Wendell Phillips Orator and Agitator By LORENZO SEARS Benjamin Blom New York TO RALPH CURTIS RINGWALT, ESQUIRE, AT WHOSE SUGGESTION THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail without it nothing can succeed. Conse quently, he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Agitation is ilie marshalling of a nations conscience to mould its laws SIR ROBERT PEEL. An Agitators purpose is to throw the gravest questions upon the conscience and intellect of the masses, because they are the ultimate governors in a republic WENDELL PHILLIPS. PREFACE WENDELL PHILLIPS was so closely identified with the most important episode of American history in the last century that his life must be considered largely in connection with it and its consequences. Known as the anti-slavery agitation, it assumed as one of its early phases the demand for immediate and unconditional abolition. To this cause Phillips gave his best years as the preacher of a crusade against an institution, at first national and later sectional, which finally came to be regarded as bad anywhere. Agitation of a disputed question was the method, untrammeled speech before the people the means, and superlative eloquence the manner of his warfare. In his later years he became the champion of other causes. To do him and his work justice, both should be contem plated from the present as the day of an accomplished purpose which was not generally approved in his own time nor correctly estimated. Yet, to be just to his contemporaries, it should be borne in mind thatthe progress of reforms is slow and the appreciation of them a gradual growth. The difference between him and most men of his generation was in his early apprehension of justice, humanity, and national consistency in a country calling itself free. The interest of his biography gathers around this difference, as well as around the later acceptance and endorsement of his main viii WENDELL PHILLIPS purpose by a large part of the nation. In both periods he should be accorded a fair presentation of convictions whose sincerity was equalled by their courageous and uncom promising utterance in the face of sufficient antagonism to make his persistence heroic. Aside from his interest to one and another as a reformer, his oratory is of exceptional value to all who are interested in the art of public speaking. Two volumes have been published, one with his own endorsement, giving all that type can preserve of some fifty examples of his speeches, lectures, and addresses. Besides these there are hundreds more printed in two weekly journals throughout a period of forty years, which have been read in order to trace the course of his thought on national, sectional, and other questions of importance. The drift of his comment is given in such abridgments and extracts as the limits and design of this book permit, together with examples of his oratory on widely differing occasions. To those who desire further acquain tance with entire addresses the volumes mentioned and files of the Liberator and Anti-Slavery Standard afford ample opportunity. Besides the privilege of listening to him on several occasions and reading information and comment in contemporary sheets by friend and foe, the author has foundparticulars of home life in the early biographies of Austin and Martyn, to which have been added reminiscences and letters by some who knew him well. Grateful acknowledgments are especially due to Colonel T. W. Higginson, Messrs. Frank B. Sanborn, Francis J. Garrison, William I. Bowditch, John P. Reynolds, Jr., Edward J. Carpenter, Mrs. Julia G. Blagden, and to others who have done what they could to add to memorials which PREFACE ix are remarkably few of a man who was oftener before the people and for a longer period than any other public speaker of his generation...
