Chapter XI: Wendell Phillips--Governor Andrew--Phillips's Conversion

There was one clear reason for the deadly hatred of the pro-slavery faction in Boston to Phillips. He was the real leader of the Anti-Slavery Party. If he could be silenced, the voices of the rest mattered little. During twenty years Garrison's influence had been declining, and Phillips had come steadily to the front. For the last ten years he had stood alone. It was his voice which rang through the land. His were the counsels which governed the Abolitionist band. His speeches were something more than eloquent; they were full of knowledge, of hard thinking; and the rhetorical splendour only lighted up a closely reasoned argument. What Emerson said of speeches and writings in general was absolutely true of Phillips's oratory; the effect of it was mathematically measurable by the depth of thought. He spoke all over the North. The Conservatives had no match for him; therefore he was to be put down by other means.

Passions ran, I think, higher in Boston during those winter months of 1860-1, and the early {105} spring, than before or since. Thanks to the pro-slavery faction on one side and the Abolitionists on the other, Massachusetts was within measurable distance of civil war within her own borders. After Fort Sumter and Baltimore, these passions found an outlet elsewhere. For a time, the two Northern factions merged into one people. But during all the years that have passed since I have known nothing quite like the state of feeling which prevailed that winter. The solid men of Boston thought they saw the fabric of society dissolving and their business and wealth and authority perishing with it. The solid world was to exist no more. Naturally, they fought for their lives and all the rest of it, and fought hard. Their hatreds were savage. Their methods were savage. We seemed to be getting back to the primitive days when men stood face to face, and the issue of battle became a personal combat. The Lawrences and their friends were generally a little stout for the business of battle, but the allies whom they brought with them to Tremont Temple and the Music Hall and the streets were good fighting material. During all this time the Abolitionists were, as they had been, a minority and on the defensive.

But this was the state of things which Governor Andrew had in mind when he challenged Phillips to show him the statute. He did not want to make the State of Massachusetts a party to this conflict within itself. If to keep order in the streets or to keep a platform open to Phillips he were obliged to move, he meant to have the law {106} with him. No refinements, no Judge-made law, no generalizations--for the common law after an Atlantic voyage and a hundred years' sleep is nothing--but a statute, printed, legible, peremptory, binding alike upon Governor and citizens. There was no such statute. If anybody had happened to think of it, no doubt there would have been, but there was not.

Therefore the Governor sat still. He was of such a bulk that it seemed as if, while he sat still, nothing could move. He was, in size and build, not wholly unlike Gambetta, though he had two eyes, both blue, as against the one black, fiery orb of the Genoese; and curling light brown hair instead of the black lion's mane which floated to Gambetta's shoulders; and a face in which sweetness counted for as much as strength. Like Gambetta, he was well served by those about him. He knew accurately what was going on, and all that was going on. He told me afterward he did not know on what information we acted, but he was astonished we knew so much about what the enemy intended. When I reminded him that my associations were mostly with the other side, he reflected a moment and said: "Yes, that explains a good deal." I did not think it necessary to add that, after Tremont Temple, we were on good terms with the police also; since Phillips's appeal to Andrew had been based on the alliance between the police and the Lawrence mob; an alliance which had in truth existed, at that time.

But the winter wore on. Twice after the {107} discourse on Mobs and Education, Phillips spoke in the Music Hall--January 20th, 1861, on Disunion, and February 17th, on Progress. Both times the mob supplied part of his audience inside and part of his escort outside. No violence was attempted. The police were too strong, and the example of Deputy Chief Ham had proved they were in earnest. If there was any violence, it was in Phillips's speeches and language. He was never more provocative. His forecast of the situation was influenced by his wishes and theories. All his life he had been preaching disunion as the one remedy for the slave. Disunion seemed now at last within reach, and at all costs he would do what he could to promote it. Indeed, he thought it already accomplished. Within six weeks after Lincoln's election South Carolina had replied by an ordinance of secession. Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia had followed, and all over the South United States forts and arsenals had been seized by State troops. What was Phillips's comment?

"The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice. The covenant with death is annulled; the agreement with hell is broken in pieces. The chain which has held the slave system since 1787 is parted."

He pronounced a eulogy on the Southern State which had led the way:

"South Carolina, bankrupt, alone, with a hundred thousand more slaves than whites, four blacks to three whites within her borders, flings her gauntlet at the feet of twenty-four millions of people--in defence of an idea."

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A month later he was in the same mood. It was a trait of Phillips--not a good one--that he attacked most mercilessly the men who hated slavery as much as he did, but could not go as far as he did. In this February speech there is a long lampoon on Dana; counsel for the slave in all the fugitive slave cases, but never denying--what lawyer ever did deny?--that there was a constitutional obligation to return fugitives. It is human nature, but not the best side of it.

Such a reproach came ill from a man who denounced the Constitution as a covenant with death because of the compromises with slavery imbedded in the great instrument of 1787. Of these compromises the rendition of fugitive slaves was one. Phillips himself could not deny it. The difference between him and Dana was that Dana would bow to the law and Phillips would not. Dana would do what he could by legal means to rescue the fugitive. He defended him in the courts. Phillips would have defended him in the streets. Both men were needful to the time. The Abolitionists were very far from disdaining the use of legal weapons. When Theodore Parker had been indicted and the Court, at the instance of his counsel, quashed the indictment on purely technical grounds, Parker exulted. "It is a triumph for the right. We have broken their sword."

There came, however, the moment when Phillips had to cast in his lot, for good or evil, with either North or South. He hesitated long. He thought and thought. He talked with his friends, with the {109} man in the street, with the men who had lately mobbed him. One morning he came into my office. His sunny face was clouded. He looked anxious, almost ill. He had to make the most momentous decision of his life; and he could not yet make up his mind. He said:

"I came to talk to you because I know you are against me. What I have said to you before makes no impression. You still think I ought to renounce my past, thirty years of it, belie my pledges, disown every profession of faith, bless those whom I have cursed, start afresh with a new set of political principles, and admit my life has been a mistake."

"Certainly not the last," I said, "and as for the others, are you not taking a rhetorical view, a platform view? But I will go further. I don't think it matters much what you sacrifice--consistency, principles, or anything. They belong to the past. They have nothing to do with to-day. The war is upon us. You must either support it or oppose it. If you oppose it, you fling away your position and all your influence. You will never be listened to again."

And so on. He sat silent, unmoved. Nothing I could say, nothing anybody could say, would move him. All his life long he had thought for himself; in a minority of one. It had to be so now. We talked on. Finally, I said: "I will tell you what I once heard a negro say: 'When my massa and somebody else quarrel I'm on the somebody else's side.' Don't you think the negro knows? Do you really doubt that a war between {110} the Slave Power and the North, be the result what it may, must end in Freedom?" I am not sure that I ever did hear a negro say that, but I hoped that Phillips would open his mind to the negro if not to me. And I think he did. I trust this little artifice of debate was not very wrong. I had to urge what I could, but I knew Phillips would decide for himself. He left saying, "I will see you again to-night." I went to his house. When I opened the door of the parlour, there lay Phillips on the sofa, asleep. Ten minutes later he awoke; lay silent for another minute, then said:

"We shall not have to discuss these things any more. I am going to speak next Sunday at the Music Hall for the War and the Union."

And he began at once to consider how he should announce his conversion. Having gone over, he took his whole heart with him. No compromise, no transition, not one word to retract, not a hint of apology or explanation. Yesterday an Abolitionist to whom the Constitution was a covenant with death and an agreement with hell. To-day a soldier for the Union. Presently he said:

"It will be the most important speech of my life. I don't often write, as you know, but I shall write this and will read it to you when it is finished."

Two days later he sent for me again and these were the first sentences I heard:

"Many times this winter, here and elsewhere, I have counselled peace--urged as well as I knew how the expediency of acknowledging a Southern Confederacy and the peaceful separation of these {111} thirty-four States. One of the journals announces to you that I come here this morning to retract those opinions. No not one of them."

I said: "Mr. Phillips, you will never get beyond that. They will not listen."

"Then they will be the last sentences I shall ever utter in public. But do you listen."

And he went on, in his finest platform manner and voice:

"No, not one of them. I need them all; every word I have spoken this winter; every act of twenty-five years of my life, to make the welcome I give this War hearty and hot."

He knew what he was about. When it became known he was to speak for the Union, Charles Pollen came to me and asked whether I thought Phillips would like the Music Hall platform hung with the American flag. "Yes," said Phillips, "deck the altar for the victim." And decked it was--a forest of flags; and the flags told the story, long before Phillips opened his mouth. There was not a note of remonstrance as he announced his refusal to retract. And again he went on:

"Civil war is a momentous evil. It needs the soundest, most solemn justification. I rejoice before God to-day for every word I have spoken counselling peace, but I rejoice also, and still more deeply, that now, for the first time in my Anti-Slavery life, I speak beneath the Stars and Stripes, and welcome the tread of Massachusetts men marshalled for war."

I never saw such a scene. The audience sprang {112} up and cheered and cheered and cheered. The hall was a furnace seven times heated. The only unmoved man was Phillips. He waited and once more went on:

"No matter what the past has been or said, to-day the slave asks God for a sight of this banner and counts it the pledge of his redemption. Hitherto it may have meant what you thought or what I thought: to-day it represents sovereignty and justice. Massachusetts has been sleeping on her arms since '83. The first cannon shot brings her to her feet with the war-cry of the Revolution on her lips."

And so on to the end. It was a nobler speech even than in the printed report, for that came from his manuscript and often he put his manuscript aside and let himself go. The inspiration of the moment was more than any written words. When it was over there was again a mob outside; a mob that would have carried the orator shoulder-high to Essex Street. The honest, strong face of the Deputy Chief of Police wore a broad smile. He had done his duty. His responsibilities were ended. He, too, had fought his fight. Phillips took it all coolly. It was such a triumph as comes to a man once in his career, and once only--the finest hour in Phillips's life. He never reached a greater height of oratory, nor an equal height of devotion. For his triumph was over himself.

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