Wendell Phillips (November 29, 1811 – February 2, 1884) was an American abolitionist, labor reformer, temperance activist, advocate for Native Americans, orator, and attorney.
According to George Lewis Ruffin, a black attorney, Phillips was seen by many black people as "the one White American wholly color-blind and free from race prejudice". Another black attorney, Archibald Grimké, saw him as ahead of William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Sumner as an abolitionist leader. From 1850 to 1865 he was the "preeminent figure" in American abolitionism.
Early life and education Phillips was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 29, 1811, to Sarah Walley and John Phillips, a wealthy lawyer, politician, and philanthropist, who was the first mayor of Boston."A Famous Career," Reading [PA] Times, February 4, 1884, p. 1. He was a descendant of Reverend George Phillips, who emigrated from England to Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1630. All his ancestors migrated to North America from England, and all of them arrived in Massachusetts between 1630 and 1650.The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips By George Lowell Austin pp. 17–27The "Old Northwest" Genealogical Quarterly, Volume 13 pp. 133–134Hofstadter, 1948, p. 140: “Wendell’s father, a wealthy lawyer with excellent mercantile connections, became the first Mayor of Boston” under its 1821 charter.
Phillips was schooled at Boston Latin School and graduated from Harvard College in 1831. 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 1835, he opened a law practice in Boston.Hofstadter, 1948, p. 140
Marriage to Ann Terry Greene In 1836, Phillips was supporting the abolitionist cause when he met Ann Terry Greene. She believed that this movement required not just support but total commitment. Phillips later acknowledged Ann's influence: “My wife made me an out and out abolitionist and she always preceded me in the adoption of the various causes I have advocated.”Hofstadter, 1948, p. 141 Phillips and Greene were engaged that year, and Greene declared Wendell to be her "best three quarters". They were married until Wendell's death, 46 years later.
Phillips's marriage and his embrace of abolitionism led to his exile from Boston's elite society and cost him his legal practice. Believing that their son had gone mad, Phillips's family considered having him placed in a sanatorium.Hofstadter, 1948 p. 140: “...Beacon Street turned their backs on him for joining the abolitionist movement.” And p. 141: “He became an outcast to the Boston aristocracy and lost his prospects as a lawyer…”
Abolitionism
On October 21, 1835, the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society announced that British abolitionist George Thompson would be speaking. Pro-slavery forces posted nearly 500 notices of a $100 reward for the citizen that would first lay violent hands on him. Thompson canceled at the last minute, and William Lloyd Garrison, editor and publisher of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, was quickly scheduled to speak in his place. A lynch mob formed, forcing Garrison to escape through the back of the hall and hide in a carpenter's shop. The mob soon found him, putting a noose around his neck to drag him away. Several strong men, including the mayor, intervened and took him to the most secure place in Boston, the Leverett Street Jail. Phillips, watching from nearby Court Street, was a witness to the attempted lynching.Hofstadter, 1948, p. 141: See here for a sketch of the same event, after which Phillips “soon grew close to the abolition movement.”
After being converted to the abolitionist cause by Garrison in 1836, Phillips stopped practicing law in order to dedicate himself to the movement. Phillips joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and frequently made speeches at its meetings. So highly regarded were Phillips' oratorical abilities that he was known as "abolition's golden trumpet".Hofstadter, 1948 p. 141-142: “He was probably the most effective speaker of his time.”
Phillips lectured widely throughout his lifetime and for which he was paid handsomely. From his speaking engagements, he earned $10,000 to $15,000 annually; for those programs concerning abolitionist themes, he charged no fee.Hofstadter, 1948 p. 142: Phillips was known for “charging high fees for his formal talks but speaking against slavery free of charge.” Phillips's cash donations to needy individuals and families was extensive. Of his estimated $150,000 income earned over 45 years, his itemized personal gifts amounted to over $65,000.Hofstadter, 1948 p. 142-143
Like many of Phillips' fellow abolitionists who honored the free-produce movement, he condemned the purchase of cane sugar and clothing made of cotton, since both were produced by the labor of slaves. He was a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, which assisted fugitive slaves in avoiding slavecatchers.
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. He disagreed with abolitionist Lysander Spooner and maintained that slavery was part of the Constitution, and more generally disputed Spooner's notion that any judge could find slavery illegal. An abolitionist pamphlet penned by Phillips outlined so compellingly that the US Constitution was a slaveholder's legal device to perpetuate slavery that it was recommended by a John C. Calhoun supporter for distribution in the South with only minor alterations.Foner, 1970 p. 85-86 And p. 139
In 1845, in an essay titled "No Union With Slaveholders", he argued that the country would be better off, and not complicit in their guilt, if it let the slave states secede:
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. (Quoted in Ruchames, The Abolitionists p. 196)
Phillips' alliance with the Garrisonians came with liabilities as many northerners, in both political parties, were devoted to the Union. Anti-slavery constitutionalists considered disunionism among abolitionists a threat to their cause.Foner, 1970 p. 138-139: “Most [anti-slavery] radicals realized that to advocate disunion in most parts of the North would be to court political disaster.”
On December 8, 1837, in Boston's Faneuil Hall, Phillips' 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 newspaper's office in Alton, Illinois, on November 7. Lovejoy died defending himself and his press from pro-slavery rioters who set fire to a warehouse storing his press and shot Lovejoy as he stepped outside to tip a ladder being used by the mob. His death engendered a national controversy between abolitionists and anti-abolitionists.
At Faneuil Hall, Massachusetts attorney general James T. Austin defended the pro-slavery mob, comparing their actions to 1776 patriots who fought against the British and declaring that Lovejoy "died as the fool dieth!"
The 26-year-old Phillips, infuriated by what he considered a slanderous distortion of the American Revolution, leapt to the stage and denounced Austin in a rousing extemporaneous speech that drew cheers from the audience. The episode catapulted Phillips into a leading position in the American abolitionist movement.Hofstadter, 1948 p. 141-142
Trip to Europe The married couple went abroad in 1839 for two years. They spent the summer in Great Britain and the rest of each year in mainland Europe. They made important connections and Ann wrote of them meeting Elizabeth Pease and being particularly impressed by the Quaker abolitionist Richard D. Webb. In 1840 they went to London to join up with other American delegates to the World Anti-Slavery Convention at the Exeter Hall in London. Phillips' new wife was one of a number of female delegates, who included Lucretia Mott, Mary Grew, Sarah Pugh, Abby Kimber, Elizabeth Neall and Emily Winslow. The delegates were astounded to find that female delegates had not been expected and they were not welcome at the convention.
Instructed by his wife not to "shilly-shally", Phillips went in to appeal the case. According to the history of the women's rights movement of Susan B. Anthony's and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Phillips spoke as the convention opened, scolding the organizers for precipitating an unnecessary conflict:
The efforts of Phillips and others were only partly successful. The women were allowed in but had to sit separately and were not allowed to talk. This event has been taken by Stanton, Mott, and others as the point at which the women's rights movement began.
Before the Civil War In 1854, Phillips made a speech at the Boston Courthouse where Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave, was being imprisoned; however, it was believed that he was not involved in the celebrated attempt to rescue Burns.
After John Brown was executed in December 1859, Phillips attended and spoke at his funeral, at the John Brown Farm in remote North Elba, New York. He met Mary Brown and the coffin in Troy, New York, where she changed trains, and expressed, unsuccessfully, his wish that Brown would be buried, with a monument, in Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which he felt would help the abolitionist cause. He spoke at the funeral and on the way home, repeated his speech the next night to a wildly enthusiastic audience in Vergennes, Vermont.
On the eve of the Civil War, Phillips gave a speech at the New Bedford Lyceum in which he defended the Confederate States' right to secede:
In 1860 and 1861, many abolitionists welcomed the formation of the Confederacy because it would end the South's 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. Twelve days after the attack on Fort Sumter, Phillips announced his "hearty and hot" support for the war.Wendell Phillips Orator And Agitator, 1909 p. 223 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 mid-1862, Phillips's 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.
Women's rights activism Phillips was also an early advocate of women's rights. In 1840 he led the unsuccessful effort at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London to have America's women delegates seated. In the July 3, 1846, issue of The Liberator he called for securing women's rights to their property and earnings as well as to the ballot. He wrote: