Wendell Phillips

(click to enlarge)
Wendell Phillips (credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born Nov. 29, 1811, Boston, Mass., U.S. — died Feb. 2, 1884, Boston) U.S. reformer and abolitionist. A wealthy graduate of Harvard Law School, he sacrificed social status and a prospective political career in order to join the antislavery movement. His reputation as an inspirational orator was established with his address at an abolitionist meeting in 1837 to protest the murder of Elijah Lovejoy. He became an associate of William Lloyd Garrison and lectured widely at meetings of the American Anti-Slavery Society, serving as its president from 1865 to 1870. He also advocated prohibition, woman suffrage, prison reform, regulation of corporations, and labour reform.

For more information on Wendell Phillips, visit Britannica.com.

Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), American abolitionist and social reformer, became the antislavery movement's most powerful orator and, after the Civil War, the chief proponent of full civil rights for freed slaves.

Wendell Phillips was born on Nov. 29, 1811, into a wealthy, aristocratic Boston family. Gifted, handsome, and brilliant, he excelled in his studies at Harvard, where he graduated in 1831, and in the study of law, which he undertook with the great Joseph Story. Phillips was admitted to the bar in 1834 and opened an office in Boston. In 1835, from his office window, he saw William Lloyd Garrison being dragged through the street by a mob, an event that changed his attitude toward slavery. Phillips's meeting with Ann Terry Greene, an active worker in the Boston Female Antislavery Society, increased his interest in the abolition movement. They were married on Oct. 12, 1837. He wrote later that "my wife made an out-and-out abolitionist of me, and always preceded me in the adoption of various causes I have advocated."

Phillips enlisted in the cause at a meeting on Dec. 8, 1837, to protest the death of antislavery editor Elijah Lovejoy in Illinois. After the attorney general of Massachusetts condoned the Illinois mob, Phillips sprang to the platform: his eloquent defense of Lovejoy catapulted him into the ranks of abolitionist leaders. Breaking with his family and friends and relinquishing his law practice, he joined Garrison and became, next to Garrison, New England's best-known abolitionist. The true reformer, Phillips said, must be prepared to sacrifice everything for his cause; he is "careless of numbers, disregards popularity, and deals only with ideas, consciences, and common sense." Like Garrison, Phillips attacked what he believed to be the "proslavery" Constitution, rejected political action, and ultimately demanded the division of the Union if slavery was not immediately abolished. A persuasive and elegant speaker, he could be so denunciatory that he was several times nearly mobbed.

During the early Civil War, Phillips censured Abraham Lincoln's reluctance to free the slaves, calling him "a first-rate second-rate man" whose "milk-livered administration" conducted the war "with the purpose of saving slavery." He welcomed the Emancipation Proclamation but violently opposed Lincoln's reelection in 1864, and in 1865 he resisted Garrison's attempts to terminate the American Antislavery Society. Phillips maintained that the African Americans' freedom would not be achieved until they possessed the ballot and full civil and social rights. Garrison lost, and Phillips remained president of the society until 1870.

Phillips's other causes included prohibition, women's rights, prison reform, greenbacks, an 8-hour day, and Labor unions. He helped organize the Labor Reform Convention and the Prohibition party in Massachusetts, and both nominated him for governor in 1870. A revolutionary idealist, he envisioned an American society "with no rich men and no poor men in it, all mingling in the same society … all opportunities equal, nobody so proud as to stand aloof, nobody so humble as to be shut out." His political involvement, however, and his increasing radicalism, which led him to advocate "the overthrow of the whole profit-making system …, the abolition of the privileged classes …, and the present system of finance, " alienated some of his friends and reduced his effectiveness as a reform leader.

Phillips remained popular on the lyceum circuit, speaking sometimes 60 times a year and earning up to $15, 000 annually. He died on Feb. 7, 1884.

Further Reading

Three excellent biographies of Phillips are Ralph Korngold, Two Friends of Man: The Story of William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, and Their Relationship with Abraham Lincoln (1950); Oscar Sherwin, Prophet of Liberty: The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips (1958); and Irving H. Bartlett, Wendell Phillips: Brahmin Radical (1961).

Additional Sources

Bartlett, Irving H., Wendell and Ann Phillips: the community of reform, 1840-1880, New York: Norton, 1979.

Sherwin, Oscar, Prophet of liberty: the life and times of Wendell Phillips, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975, 1958.

Stewart, James Brewer, Wendell Phillips, liberty's hero, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986.

(1811-1884), abolitionist, labor reformer, and orator. Born in Boston to a wealthy family of distinguished lineage, Phillips received his LL.B. from Harvard in 1834 and was admitted to the bar. But urged on by his wife, Ann Terry Greene Phillips, he soon abandoned his legal career for the cause of immediate slave emancipation. The attack by a proslavery mob in Boston on abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison in 1835 and the 1837 killing of abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois, sealed his commitment to the cause, and he soon emerged as one of the nation's most accomplished and well-known public speakers.

Garrison served as Phillips's model of abolitionism and became his closest friend. Both rejected the idea of participating directly in electoral politics, embraced the imperative of northern disunionism, and insisted on the equality of women. When these issues split the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, Phillips emerged as a powerful spokesperson for "Garrisonism" and became regarded as radical abolitionism's most able expositor of legal theory and social reform. He also displayed considerable independence of mind, rejecting Garrison's beliefs in religious millennialism, nonresistance, and human perfectibility. He developed a highly politicized version of republican ideology that justified abolitionist agitators as heroic guardians of popular liberty, demanded state legislation in favor of social justice, and was prepared to meet oppression with violence.

Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, Phillips's radical republicanism and Garrison's Christian perfectionism harmonized to supply their followers with inspirational leadership. At the same time, Phillips's republican ideology put him in close touch with beliefs that were widely shared. By the mid-1850s, he had become one of the nation's most popular public lecturers, traveling the Lyceum circuit and seeing his speeches reprinted in northern periodicals.

Phillips's influence extended far beyond the confines of organized abolitionism, making him a major force in the larger political struggles over slavery that led to the Civil War. He opposed the Mexican War and the Compromise of 1850, and called for defiance of the Fugitive Slave Law. In 1859-1860, his eloquent defense of the insurrectionist John Brown and his vehement insistence on northern disunion during the secession crisis aroused controversy, as did his criticism of Abraham Lincoln's emancipation policies during the course of the war. In 1864, he opposed Lincoln's reelection, arguing that the federal government owed the former slaves not only freedom but also land, education, and full civil rights. This demand led him to split with Garrison in 1865 when Garrison proposed to dissolve the American Anti-Slavery Society on the grounds that the Thirteenth Amendment had fulfilled its mission. Phillips became president of the society while many of his colleagues chose retirement, keeping the organized abolitionist movement alive until the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment enfranchised black males.

Thereafter, Phillips pursued the causes of temperance, woman suffrage, the prohibition of capital punishment, and labor reform, a crusade he linked to demands for racial equality for African-Americans. In 1870, Phillips ran unsuccessfully for the Massachusetts governorship as a Labor and Prohibition party candidate and remained active as a public speaker and social agitator until the late 1870s. As an orator, Phillips is best remembered for breaking free of the formal classical traditions of American rhetoric in favor of an informal, colloquial delivery.

Bibliography:

James Brewer Stewart, Liberty's Hero: Wendell Phillips (1986).

Author:

James Brewer Stewart

See also Abolitionist Movement; Garrison, William Lloyd.

Quotes:

"The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living."

"What is defeat? Nothing but education. Nothing but the first step to something better."

"One on God's side is a majority."

"The heart is the best reflective thinker."

"To be as good as our fathers we must be better, imitation is not discipleship"

"Aristocracy is always cruel."

See more famous quotes by Wendell Phillips

Wendell Phillips in his forties

Wendell Phillips (29 November 1811 – 2 February 1884) was an American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, and orator. He was an exceptional orator and agitator, advocate and lawyer, writer and debater.

Contents 1 Education 2 Abolitionism 3 Postbellum activism 3.1 Equal rights for Native Americans 3.2 Recognition 4 Well known quotations 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Education

Phillips was born in Boston, Massachusetts on November 29, 1811, to Sarah Walley and John Phillips, a successful lawyer, politician, and philanthropist. Phillips was schooled at Boston Latin School, and graduated from Harvard University in 1831. Afterwards, he went on to attend Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1833. In 1834, Phillips was admitted to the Massachusetts state bar, and in the same year, he opened a law practice in Boston. His professor of oratory was Edward T. Channing who criticized the flowery style of speakers such as Daniel Webster. He urged the value of plain talk which Phillips took to heart.

Abolitionism

On October 21, 1835, the Boston Female Society announced that George Thompson would be speaking. Pro-slavery forces posted close to 500 notices with the reward of $100 for the citizen that would first lay violent hands on him. But George Thompson canceled last minute, and William Lloyd Garrison was quickly scheduled to speak in his place. The lynch mob formed, Garrison escaped through the back of the hall, hiding in a carpenters shop. The mob then found him, putting a noose around his neck to drag him away. Fortunately, several strong men intervened and took him to the Leverett Street jail. One who witnessed this attempted lynching was a young Wendell Phillips, watching from Court Street. After being converted to the abolitionist cause by William Lloyd Garrison in 1836, Phillips stopped practicing law in order to fully dedicate himself to the movement. He joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and frequently made speeches at its meetings. Garrison was a newspaper writer who spoke openly against the wrongs of slavery. Phillips horrified his family when he joined the Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society. His family tried to have him thrown into an insane sanitarium. So highly regarded were his oratorical abilities that he was known as "abolition's Golden Trumpet". Like many of his fellow abolitionists, Phillips took pains to eat no cane sugar and wear no clothing made of cotton, since both were produced by the labor of Southern slaves.

It was Phillips's contention that racial injustice was the source of all of society's ills. Like Garrison, Phillips denounced the Constitution for tolerating slavery. In 1845, in an essay titled "No Union With Slaveholders", he argued for disunion:

The experience of the fifty years ... shows us the slaves trebling in numbers -- slaveholders monopolizing the offices and dictating the policy of the Government -- prostituting the strength and influence of the Nation to the support of slavery here and elsewhere -- trampling on the rights of the free States, and making the courts of the country their tools. To continue this disastrous alliance longer is madness. The trial of fifty years only proves that it is impossible for free and slave States to unite on any terms, without all becoming partners in the guilt and responsible for the sin of slavery. Why prolong the experiment? Let every honest man join in the outcry of the American Anti-Slavery Society. (Ruchames, The Abolitionistsp. 196)

On December 7, 1837 in Boston's Faneuil Hall, Phillip’s leadership and oratory established his preeminence within the abolitionist movement. Bostonians gathered at Faneuil Hall to discuss Elijah P. Lovejoy’s murder by a mob outside his abolitionist printing press office in Alton, Illinois on November 7. Lovejoy died defending himself and his livelihood from pro-slavery rioters who set fire to his printing office. When Lovejoy exited his office, he was engulfed in a hail of bullets. His death engendered a national controversy between abolitionists and anti-abolitionists. At Faneuil Hall, Massachusetts attorney general James T. Austin defended the anti-abolitionist mob comparing their actions to 1776 patriots who fought against the British. Deeply disgusted, Phillips spontaneously rebutted, praising that Lovejoy’s actions were in defense of liberty. Inspired by Phillips’s eloquence and conviction, Garrison and Phillips began a partnership to define the beginning of the 1840s abolitionist movement.

Anti-Slavery Society Convention 1840, painting by Benjamin Robert Haydon. Move your cursor to identify participants or click the icon to enlarge

In 1854 Phillips was indicted for his participation in the celebrated attempt to rescue Anthony Burns—a captured fugitive slave—from jail in Boston.

By 1860 many abolitionists welcomed the formation of the Confederacy because it would remove the Slave Power from its stranglehold over the United States government. This position was rejected by nationalists like Abraham Lincoln, who insisted on holding the Union together, while gradually ending slavery. Disappointed with what he regarded as Lincoln's slow action, Phillips opposed his reelection in 1864, breaking with Garrison, who supported a candidate for the first time.

In the summer of 1862, Phillips' nephew, Samuel D. Phillips died at Port Royal, South Carolina where he had gone to take part in the so-called Port Royal Experiment to assist the slave population there in the transition to freedom.

Postbellum activism

After African Americans gained the right to vote with the 15th Amendment in 1870, Phillips switched his attention to other issues, such as women's rights, universal suffrage, temperance, and the labor movement.

Phillips's philosophical ideal was mainly self-control of the animal, physical self by the human, rational mind, although he admired rash activists like Elijah Lovejoy and John Brown.

As Osofsky (1973) shows, Phillips's nationalism was shaped by religion. Its ideology was derived from the European Enlightenment, as expressed by Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. The Puritan ideal of a Godly Commonwealth, through a pursuit of Christian morality and justice, however, was the main influence on Phillips's nationalism. He would have fragmented the American republic to destroy slavery, and he sought to amalgamate all the American races. Thus, it was the moral end which mattered most in Phillips's nationalism.

Equal rights for Native Americans

Phillips was also active in efforts to gain equal rights for Native Americans, arguing that the 14th Amendment also granted citizenship to Indians. He proposed that the Andrew Johnson administration create a cabinet-level post that would guarantee Indian rights. Phillips helped create the Massachusetts Indian Commission with Indian rights activist Helen Hunt Jackson and Massachusetts governor William Claflin.

Although publicly critical of President Ulysses S. Grant's drinking, he worked with Grant's second administration on the appointment of Indian agents. Phillips lobbied against military involvement in the settling of Native American problems on the Western frontier. He accused General Philip Sheridan of pursuing a policy of Indian extermination.

Public opinion turned against Native American advocates after the Battle of the Little Bighorn in July 1876, but Phillips continued to support the land claims of the Lakota (Sioux). During the 1870s, Phillips arranged public forums for reformer Alfred B. Meacham and Indians affected by the country's "Indian removal" policy, including the Ponca chief, Standing Bear, and the Omaha writer and speaker, Susette LaFlesche Tibbles.

Recognition

In 1904 Wendell Phillips High School in Chicago was named in Phillips' honor.

Well known quotations

Wendell Phillips Memorial at Boston Public Garden.

Dedication ceremony on July 5, 1915

• "What gunpowder has done for war, the printing press has done for the mind."

• "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

• "The heritage of the past is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future."

• "To be as good as our fathers we must be better. Imitation is not discipleship".

• "The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living."

• "Physical bravery is an animal instict; moral bravery is a much higher and truer courage."

• "Revolutions are not made: they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back."

See also

• Dyer Lum, labor activist and abolitionist who ran for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts on Phillips' ticket.

References

• Irving H. Bartlett. Wendell Phillips, Brahmin Radical (1962)
• Hinks, Peter P, John R. McKivigan, and R. Owen Williams. Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition: Greenwood Milestones in African American History. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2007
• Hofstadter, Richard. "Wendell Phillips: The Patrician as Agitator" in The American Political Tradition (1948)
• Osofsky, Gilbert. "Wendell Phillips and the Quest for a New American National Identity" Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 1973 1(1): 15-46. ISSN 0317-7904
• Ruchames, Louis, ed. The Abolitionists (1963), includes segment by Wendell Phillips, "No Union With Slaveholders", January 15, 1845.
• Stewart, James Brewer. Wendell Phillips: Liberty's Hero. Louisiana State U. Press, 1986. 356 pp.
• Stewart, James B. "Heroes, Villains, Liberty, and License: the Abolitionist Vision of Wendell Phillips" in Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists (Louisiana State U. Press, 1979): 168-191.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Wendell Phillips

• Spartacus Educational Biography
• Article from "Impeach Andrew Johnson"
• 'Toussaint L'Ouverture' A lecture by Wendell Phillips (1861)

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)