Wendell Phillips - The Lesson Of His Life

( Originally Published 1885 )

THE life of Wendell Phillips presents to the young several important lessons. The most obvious of these is, probably, the lesson of self-sacrifice for the truth. He turned aside from the most alluring prospects of wealth, social distinction, honor and fame, to devote his life to the advocacy of an unpopular cause ; and that from the pure motive of the love of truth.

Born in 1811; entering Harvard College in 1827, under sixteen years of age ; graduating before he was twenty ; admitted to the Suffolk bar at twenty-three ; belonging to one of the first families in Boston, of which city his father was the first mayor ; the most cultured and polished society of the age opening its doors to him, not only on account of his social position, but equally from his own scholarship and culture, — few young men in this country have ever had a more brilliant future predicted for them by admiring friends, or by a wide circle of acquaintances. He had had every advantage that wealth and social position could confer. Moreover, in his college course he had exhibited that native strength of intellect, and those superior traits of mind and heart which are the sure precursors of a brilliant career. Widely read in the facts and the philosophy of history ; his mind well stored with classical learning, and well disciplined by thorough training in the foremost college in the land, — what door of advancement or preferment, what avenue of brilliant success, would be closed to him ?

At the early age of twenty-three, a practitioner at the Suffolk bar, which was then graced by such men as Daniel Webster and Jeremiah Mason, and had been honored by Joseph Story and Samuel Dexter, — he himself having already exhibited remarkable powers of oratory, — surely the brightest and most successful career is now opening before him. It would require but little imagination to picture him a governor of that ancient commonwealth, senator in the American Congress, or perhaps the chief executive of the nation.

Scarcely, however, had he entered upon practice at the bar, when troublous times began. William Lloyd Garrison, born in 1804, — apprenticed to a shoemaker, and afterwards to a cabinetmaker, — had learned the printers' trade, wrote for the press, became an editor, was imprisoned in Baltimore, and finally, on the 1st of January, 1831, had begun in Boston the publication of The Liberator, a paper which continued to advocate immediate emancipation till the fact was accomplished, and it was discontinued in December, 1865.

On the 21st of October, 1835, a meeting of the Women's Anti Slavery Society in Boston was broken up by a mob of " gentlemen of property and standing." Garrison, who was assisting at the meeting, was seized, a rope put around his body, and he was dragged through the streets of Boston, and only saved from the mob by being put in jail.

Wendell Phillips, then less than twenty-five years of age, was a witness to these transactions. These men, "well-dressed, rich, and the inheritors not only of money but of all that had been done for culture and enlightenment in Boston for two hundred years, yet still so sunk in essential ignorance as to believe they could fight moral convictions with brick-bats and ropes." How was the soul of the young man stirred !

His first distinguished mark as an orator was made Dec. 8, 1837, when he was twenty-six years old. It was in Faneuil Hall, the " Cradle of Liberty," an appropriate place for that first address of his in defence of liberty of speech, liberty of the press, and liberty of the slave.

Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy had been murdered in his own home, in the city of Alton, Ill., by a pro-slavery mob, losing his life in defending the freedom of the press. This meeting had been called to "notice in a suit-able manner" this event. Resolutions, deploring his death and denouncing the mob, had been offered and were under discussion. Hon. James T. Austin, attorney-general of the Commonwealth, spoke in opposition to the resolutions. He compared the slaves to a menagerie of wild beasts, and the rioters at Alton to the "orderly mob which threw the tea overboard in 1773 "; called Lovejoy presumptuous and imprudent; said that he "died as the fool dieth " ; and asserted (referring to Rev. William Ellery Channing, who had spoken) that " a clergyman mingling in the debates of a popular assembly was marvelously out of place."

Wendell Phillips followed this specious tirade with a speech at once bold, incisive, and patriotic. "Imprudent ! to defend the liberty of the press ! Why? Because the defence was unsuccessful? Does success gild crime into patriotism, and the want of it change heroic self-devotion to imprudence? Was Hampden imprudent when he drew the sword and threw away the scabbard ?

"Imagine yourself present when the first news of the battle of Bunker Hill reached a New England town. The tale would have run thus : 'The patriots are routed; the redcoats are victorious. Warren lies dead upon the field.' With what scorn would that tory have been received, who should have charged Warren with imprudence ! who should have said that, bred a physician, he was out of place' in that battle, and died as the fool dieth.'

" As much as thought is better than money, so much is the cause in which Lovejoy died nobler than a mere question of taxes. James Otis thundered in this hall when the king did but touch his pocket. Imagine, if you can, his indignant eloquence had England offered to put a gag upon his lips."

The popular sentiment of the audience was changed. The resolutions were adopted. But more than that; Wendell Phillips had put his hand to the plow, and never after did he look back. From that time till the day of his death he was the " silver-tongued orator" for the slave and the oppressed.

He threw up his commission as a lawyer because he would not make oath to support the Constitution of the United States so long as it protected slave property. For twenty-five years he was a firm, uncompromising abolitionist, before success crowned the cause he so ably advocated. His invective was scathing ; his boldness was startling ; his eloquence was grand. He became the foremost orator of his age, for his heart was in his words. His soul was on fire, and it is fire that kindles fire. Turning his back upon riches, scorning honors, place, and power, he held it to be his greatest honor, his chief joy, to be called the friend of the poor and the oppressed, to plead for the down-trodden and the enslaved.

Finally came the slave-holders' rebellion. The gun which sent the first shot against Fort Sumter was heard in Maine and Minnesota. The conscience of the North had been quickened by Phillips's eloquence. There was to be no more compromise with slavery ; the days of its apologists had gone by forever. As a military necessity the slaves of those in rebellion were declared free. The rebellion was crushed. The Union triumphed over secession. By constitutional amendment slavery was forever made impossible in this country, which for eighty years had been called a free land. Surely Wendell Phillips earned the right to be named the defender of the oppressed; the friend of the slave. He was true to the truth as he saw it. To-day the pulpit, the press, the people of the land call slavery a sin, just as Garrison and Phillips did forty years ago. The logic of events is potent to change the opinions of men. Had Wendell Phillips died thirty years ago, the verdict of the American people regarding him would have differed from that verdict today. The principles he advocated have succeeded; hence he dies a patriot, a philanthropist, a Christian.