Sketches from Concord and Appledore Part 8

They are both said to have given striking proof of their oratorical talent, though perhaps not more so than many others have before and since. He entered at Harvard in 1827, while Sumner was a soph.o.m.ore, and Dr. Holmes and his celebrated twenty-niners were in their junior year.

His college life was a dream of wonder-land. Rich, gifted, full of good-humor, handsome in form and feature, a brilliant scholar, he seemed above all others to be Fortune's favored child. Work was easy to him, and his play was the sport of genius. He was everywhere among the first; president of the Porcellian Club, president and orator of the Hasty Pudding Club--the Apollo Belvedere of his cla.s.smates. He also belonged to a society called "The Owls," which only met at midnight, and the one who could control his face so as to look most like an owl was considered the best fellow.

Yet in the midst of this happiness, like the Hindoo prince, the spirit of sadness comes over him when he reflects that very few are so fortunate as himself, and that a great many seem to be born to positive misfortune. The change in him was so marked that his cla.s.smates took notice of it and attributed it to too much of a religious interest; but it was not that. He accepted religion as he found it, and lived and died in the faith of his ancestors. What is called a religious experience never came to him; but from this time forward he showed an especial tenderness and consideration for unfortunate people. It is well we bear this trait of his character in mind, for it is the interpretation of the various phases of his career.

He studied law, but does not appear to have ever taken a serious interest in it. Sumner, on the contrary, became a s.h.i.+ning light in the law-school, and there laid the solid foundation of his future eminence.

Looking back at the past, we see now how the lives of these two men diverged. In tact and readiness, in mental gifts, and fineness of nature, Phillips was slightly the superior of Sumner, but Sumner easily surpa.s.sed him in greatness of design. Phillips wished to be an orator, and afterwards confessed that at this period of his life his admiration for Webster knew no legitimate bounds. But oratory is an art which requires a liberal profession for its basis; and Webster and Sumner became orators by virtue of their profession. An orator merely as such is simply an actor, and it requires a strong and well-balanced character to withstand the temptations of the stage and the platform. Wendell Phillips afterwards found a basis for his oratory in the anti-slavery conflict; and then, when that came to an end, his occupation was gone.

It is also to be doubted if he had the right sort of intellect to make a lawyer of, though no man could be better qualified in other respects for practice in the courts.

Although one of his professors predicted a term in Congress for him, he did not obtain any clients for several years; which is more remarkable as there could have been no question in regard to his capacity or popularity. Another strange fact is that when he went to Europe and asked Judge Story for letters-of-introduction, he failed to obtain them; while Sumner, who was Story's favorite, was presented a few days later with more than a dozen. Had Judge Story already discovered a centrifugal and uncontrollable element in the man?

It is difficult to understand, at this distance, the persecution of the early abolitionists. They were the most harmless and inoffensive of men, and the spirit in which they approached the slavery question, and the arguments they used in regard to it, were like those by which the Christian Church obtained the abolition of serfdom in Europe. They were the most purely Christian people of their time; certainly much better Christians than those ministers of the gospel who denounced them as disturbers of a hollow peace. So Suetonius speaks of the Christians as being disturbers of the peace, and Tacitus, like a late writer in the "Atlantic Monthly," refers to them as enemies of society.

It is true they finally became narrow-minded, intolerant, and almost misanthropic, as always happens when a small minority are fatally enclosed within an unfriendly community; but they were not so in the beginning. Their methods were mild and pacific: they wished to influence public-opinion, and even hoped to persuade the slaveholders to a.s.sist in general emanc.i.p.ation. That the slave-holder should have been somewhat irritated at this suggestion to part with so much valuable property is not surprising; but why should it have disturbed their neighbors in Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut where the question of free and slave labor had been agitated forty years before, and satisfactorily settled? The same speakers who harangued against the abolitionists, would say in the next breath that it was contrary to democratic principles for people in one section of the country to concern themselves about the affairs of those in another. Was it an inherited public tendency from the spirit of intolerance which formerly persecuted the Quakers? However that may be, it is an historical fact that great social reformers always have begun in a similar manner, and their importance can fairly be measured by the violence and duration of the opposition to them.

Wendell Phillips did not at first take an interest in the anti-slavery cause. The abolitionists were not personally known to him, and his mind was largely occupied with the pleasures of fas.h.i.+onable society, where he shone before all others. There was a certain strength and good sense in this; the reserve of a man who waits for opportunity, and who does not risk s.h.i.+pwreck at the start by rus.h.i.+ng hastily into troubled waters. In October 1837, he was married to Miss Mary Anna Green, the daughter of Benjamin Green of Boston, and cousin, or other near relative, to Mrs.

Maria Chapman, a friend of Harriet Martineau and other English philanthropists. In November occurred the riot at Alton, Illinois, and the a.s.sa.s.sination of Lovejoy. Dr. Channing's first pet.i.tion for an indignation-meeting in Faneuil Hall was refused by the authorities; but a second and more urgent one was granted: evidently with the antic.i.p.ation that the anti-slavery people might, after all, find themselves in a minority.

As it happened, the audience was nearly divided between the two parties, but the pro-slavery faction, led by government officials, had the advantage of being able to make all the noise and disturbance they wished without being interfered with by the police for it. It seemed as if the meeting would end in confusion and a vote of disagreement.

Twenty-five years later Wendell Phillips said of it: "I went there without the least intention of making a speech or taking any part in the proceedings. My wife and Mrs. Chapman wished to go, and I accompanied them. I remember wearing a long surtout, a brand-new one, with a small cape (as was the fas.h.i.+on of the day), and after the attorney-general made his speech denouncing Lovejoy as a fool, I suddenly felt myself inspired, and tearing off my overcoat, started for the platform. My wife seized me by the arm, half terrified, and said, 'Wendell, what are you going to do?' I replied, 'I am going to _speak_, if I can make myself heard.'" The uproar was so great that the chairman asked Dr.

Channing if he could stand thunder; but the personal beauty and intrepidity of Phillips,--coming like a meteor out of the night,--so surprised all hearers, that they paused to listen to him, and were so charmed by his eloquence that they neglected to make any further disturbance. The attorney-general was wholly discomfited, and Dr.

Channing's resolutions were carried by a substantial majority.

It is surprising that so thorough an historian as Von Holst should have omitted to make mention of this speech, which really struck the key-note of the anti-slavery movement from first to last. As we have it now, revised by its author from the newspaper reports of the time, it is one of the purest, most spontaneous and magnetic pieces of oratory in existence. It deserves a place beside those two famous speeches of James Otis and Patrick Henry which ushered in the war of separation from England. It possesses even a certain advantage, in the fact that it never has been nor is likely to be made use of for school declamations.

It will always remain fresh, vigorous, and original as when it was first delivered.

But Phillips was not content merely with silencing the opposition. He claimed that the cause for which he spoke, and for which the meeting had been called, was one of higher importance than any that had preceded it in Faneuil Hall. When the audience murmured at this, he boldly continued: "Insomuch as _thought_ is better than _money_, is the cause for which Lovejoy died superior to that for which our ancestors contended. James Otis thundered within these walls when the king did but touch his pocket; imagine his indignant eloquence if they had attempted to put a gag upon his lips." For this statement, if for nothing else, Wendell Phillips deserves an immortality in the history of his country.

With such an achievement at the age of twenty-six, what might not have been expected of his maturer years,--of the full fruition of his genius?

What but a future candidate for the senate of the United States, or even for the presidency? The full fruition of his genius, the development that nature intended for him, never was realized. It is true, he accomplished much, and was in himself even more,--but by no means what he might have been. Even in the first hour of success, the temptation comes to us which determines our future destiny in one way or another.

The two ladies were of course delighted at his triumph, and overwhelmed him with congratulations; but Mrs. Chapman, "the born d.u.c.h.ess", as she was called, saw instantly what an advantage would accrue to the small band of abolitionists from the alliance of this able young aristocrat, with his suddenly revealed gift. That evening she used all the arts of persuasion to induce him to relinquish his profession and cast his fortune to sink or swim on the broad ocean of reform. She argued that Webster and Everett had the field; that years must elapse before he could win equality with those veterans; while as an anti-slavery orator, a fresh field would be open to his genius, in which he would meet with no compet.i.tor. The hour only waited for the man, and what a glorious reward to have finally secured--the freedom of a whole race! Unhappily this coincided with a natural inclination in Phillips, of which we have already spoken, and a few days later he decided to follow her advice.

One could heartily wish that the born d.u.c.h.ess had left Wendell Phillips to work out his own salvation. It is hardly the sign of a strong character for a man to be guided in the choice of a profession by feminine counsel; but he was still young, tender-hearted, and susceptible, and if left to himself might have escaped the impending danger. It was a temptation at once to his ambition as an orator and the latent heroism in him,--his disposition to self-sacrifice. His law practice was not satisfactory, and he could not look forward to immediate success in that direction--especially since the Faneuil Hall meeting.

Much better however for him to have gone patiently forward in the path already cleared by Webster and Everett, until, fully equipped in experience and maturity, he could have carried his anti-slavery principles into the arena of practical politics and become a leader in the House of Representatives, or have stood by Sumner in the Senate. A woman can hardly be expected to understand the long-drawn persistent struggle by which a man rises to the top of his profession; but it seems as if Mrs. Chapman might have been more considerate of the fortune and prospects of this young Apollo, himself of more value than many negroes.

He did not properly belong with the abolitionists. They always felt so.

They were excellent people, stainless in thought and in action, but limited in education and ability. Men of the highest mental endowments naturally form a cla.s.s by themselves, though not an exclusive one. If Phillips had consulted John Quincy Adams on the subject, he would have been answered with a "No" such as might have been heard across Court Street.

His life was now as much changed as if spring had suddenly been succeeded by winter. It was like a penitential pilgrimage. He had inherited from his father a moderate property upon which he and his wife, who was already much of an invalid, could live in a moderate way.

He resided for a time in Florence, Ma.s.sachusetts, and then purchased a small house in Ess.e.x Street, Boston, which has since been torn down to make room for the extension of Harrison Avenue. It was a house of very small dimensions, such as is commonly occupied by a mechanic's family; but possessed the advantage of admitting as much suns.h.i.+ne as possible into Mrs. Phillips' lonely chamber, which was probably his reason for selecting it. He wished to live economically in order to save money for the cause of freedom, and also for private charities.

The number of persons whom he a.s.sisted in the course of his life may be called countless; and he was even too careful in preventing a knowledge of this from being made public. He selected for his motto the Latin sentence which he had translated while at school, "Phocian always remained poor, though he might have been very rich." His fas.h.i.+onable friends deserted from him in a body, and old family acquaintances pa.s.sed him in the street without recognition. The only society he had was his wife and Mrs. Chapman and the families of the few abolitionists who lived in Boston. He was as careful of his diet, exercise, and sleep, as a trainer is in regard to a race-horse; and was rewarded for this with the most magnificent health. In all things he ill.u.s.trated the words of the poet:--

"The hero is not fed on sweets; Daily his own heart he eats: The chambers of the great are jails And head winds right for royal sails."

He never lost an opportunity of speaking on the slavery question. He joined the corps of lyceum-lecturers, and soon won the first place among them. If they would listen to him on slavery, or "Toussaint L'Ouverture," his lecture was free; otherwise it must be paid for. No one else did so much to arouse public consideration in regard to this great evil, as the conservative Webster had already designated it. All through the northern states, wherever the railroads went, there Wendell Phillips was also, exhorting the people with burning words, and warning especially the farmers and laboring cla.s.ses that free and slave labor could not exist together, and unless the negroes were emanc.i.p.ated they would ultimately become enslaved themselves.

Stumping New England, it was said, made Wendell Phillips an orator; and that, after all, was the right name for it. It was refined and elegant as could be, but still stump-oratory. It became so inevitably from the nature of the case, and in one sense this is to his credit, for it would seem to prove that he cared more for the cause than for his own reputation. He never attained to the well-considered architectural oratory of Webster and Burke, though in his best period he sometimes came very close to this, but neither did he speak to the House of Commons, nor before a bench of judges. Nothing is more fatiguing to untrained minds than a consistent and elaborate argument; and the mixed character of Phillips' speeches, like a bonfire made out of all inflammable materials, was remarkably well suited to the audiences whom he addressed. It is said that even Burke often emptied the benches, as if his a.s.sociates in parliament did not appreciate him so well as those who now enjoy reading his works.

An artist who draws with a free hand, will be able to develop his talent to its full extent, but one who draws in a cramped or false manner will always suffer more or less from the effects of it; but this was not the worst of the matter. Self-control does much for the artist, but unprejudiced criticism is also necessary. This Phillips never could obtain. There were persons who judged him impartially, but he was not in the way of obtaining their opinions. He was surrounded by a small band of adherents who praised him without discrimination, and who fiercely repelled the attacks of those who found fault with him. The newspapers all took sides against him, for both political parties dreaded the agitation of the slavery question, and Phillips could rarely look into one of them without meeting with a savage attack on himself by some subaltern who knew of no better use for his quill than the manufacture of these venomous darts. Neither could he walk through the streets of Boston without hearing himself cursed and execrated. Meanwhile Mrs.

Chapman and Mrs. L. Maria Child extolled him to the skies. Faithful and undistorted picture of himself he could meet with nowhere.

We read of saintly characters who have endured persecution with Christian humility and resignation, who have blessed those who cursed them, and loved those who hated them; but how many such have we been personally acquainted with? If we except Desdemona there are none in the great dramatists. It is an excellent principle, this of returning good for evil; but is it not also true that nature has planted hatred in us as a protection against future imposition? There may be such personages, but Wendell Phillips was not one of them.

He endured the stings of the pro-slavery hornets, as they were called, with stoical dignity and forbearance, but in spite of all good resolutions, they had an effect upon the inner man. Like the good Maritornes when Sancho Panza mistook her for an evil spirit, he endured the drubbing as long as flesh-and-blood would stand it, and then retaliated in good earnest. It was discovered at length, that Wendell Phillips had a sharp tongue, as well as a silver one, and could use it also with some temper. Of course he was blamed for this, and very few considered what provocation he had, or gave him credit for his previous forbearance. The habit increased rather than abated in him with age, and finally acquired the nature of a familiar demon that would appear unexpectedly in the midst of a brilliant discourse and sadly mar the effect of it.

His tendency to exaggeration, disregard of fact, and recklessness of statement, may all be attributed to his irregular, improvised manner of working. There are few public speakers, indeed, who escape these faults.

What preparation he made for his speeches will probably never be known.

He was always as mysterious on this point as a professional juggler. To a lady who once asked him about it, he replied, that he never made any preparation. For those of his speeches that have been published, we are obliged to a skilful short-hand writer named Yerrinton, who was Wendell Phillips' devoted admirer, and never missed an opportunity of hearing him on a fresh subject in Boston or New York.

To judge from internal evidence, it would seem likely that having divided his subject, as a lawyer does his argument, into a number of points, and having filled his mind somewhat full of them, he wrote out a careful and well-studied opening to his address, and then committed it to memory. This would enable him to make terms, as it were, with his audience in those first critical moments of his speech, and afterwards he could rely on his native wit and genius to carry him through. When his subject was a criticism of public events, this was not so difficult, and it gave him the advantage of a certain vivacious energy which appealed strongly to his hearers; but it was a dangerous practice. An orator who has a certain length of time to fill, and a reputation to sustain, is obliged to go on at all hazards. He cannot afford to be dull, nor to stop for a moment's reflection. If his memory fails him for an instant, imagination must supply its place. In this manner he often made misstatements which were quite unintentional, and must have been deeply regretted afterwards. Some allowance too should be made for a man who feels himself in a desperate position. His historical lectures on "The Lost Arts," "Daniel O'Connel," and "Toussaint," must sooner or later have been committed to memory, and were repeated again and again in a nearly identical form.

To amend for these deficiencies, his delivery was perfect, and even more than that. One of our best critics has called him matchless in this respect, and no other orator of the century, except possibly Canning, may be compared to him. Webster was more effective, but rather ponderous. Choate's style was peculiar, and Everett's cold and studied.

Gladstone resembles him more, perhaps, than any other, but Gladstone has a decided solemnity of manner which is a help to him among his countrymen, but a defect as judged by cla.s.sic standards. With Wendell Phillips, it was not only that every phase of thought and feeling was portrayed at once in his face, att.i.tude, and gestures, but this was done with such grace and purity as only belongs to the very highest art. It was as if a figure in Raphael's "School at Athens" had suddenly stepped out from the picture and explained the thought of the master to us in words.

There is nothing I can compare with the unconscious grace and purity of Phillips in his best moments except a picture by Raphael, or one of Milton's shorter poems. It was no lurid brilliancy or artificial light that shone from him, but rather the cheerful radiance of spring suns.h.i.+ne. No matter how gloomy the political outlook might be, or in what sombre colors he depicted it, this light from the man himself illuminated his subject and gave encouragement to his hearers. The most prolonged applause could not disturb a muscle in his countenance, and a storm of hisses appeared to have as little effect on him. From the first word to the last, he was master of the platform, and no one dreamed of contesting his right to it. His gestures were his own, and could not be imitated, for they were the creation of the moment. There was something magical in this art of his, and if his wisdom and judgment had only equalled it, he might have counted among the greatest of men.

Emerson sent one of Webster's orations to Carlyle, and the latter complained that it was monotonous and lacked the poetic quality of Demosthenes. This is quite true, but at the same time it may be said that Webster's speeches, judged simply as literature, have not been surpa.s.sed by five other American writers. The grand roll of his sentences does not become wearisome to a lover of sound reasoning, and in the presentation of his subject he has rarely been equalled. An oration of his is not like a picture hanging on the wall, but rather a public building which one can walk around and look at from the four cardinal points. Even his speech on the fugitive-slave bill, for which he has been so much blamed, contains the best a.n.a.lysis of the slavery question up to that time which had yet been made. He considered slavery a great evil, and his mistake evidently consisted in supposing that a great evil could exist in one part of the nation without vitiating the whole of it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WENDELL PHILLIPS. AS HE APPEARED BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA.]

Phillips looked upon slavery as a crime, and attacked it in an uncompromising manner. His speeches are not much like Webster's, but they are excellent reading; full of keen, vivid thought, bright sayings, and genial humor. He had the imagination of Demosthenes, but without the logical faculty. Many of them possess historical value, and but for too much _voix blanc_, like the brightness of new silver, might be compared with Emerson's essays. Certain pa.s.sages and individual sentences are of rare beauty. Speaking of Lovejoy thirty years after his death, he said, "How cautiously men sink into nameless graves, while now and then one forgets himself into immortality." At the time of the Dred Scott decision, he exclaimed: "Is Liberty dead? Is the valley of the Mississippi her grave? Are the Rocky Mountains her monument; and shall the Falls of Niagara chant forever her requiem?" In his Brooklyn address of November 1st, 1859, the finest of his orations, and one which he must have prepared with exceptional care, after telling the story of Tsar Nicholas, who insisted on building a straight railroad from Moscow to St. Petersburg in spite of the opposition of the engineers, he continued: "An intelligent democracy says of slavery, or a law, or a creed, 'This is justice, or it is not'; the track of G.o.d's thunderbolt is a straight line from justice to iniquity, and the church or state that cannot stand it must get out of the way." Or take this ill.u.s.tration of his subject from Athenian life--which is itself Athenian, and very much in the vein of Demosthenes:--

"Anacharsis went into the forum at Athens, and heard a case argued by the great minds of the day, and saw the vote. He walked out into the streets, and somebody said to him, 'What think you of Athenian liberty?'

'I think,' said he, 'wise men argue causes, and fools decide them.' Just what the timid scholar two thousand years ago said in the streets of Athens, that which calls itself the scholars.h.i.+p of the United States says today of popular agitation, that it lets wise men argue questions, and fools decide them. But that unruly Athens, where fools decided the gravest questions of polity and right and wrong, where it was not safe to be just, and where property, which you had garnered up by the thrift and industry of to-day, might be wrung from you by the caprices of the mob to-morrow,--that very Athens probably secured the greatest human happiness and n.o.bleness of its era, invented art, and sounded for us the depths of philosophy: G.o.d lent to it the n.o.blest intellects, and it flashes to-day the torch that gilds yet the mountain-peaks of civilization."

At a memorial meeting of Sumner's friends in 1874, Phillips concluded his remarks with the same expression that Cicero used in regard to Homer:--"There was no one like Sumner." He was not a mellow-toned orator of peace and conciliation, but soul-stirring, and one could detect the distant flash of a sword-blade in his periods.

In private life, he was the most delightful of men. Good orators always have the finest manners, for it is from them that we learn the art of behavior; but Wendell Phillips never brought the great man of the world to the drawing-room or dining-table, but was so perfectly a gentleman that he seemed almost like a prince who had abdicated his hereditary possessions. He did not seem to have been bred to good manners, but born to them, so natural and unconstrained was everything he said and did.

Never self-conscious and never self-forgetful; where consideration was needed he was sure to be at hand. He was at once dignified and deferential, even to children and servants, whom he was sure to remember in the homes where he visited, and usually had a kind word for them at the right moment. I do not think he could have treated even the meanest of women with disrespect.

He never talked too long or too brilliantly, but seemed to be on the 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 n.o.bility. A certain d.u.c.h.ess (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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 const.i.tution 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 Th.o.r.eau, John A. Andrew and Rev. J. M. Manning, pastor of the Old South church, were the ones who a.s.serted 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.sed among the world's great speeches, and it is certainly one of the most brilliant orations of either ancient or modern times. Certain pa.s.sages 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 surpa.s.sed any thing they had known of him before; and fairly quelled the mob by his courage, address, and personal magnetism.