Boston 25 Cornhill, Aug. 13 1845

My thoughtful and Dear FriendPhillips, Wendell

Boston-born and Harvard-educated Wendell Phillips (1811-84) ranked second only to Garrison in influence in the American Anti-Slavery Society in the 1840s and 1850s. Bored with the legal profession and influenced by his antislavery fiancee, Ann Terry Greene, Phillips dedicated himself to abolitionism beginning in 1837. A highly gifted orator, Phillips was in demand as a lecturer even in nonabolitionist circles. Besides abolition, Phillips championed woman suffrage, prohibition, penal reform, Indian rights, and legislative protection for workers. When Garrison retired from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1865, Phillips assumed the post and led abolitionists until passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. James Brewer Stewart, Wendell Phillips: Liberty's Hero (Baton Rouge, La., 1986); Irving H. Bartlett, Wendell Phillips: Brahmin Radical (Boston, 1961); DAB, 14:546-47. , I snatch my pen in haste to acknowledge the receipt of your kind letter and the accompanying documents, for all of which I beseech you to accept my heartfelt thancks. You have been more kind to me than a Brother, and if a determination on my part to render myself deserving such kindness, be any compensation or satisfaction, you have that assurance most fully.

I wish I had time to write a long letter, But I have just returned from a lecturing tour, which has left me but three days in which to get ready for my long Journey. this short imperfect scroll must suffice.

Affectionately F. Douglass.