Slavery idea has initiated. Our mis 
take, if any, has been that we counted too much on the intelli 
gence of the masses, on the honesty and wisdom of statesmen as 
a class. Perhaps we did not give weight enough to the fact we 
saw, that this nation is made up of different ages ; not homo 
geneous, but a mixed mass of different centuries. The North 
thinks, can appreciate argument, is the nineteenth century, 



1 Reminiscences of Charles W. Slack. 



318 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

hardly any struggle left in it but that between the working- 
class and the money-kings. The South dreamsit is the thir- 
teenth.and fourteenth century, baron and serf, noble and slave. 
Jack Cade and Wat Tyler loom over its horizon, and the serf, 
rising, calls for another Thierry to record his struggle. Thete 
the fagot still burns which the doctors of the Sorbonne called, 
ages ago, the best light to guide the erring. There men are 
tortured for opinions, the only punishment the Jesuits were will 
ing their pupils should look on. This is, perhaps, too flattering 
a picture of the South. Better call her, as Sumner does, the 
Barbarous States. Our struggle, therefore, is between barbar 
ism and civilization. Such can only be settled by arms. (Pro 
longed cheering.} The Government has waited until its best 
friends almost suspected its courage or its integrity ; but the 
cannon shot against Fort Sumter has opened the only door out 
of this hour. There were but two. One was compromise ; the 
other was battle. The integrity of the North closed the first ; 
the generous forbearance of nineteen States closed the other. 
The South opened this with cannon-shot, and Lincoln shows 
himself at the door. (Prolonged and enthusiastic cheering.} 
The war, then, is not aggressive, but in self-defence, and Wash 
ington has become the Thermopylse of liberty and justice. (Ap 
plause.} Rather than surrender that Capital, cover every 
square foot of it with a living body (loud cheers} ; crowd it with 
a million of men, and empty every bank vault at the North to 
pay the cost. (Renewed cheering.} Teach the world once for 
all, that North America belongs to the Stars and Stripes, and 
under them no man shall wear a chain. (Enthusiastic cheer 
ing.} In the whole of this conflict, I have looked only at liberty, 
only at the slave. Perry entered the battle of the Lakes with 
4 Don t give up the ship ! floating from the masthead of the 
Lawrence. When with his fighting flag he left her crippled, 
heading north, and, mounting the deck of the Niagara, turned 
her bows due west, he did all for one and the same purpose, 
to rake the decks of his foe. Steer north or west, acknowledge 
secession or cannonade it, I care not which ; but proclaim lib 
erty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. 
(Loud cheers.}* 



11 Speeches and Lectures," p. 398. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 319 

In pursuance of his purpose to support the Admin 
istration and educate public opinion, Mr. Phillips 
entered heart and soul into a personal canvass of the 
country and made himself ubiquitous during the re 
mainder of 1861. In December he visited New York 
and spoke to an audience that recalled the one in 
Music Hall on April 2ist. His aim was to strike 
into the inmost conscience of the country the essen 
tial nature of the strife, and the hopelessness of com 
promise. Said he : 

41 It is the aristocratic element which survived the Constitution, 
which our fathers thought could be safely left under it, and the \ 
South to-day is force.d into this war by the natural growth of the r 
antagonistic principle. You may pledge whatever submission 
and patience of Southern institutions you please, it is not enough. 
South Carolina, said to Massachusetts, in 1833, when Edward 
Everett was Governor, Abolish free speech, it is a nuisance. 
She is right, from her standpoint it is. {Laughter.} That is, 
it is not possible to preserve the quiet of South Carolina con 
sistently with free speech ; but you know the story Sir Walter 
Scott told of the Scotch laird, who said to his old butler, Jock, 
you and I can t live under this roof. And where does your 
honor think of going ? So free speech says to South Carolina 
to-day. . Now I say you may pledge, compromise, guarantee 
what you please. The South well knows that is not your pur 
pose, it is your character she dreads. It is the nature of North 
ern institutions, the perilous freedom of discussion, the flavor of 
our ideas, the sight of our growth, the very neighborhood of 
such States, that constitutes the danger. It is like two vases 
launched on the stormy sea. The iron said to the crockery, I 
won t come near you. Thank you, said the weaker vessel ; 
4 there is just as much danger in my coming near you. This 
the South feels ; hence her determination ; hence, indeed, the im 
perious necessity that she should rule and shape our Government, 
or of sailing out of it. 

" And the struggle is between these two ideas. Our fathers, 
as I said, thought they could safely be left, one to outgrow the 
other. They took gunpowder and a lighted match, forced them 



320 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

into a stalwart cannon, screwed down the muzzle, and thought 
they could secure peace. But it has resulted differently ; their 
cannon has exploded, and we stand among the fragments. 

" Now some Republicans and some Democrats not Butler 
and Bryant and Cochrane and Cameron, not Boutwell and Ban 
croft and Dickinson, and others but the old set the old set 
say to the Republicans, Lay the pieces carefully together in 
their places ; put the gunpowder and the match in again, say the 
Constitution backward instead of your prayers, and there will 
never be another rebellion ! I doubt it. It seems to me that 
like causes will produce like effects." 1 

In a letter which Mr. Garrison wrote to Oliver 
Johnson, the editor of the Anti-Slavery Standard, in 
New York City, there is an interesting reference to 
this speech, and an amusing account of Mr. Phillips" s 
habits of revision : 

" You will see in the Liberator, this week, the speech of Mr. 
Phillips, delivered in New York, as revised and corrected by 
himself. And such revision, correction, alteration, and addi 
tion you never saw, in the way of emendation ! More than two 
columns of the Tribune s report were in type before Phillips 
came into our office ; and the manipulation these required was 
a caution to all reporters and type-setters ! I proposed to Phil 
lips to send his altered slips to Barnum as a remarkable curi 
osity, and Winchell suggested having them photographed ! But 
Phillips desired to make his speech as complete and full as he 
could, and I am glad that you are to receive it without being put 
to any trouble about it. Doubtless, you will be requested to 
make some new alterations ; for he is constantly criticising what 
he has spoken, and pays no regard to literal accuracy. This 
speech will be eagerly read, as it touches ably upon many inter 
esting points." 2 

Mr. Phillips s mind was critical. His taste was 
exquisite. He never cared to see his speeches in 



1 " Speeches and Lectures," pp. 426, 428. 

2 Quoted in " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iv., p. 39. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 321 

print. But if they were "printed he wished them 
to appear in proper shape. Hence his painstaking 
revision. Nor did the amended copy ever quite 
satisfy him. Probably, like the after-dinner speaker 
who made a poor speech and then went home, lay 
awake all night and thought what a splendid speech 
he might have made, he was perplexed by the very 
wealth of his resources. He never made a poor 
speech ; but his temperament made him exacting 
and fastidious. 

" Simultaneously with the efforts above referred to, 
the Agitator now delivered far and wide his marvel 
lous lecture on " Toussaint L Ouverture," the negro 
creator of Hayti. The doubt in these days touched 
the capacity of the blacks, their courage, their sus 
ceptibility to improvement, their humanity. With 
the San Domingo insurrection for an illustration, 
Mr. Phillips showed " that the negro blood, instead 
of standing at the bottom of the list, is entitled, if 
judged either by its great men or its masses, by its 
courage, its purpose, or endurance, to a place as 
near the Anglo-Saxon as any other blood known in 
history." He had a genius for this kind of por 
traiture ; and he made Toussaint as familiar to the 
American Lyceum as John Brown or Washington. 
Thus he rendered to the nation an immense service, 
immediate and remote ; immediate, because public 
opinion was thus fashioned to tolerate and soon to 
demand the arming of the blacks for the defence of 
the Union ; remote, because prejudice was dispelled, 
a race was rehabilitated in its own respect and in the 
respect of others, and it was thus made easier for 



Vide " Speeches and Lectures," pp. 468-94, 



322 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

whites and blacks to get on together in the new re 
lations of freedom. 

Considering the purpose for which it was pre 
pared and the limitations incidental to the Lyceum, 
it is not too much to claim that the lecture on 
Toussaint stands at the head of this department of 
literature. Its delivery was an enchantment. With 
out this, however, the critic feels the subtle charm, 
and admires the wealth of historical reference, the 
keen analysis, the effective anecdote, the spicy sa 
tire, the nice portrayal of character, the epigramma 
tic point, the varied splendor of diction. But to 
those who can only read it, we may say, as ^Eschines 
did to his applauding scholars at Rhodes, when he 
had recited the oration of Demosthenes that resulted 
in his banishment : " You admire now : how would 
your admiration have been raised could you have 
heard him speak it ?" 



XXV. 

THE STRUGGLE OF TWO CIVILIZATIONS. 

WAR, like peace, requires adjustment. It cannot 
be waged successfully without accumulated material 
and practical skill. In the appeal to arms the South 
had every advantage of long preparation, the choice 
of time, military habits, and initiative. The North 
w