watch to give everyone present a fair chance. His presence in a room was
stimulating, and made people brighter than their ordinary wont. Of small
conversation, conversational pleasantries, and what is called
table-talk, he happily knew nothing. He had no sharp wit or repartee,
but plenty of genial humor, and could of course tell a story to
perfection. His imitations of other orators were highly amusing,
especially what he called Webster's Rochester speech: "The public debt;
it must be paid; and it _shall_ be paid;--how much is it?" He would
go through the performance and then resume his seat at the table,
laughing like a child. When Emerson and Phillips dined together they
would look at one another, as it seemed, with a kind of awe, as if they
were more wonderful to each other than to ordinary mortals. It was after
such an occasion that Emerson said, "This man is such a perfect artist
that he ought to be walking all the galleries of Europe, and yet here he
is fighting these hard questions." He did not appear to care much for
society however, and always declined an invitation where he was in
danger of being lionized, or otherwise made use of.
A characteristic anecdote is told of him during the expedition of the
abolitionists to England in 1853. They were entertained there by their
British allies, and also by members of the nobility. A certain duchess
(or countess perhaps) invited them to a lawn-party, and while they were
engaged in drinking coffee on her lawn, an uncomfortable drizzling mist
came down on the company. The gentlemen all carried their hats in their
hands, out of respect for the duchess, who wore a sort of lace tiara;
but in this emergency Phillips, who had a speech to make at Birmingham
next evening, placed his on his head and continued to wear it. The
consequence was that when the duchess gave them a second entertainment
Phillips was not invited. He was as independent as this on all
occasions.
The anti-slavery movement carried along with it a variety of other
social and political movements such as spiritualism, total abstinence,
and the prevention of capital punishment; which prevented many
sympathetic friends of the cause from joining it, and gave it a quaint,
and sometimes even a comical aspect. These Utopian and impracticable
notions were accepted by the abolitionists partly on the log-rolling
principle, and partly from a tendency of those people to separate
themselves from what is real and tangible. It seems strange that a man
of Wendell Phillips' culture and mental endowments should not have been
able to distinguish between a necessary and possible reform, and those
vague theories of human happiness and perfection which are not based on
the logic of experience, but indicate rather a wayward mental condition
in the devotees. If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, what should
be said of unripe and superficial thinking? We wonder what were Wendell
Phillips' reflections concerning the women in Bloomer costume, and the
paradoxical persons who frequented the anti-slavery fairs, and created
disturbances at the anti-slavery conventions. If questioned about them
he would probably have said, with a laugh, "Oh, those are our
barnacles;" but they were only extreme cases of the general tendency.
It was not the right element for a man of his calibre: he did not become
a spiritualist, nor was he so intolerant as to object to the use of
brandy for cooking purposes; but he published an injudicious and even
intemperate letter to the chief-justice of Massachusetts and the
president of Harvard College, arraigning them for drinking wine at a
public banquet. He exerted himself strenuously to obtain the repeal of
capital punishment; and when that failed, and also an attempt to obtain
a pardon for a miserable murderer, whom it was merely a kindness to
hang, he attacked the governor of the state in a sermon before the
Theodore Parker Society, which was little better than a tirade of
invectives. He never appeared as an advocate of woman suffrage before
the public, but he is said to have approved of it. Neither would he go
to the polls to vote; at first because the national constitution
supported slavery, and afterwards because the government maintained an
army and encouraged war.
He missed a fine opportunity to escape from this narrow routine and
enter the arena of practical politics when the Free-soil party was
formed to prevent the extension of slavery. However, he either did not
think of it, or preferred to hold fast to his former friends, though he
little knew how little they cared for him, and he continued for ten
years longer to lecture on Toussaint and talk moral-suasion,--riding
hard on the Garrisonian formula. It seems like small business when we
recollect the work that Seward and Sumner and Chase were doing
meanwhile.
It was the attack on Harper's Ferry that broke the spell at last, and
awoke Wendell Phillips to a higher and more useful life. It is difficult
to realize now, the courage that was required to appear before the
public in defence of what was generally considered the outrage of a
madman. It is easier for men to understand the differential calculus,
than that rebellion against government is either the greatest of crimes
or the highest of virtues. When government becomes so bad that honesty
and virtue cannot endure it, revolution is imminent. Phillips, Emerson
and Thoreau, John A. Andrew and Rev. J. M. Manning, pastor of the Old
South church, were the ones who asserted this. Andrew and his friends
called a meeting, nominally to obtain funds for the wife and daughters
of John Brown. The hall was crowded with a remarkably intelligent
looking class of people. Andrew presided, and claimed that whatever
might be thought of his Virginia raid, John Brown himself, considered
from his own standpoint, was in the right. Rev. Mr. Manning said, if
John Brown had consulted him in regard to inciting a slave insurrection
he should certainly have advised him not to do it, but he was far from
regretting that the attempt had been made. Phillips was the last
speaker, and treated his subject in the boldest revolutionary manner;
and before he had finished the applause was deafening. A judge of the
superior-court sat on the front bench clapping his hands with a noise
like pistol shots.
This served him as a preparation for the Brooklyn address already
referred to, which, if it had been equal throughout, might be classed
among the world's great speeches, and it is certainly one of the most
brilliant orations of either ancient or modern times. Certain passages
in it remind one of a shower of falling stars. It is remarkable for its
light and shade. He began with a gay and graceful compliment to Thomas
Corwin, an old statesman of the Henry Clay school, who was seated on the
platform; but he soon became intensely serious. "The lesson of the hour
is insurrection. And why is it? Because we are all recreant Americans;
recreant to the principles of our ancestors." After a while he changed
to a sort of rippling humor, which was peculiar to him, and delighted
his audience immensely, describing the subterfuges which had come into
fashion to escape using the word slavery. "Hypocrisy is the homage that
vice pays to virtue." Then he became deeply pathetic as he referred to
the heroic man condemned to death and lying wounded in a Virginia
prison; and concluded with an outburst of spiritual triumph like that in
Goethe's tragedy of Egmont. "They have brave men in Virginia: it was not
an old, grey-headed man entering Harper's Ferry that they were afraid
of, it was the John Brown in every man's own conscience that made them
tremble."
He achieved an equal success of a different kind soon after, in
attempting to deliver the same speech in New York city. A portion of the
hall was filled with pro-slavery roughs who cursed and reviled him, and
threw various missiles at him. A stone which struck a chair near him on
the platform might have done him very serious injury. Nothing dismayed,
he continued his speech, and taking his text from the insults of his
enemies, hurled defiance back in their teeth. His friends who
accompanied him and were ready to defend him from personal violence,
said that on this occasion Phillips surpassed any thing they had known
of him before; and fairly quelled the mob by his courage, address, and
personal magnetism.
It was during the following eight years that Wendell Phillips proved
himself the great orator. Wasson, who never quite approved of him, said
that Webster might have excelled him, but that Choate or Everett could
not be compared with him. The largest halls could not contain the people
who wished to hear him. He was several times mobbed, and his life was in
continual danger. A body-guard of devoted young friends escorted him to
and from his house. He never ceased calling for the emancipation of the
negroes, and when that was accomplished, for their enlistment as
volunteers and a more vigorous prosecution of the war. His criticism of
public affairs was not always judicious, but it warmed the hearts of the
people and strengthened the hands of the anti-slavery party in
Washington. The real difficulty at that time was best known to Lincoln
and his cabinet; the difficulty of organizing such large armies with so
small a number of trained and experienced officers. Good judges have
given an opinion that the practice of appointing noted politicians to
important commands lengthened the war at least two years, and one after
another, all these men had to be removed; but what else could the
government do? The officers of the regular army nearly all belonged to
the democratic party, and President Lincoln hardly knew whom he could
trust. Phillips knew as little of military affairs as Grant did of
oratory.
Just one year after the Brooklyn address, he was called upon to
celebrate the election of Abraham Lincoln in Boston Music Hall. For once
Phillips and his audience were in perfect harmony, and also in the best
of spirits. Men little dreamed at that time of the awful chasm that was
to open beneath them. His speech was full of the most delicious humor;
rather a biting humor at times, as we read it now, but it did not seem
so in the way he spoke it. It was like a wedding feast: laughter and
applause were so frequent that the wonder is that the speaker was able
to keep the thread of his discourse. Among a dozen witty passages, he
said, "Now I would like to have a law that one-third of our able men
should not be eligible for the presidency. Then every third man could be
depended on to tell the truth. Listen to Mr. Seward on the prairies;
what magnificent speeches he has made there since Mr. Lincoln's
nomination. When he ceased to be a candidate for the presidency, he
became a man again."
In the winter of 1863 he went to Washington for the first time, and
lectured on the lesson of the hour. "Old Abe" went to hear him and
expressed himself as being greatly pleased with the exhibition, as he
called it. Next day a committee of influential citizens called on him to
inquire if he could deliver his oration on "Toussaint" that evening for
the benefit of his admirers; and then that was not enough, but they must
have his lecture on "The Lost Arts" the evening afterward. This was a
fine triumph for him after twenty-five years of social ostracism but his
anxiety in regard to the condition of the country, prevented him from
enjoying it as he might have.
Meanwhile a storm was preparing for him in the quarter he least expected
it. The old abolitionists, whom nobody had thought of since the repeal
of the Missouri compromise and who were beginning to feel a good deal
neglected, looked upon Phillips now as a deserter from their standard of
non-resistance and moral suasion, and perhaps also eyed his brilliant
course with some little jealousy. In the spring of 1865 Garrison
returned from hoisting the flag at Fort Sumter, fully satisfied that the
negroes could be safely trusted in future to the patriarchal care of the
central government. Phillips thought otherwise. He argued that the black
man still suffered from the effects of slavery; that they were very much
at the mercy of their former masters, who would naturally bear them no
good-will; that their future political position would depend on the
action of Congress and not on the administration; and that it was still
advisable for northern friends to keep watch over their interests.
From this private difference of opinion an obstinate controversy soon
developed itself, in which a large portion of the public took part on
one side or the other. Senator Sumner and his friends supported
Phillips; while Governor Andrew, who disliked him for no very good
reason, and Senator Wilson for a much better one, supported Garrison.
Both parties being thus strongly reinforced, the dispute rose to a high
pitch. Phillips finally carried the day, and was fully justified
afterwards for doing so; but the Garrison party took mortal offence at
him for this, and would never afterwards recognize him except by a cold
and distant courtesy. George Thompson, an English friend of Garrison who
came over providentially at that time, quoted Phillips' earlier speeches
against him (an inconsistency which was rather to his credit) and
exclaimed, "I appeal from Phillips drunk to Phillips sober:" nor was
this the worst of it. [Footnote: A year after this he said to two Rhode
Island ladies, who were among the few friends that remained faithful to
him all through life, "It seems hard that of the men whom I worked with
for thirty years only three or four are willing to speak to me now."]
But Phillips endured the storm like a man. He argued his case with all
the ardor and energy of his nature, but there escaped from him not one
opprobrious or resentful sentence towards his former associates. Emerson
said (to quote him again, and we hope for the last time): "How
handsomely Mr. Phillips has behaved in his controversy with Mr.
Garrison. In fact Phillips was the same we have always known him." But
the wound went deep into him; and seven years later, when he said at the
Radical Club, "I have known cases in which it only took _one_ to
make a quarrel," we all recognized what he was thinking of.
This was the acme of his career, and alas! how soon he fell away from
it. About a year before this time, his friends began to notice certain
expressions in his speeches which puzzled them not a little. At length a
severe and unjust attack on Senator Wilson as a frequenter of
drinking-saloons explained the new departure to them. Phillips was
evidently taking a hand in practical politics, and as Wilson's term was
nearly expiring, wished to make General Butler his successor. So
strangely are good and evil united in us, that this happened about the
same period as the Garrison controversy. The less said about General
Butler perhaps the better. At the same time Wendell Phillips' support of
him would seem to be no worse than Judge Hoar's continued support of
Blaine for the presidency; and it is also true that General Butler's
reputation was better at this time than it afterwards became; he was
well received at the political clubs, and even considered in the light
of a presidential candidate by prominent republicans. Phillips'
subsequent explanation of the matter was, that the negro was his client,
and General Butler was the only person who had the will and ability to
manage his case. He was not inconsistent in this, for he afterwards
supported General Grant in the machine governments at the south for the
same reason.
Another bond of mutual interest between them was socialism. When or
where Phillips became a socialist is uncertain. He was conservative in
religion, and there is no more necessary connection between the
abolition of slavery and socialism than between socialism and
free-trade. On the contrary, the votes of the Irish laborers, who now
divided his interest with the negroes, had always been the chief bulwark
and mainstay of the slave power in the northern states. It must however,
have been a question of principle with him, a theory of abstract right,
for the course and conduct of his whole life is a true witness against
any meaner motive. But General Butler's socialism was doubtless a matter
of personal ambition--a bait to catch the popular vote. Nobody except
Phillips, not even the laborers themselves, imagined anything else in
his case. [Footnote: In the autumn of 1884 my brother asked a plumber
then working for him, if he intended to vote for General Butler, who was
presidential candidate that year for the labor-party. "No," replied the
fellow, "Butler is a bad man; he will do for Governor of Massachusetts,
but for President of the United States we want something different."]
This unholy alliance was productive of no good to either party: Phillips
injured his reputation by it, and what advantage Butler may have gained
is yet to be discovered.
In 1870 Phillips injured himself still more by a public attack on the
Bird Club; a company of merchants and politicians who met together for a
Saturday-afternoon dinner. This was done so evidently in Butler's
interest that the general's future plans were disclosed by it. He wished
to obtain the nomination for governor the following year, and looked
upon the Bird Club as the chief obstacle in the way of his doing so.
Frank W. Bird, who usually presided at the table, was one of the most
patriotic and single-minded men that ever labored for the good of his
country. He was so sincere and warm-hearted that there was no
possibility of mistaking his character. He was in the legislature for
nearly twenty years, and a member of the governor's council; but offices
were not what he cared for. He was at once the most intimate friend of
Andrew and Sumner,--two men who never could agree because one wanted to
organize all men under his banner, and the other was equally determined
to be independent of everybody. He might almost have been called the
balance-wheel of Massachusetts politics. At the State House he was the
terror of all mean and mischievous members; a sentinel always on the
watch to prevent extravagance, fraud, and political chicanery. His
persistent opposition to that monstrous abortion the Houssac tunnel, for
which our children and grandchildren will be taxed _ad infinitum_,
cost him an election to Congress. Upon this account he had numerous
enemies, but even General Butler could not discover the smallest
reproach against his character. He was one of the most useful men in the
State. The club was called by his name because it had neither name nor
organization. It originated with a few friends who used to meet at
Chevalier Howe's office during the Kansas excitement; and Wendell
Phillips' charge against them that they managed the politics of
Massachusetts, had less than half a leg to stand on. While the governor
and both senators were members of the club it must have been of course
an influential body. Sumner certainly never made use of official
patronage to promote his private interests. Yet this was the only
charge, mixed with some dark insinuations, that Phillips could bring
against them; and even this might have had some excuse if it had not
been in the interest of General Butler.
The remainder of his life was a wreck, though he may not have been aware
of it. Frank Bird and his associates were the best friends that Wendell
Phillips ever had. They were friends who would have held fast to him
through everything except such an attack as he made on them. Alone now
with his invalid wife, childless and well-nigh friendless, his life must
have been gloomy and miserable. No company was ever invited to his
house, and it was by the rarest chance that he went to any
entertainment. Who his associates were in this new phase of his life, is
often a matter of conjecture. Revolutionary socialists mostly, practical
and unpractical--not of the harmless theoretical sort: but he never was
seen on the street in company with other men. Whoever they were, they
could not have been either cheerful or elevating society. The audiences
that went to hear him were composed of quite a different class of people
from those of the preceding era, and could not sustain him with the same
moral force as formerly. No wonder if his temper became sharp and his
mind melancholic; if the lines deepened in his face and the quick,
bright look of his eye changed to a fitful, suspicious and desperate
expression; if his splendid talent deteriorated too much into mannerism.
Although this was his own fault, we could not help feeling pity for him,
and the kind of regret with which we look on the fragments of a
beautiful statue. He was evidently carried away with the ambition of
becoming a world reformer.
There is a sentence in his speech on Lincoln's election which may cast
light on Wendell Phillips' socialistic views. He says, "Caesar crossed
the Rubicon borne in the arms of a people trodden into poverty and
chains by an oligarchy of slaveholders; but that oligarchy proved too
strong even for Caesar and his legions." This was a bold and original
opinion in those days, for Mommsen's history, to which we are mainly
indebted for our change of sentiment in regard to Caesar, had not yet
been translated. There is at the present time an oligarchy of land
owners and capitalists in England of whom Froude has predicted that they
will come to the same catastrophe as the Roman oligarchy did finally,
and as that of Bohemia in the sixteenth century, and of France in the
eighteenth, unless the present course of events shall be arrested by
judicious legislation and magnanimous sacrifices. Phillips had already
taken a hand in suppressing one American oligarchy, who have been
compared by Mommsen to the Roman senatorial party, and he thought he
foresaw another rising in our midst from the iron kings, and other great
industrial magnates. He may have been far-sighted in this, for he often
proved to be a true prophet, and there are many now who think the same;
but that would not justify the methods by which he undertook to provide
against the evil. The condition of the laboring classes in America,
where a thrifty and temperate mechanic can occupy as good a house as a
country doctor in Europe, is the most favorable yet known in history;
much more favorable, comparatively, than that of our professional
classes; but Phillips had seen the most wealthy and highly educated
people ranged against him throughout the long conflict with slavery, and
had acquired the habit of considering them a dangerous element in the
community.
There is a certain artistic perfection in the contrasts of his life.
Thirty-seven years after his Lovejoy speech, he appeared again in
Faneuil Hall attended by a retinue of government employees, with intent
to capture a meeting called to protest against the interference of the
government at Washington in Louisiana politics. There was wrong no doubt
on both sides of this question, but the interference of the government
was equally illegal and injudicious. Phillips appeared now more on the
side of the oppressor than for the oppressed, and though his speech was,
as formerly, the best of the occasion, it failed to win the sympathy of
the audience. He was consistent in his devotion to the interests of the
freed, men, but he would have been more true to himself if he had been
willing to recognize, as the more reasonable anti-slavery people did,
how absurd and even abominable, were the negro governments in the
southern states; but he had long since lost his good judgment, and when
President Hayes removed the troops for whose maintenance he could obtain
no appropriation from Congress, and the pyramid which had been so long
supported on its apex suddenly fell over, Phillips could scarcely find
terms harsh enough to express his rage and exasperation. His attacks on
the Hayes administration might fairly be called philippics had they
possessed the saving grace of Hellenic self-control, but they remind us
rather of Carlyle's furious "Latter Day Pamphlets."