By EDWARD EVERETT HALE.
For many generations the gift of oratory has been in the blood of the
Phillips family. The founder of the family in America, the Rev. George
Phillips, first minister of Watertown, Mass., is noted in New England
annals for his eloquence. “The irrefragable doctor” he was called by his
hearers, we learn from the pedantic Mather, so able was he in dispute,
and such readiness had he on all occasions to stand to his guns and to
maintain any statement he had once made. But there must have been another
strain of blood in Wendell Phillips, added to that in the veins of his
ancestor George, for Mather goes on to say that the earlier Puritan
was “very averse unto disputation until delivered thereto by extreme
necessity.”
The son of George Phillips, of Watertown, was the Rev. Samuel Phillips,
first minister of Rowley, so distinguished a preacher that it was said of
his father: “He would have been beyond compare, if he had not been the
father of Samuel.” This is Mather’s epitaph on the Rev. George Phillips.
The grandson of the first Phillips was another George, a minister like
his father and grandfather, who lived at Brookhaven, Long Island. “A good
man,” was the second Rev. George, but “thought to be too much addicted to
facetiousness and wit;” more dangerous qualities in those Puritan times
than nowadays, and suggesting, again, the Phillips of our day.
The great-grandson of the first George Phillips, nephew to the second,
was Samuel Phillips, for sixty years minister of Andover, and the father
of John and Samuel Phillips, the founders of the Andover and Exeter
academies. Strictly orthodox was the Rev. Samuel Phillips, as one may see
from his sermons; and the religious tone that he gave to the village of
Andover has lasted to this day. His many printed sermons are proof of the
popularity of his public speech, and the election sermon, at least, shows
that he was not afraid to deal with the living problems of the day.
His sons founded the two Phillips academies, John that at Exeter, and
the two together the academy at Andover. Samuel was as well a liberal
benefactor to the theological seminary at Andover. It would be fair to
say, that with one single exception, where there was perhaps insanity,
the family has been distinguished for public spirit, as well as for
eloquence. Two of the grandsons of the Rev. Samuel, Samuel and William,
were chosen lieutenant-governors of the commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Their second cousin, John Phillips, was the first mayor of Boston. Their
grandfathers had been brothers, the one Samuel, the Andover minister, and
the other John, a Boston merchant. The mother of this second John was
Margaret Wendell. She was Wendell Phillips’s grandmother, and from her
he had his Christian name. His mother was of another Puritan family. Her
maiden name was Walley.
John Phillips, father of Wendell, graduated at Harvard College in 1788,
and became a lawyer. He was afterward one of the trustees of the college,
and in 1809 was appointed a judge of common pleas. In 1822 Boston was
made a city, and John Phillips was chosen the first mayor. He died in
the next year of a trouble of the heart. His sudden death took place
when Wendell and his brother George were both scholars in the Boston
Latin School—the oldest school in America. At that time this school had
recently been revived, and set in new order, with great local reputation,
under Mr. Benjamin Apthorp Gould. It is said that the mayor, John
Phillips, once came into the school to examine it, and, almost of course,
had offered to him the seat of most dignity on the platform. This his
little boys thought a mistake in etiquette, considering that no one could
be of rank as high as the master. They did not hesitate then, more than
in later days, to express their disapprobation, and when their father
met them at table, told him they had been mortified to see him in that
chair. “Ah,” he said, “you were not more ashamed of me than I was of you.”
But this anecdote must only be taken to show that Wendell Phillips
at eleven years was not afraid of his father, and was not averse to
criticising what he thought mistaken. He took even distinguished rank
at school, and another school anecdote shows how early boys can judge
correctly of each other’s ability, for it is remembered that when he
first spoke before the assembled school, on Saturday, the first class—who
sat by themselves, and thought well of their own opinion—were not
displeased. Charles Chauncey Emerson, who was a crack scholar, one of
the very highest in repute, turned to George Stillman Hillard and said,
“That boy will make an orator.” The name of Charles Emerson will not be
familiar to all your readers, for he died young. But here he is still
remembered by the men of his time as the young man of most promise, who,
in those days, left Harvard College. They will not admit that his brother
Waldo Emerson has won any renown in the world, or rendered any service
which would not have come in the life of Charles, had it been spared to
this earth.
From this school, with a distinguished reputation among his fellows,
Wendell Phillips entered Harvard College in 1827. The college was
not then what it is now. Neither law nor divinity school was large,
and these were the only graduate schools at Cambridge. The college
proper, or the “seminary,” as President Quincy used to call it,
numbered about two hundred students, of whom the greater part were
from Massachusetts. A few southern lads, from distant plantation life,
struggled up into what, in those days of no railroads and of no coast
lines of steamers, was a foreign country. They were generally favorites;
there was no such discussion of slavery as to make their position in
the least uncomfortable, and, indeed, the general drift of sentiment
among the people around them was not in sympathy with Abolitionists
or abolitionism. Both these words, if spoken at all in those days in
New England, were generally spoken with scorn. After a genial and
affectionate administration, Dr. John Thornton Kirkland resigned the
presidency of the college in the year 1828. Wendell Phillips was then a
freshman. To succeed Dr. Kirkland, Josiah Quincy was appointed. He had
won his reputation by steady work in Congress, first as a Federalist, and
afterward as a watchful maintainer of northern rights. More lately he
had approved himself an admirable administrative officer as Mayor of the
city of Boston—the second chosen under its city charter. John Phillips,
the father of Wendell Phillips, had been his immediate successor in that
duty. The older Ware was professor of Divinity, Levi Hedge of Logic and
Metaphysics, Dr. J. S. Popkin of Greek, Dr. Sidney Willard of Hebrew,
John Farrar of Mathematics, Edward T. Channing of Rhetoric and Oratory,
and George Ticknor of the Modern Languages. A few of these names will be
remembered by general readers, though “’tis sixty years since” and more,
and I record them because I wish all biographers would tell more than
they are apt to do of the circumstances under which the mental powers of
their heroes were trained.
Several of Phillips’s classmates survive, and one of them, Mr. Francis
Gold Appleton, a gentleman whose wide American sympathies and sterling
public spirit have endeared him to the whole community in which he lives,
has kindly given to me some personal reminiscences of the young fellow’s
life there. Thirteen of his school companions entered college with him.
Other Boston boys came from the Round Hill school, and Exeter, so that
in a class of sixty there were at least twenty Boston boys. In a sense,
therefore, Phillips was not lonely there. But his classmates saw, or
fancied they saw, that at one time he was moody, and suffering from what
they called religious depression. They knew, even then—for boys know
almost everything of the abilities of their companions—that Phillips
had remarkable power in elocution. They chose him into the Porcellian
Club—which takes its name from the traditional roasting of a little pig
(Porcellus)—and of this club he became president. In other days the
Porcellians were thought to be specially Southern in their proclivities,
and this club used to rally almost all the Southern students. It is
therefore rather a queer incident in its history that Wendell Phillips
stands as a popular president. His college reputation was that of an
amiable and bright young man, with an especial gift for oratory. He took
his first degree in 1831—studied at the Law School, then under Professor
Greenleaf, and Judge Story—and took the degree of Bachelor of Laws in
1833. He then went into a lawyer’s office in Boston and entered at the
bar in 1834. He opened his modest office and waited for clients. But in
those days, perhaps in these days, even such a young man waits long. For
myself I think that the old dons of money or of business would rather
give such scraps of formal business as they have to some young stranger
from the country, who has no relatives in Boston, and whom nobody knows
there, than to confide private affairs to somebody they have known from
childhood, whose father, or uncle, or brother-in-law they meet at the
Saturday Club or the Wednesday Club. But Phillips did not flinch from
doing what anybody wanted him to do. It has been remembered that in the
illness of his brother he did the almost mechanical work of the clerk
of the Municipal Court. This means that he was brought into personal
relation with every criminal who was brought up there for trial and
sentence.
But the skies were thickening, and there was not any danger that a young
man of spirit would long lack a chance if he chose to take it. It was
in October, 1835, that “a mob of gentlemen of property and standing”
broke up a meeting of the Women’s Anti-Slavery Society of Boston.
Phillips was an eye witness of the indignities with which Mr. Garrison
was then treated. He loyally threw in his fortunes with those of the
Abolitionists; and, as it proved, his chance came at a public meeting
called at Faneuil Hall.
At this meeting the small and unpopular set of Abolitionists was in a
measure reinforced by persons who had not been identified with them;
for it was a meeting in the interests of free speech. Lovejoy had been
killed by a mob in Illinois, and the people of Boston were called to
their historic Town Hall to remonstrate. The moderator selected was
Jonathan Phillips, a relative of Wendell’s, and a man deservedly of
leading position in Boston. He was rich, enterprising and wise. He was
a leader in philanthropic organization. He was a great friend of Dr.
William Ellery Channing, who said of him once, “I have had much more
from Mr. Phillips than he ever had from me;” this from a friend who
was saying that Phillips had derived great profit from Dr. Channing’s
preaching. Benjamin F. Hallett, a distinguished anti-Masonic leader,
moved the resolutions. Hillard, a young lawyer, sustained them, and the
event of the day—on the program—was a speech from Dr. Channing, whose
reputation as a man of letters and a leader in religious opinion was
at its height, and who was senior pastor of the most fashionable and
influential church in Boston. But the meeting was held in Faneuil Hall,
which, by a clause in the city charter, must be given for the use of any
fifty citizens who asked for it for a public purpose. Of course, at such
a meeting any citizen might be present. On this occasion the enemies
of the Abolitionists were on hand in force. When the fit moment came
for them to reply, James T. Austin, one of the political leaders of the
State, of Democratic antecedents, but now Attorney General of the State,
under the rule of the newly named Whig party, took the floor against the
resolutions proposed. It was clear enough that the hall was well filled
with marketmen and truckmen, and other laboring men, who, in those days,
all supposed that a “nigger” was the most despicable creature in the
world, excepting that an “Abolitionist” was worse. Austin never spared
invective, and he used it on this occasion to denounce Lovejoy and those
who abetted him.
I doubt if Phillips knew he was going to speak when he went to the
meeting. Indeed, it is quite sure, that Austin secured for him the
attention of the unfriendly assembly. But he had not spoken long before
he was sure of their audience.
“I thought this floor would yawn open before the gentleman and swallow
him up. I thought the pictured forms behind me here would step from their
frames in horror at his words.” These are Phillips’s phrases, which in
one form or another those men repeat who heard him.
The meeting was pitilessly opposed to him and his. After a fashion a
vote was obtained for all the resolutions of sympathy. But nobody cared
whether they passed or not. Nobody heard Phillips that day who did not
know that there was an orator in the town who could do much what he would
with any audience.
He spared nobody and no thing in his attack. He never did till the last
hour of his life. And it is right to say, that the people he opposed,
denounced and satirized, replied with the sneer so often lavished on
such men, “He has a devil and is mad, why do you hear him?” “Phillips’s
crazy talk” is the phrase you constantly find as you turn over private
or published letters of those times. None the less did people go to
hear him, and, as I said, he could do with an audience, friendly or
unfriendly, much what he would. He seemed to be—I think he was—quite
careless about preparation. If he was asked to speak for the cause,
he spoke. He thus had, very soon, the best possible training for his
business. If I am right, it is the only training worth much—namely,
constant practice. I have never, in forty years, varied from the opinion
I expressed the night I first heard him, that he was the best public
speaker we had in New England, as he was the best I had heard anywhere.
He had the double gift of language and of easy familiar gesture. He was
absolutely at his ease. He talked with his audience, played with them,
joked with them, reasoned with them, scolded them, ridiculed them,
soothed them, flattered them and compelled them, just as he chose. He
knew his audience through and through. He knew what speech to make
to them. He was never guilty of that ghastly folly which insists on
addressing to the audience of to-day the speech which pleased some other
audience a week ago.
I have no intention of writing his biography or an abridged history of
the time in which he was so active. I think he did not long remain at
the bar. I think it was as early as 1838 that he refused to take the
attorney’s oath of allegiance to the United States, without which he
could not practice in any United States Court. For the theory of the
extreme Abolitionists was that they must break up the Constitution of the
United States. But in practice very few of their adherents followed them
fully here, and many a man who cordially supported their newspapers and
their meetings, voted as he chose at the next election, or when the time
came went loyally into battle for the old flag. Nay, of Phillips himself
I remember this: I met him on the Sunday before Fort Sumter was fired
upon, and we walked half a mile together. He had brought up town the
last news from the bulletin about the preparations of the South Carolina
batteries. I had been on the spot, on Sullivan’s Island, and pointed out
some inconsistency in the narrative, saying, what I thought then, that I
believed the whole thing would turn out to be mere Carolina bluster. To
which he replied with great cordiality, “I am sure I hope so;” and from
that moment to the end of the war I think no one enjoyed the national
successes more thoroughly than he.
Side by side with the Anti-Slavery excitement, which every one connects
with his name, was the growth of what may fairly enough be called the
“Lyceum Movement.” In the beginning this was thought as pure a piece of
philanthropy as the other. Almost every public spirited man considered
it his duty to have one or more “Lectures” which he should deliver at
the call of his neighbors when they had a “Lyceum.” I have no doubt that
Phillips’s early lecturing was a bit of philanthropic effort of this
sort. But as things went on, enterprising committees began to raise the
price of their tickets, to send for distant lecturers and to pay them
enough to make it worth their while to come. Even college societies
and the providers for Commencement entertainments found it wise to
pay a handsome honorarium to their speakers, and I am afraid that the
element of philanthropy has long since disappeared from what is called
the “Lecture Platform.” Phillips had an ingenious way of uniting the
functions of a literary and of a political lecturer. No one was in more
demand than he for the regular work of the winter Lyceums. But it would
often happen that the timidity of a committee made them pause before they
would listen to his radicalism in a lecture. For such agents he was quite
ready. If people had scruples they must pay for them. His program was:
“For a literary lecture without politics, $100 and my expenses.” “For a
political lecture, nothing, and I pay my fares.”
He used to tell a story of his arrival at a western city where the
committee were divided, four to four, on the question whether they would
hear his lecture on the “Lost Arts” or a political speech. Perhaps he
would determine between them.
“Let us have both,” said Phillips. To which they eagerly assented. So
he delivered the “Lost Arts” first, innocent as a new rosebud of any
political bias. Then a recess was given to the audience, and all who
wished to go might go. But of course, after that beginning, no one went.
And so Phillips had another hour, and an audience for as many heresies as
he chose to utter.
It ought to be remembered that as soon as he had any leisure from his
work as an Anti-Slavery agitator, he gave his time and power, in the same
open-handed way, to the temperance cause. In all these late years the
friends of temperance reform have had no public man more ready to take up
their work for them than he.
The country has shown that it can duly honor such an agitator, whose own
conscience was always clear, even though no man could agree with him in
what he called opinions. The truth is, they were as often impulses as
convictions. But in the matter of slavery, of temperance, and of charity,
he had settled convictions, and lived on them without flinching. He was
utterly without thought of self.
The public has never known nor said enough of Mr. Phillips’s private
charities, and I can not wonder at it. It is impossible for any one
to speak fitly of them this side of the recording angel. Throughout
the world Mr. Phillips had a reputation as helper of the oppressed,
and with this reputation, the other, more dangerous to the comfort
of its possessor, that he cared nothing for popularity, and that he
acted from his own knowledge and will alone, and without regard to the
recommendations of anybody. Thus it was natural that every wanderer,
every outcast, of every color or nation, when he might find himself in
need in Boston went first to Mr. Phillips’s door, and that he should
find the door always open to him. He gave lavishly whenever he thought
he ought to give, not only of his time but of his money; exactly how
much no one but himself ever knew. His house became a sort of bureau of
charity, investigation and relief, so that whenever man, woman or child
was not known at the overseers of the poor, at the “Provident,” or at the
“Associated Charities,” it was the more certain that he was known at Mr.
Phillips’s. He gave his alms literally to all sorts and conditions of men.
That would be a very queer world—and it would be hard to say how it would
fare—which should be made up of Wendell Phillipses. But this may be
fairly said—that one such man in a community like that of New England,
renders essential service. In his case, while there were thousands
who hated him, other thousands loved him—and the thousands who loved,
lived much nearer to him, and knew him a thousand times better than the
thousands who hated.