Phillips, Wendell

views updated

Phillips, Wendell 1811–1884

Wendell Phillips, antislavery leader and crusader for the rights of women, labor, and the oppressed everywhere, was born November 29, 1811, “the child,” as he put it, “of six generations of Puritans” (Phillips 2001, p. 26). His father was the first mayor of Boston. His mother was Salley Walley, daughter of a Boston merchant. When Phillips was fourteen, he attended a meeting conducted by the famous revivalist Lyman Beecher. Shortly before his death, Phillips said, “From that day to this, whenever I have known a thing to be wrong, it has held no temptation. Whenever I have known it to be right, it has taken no courage to do it” (Korngold 1950, p. 111). He attended Boston Latin School, distinguishing himself as an athlete, and Harvard College, graduating with high honors in 1831. According to biographer Ralph Korngold (1950), he was “six feet tall, deep-chested, broad-shouldered and with a soldierly bearing.” A college friend described him as “the most beautiful person I had ever seen… a young Apollo.” All his life he conducted himself like an aristocrat, “always well-dressed—not a speck on his clothing” (pp. 119–120). He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1833 and was admitted to the bar the next year. He opened a law office, but his heart was not in it. Later he said that, left to follow his own course, he should have studied mechanics or history.

Phillips was fond of telling friends that his wife, the former Ann Terry Greene, whom he had met while he was in law school, had converted him to abolitionism. In 1835 he witnessed a mob determined to lynch William Lloyd Garrison leading him up the street with a rope around his neck. It was not that episode but another that won him to the cause of abolition. In November 1837 abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy was murdered in Alton, Illinois, while trying to defend his printing press from a mob. The following month, at a public meeting at Faneuil Hall called to discuss the case, Phillips, angered by the speech of the Massachusetts attorney general, who defended the mob and condemned Lovejoy as “presumptuous and imprudent,” took the floor and delivered an address that linked the right of free speech and the antislavery cause. His address won over the audience, most of whom had started out hostile, and led to his being immediately recognized as one of the outstanding orators of the day. He would later come to be known as “the golden trumpet of abolition.”

Phillips gave up his law practice, such as it was, because he found it impossible to take an oath to defend the Constitution, regarding it as “a covenant with death and agreement with hell,” a description used by many abolitionists. For thirty years he labored in the ranks of the abolitionists. Whereas most northerners opposed slavery, they hated abolitionism more. Business interests depended on slave-grown cotton and sugar, and laborers feared the sudden appearance of a million former slaves in the labor market. As a result, abolitionists regularly found themselves the targets of violent mobs. Phillips carried a pistol to defend himself. His family responded to his course by seeking to have him declared insane. “We do not play politics,” he declared. “Anti-slavery is no half-jest with us; it is a terrible earnest, with life or death, worse than life or death, on the issue” (Phillips 2001, p. 51).

In addition to speaking, Phillips wrote, traveled, and organized for the cause. He helped popularize the slogan “No union with slaveholders,” part of a strategy aimed at bringing down slavery by removing northern support. Phillips frequently addressed northern audiences as “fellow subjects of Virginia,” reminding them that it was their taxes that paid for the armed force that held down the slave. “All the slave asks of us,” he declared, “is to stand out of his way, withdraw our pledge to keep the peace on the plantation, withdraw our pledge to return him” (Phil-lips 2001, pp. 14–15). At rallies he asked his audiences to pledge never to return the fugitive who set foot on northern soil, and he himself took part in efforts to defend fugitives by direct action, in defiance of federal law.

When South Carolina and other states announced their secession from the Union, Phillips and other abolitionists were outcasts, living under threat of attack from northern mobs who blamed them for the breakup of the nation. Yet as the Civil War continued and it became increasingly clear that no policy of conciliation could lure the seceded states back into the Union, public opinion turned. Over the winter of 1861–1862, five million people heard him speak or read his speeches calling for emancipation, the enlistment of black soldiers, and an active military strategy. When he visited Washington, the vice president welcomed him to the Senate chamber, the Speaker of the House invited him to dinner, and the president received him as a guest. He had gone from pariah to prophet.

When the Thirteenth Amendment passed in December 1865, some abolitionists, including Garrison, concluded that their work was done. Phillips disagreed, believing that their work was not over until full equality was guaranteed. He assumed formal leadership of the Anti-Slavery Society and continued his efforts on behalf of the freedpeople. While not forgetting the slave, he took up new issues. He ran for governor of Massachusetts in 1870 on the Labor Reform ticket, resisting the anti-Chinese campaign that had gained the support of many labor reformers. He joined the International Working-men’s Association and declared his support for the Paris Commune of 1871.

Summarizing his career, Phillips said he had “worked 40 years, served in 20 movements, and been kicked out of all of them” (Phillips 2001, p. 27). He died on February 2, 1884. His death was announced in newspapers across the country. His funeral was a state occasion, with offerings sent from workers, Irish, and other groups whose cause he had championed. Thousands waited in line for a last look at him. Two companies of black militia, marching to the roll of muffled drums, served as an honor guard (Korngold 1950, p. 397). A statue of him stands by the Boston Public Garden.

SEE ALSO Abolition Movement.