We are glad, though at a late hour, to pay, with many others, our tribute
to the ability and worth of Wendell Phillips, and to review his life
and work. Glad to do this, for his life was clean and clear, the kind
men love to honor; his work was that of the philanthropist and patriot.
He had entered his seventy-third year, having been born November 29,
1811, in a house which is still standing on the lower corner of Beacon
and Walnut streets, Boston. He came from one of Boston’s aristocratic
families; for several generations the Phillipses were well known, rich
and influential. His father, John Phillips, was chosen first mayor
of Boston in 1822, in a triangular contest, with Harrison Gray Otis
and Josiah Quincy as rival candidates. Young Phillips had the best of
educational advantages. He prepared for college at the famous Boston
Latin School; entered Harvard in his sixteenth, and graduated in his
twentieth year. One of his classmates was the historian Motley, a man,
like Phillips, of handsome person, of courtly manners, and high social
position. From college Phillips passed to the Cambridge Law School, from
which he graduated in 1833, and the following year he was admitted to the
bar. But he was not long to follow the law.
The public career of this man whose name is known in every land, dates
from a certain illustrious meeting held in Faneuil Hall, Boston, in 1837.
It was an era of great excitement. In Congress, John Quincy Adams, the
undaunted, was presenting petitions for the abolition of slavery, in the
midst of the howls and execrations of the friends of the institution.
Elijah I. Lovejoy had been murdered by a pro-slavery mob at Alton,
Illinois, while defending his printing press. Two years before, Boston
had witnessed the mobbing of Garrison. Phillips himself was a witness of
the spectacle, and the following year he joined the American Anti-Slavery
Society. A meeting was called in Faneuil Hall by Dr. Channing and other
friends of freedom to express indignation over Lovejoy’s murder. That
meeting will long live in history. Jonathan Phillips, a second cousin
of Wendell, presided. Dr. Channing and others spoke. At length, the
Attorney-General of the State, James T. Austin, took the platform and
delivered a speech in direct opposition to the sentiments which had been
expressed. It was not without effect. The people cheered as the speaker
declared that Lovejoy died as the fool dieth, and placed his murderers
by the side of the men who destroyed the tea in Boston Harbor. The
meeting, designed to be one of indignation for the murder of Lovejoy,
bid fair to turn into a meeting of approbation. But Wendell Phillips was
the next speaker, and he had not spoken long before the tide was again
reversed. This, his first public plea for free speech, human freedom and
equal rights, was wonderfully effective. It carried the audience and
established at once the speaker’s fame as the foremost orator of the
anti-slavery cause.
From this time on, until in those years of blood the shackles were struck
from the slaves of America, Phillips was a man of one work. He lived for
the cause of abolition. His motto might have been: “One thing I do.” By
the side of Garrison he stood, in full sympathy with his ideas. His name
has long been the synonym of extreme radicalism. He held, with Garrison,
that the constitution was “a league with hell,” and would not vote, or
take an oath to support the iniquitous document. In the years before the
war of the rebellion, he freely advocated a dissolution of the Union; but
when the war came, he was found a stanch defender of the Union cause. In
that band of once execrated, but now honored abolitionists, who “prepared
the way of the Lord,” there may have been others who did as effective
work as Wendell Phillips; but he was the incomparable orator, gifted with
eloquent speech to a degree unapproachable. Stories of his power over
an audience will long be told. Delightedly the people have listened to
his silver tongue and chaste diction when he spoke upon purely literary
themes; the lyceum in our land had no more popular lecturer. But he
will live in our history as the matchless abolitionist orator. Since
the death of slavery he has been a prominent worker in different reform
movements, and the advocate—as it seems to us—of certain vagaries, but
his fame is inseparably connected with the colored race, of whose rights
he was the devoted, unselfish, and fearless champion. His private life
was singularly simple, sweet and beautiful. His wife, an invalid of
many years, his devotion to whom was beautiful indeed, survives him;
and an adopted daughter, Mrs. Smalley, wife of the well known newspaper
correspondent, is also left to mourn his loss.