Wendell Phillips Cast His Lot With the Slave: An Address Delivered in Washington, D.C., on February 22, 1884
WENDELL PHILLIPS CAST HIS LOT WITH THE SLAVE:
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN WASHINGTON, D.C.,
ON 22 FEBRUARY 1884
George Lowell Austin, (1884; Chicago, 1969), 413-
25. Other texts in Speech File, reel 10, frame 634, reel 15, frames 619-55, reel 16, frame
517, FD Papers, DLC; Washington , 23 February 1884.
A group of Washington citizens gathered at the First Congregational Church
on the evening of 22 February 1884 to conduct a memorial service for
Wendell Phillips. According to the Washington , the
service was “attended by an overflowing audience, representing the best
white and colored society of Washington.” A large painting of Phillips,
draped in flags and black bunting, hung at the front of the church. Milton M.
Holland called the meeting to order and the Reverend Walter H. Brooks
opened the services with prayer. After the Orpheus Club gave a musical
selection, Blanche K. Bruce made the first address of the evening. The
Reverend William Waring then read resolutions commending Phillips, and
the Washington Harmonic Association sang “Rest, Spirit, Rest.” Following
these preliminaries, Bruce introduced the principal speaker of the occasion,
Douglass. A reporter for the Boston praised Douglass’s address
for its “finely-chosen and fine-accented words.” After Douglass’s oration,
there were more songs and then short addresses by Congressman John D.
Long of Massachusetts, Edward Greely Loring, Richard T. Greener, and the
Reverend Jeremiah E. Rankin. Washington , 16 February
1884; Washington , 23 February 1884; Washington , 23
February 1884; Washington , 23 February 1884.
We are here to commemorate the virtues, and commend the example, of
Wendell Phillips,—a man of rare endowments, and of rare devotion to the
cause of justice, liberty, and humanity.
Death has been very busy during the last few years, in thinning out the
ranks of such men. The list of those who have departed is longer and more
brilliant than that which remains. We cannot think of the anti-slavery
movement without remembering such names as John Quincy Adams,
William Slade,1In the late 1830s, Vermonter William Slade (1786-1859) joined John Quincy Adams and Joshua Reed Giddings to form a small circle of antislavery Whigs in the U.S. Congress. Born in Cornwall, Vermont, Slade had graduated from Middlebury College in 1807. Admitted to the bar in 1810, he abandoned the law first to edit the Middlebury (1814-16) and then to serve as Vermont secretary of state (1815-22). He held a clerk's post at the U.S. State Department (1823-29) in Washington, D.C., before returning to the national capital as a congressman (1831-43). Slade's last public office was as governor of Vermont (1843-45) and he devoted his remaining years to serving as corresponding secretary of the Board of National Popular Education. Walter Hill Crockett, , 5 vols. (New York. 1921-23), 5: 201-02; , 1608; , 5: 547. John P. Hale, Salmon P. Chase, Charles Sumner, William
H. Seward, Horace Greeley, Benjamin F. Wade, Thaddeus Stevens.
William Lloyd Garrison, Samuel J. May. William Goodell, Gerrit Smith,
and many others who might as worthily be named. These have all disap-
peared behind that curtain which veils the living present from the mysteries
of death and eternity; and now the most brilliant and eloquent of them all,
has laid aside his shining armor, and passed on to his eternal rest.
I was among those who travelled many miles to attend his funeral ser-
vices.2Douglass attended the funeral services for Wendell Phillips in the Hollis Street Unitarian Church in Boston on 6 February 1884. Boston , 7 February 1884. This simple act was a better expression of the love and reverence
felt for this man. and a higher tribute to his many virtues, than any words of
mine, however well chosen, can render. The ties that bound me to Wendell
Phillips were closer and stronger than ties between most men. They were
both general and special, public and personal. He was among the first of
those noble anti-slavery men in Massachusetts, who, more than five and
forty years ago, gave me a heart-felt welcome to a home of freedom and a
life of usefulness. I went to his funeral as to that of one of my own
household; as to that of a life-long friend, an affectionate brother, one to
whom I was indebted for offices the highest and best that a great man can
bestow upon his humble brother. It was his to give me generous sympathy,
wise counsel, and a noble example. His funeral was an occasion long to be
remembered. It was not so much a season of tears as a season of calm
resignation. The grief that he was gone was subdued by a sense of gratitude
that he had been spared so long. Lament we may and must when a friend
has departed, and when a great champion of liberty has fallen. But our grief
is not without consolation: for when the full measure of human life has been
evenly filled up with good works, as in this case; when all the great
purposes of individual human existence have been fairly accomplished;
when a blameless and beautiful career amid all the sweet consolations of
home, family, and friends, has been calmly ended; when sin, the poisonous
sting of death, has lost its power to inflame the wounds of the living, or to
disturb the repose of the dead; when a life that began in conflict, clouds,
and darkness, ends in peace, victory, and glory,—there is no permanent
lodgement for pain and sorrow.
The place of his funeral service was strikingly appropriate and suggestive.
It was the old Hollis-street Unitarian Church,3The first Hollis Street Church was erected in 1732 on land donated by Massachusetts colonial Governor Jonathan Belcher. The original wooden building burned in 1787 and a second wooden edifice was torn down in 1810 to make way for the stone church designed by Charles Bulfinch, which was the site for Wendell Phillips's funeral. Among the well-known pastors of this prestigious Unitarian congregation in the nineteenth century had been John Pierpont (1819-45) and Thomas Starr King (1848-60). The Hollis Street Church building was later converted into a theater. Samuel Adams Drake, (1872; Boston, 1890), 102-03, 414-16; , 10: 403-05, 14: 586-87. famous for the
marvellous ministry of John Pierpont, a man who added to his high qualities
as a teacher, writer, and preacher, those of poet, scholar, patriot, states-
man, and reformer. This edifice is one of the oldest in the city of Boston. To
those who knew its history, there were sermons in its very walls. Looking
up to its lofty pulpit, high above its high-backed, old-fashioned pews, my
mind was carried back to the time when John Pierpont spoke his brave,
scorching, and incisive words against those twin monsters, the liquor-
power and the slave-power of our country, and thereby brought down upon
himself the bitter and persistent hostility of the common enemies of human
welfare and happiness. It was here, too, that Starr King,4Born in New York City, Thomas Starr King (1824-63) worked as a bookkeeper and a teacher before joining his father in the Universalist ministry in 1845. Three years later, he accepted the call of Boston's prominent Hollis Street Unitarian congregation. In addition to his immediate success in the pulpit, King soon became one of the nation‘s most highly paid lecturers. He also wrote a widely praised book on the scenic beauty of New Hampshire's White Mountains. This love of nature, perhaps, prompted King to accept the call of a Unitarian church in San Francisco in 1860. During the Civil War, he appealed for Pacific coast loyalty to the Union and was a vigorous fundraiser for the activities of the United States Sanitary Commission. William Day Simonds, (San Francisco, 1917); , 3: 547; , 10: 403-05. king of pulpit
orators in his time, poured forth his soul for truth, justice, and liberty. It
was here, too, worshipped Francis Jackson, the brave man who welcomed
to his house an anti-slavery prayer-meeting, in the face of a howling mob
that threatened to tear it down if he gave such welcome.5After the anti-abolitionist riot in Boston on 21 October 1835, Francis Jackson, a leading merchant as well as abolitionist, offered the use of his home on Hollis Street to the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and that group held a meeting there without incident on 19 November 1835. ., 19 November 1835. The very atmo-
sphere of the place seemed pervaded with the principles that inspired the
energies, moulded the life, and fashioned the eloquence, of Wendell Phil-
lips.
As was the place, so was the conduct of the funeral. It was made
impressive by its very simplicity. There were no sombre weeds of mourn-
ing festooning pillars, pulpit, or chancel, no floral decorations, no solemn
pomp, no high-sounding ceremony, no ostentatious symbols of grief to be
seen anywhere; but all was like the great man whose funeral it was, un-
strained, modest, natural, simple, and consistent. A few well-chosen scrip-
tural quotations, a prayer, more of thanks than of supplication, a hymn of
joy rather than a dirge of sorrow, and all was over; and the corpse of
Wendell Phillips, on the arms of those who had loved and honored him in
life, was silently and reverently borne away to old Faneuil Hall, to lie in
state,6After the morning funeral services at the Hollis Street Unitarian Church, the casket with Wendell Phillips's body was carried to Faneuil Hall where it lay open for public mourning during the afternoon of 6 February 1884. Douglass and his wife were among the thousands reported to have passed by the corpse for a final viewing. At 4:30 P.M., the casket was closed and taken to the Old Granary Cemetery for burial. Boston , 7 February 1884; Irving H. Bartlett, (Boston, 1961), 399. where for nearly fifty years the same noble form often stood up to
reprove and denounce the errors, prejudices, and wrong—doings of his
fellow-citizens, and where I have often seen him hooted down by the
infuriated populace, because of his fidelity to the claims of justice and
liberty.
The contrast between then and now is conspicuous, striking, and im-
pressive,—Wendell Phillips, reviled while alive, reverenced and adored
when dead; unpopular when he spoke, applauded now that he was silent.
The hold this man had upon the people of Boston and Massachusetts
was well illustrated by the thousands wading through mud and rain to
Faneuil Hall, to take one last look at the tranquil features of him they had so
often seen and heard in life. Not more significant was this grand procession
as to numbers, than was its composition and representative character. Rich
men, poor men, learned men, simple men, Englishmen, and Irishmen,
reverently gathered around the corpse of this, the friend of all men.
Until I made one of this vast throng, and looked into the casket that
held all that was mortal of Wendell Phillips, I could hardly realize that my
friend and co-laborer of five and forty years was indeed dead, and the great
loss the cause of humanity had sustained in his death.
Of all the multitudes now doing honor to the memory of Wendell
Phillips, none have a better right to engage in such manifestations than the
colored people of the United States. It is true that Mr. Phillips was a friend
to temperance, to the cause of the working-classes, and to Ireland. Wherev-
er the tyrant reared his head, he was ready, like O’Connell,7Daniel O’Connell. to deal his
bolts upon it. But he was primarily and pre-eminently the colored man’s
friend, not because the colored man was colored, not because he was of a
different variety of the human family from himself, but because he was a
man, and fully entitled to enjoy all the rights and immunities of manhood.
The cause of the slave was his first love; and from it he never wavered, but
was true and steadfast through life.
It was for him the theme of themes, the one that touched his heart,
aroused his soul, and fired his eloquence. Great and powerful as he was as a
speaker on all other subjects that engaged his wondrous faculties, he was
incomparably greater when he spoke for the rights of the American slave.
Other subjects stirred his intellect; but this touched the deepest chords of
his heart, and engaged the whole man more completely than all else. Only a
part of his weapons were employed elsewhere: here he brought to his help
his whole mental and moral artillery. Not only the cruelty and wickedness
of slavery, but its superlative meanness, stirred his soul, and kindled his
moral indignation. He gave no quarter to its defenders at any point, but
poured the living coals of truth, and his boundless wealth of scorn and
execration, upon the system, and the men who upheld it. He was the most
uncompromising man I ever saw. Nothing that stood in the way of the
slave’s freedom, secured respect or exemption. He spared neither church
nor state, priest nor politician, high nor low, friend nor foe. Especially was
he severe upon a half-hearted and halting support of anti-slavery prin-
ciples. The lash and sting of his fierce invective often fell mercilessly upon
men who thought they were serving the cause of emancipation not less well
and faithfully than himself. Hale, Chase, Giddings,8Joshua Reed Giddings. Seward, Lincoln,
Mann,9Abraham Lincoln and Horace Mann. and even Charles Sumner, were sharply criticised by him. It need
not be pretended that Mr. Phillips was always just in his criticisms and
invectives. He made no pretensions to infallibility, but his sincerity and
devotion to principle were utterly beyond question.
He was universally popular as a lyceum lecturer, and often received
calls to lecture by associations bitterly hostile to his anti-slavery opinions.
He had more calls to fill such appointments than he could possibly comply
with. To such invitations he usually replied, “One hundred dollars and
expenses if upon a literary subject; free of charge if upon slavery.”10Douglass somewhat garbles Phillips's practice of offering to speak on slavery for no fee if a lyceum board would also engage him to deliver a lecture on a noncontroversial subject. James Brewer Stewart, (Baton Rouge, 1986), 184. To this
cause he gave his time, his money, and his eloquence, without reserve, and
without fee or reward.
In measuring this man’s worth, we must not view him in the sunlight of
the present. We must go back to the time when he first gave his support to
the anti-slavery cause, and reflect what was the condition of the public
mind on that subject at that time.
Daniel Webster, you know, once said, “Any man can do an agreeable
duty, but not every man can do a disagreeable duty.” After slavery struck at
the life of the nation, after it had crippled and killed thousands of our sons
and brothers on the battle-field, after it had rent asunder the nation at the
centre, and imperilled the existence of the republic, it was easy to be an
anti-slavery man: but when slavery ruled both the State and the Church,
when it commanded the support of both press and pulpit, and wielded the
purse and the sword of the nation; when he who dared to speak in favor of
the abolition of slavery, lost caste in society, made himself of no reputation,
and exposed his person and property to violence and peril,—to espouse
this cause at such a time was not an agreeable duty, but one that required the
noblest qualities of head and heart.
A few facts only need to be stated, to show how dark and terrible was
the moral atmosphere of the republic when young Phillips gave his heart to
the anti-slavery movement. In 1831 Nathaniel Turner headed an insurrec-
tion in Southampton County, Va. The excitement caused by this act was
tremendous, and kindled against the negro the fiercest hate. In the same
year Mr. Garrison established “The Liberator,” in Boston. In 1835 he was
mobbed, and dragged through the streets of that city with a rope around his
neck. In 1837 Lovejoy11Elijah Parish Lovejoy. was murdered at Alton, Ill. , for advocating eman-
cipation in his paper. In 1838 Pennsylvania Hall was burned down in
Philadelphia by a pro-slavery mob. In 1842 a slave—holding mob burned
down several colored churches and halls in Philadelphia, and held sway in
that city for several days without check or hindrance. In the South, at this
time, abolitionist was but another name for a negro thief and a cutthroat. In
the North, it stood for a disorganizer and a fanatic. Both the great political
parties, Whig and Democratic, were pledged to the suppression of anti-
slavery literature; and Congress adopted what was known as the gag-rule,
suppressing all papers in any way relating to slavery. Gov. Everett12Edward Everett. of
Massachusetts recommended the passing of a law making the discussion of
slavery an offence punishable at common law. The great Methodist-
Episcopal Church, at its General Conference, held in Cincinnati in 1836,
issued the following resolution: “Resolved, By the delegates of the annual
conferences in general conference assembled, that they are decidedly op-
posed to modern abolitionism, and wholly disclaim any right, wish, or
intention to interfere in the civil and political relation between master and
slave, as it exists in the slave-holding States of the Union.”13Douglass quotes a resolution adopted by the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Cincinnati on 13 May 1836. “Journal of the General Conference, 1836,” , 1: 447.
The position of the four leading religious denominations were in har-
mony with the position of this resolution. The sentiment of the time was,
Down with abolitionism! Suppress the agitation! The common arguments
against anti-slavery men were, “You had better mind your own business.”
“You are meddling with what does not concern you.” “You are only
making the condition of the slave worse.” “You have put back their cause
fifty years.” “You should leave slavery where the wisdom of the fathers left
it.” “You will never put down slavery by this agitation.” “What have we to
do with slavery?” “What would you do with the negroes if you had them
all?” “The North is no better than the South.” “You would not associate
with negroes.” “You want the negroes to cut their masters’ throats.” “If
you turn them loose, they will all come North.” “If you want them free,
why don’t you pay for them?” “The negro will not work without a master.”
“The slaves are contented and happy.” “The Bible sanctions slavery.”
“England forced slavery upon the colonies.” “Slavery is guaranteed by the
Constitution.” “The early Christians said nothing against slavery.” “Are
you wiser than the Fathers?” “The slaves are the happiest peasantry in the
world.” “You dare not go South, and preach your abolition.” “They could
not take care of themselves.” “They are not prepared for freedom.” “You
are just making trouble.” “If God wants slavery abolished, he will do it in
his own good time.”
These sentiments reflect the public opinion of the time when Wendell
Phillips bravely stepped into the anti-slavery ranks, and took his place with
the lowly and despised, nearly fifty years ago.
It is said that the redeemer always comes from above. Whatever may
be the truth in respect to this, as a general rule, there is no question that
Wendell Phillips, in a very important sense, came from above. He be-
longed to the upper circle of American society. He had ancestry, birth,
wealth, talents, influential friends, and the best education which wealth
and opportunity could give him. Office and honors were before him. Power
and fame were within his reach. He laid them all aside, and cast his lot with
the slave and the men everywhere spoken against.
“Then to side with Truth is noble,
When we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit,
And ’tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses,
While the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit,
Till his Lord is crucified,
And the multitude make virtue
Of the faith they had denied.
For Humanity sweeps onward:
Where to-day the martyr stands,
On the morrow crouches Judas,
With the silver in his hands;
Far in front the cross stands ready
And the crackling fagots burn,
While the hooting mob of yesterday,
In silent awe return
To glean up the scattered ashes
Into History’s golden urn.”14Douglass quotes the eleventh and fourteenth stanzas of James Russell Lowell's “The Present Crisis." , 7: 182, 183.
Among all the noble men in Massachusetts who early came to the support
of William Lloyd Garrison, in his war upon slavery, none came from a
higher social plane, or parted with brighter prospects, or brought to the
cause more brilliant abilities, than did Wendell Phillips. He might have
been congressman, governor, senator, of the United States, and, possibly,
have risen higher still, had he allied himself to either of the great political
parties. In the Senate, had he reached that body, he would have ranked with
Sumner and Conkling15Roscoe Conkling. as an orator, and with Fessenden,16William Pitt Fessenden. Grimes,17James Wilson Grimes (1816-72) was born in Deering, New Hampshire, and educated at Dartmouth College. In 1836 he moved to Burlington, Iowa, and commenced a legal and political career. Originally a Whig, Grimes served in the territorial legislature and, after Iowa achieved statehood, was elected govemor (1854-58) by the political coalition that developed into the Republican party. He served in the U.S. Senate from 1859 until a paralyzing stroke forced his resignation in 1869. William Salter, (New York, 1876); , 977; , 2: 767.
Douglas, and O. P. Morton18Stephen A. Douglas and Oliver P. Morton. as a debater.
Eloquent as he was as a lecturer, he was far more effective as a debater.
Debate was for him the flint and steel which brought out all his fire.
The memory of Mr. Phillips was something wonderful. He would
listen to an elaborate speech for hours, and, without a single note of what
had been said, in writing, reply to every part of it as fully and completely as
if the speech were written out before him. Those who heard him only on the
platform, and when not confronted by an opponent, have a very limited
comprehension of his wonderful resources as a speaker.
In his style as a debater, he resembled Sir Robert Peel, in grace and
courtliness of manner, and in the fluency and copiousness of his diction. He
never hesitated for a word, or failed to employ the word best fitted to
express his thought on the point under discussion.
It may be said, that, on the subject of slavery, it was easy to do all this;
since one might have a full command of all the facts and arguments, and be
ready at any moment to employ them against an opponent. But this was not
so. The anti-slavery platform in Massachusetts was not confined to the bare
subject of chattel slavery. The whole circle of human interests came up for
discussion.
Legal, political, ethical, social, and religious questions claimed atten-
tion and debate. As the whole man was struck down by slavery. so the
whole man was considered by the friends of liberty in advocating his claims
to liberty. In all these discussions Mr. Phillips bore his full share.
His oratory, like the oratory of all men, had its period of youth, its
middle age, and its old age. When young, his style was ornate, and
abounded in word-pictures. More than forty years ago, when he had just
returned from a tour in Europe, where he witnessed the disgraceful position
this republic had been made to occupy by Gen. Cass, our minister to
France, in refusing to sign the quintuple treaty for the abolition of the slave-
trade,19 In December 1841, representatives of Great Britain, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria completed negotiations for the so-called Quintuple Treaty. The pact authorized these nations' navies to halt and search each others' merchant ships if there was suspicion that they were engaged in the slave trade. As U.S. ambassador to France (1836-42), Lewis Cass presented a strong protest against the treaty to the French foreign office and influenced that country's decision to refuse to ratify it. W[illiam] E[dward] Burghardt DuBois, (1898; New York, 1965), 141-49; , 1: 552; , 5: 4; , 3: 563. he made a speech in the Tabernacle in New York, which illustrated
this youthful quality of his oratory. “As I stood,” said he, “on the shores of
Genoa, and saw our beautiful American ship, the “Ohio,” floating on the
placid Mediterranean, with her masts tapering proportionally aloft, her
pennon flying, and an Eastern sun reflecting her graceful form upon the
sparkling waters, attracting the gaze of the multitude on the shore, I
thought the scene one to pride any American to think himself an American;
but when I thought, that, in all probability, the first time that gallant ship
should gird on her gorgeous apparel, and wake from beneath her sides her
dormant thunder, it would be in defence of the African slave-trade, I could
but blush, and hang my head, to think myself an American.”20Wendell Phillips and his wife toured Europe from June 1839 to July 1841. He denounced Lewis Cass’s role in blocking united European action to suppress the slave trade in a speech at the ninth annual meeting of the America Anti-Slavery Society, held in New York City's Broadway Tabernacle, on 10 May 1842. Douglass was among the participants at that meeting. , 20 May 1842; Douglass, , 593-94; Bartlett, , 59, 75.
On another occasion, after tracing the progress of liberty, under the
symbol of the eagle, from Greece to Rome, and from Rome to Western
Europe, and thence to America, he made an impressive pause in his rapid
sketch; and, while his audience were yet under the spell of his matchless
eloquence, he exclaimed, “Did God send that eagle here to die? Did he
form the Mississippi valley for its grave? Did he pile up the Rocky Moun-
tains for its monument? Did he pour out Niagara’s thunders for its requi-
em?” This florid style of the young orator was early laid aside for a more
direct and dignified one, which grew more and more chaste with his
advancing years.
Perfect as Mr. Phillips was as a speaker, he lacked one element of a
perfect orator. He could make men think, make them angry, make them
wince under his scathing denunciations; he could make them smile; but he
could not bring young tears from mature eyes. His mission was, to point
out the defects in the thoughts, speech, and action of others; to expose the
short-comings of men,—and he did this unsparingly and thoroughly. He
would not occupy official position himself, and sharply criticised all who
did. When asked to come and fill their positions better, his answer implied,
that, were he in office, he would be compelled to do as others did, or do
nothing. At any time within the last twenty years, he might have been sent
to Congress had he wished it; but he did not wish it, because, in that case,
he would have to forsake his vocation as a critic, and become an actor, and,
of course, open to criticism. I cannot but think this was a mistake; for Mr.
Phillips was not only a speaker, but a man of affairs, and was marvellously
well fitted to manage affairs.
The true nobility of this man was shown in his tender regard for the
feelings of the lowly and proscribed. In this he touched the point of supererogation.
For instance, after delivering a lecture to the New-Bedford
Lyceum before a highly cultivated audience, and 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 would step to
my side in the presence of his aristocratic friends, and walk with me
straight into this miserable dog-car, saying, “Douglass, if you cannot ride
with me, I can ride with you.”21Douglass recalls the same incident in his third autobiography, Life and Times. but supplies no date. Phillips had begun riding with blacks in segregated Jim Crow railroad cars to protest company policies at least as early as 1841. Douglass, , 249; Stewart, , 97-99. 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 his nights on the forward deck,
with horses, sheep, and swine. On such trips, when I was a passenger,
Wendell Phillips 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. Acts like these gave me a peep into this man’s
soul, and taught me to love and respect him, even when afterwards he made
me, at times, the object of his sharpest criticism.
Wendell Phillips had reached that point where he respected neither race
nor color, but honored manhood wherever he found it. He had no word to
say in favor of race-pride or race-prejudice, but everywhere evinced his
high respect for a common manhood; and in this he set an example for men
of every shade and color.
When I first essayed to speak in public, I often left the platform feeling
depressed with the thought that my effort had been a failure; but I never felt
thus in the presence of Mr. Phillips, that he did not give me some cheering
word. When I was going to England, and expected to do some speaking
there, he said to me, “Douglass, you will find many speakers in England
inferior to ours, but you will find some who are superior to any of our
speakers. But have no fear: speak there as you do here. Be yourself, and
you will succeed.”22Douglass recalled this incident in roughly similar terms in , 261.
Perhaps there was no one act in the life of Wendell Phillips that showed
what manner of man he was, and better illustrated his dauntless courage,
than his prompt vindication of the character and motives of John Brown,
immediately after his raid upon Harper’s Ferry. For the moment, the blood
of the nation stood still, and the boldest held his breath. Murderer, assassin,
cutthroat, incendiary, traitor, were the best names that the nation could
apply to Capt. John Brown. A fierce scream for his blood came up from all
the land. Anti-slavery men made haste to free themselves from all com-
plicity with him by condemning both the man and his methods. It was at
this time, in the midst of a reign of terror such as the country had never
before seen, that Wendell Phillips dared to step forward, and demand a
hearing for John Brown. He stood alone. No voice but his was raised. Men
were stunned by his temerity. By many he was deemed as mad as the men at
Harper’s Ferry. But his isolation was of brief duration. His words from
Beecher’s Brooklyn pulpit were contagious.23On the evening of 1 November 1859, Wendell Phillips delivered a lecture entitled “The Lessons of the Hour" to a large audience at the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher's Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York. In the address, Phillips praised John Brown and the raid upon Harpers Ferry without reservation. , 11 November 1859; Bartlett, , 212. They sounded over the land
like a voice from heaven. Wise men heard them as Saul heard on his way to
Damascus,24Douglass refers to the conversion of Paul, as found in Acts 9: 1-31, 13: 9. and soon John Brown vaulted in the hearts of the loyal North
to the dignity of hero and martyr. He spoke the word for which millions
were listening, and which became at last the watchword of the loyal nation,
and to which the armies of the nation were to time their high footsteps to
Union, law, and liberty.
The cause of the slave had many advocates, many of them very able
and very eloquent; but it had only one Wendell Phillips.
He was the Wilberforce25William Wilberforce. of America; and as Lamartine26Alphonse Marie de Lamartine. once said of
that great English philanthropist, so we may say of Wendell Phillips, that
he went up to heaven with a million broken fetters in his arms, as evidence
of a life well spent.