• MEMORIAL WENDELL PHILLIPS. t^^uuyt/. MEMORIAL WENDELL PHILLIPS FROM THE CITY OF BOSTON. "It remains for us to devote ourselves to liberty, and the welfare of others, with the generous willingness to be and to do towards others as we would have others do to us." "As a sane man, a Christian man, and a lover of my country, I am willing to be judged by posterity." Wendell Phillips. 15 S T N : PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE CITY COUNCIL. MDCCCI. XXXIV. PRESS OF *ROCK WELLS CHURCHILL* BOSTON. CITY OF BOSTON. In Board of Aldermen, April 25, 1884. Ordered, That the Clerk of Committees be authorized, under the direction of the Committee on Printing, to prepare for publication the proceedings of the City Council upon the death of Wendell Phillips, together with the address upon his life and character delivered before the City Authorities, the L8th instant, l>y George William Curtis; that five thousand copies be issued, each member to receive fifty copies, the expense thereby incurred to be charged to the appro- priation for Incidentals. Passed in Common Council. Came up for concurrence. Concurred. Approved by the Mayor, April 26, 1884. A true copy. Attest: JOHN T. PR I F.ST, Assistant City Cleric. CONTENTS &Hc Action of the City Government Death of Wendell Phillips Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen Resolutions of the City Council Remarks of Alderman Curtis Remarks of Alderman Hall Remarks of Alderman Hersey . Action relative to attending funeral . Proceedings of the Common Council Remarks of Henry Parkman Remarks of William Taylor, Jr. Remarks of Harvey X. Collison Action relative' to attending funeral . Committee of Arrangements .Mayor authorized to procure a portrait Committee on Memorial Services Memorial Services .... Prayer by Rev. Minot .1. Savage Address of the Mayor Poem by Mrs. Mary E. Blake . Eulogy by George William Curtis . 1'is m Proceedings .... Page 11 11 11-14 11 12 12, 13 11 14 1 1 15, 16 16 17 17 17 IS 24 26 30 2i ; :;:, 65 ACTION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT. DEATH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. The death of Wendell Phillips occurred on Saturday even- ing, at quarter past six o'clock, February 2, 1884. Symptoms of the disease which terminated his life had been manifest for a year or more, but were not so serious as to cause apprehension. An acute form, however, developed itself on Friday, the twenty- fifth of January, and he became gradually worse, during the following week, until Saturday, when the fatal result took place. PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN. At the meeting of the Board of Aldermen, Monday, February 4th, Alderman Hall offered the following resolve and order : — Resolved, That the City Council of Boston receives with profound regret the sad intelligence of the death of Wendell, Phillips, one of Boston's most distinguished sons, whose unflinching devotion to the cause of human liberty, and uncompromising advocacy of the rights of the l^oor and oppressed of every race, creed, and color, entitle him to a most prominent position among the illustrious men of our times. Ordered, That the Chairman and one member of this Board, with such as the Common Council may join, be a (ii) 12 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. committee to represent the City Council at the funeral of Mr. Phillips. Alderman Curtis said : — I rise for the purpose of seconding the resolution. As it states, we have lost a distinguished citizen of Boston. He was a man of great mind, and possessed in- domitable perseverance. When he was about twenty-five years old, as we all know, he stopped the practice of his profession, and took up the cause of the oppressed slave. He advocated that cause until the slaves were liberated, and from that time until his death he never ceased to ad- vocate the cause of the poor and oppressed. In his death the poor of Boston have lost one of the best friends they ever had. He was always ready to serve his fellow-citi- zens. He had a kind heart as well as a great mind. "When we lose a man of that stamp it always makes me feel that a great gap has been opened in the community. When the question is taken I hope it will be by a rising vote. Alderman Hall said : — I present this resolution, Mr. Chairman, in profound re- spect for a man who had the courage of his convictions, and whose example in that respect I wish had been fol- lowed by all men everywhere, whose voices have gone before us, and who have made their mark in this world. In 1836, when Mr. Lovejoy had been murdered by a mob in Illinois, Mr. Phillips made his first great effort in Fan- euil Hall. He stood there, a young man, pleading for ACTION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT. 13 human rights and human liberty, speaking as fearlessly and eloquently as if he had been of more mature years. From that time to his death he was ever the champion of the cause of freedom everywhere. He lias spoken for the poor and oppressed in all countries. The money of the rulers of England never daunted him; but he fearlessly stood and spoke in behalf of the oppressed of the Green Isle. Everywhere, and upon all occasions, has his voice been raised in the interest of human rights. While I mourn his loss, and bow with profound sorrow at it, I feel happy to think that it is my lot to speak one word in honor of him who, from boyhood to a ripe old age, defended the rights of those who were oppressed by the rich and powerful of this world. Mr. Phillips did not outlive his usefulness. His philanthropic efforts continued to be exerted, and his intellect was unimpaired, during the last years of his life. One of his most scholarly and eloquent efforts was made some two years ago in the celebrated oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, in which he used these memorable words : — "Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on tin' throne; Vei that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own." I hope this Board will attend his funeral, either indi- vidually or as a committee of the whole, and pay their tribute of respect, not only to the deceased, but to the cause he espoused, and I believe that good will come from our having followed him to his last resting:- place. 14 MEMORIAL Or WENDELL PHILLIPS. Alderman Heksey said : — I believe the City Government of Boston should take recognition of the death of "Wendell Phillips, one of our most able and philanthropic citizens. I am happy to second the adoption of the resolution, and move, as an amendment, that the Board attend the funeral as a com- mittee of the whole. Alderman Hall accepted the suggestion, and the order was amended accordingly. The resolve and order as amended were passed by a unanimous rising vote. PROCEEDINGS OF THE COMMON COUNCIL. A special meeting of the Common Council was held on Tues- day, February 5, at 2 o'clock P.M., in response to the following message frorn His Honor the Mayor : — City of Boston, Executive Depaktment, February 4, 1884. To the Honorable Common Council of the City of Boston : — In conformity with an order passed this day in the Board of Aldermen, you are hereby requested to assemble in the Council Chamber to-morrow, Tuesday, the 5th ACTION OE THE CITY GOVERNMENT. 15 inst., at two o'clock P.M., to take such action in regard to attending the funeral of our late illustrious fellow-citi- zen, Wendell Phillips, as may harmonize with the action of the Board. AUGUSTUS P. MAKTIN. Mayor. The members were culled to order by the President, John II. Lee, Esq. The resolution and order adopted by the Board of Aldermen were read twice, and the question was upon their passage. Mr. Parkman, of Ward 9, said : — I believe, Mr. President, that this is one of the rare oc- casions when the City Government has been prompted to take official notice of the death of one of its citizens who has never held an official position either in the city, State, or nation. Rarely, if ever, has one who was foremost in so many agitations, and who has championed so many causes, not been forced to accept some public office where he might carry into effect the views for which he has labored. Perhaps he felt that his best work lav in the agitation of great public questions; in obliging people to think abontthe questions which he forced to their attention by his matchless gifts. His fearlessness in the expression of his opinions, and his pronounced views, always aroused active opposition. One class of fellow-citizens mobbed him for his views on the slavery question, while in later days his views on the money question, or on the use of the federal power in the Southern Slates, have aroused almost as lively an opposition from others, though not 16 MEMORIAL OE WENDELL PHILLIPS. manifested in a similar way. But now that he has passed away, and as we look upon his life as a whole, the very many-sidedness of his character, the different causes which he has advocated, have appealed to every one of our fellow-citizens. All opposition has ceased. We forget where we have differed, we remember only where we have agreed with him, and we can all unite in paying our last tribute to one who has occupied so prominent a position among us. We shall remember the power of his oratory which charmed us and held our attention spellbound even while we differed with his sentiments. Our children will read his speeches, and we shall point to him as one who courted not the popular applause, but who advocated what he believed was right. I move, Mr. Chairman, that when the vote is taken upon this resolution it be by a standing vote; and that a committee of twelve on the part of this body be joined to the committee of the Board of Aldermen to attend the funeral of our illustrious townsman. Mr. Taylor, of Ward 8, said : — As one of the younger members of the Council I wish to add my tribute to the memory of the departed. The people, sir, whom I have the honor in part to represent have spoken their eulogy by sincere manifestations of sorrow and regret. It is with the same feeling that he enkindled within me, and by which he won my admira- tion in earlier days for him as a man and as a citizen of my native city, that I humbly desire to offer my tribute at this time. I second the motion of the gentleman from Ward 9. ACTIOX OF TIIK CITY GOVERN MKXT. 17 Mr. Collison, of Ward 6, said : — I think that the eloquent remarks of the gentleman from Ward 9 and the remarks of the gentleman from Ward 8 have covered the ground entirely, and now is the time for no eulogy upon the dead. We all knew him personally; we all knew his gifts and his power, his hon- esty and his great, manly heart, and his sympathy for suffering everywhere and in every form. 1 agree, Mr. President, that this Council should in some form take official cognizance of the death of our great fellow-citizen; but I believe that Ave should go still further, and manifest our admiration for the man by voting to attend the funeral in a body. The Hoard of Aldermen has voted to attend in a body, and I think it would be well becoming and fitting- if this Council also should attend in a body. Therefore, Mr. President, I move, as an amendment to the motion of the Councilman from Ward 0, that the Council attend in a body. The first question was upon the passage of the order, and it was passed by a unanimous vote. The question was then upon tin 1 amendment offered by Mr. Collison, of Ward 6, that the Council attend the funeral in a body, and the amendment was adopted. On motion of Mr. I'akkmw, of Ward '.). it was voted that a committee of live be appointed to make the necessary arrange- ments; and the ('hair appointed as such committee, Messrs. Denney, of Ward 12: Parkman, of Ward !• : Fraser, of Ward 6; Blume, of Ward 11 ; and Donovan, of Ward .*>. 18 MEMORIAL OP WE^TDELL PHILLIPS. Mr. O'Flynn, of Ward 19, offered the following order : — That His Honor the Mayor be authorized to procure a true picture of Wendell Phillips, and have it placed in a conspicuous place in Faneuil Hall, the style of the same to be left to the good taste of His Honor; the cost to be taken from the fund for Incidental Expenses. The order was passed at a subsequent meeting of the Common Council, and concurred in by the Board of Aldermen. On motion of Mr. Murphy, of Ward 3, the Council adjourned. The following orders were passed by the City Council : — City of Boston, In Common Council, February 7, 1884. Ordered, That the President of this Council and five others, on the part of this Council, together with the Chairman of the Board of Aldermen and such as the Board of Aldermen may join, be a committee to make suitable arrangements for a eulogy upon the life of Wendell Phillips; the expenses thereof, not exceeding five hundred dollars, to be charged to the appropriation \\)Y Incidentals. Or celebrate one of these Thy true prophets, who spoke to a nation for Thee; who, though outcast and neglected long, at last was heard, because he uttered the eternal voice of God's eternal truth, that voice that never returns unto Thee void, but accomplishes that whereto Thou dosl send it. Our fathers long did east him out; but we the children — as has been done so many times in the past — are come to build his monument, — a monument of noble words to-day, — a monument of stone by and by. ]S\)w we pra} r that we may build a monument of deeds nobler than either of these; for shall we not commemorate him best by having the same divine spirit, the same love for humanity, in our hearts that was in his, by going 26 MEMORIAL OP WENDELL PHILLIPS. on and finishing the work which he began? Let us not be content until humanity is redeemed, until the poor are lifted up, the ignorant enlightened, until every chain is broken, and all ugliness is transformed into the divine beauty. And when we have accomplished this, the dream of the ages shall have been realized, the Desire of all nations shall have come, and the kingdom of God, which is the true kingdom of man, shall have descended from on high to abide with us here on the earth. Amen. The following hymn, composed for the occasion by Rev. M. J. Savage, was then sung by the quartette : — TRUTH. No power on earth shall sever My soul from Truth forever; In whate'er path she wander, I'll follow my commander. All hail ! all hail ! beloved Truth ! Whate'er the foe before me, Where'er her flag flies o'er me, Til stand and never falter: No bribe my faith shall alter. Lead on ! lead on ! thou mighty Truth ! And when the fight is over, Look down upon thy lover; He asks for well-done duly, To see thy heavenly beauty; Reveal thy lace, celestial Truth! Then followed the memorial poem, written by Mrs. Mary E. Blake in response to an invitation from the committee. The MEMORIAL SERVICES. 27 poem was read in a pleasing manner by Miss Belle Cushman Eaton, introduced to the audience, by the .Mayor, as the grand- niece of Charlotte Cushman. POEM. Glory, not grief, our theme to-day! The paean of his life to sing Who brought, to clothe our common clay, The royal mantle of the king. Glory, not grief! The heart is cold That drinks of sorrow's bitter cup, When, like the prophet saint of old, God's fiery steeds bear heroes up. Some tombs are altars. On them Same The beacon-lights of sacrifice, Like stars fair set in skies of fame To light the way for seeking r. Beside them lie the conqueror's The patriot's sword, the poet's pen, — Like kindling sparks to set ablaze The lire divine in hearts of men. Round thy dear name, thou mosl blessed, Because most loved! what memories throng, Now that thy virtues stand confessed, By death's pale light made doubly strong! Thou Bayard of our craven age, When even honor stoops to greed, ILnv white tin' fair, unsullied page Thy record leaves for men to read! Born in the purple, placed beyond The rare-; that lowlier fortune hears, What wiser insight, grave and fond. Led thee to mate thy life with theii ; Thy soul was like an angel's wing To stir the troubled pool of d >ubt, Till Bondage, bathing in the spring, 28 MEMORIAL OF WEKDELL PHILLIPS. Twofold thj- nature : one was shown To those oppressed of creed or race, Who knew thy tenderness alone — "Who saw the Saviour in thy face; While one, in stern and awful guise, Confronted the embattled throng, And with the lightning of thine eyes Struck down the armored might of Wrong. If, sometime, on the upward track, When frosty peril nipped the soul, And Prudence called her warriors back, Thy braver spirit stormed the goal, Smote giant Danger branch and root, And spurred thy lagging comrades on, — Shall we, who share the victory's fruit, Dare question how the heights were Avon? The winged arrows of thy speech, Barbed with sharp points of finest scorn, That tore their way through gap and breach, And forced a path for hopes forlorn; The broken fetter of the slave, The right of manhood to be free, — What nobler signs could make thy grave A sacred shrine to Liberty? On thy dead brow we place the crown, For words made living by thy breath ; For fearless thought, for high renown Of conquest from the jaws of death ; For this is Fame! But to thy bier Come gifts all other gifts above, — The freedman's prayer, the poor man's tear, A Nation's stricken cry of love ! The following ode, written especially for the occasion by Rev. M. J. Savage, was then sung by a select choir of ladies and MEMORIAL SERVICES. 29 gentlemen; the tune being the familiar one of "Glory, Hallelu- jah," and the audience joining in the chorus : — HUMANITY'S HERO. When the rights of man lead forward, then the hero turns not back, Though beneath the scaffold's shadow looms the torture of the rack ! While truth's angel flits before him, fearless following her track, He still goes marching on ! Glory, glory, hallelujah ! The people rise and follow, though they march o'er many a grave, For his high example thrills them, and the coward heart turns brave As each broken shackle, falling, shows a man for every slave, As they go marching on ! Glory, etc. Crouching in the age-long shadow, blinded by her lingering night, Woman rises to her feet at last, and hails the coming light, Echoing back with feeble voice the hero's shout of woman's right, As he comes marching on! Glory, etc. Labor deafened by the factory 1mm, or bent above the soil, Losing manhood's heart and manhood's hope in weary drudge and moil, Sees the better day ahead of honest wage for honest toil, As man goes marching on ! Glory, etc. The oppressed of eveiy nation, looking out across the sea, Catch the faint and far-off echo of the time that is to be, When each man shall own his manhood, and each hand and brain be free, As truth goes marching on! Glory, etc. Then shout aloud the hero's name with glad, exultant voice — All heroes who, like Piin.i.ii'S, have made manhood's right their choice, And as we shout we'll follow, and while following rejoice, And all go marching on, Glory, etc. 30 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. His Honor Mayor Martin next introduced the orator of the day, in the following words : — Ladies a^d Gentlemen : While great men live, the very qualities that make them great necessarily divide the people into parties, creating bitter opponents, as well as enthusiastic followers. But when one of them dies, the land that gave him birth adds one more to her grow- ing list of heroes. She is then anxious to see him in his true proportions, and assign him his appropriate niche in her temple of fame. She seeks to comprehend the spirit by which he was animated, and. to estimate the result of his life-work, so that her children may have one more example to stimulate them to heroic deeds. To attempt to recount the vicissitudes of any life, to delineate any character, and to say how large a part of the results of a great national forward movement are due to the efforts of any one man is, indeed, a delicate and diffi- cult task. How much more so when that man did not fight battles or frame acts of legislation; but, by the diffusive power of an almost matchless eloquence, created those mental and moral conditions out of which battles and legislation spring! These influences are almost as intan- gible and untraceable as are the effects of sunlight and tempest and air, which yet produce the grasses, the bud- ding leaves, and the flowers of spring. We are, therefore, singularly fortunate to-day in the man who has been chosen to give form and color to our indefinite feeling and thought. He is a gentleman fitted to speak by a life-long personal friendship, and by a hearty sympathy with the great underlying principles MEMORIAL SERVICES. 31 and general aims of him whom Boston, to-day, delights to honor, and, beyond this, lie has one more peculiar fitness for the task he undertakes. For, since the "silver tongue" is silent, perhaps there is no man left in America "whose rare and noble eloquence so fits him to speak in the stead of him whom we shall hear no more. It srives me, then, great pleasure to say that you will now listen to a portraiture of Wendell Phillips, drawn by the master skill of his friend, and our honored guest, Mr. George "William Curtis. Mr. Curtis whs received with a round of applause, and pro- ceeded to deliver his address, which occupied an hour and three quarters. It was listened to throughout with earnest attention, and was frequently interrupted by applause. At the conclusion of the Eulogy the audience united with the choir in singing " America," and an interesting feature at this point was the introduction, l>y the .Mayor, of Rev. S. F. Surra, the author of the familiar hymn. The benediction was afterwards pronounced by Rev. Mr. Savage, and the assembly dispersed. THE EULOGY, GEORGE WILLIAM CUKTIS. THE EULOGY. Massachusetts is always rich in fitting voices to commemorate the virtues and services of her illustrious citizens; and in every strain of affectionate admiration and thoughtful discrimination, the legislature, the pul- pit, and the press, his old associates who saw the glory of his prime, the younger generation which cher- ishes the tradition of his devoted life, have spoken the praise of Wendell Phillips. But his native city has justly thought that the great work of his life was not local or limited; that it was as large as liberty and as broad as humanity,, and that his name, therefore, is not the treasure of a State, only, hut a national possession. An orator whose consecrated eloquence, like the music of Amphion raising the wall of Thebes, was a chief force in giving to the American Union the impregnable defence of freedom, is a common benefactor. The West may well answer to the East, the South to the North, and Carolina and California, Minnesota and New York, mingle their sorrow with that of New England, and own in his death a common bereavement. At other times, with every mournful ceremony of re- spect, the Commonwealth and its chief city have lamented their dead sons, conspicuous party leaders, who, in high (35) 36 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. official place, and with the formal commission of the State, have worthily maintained the ancient renown and the lofty faith of Massachusetts. But it is a private citi- zen whom we commemorate to-day, yet a public leader; a man always foremost in political controversy, but who held no office, and belonged to no political party; who swayed votes, but who seldom voted, and never for a mere party purpose; and who, for the larger part of his active life, spurned the Constitution as a bond of iniquity, and the Union as a yoke of oppression. Yet the official authority which decrees this commemoration; this great assembly which honors his memory; the press, which from sea to sea has celebrated his name; and I, who at your summons stand here to speak bis eulogy, — are all loyal to party, all revere the Constitution and maintain the Union, all hold the ballot to be the most sacred trust, and voting to be the highest duty of the citizen. As we recall the story of that life, the spectacle of to-day is one of the most significant in our history. This memorial rite is not a tribute to official service, to literary genius, to scientific distinction; it is homage to personal character. It is the solemn public declaration that a life of tran- scendent purity of purpose, blended with commanding powers, devoted with absolute unselfishness, and with amazing results, to the welfare of the country and of humanity, is, in the American republic, an example so inspiring, a patriotism so lofty, and a public service so beneficent, that, in contemplating them, discordant opinions, differing judgments, and the sharp sting of controversial speech, vanish like frost in a Hood of sun- shine. It is not the Samuel Adams who was impatient THE EULOGY. ."57 of Washington, and who doubted the Constitution, but the Samuel Adam- of Faneuil Hall, of the Committee of Correspondence, of Concord and Lexington, — Samuel Adams, the father of the Revolution, — whom Massachu- setts and America remember and revere. The revolutionary tradition was the native air of Wendell Phillips. When he was born in this city, sev- enty-three years ago last November, some of the chief revolutionary figures still lingered. John Adam- was living at Quincy, and Thomas Jefferson ai Monticello; Elbridge Gerry was Governor of the State, James Madi- son was President, and the second war with England was at hand. Phillips was nine years old when, in L820, the most important debate after the adoption of the Constitution, — the debate of whose tumultuous cul- mination and triumphant close he was to be the greal orator, — began, and the second heroic epoch of our his- tory, in which he was a master figure, opened in the long and threatening contest over the admission of Missouri. Unheeding the transactions which were shaking the land and setting the scene of his career, the young boy, of the best New England lineage and prospects, played upon Beacon Hill, and at the age of sixteen entered Harvard College. His classmates recall his manly pride and reserve, with the charming manner, the delightful con- versation, and the affluence of kindly humor, which was never lost. He sauntered and gently studied; not a devoted student; not in tin' bent of his mind, nor in the special direction of sympathy, forecasting the reformer, but already the orator and the easy master of the college platform; and still, in the memory of his old companion-. 38 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. he walks those college paths in unfading youth, a figure of patrician port, of sovereign grace, — a prince coming to his kingdom. The tranquil years at the university ended, and he graduated in 1831, the year of Nat. Turner's insurrection in Virginia ; the year, also, in which Mr. G arrison issued the "Liberator," and, for unequivocally proclaiming the prin- ciple of the Declaration of Independence was denounced as a public enemy. Like other gently nurtured Boston boys Phillips began the study of law, and, as it pro- ceeded, doubtless the sirens sang to him, as to the noble youth of every country and time. If, musing over Coke and Blackstone, in the full consciousness of ample powers and of fortunate opportunities, he sometimes forecast the future, he doubtless saw himself succeeding Fisher Ames, and Harrison Gray Otis, and Daniel Webster, rising from the Bar to the Legislature, from the Legis- lature to the Senate, from the Senate — who knew whither? — the idol of society, the applauded orator, the brilliant champion of the elegant repose and the culti- vated conservatism of Massachusetts. The delight of social ease, the refined enjoyment of taste in letters and art, opulent leisure, professional distinction, gratified ambition, — all these came and whispered to the young student. And it is the force that can tranquilly put aside such blandishments with a smile, and aeeept alienation, outlawry, ignominy, and apparent defeat, if need be, no less than the courage which grapples with poverty and outward hardship, and climbs over them to worldly pros- perity, which is the tesl of the finest manhood. Only he THE EUIiOGT. 39 who fully knows the worth of what he renounces gains the true blessing of renunciation. The time during which Phillips was studying law was the hour of the profoundest moral apathy in the history of this country. The fervor of revolutionary feeling was long since spent, and that of the final anti-slavery contest was just kindled. The question of slavery, indeed, had been quite forgotten. There was always an anti-slavery sentiment in the country, but there was also a slavery in- terest, and the invention of the cotton-gin in 178!) gave slavery the most powerful and insidious impulse that it had ever received. At once commercial greed was allied with political advantage and social power, and the active anti-slavery sentiment rapidly declined. Ten years after the invention of the cotton-gin, the General Convention of the Abolition Societies deplored the decay of public interest in emancipation. Forty years later, in L833, while Phillips was still studying law, the veteran Penn- sylvania Society lamented that since 1794: it had seen one after another of those societies disband, until it was left almost alone to mourn the universal apathy. When Wendell Phillips was admitted to the bar, in 183-1, the slave interest in the United States, entrenched in the Constitution, in trade, in the church, in society, in historic tradition, and in the prejudice of race, had already become, although unconsciously to the country, one of the most powerful forces in the world. The English throne in 1625, the old French monarchy in 1780, the English aristocracy at the beginning of the century, were not so strong as slavery in this country fifty years ago. The grasp of England upon the American colonic- before the 40 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. Revolution was not so sure, and was never so menacing to liberty upon this continent, as the grasp of slavery upon the Union in the pleasant days when the young lawyer sat in his office, careless of the anti-slavery agita- tion, and jesting with his old college comrades over the clients who did not come. But on an October afternoon in 1835, while he was still sitting expectant in his office, the long-awaited client came; but in what an amazing form! The young lawyer was especially a Boston boy. He loved his native city with that lofty pride and intensity of local affection which are peculiar to her citizens. "I was born in Boston," he said long afterward, " and the good name of the old town is bound up with every fibre of my heart." In the mild afternoon his windows were open, and the sound of un- usual disturbance drew him from his office. He hastened along the street, and suddenly, a stone's-throw from the scene of the Boston Massacre, in the very shadow of the Old State-House, he beheld in Boston a spectacle which Boston cannot now conceive. He saw American women insulted for befriending their innocent sisters, whose children were sold from their arms. He saw an American citizen assailed by a furious mob in the city of James Otis, for saying, with James Otis, that a man's right to liberty is inherent and inalienable. Himself a citizen soldier, he looked to see the majesty of the people maintaining the authority of law; but, to his own startled surprise, he saw that the rightful defenders of law against the mob were themselves the mob. The city whose dauntless free speech had taught a country how to be independent he saw raising a parricidal hand against THE EULOGY. 41 its parent — Liberty. It was enough. As the jail rs closed upon Garrison to save his life, Grarrison and his cause had won their most powerful and renowned ally. With the setting of that October sun vanished forever the career of prosperous ease, the gratification of ordinary ambition, which the genius and the accomplishment of Wendell Phillips had seemed to foretell. Yes, the long- awaited client had come at last. Scarred, scorned, and forsaken, that cowering" and friendless clienl was wronged and degraded humanity. The great soul saw and under- stood. "So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When duty whispers Low, Thou must, The youth replies, i" can." Already the Boston boy felt what he afterwards said: K I love inexpressibly these streets of Boston, over which my mother led my baby feet; and if God grants me time enough I will make them too pure for the footsteps of a slave." And we, fellow-citizens, who recall the life and the man, the untiring sacrifice, the complete surrender, do we not hear in the soft air of that long-vamshed ( October dav, far above the riot of the stormy street, the benedic- tion that he could not hear, but whose influence breathed always from the ineffable sweetness of his smile and the gracious courtesy of his manner, " Inasmuch as thou hast done it to the least of these my brethren, thou hast done it unto me "? The scene of that day is an illustration of the time. As we look hack upon it. it is incredible. Bui it was uot until Lovejoy fell, while defending his press at Alton, in 42 MEMORIAL OF WEXDELL PHILLIPS. November, 1837, that an American citizen was killed by a raging mob for declaring, in a free State, the right of innocent men and women to their personal liberty. This tragedy, like the deadly blow at Charles Simmer in the Senate Chamber, twenty years afterward, awed the whole country with a sense of vast and momentous peril. The country has just been startled by the terrible riot at Cin- cinnati, which sprang from the public consciousness that by crafty legal quibbling crime had become secure. But the outbreak was at once and universally condemned, be- cause, in this country, whatever the wrong may be, reform by riot is always worse than the wrong. The Alton riot, however, had no redeeming impulse. It was the very frenzy of lawlessness, a sudden and ghastly glimpse of the unquenchable fires of passion that were burning under the seeming peace and prosperity of the Union. How fierce and far-reaching those passions were, was seen not only in the riot itself, but in the refusal of Faneuil Hall for a public meeting to denounce the appalling wrong to American liberty which bad been done in Illinois, lest the patriotic protest of the meeting should be interpreted by the country as the voice of Boston. But the refusal was reconsidered, and never, since the people of Boston thronged Faneuil Hall on the day after the massacre in State street, had that ancient hall seen a more solemn and significant assembly. It was the more solemn, the more significant, because the excited multitude was no longer, as in the revolutionary day, inspired by one unanimous and overwhelming purpose to assert and maintain liberty of speech as the bulwark of all other liberty. It was an II 1 1 : EULOGY. I.'! unwonted and foreboding scene. An evil spirit was in the air. When the seemly protest against the monstrous crime had bom spoken, and the proper duty of the da\ was done, a voice was heard, — the voice of the high officer solemnly sworn to prosecute, in the name of Massachu- setts, every violation of law, declaring, in Faneuil Hall, sixty years after the battle of Bunker Hill, and amid a howling - storm of applause, that an American citizen who was put to death by a mad crowd of his fellow-citizens for defending his right of free speech, died as the fool dieth. Boston has seen dark days, but never a moment so dark as that. Seven years before, Webster had said, in the famous words that Massachusetts binds as frontlets between her eyes, ft There are Boston and Concord, and Lexington and Bunker I [ill, and there they will remain forever." Had they already vanished? Was the spirit of the Revolution quite extinct? In the very Cradle oi Liberty did no son survive to awake its slumbering echoes? By the grace of Grod such a son there was. 1 Ie had come with the multitude, and he had heard with sympathy and approval the speeches that condemned the wrong; but when tin' cruel voice justified the murderers of Lovejoy, the heart of the young man burned within him. This speech, he said to himself, must be answered. As the malign strain proceeded, the Boston boy, all on fire, with Concord and Lexington tugging at his heart, unconsciously murmured, "Such a speech in Faneuil IEall must be answered in Faneuil Hall." " Why n >; answer it yourself?" whispered a neighbor, who overheard him. "Help me to the platform and T will." — and pushing and 44 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. struggling through the dense and threatening crowd, the young man reached the platform, was lifted upon it, and, advancing to speak, was greeted with a roar of hostile cries. But riding the whirlwind undismayed, as for many a year afterward he directed the same wild storm, he stood upon the platform in all the heauty and grace of imperial youth, — the Greeks would have said a god descended, — and in words that touched the mind and heart and conscience of that vast multitude, as with fire from heaven, recalling Boston to herself, he saved his native city and her Cradle of Liberty from the damning disgrace of stoning the first martyr in the great struggle for personal freedom. "Mr. Chairman," he said, " when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which placed the rioters, incendiaries, and murderers of Alton, side by side with Otis and Hancock, and Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American — the slanderer of the dead." And even as he spoke the vision was fulfilled. Once more its native music rang through Faneuil Hall. In the orator's own burning words, those pictured lips did break into immortal rebuke. In Wendell Phillips, glowing with holy indignation at the insult to America and to man, John Adams and James Otis, Josiah Quincy and Samuel Adams, though dead, yet spake. In the annals of American speech there had been no such scene since Patrick Henry's electrical warning to George the Third. It was that greatest of oratorical triumphs when a supreme emotion, a sentiment which is to mould a people anew, lifted the orator to adequate expression. Three such scenes are illustrious in our THE EULOGY. l.~i history: that of the speech of Patrick Henry at Williamsburg, of Wendell Phillips in Faneuil Hall, of Abraham Lincoln in Gettysburg, — three, and there is no fourth. They transmit, unextinguished, the torch of an eloquence which lias aroused nations and changed the course of history, and which Webster called "noble, sublime, godlike action." The tremendous controversy indeed inspired universal eloquence. As the cause passed from the moral appeal of the abolitionists to the political action of the Liberty party, of the Con- science Whigs and the Free-Soil Democrats, and finally of the Republican party, the sound of speech, which in its variety and excellence had never been heard upon the continent, lilled the air. But supreme over it all was the eloquence of Phillips, as over the harmonious tumult of a great orchestra one clear voice, like a lark high poised in heaven, steadily carries the melody. As Demosthenes was the orator of Greece asrainsl Philip, and Cicero of Pome against Catiline, and John Pym of England against the Stuart despotism, Wendell Phillips was distinctively the orator, as others were the statesmen, of the anti-slavery cause. When he first spoke at Faneuil Hall some of the most renowned American orators were still in their prime. Webster and Clay were in the Senate, Choate at the bar, Edward Everett upon the Academic plat- form. From all these orators Phillips differed more than they differed from each other. Behind Webster and Everett and Clay there was always a great or- ganized party or an entrenched conservatism of feeling and opinion. They spoke accepted views. They moved ial I ell ?::. =s - and were s par: of nor a I _ fol par _ an un- :n pu: to achieve his ur- _ ~ . an- nounced a the - ind burned in hi- With no pa and d _ shed order and - - appea. foi - _ m - . and s 5S - >uld m and the and u:_ mined a tranqui. and a L He spoke, and - eal, I - - . — _ - _ - EIow - s ecstas — - " _ THE EULOGY. I , quence. What was heard, what was -ecu. was the form of noble manhood, the courteous and self-possessed tone, the flow of modulated speech, sparkling with matchless richness of illustration, with apt allusion, and happy anec- dote, and historic parallel, with wit and pitiless invective, with melodious pathos, with stinging satire, with crack- ling epigram and limpid humor, the bright ripples thai play around the sure and steady prow of the resistless ship. Like an illuminated vase of odors, he glowed with concentrated and perfumed fire. The divine energy of his conviction utterly possessed him, and his " Pure and eloquenl blood Spoke in lii> check, and so distinctly wrought, That our might almost say his body thought." Was it Pericles swaying the Athenian multitude? Wa- it Apollo breathing the music of the morning from his lips? Xo, no! It was an American patriot, a modern sou of liberty, with a soul as firm and as true as was ever consecrated to unselfish duty, pleading with the Ameri- can conscience for the chained and speechless victims of American inhumanity. How terribly earnest was the anti-slavery contesl this generation little knows. But to understand Phillip- we must recall the situation <>(' the country. When he joined the Abolitionists, and for more than twenty years after- ward, Slavery sat supreme in the White House, and made laws in the Capitol. Courts of justice were its ministers and legislatures its lackeys, it silenced the preacher in the pulpit, it muzzled the editor at his desk, and the professor in his lecture-room. It set a price 48 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. upon the head of peaceful citizens, robbed the mails, and denounced the vital principle of the Declaration of In- dependence as treason. In States whose laws did not tolerate slavery, Slavery ruled the club and the drawing- room, the factory and the office, swaggered at the dinner- table, and scourged with scorn a cowardly society. It tore the golden rule from school-books, and from the prayer-book the pictured benignity of Christ. It prohib- ited, in the free States, schools for the hated race, and hunted women who taught children to read. It forbade a free people to communicate with their representatives, seized territory to extend its area and confirm its sov- ereignty, and plotted to steal more to make its empire impregnable and the free Republic of the United States impossible. Scholars, divines, men and women in every church, in every party, raised individual voices in earnest protest. They sighed against a hurricane. There had been such protest in the country for two centuries, — colo- nial provisions and restrictions, the fiery voice of Whit- field in the South, the calm persuasion of Woolman in the middle colonies, the heroism of Hopkins in Rhode Island, the eloquence of Rush in Pennsylvania. There had been Emancipation Societies at the North and at the South; arguments, and appeals, and threats in the Con- gress of the Confederation, in the Constitutional Con- vention, in the Congress of the Union ; there had been the words and the will of Washington, the warning of Jefferson, the consenting testimony of the revered fathers of the Government : always the national conscience some- where silently pleading, always the finger of the world steadily pointing in scorn. But here, after all the protest THE EULOGY. ID and the rebuke and the endeavor, was the malign power, which, when the Constitution was formed, had been but the shrinking Afrite bound in the casket, now towering and resistless. He had kicked his casket into the sea, and, haughtily defying the conscience of the country and the moral sentiment <>(* mankind, demanded absolute con- trol of the Republic as the price of union, — the Republic, anxious only to submit, and to call submission statesman- ship. If, then, the work of the Revolution was to be saved, and independent America was to become free America, the first and paramount necessity was to arouse the country. Agitation was the duty of the hour. Garrison was certainly not the first abolitionist ; no, nor was Luther the first Protestant. But Luther brought all the wandering and separate rays of protest to a focus, and kindled the contest for religious freedom. So, when Garrison Hung full in the face of Slavery the defiance of immediate and complete abolition, Slavery, instinctively foreseeing its doom, sprang to its feet, and joined, with the heroism of despair, in the death-grapple with Liberty, from which, after a generation, Liberty arose unbruised and victorious. It is hard for the survivors of a genera- tion to which Abolitionist was a word suggesting the most odious fanaticism — a furious declamation at once nonsensical and dangerous, a grotesque and sanctimonious playing with fire in a powder-magazine — to believe that the names of the two representative abolitionists will be written with a sunbeam, as Phillips say- of Toussaint, high over many an honored name. But history, looking before and after, readjusts contemporary judgments of 50 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. men and events. In all the essential qualities of heroic action, Luther, nailing his challenge to the Church upon the church's own door, when the Church was supreme in Europe; William Tell, in the romantic legend, serenely scorning to bow to the cap of Gesler, when Gesler's troops held all the market-place, — are not nobler figures than Garrison and Phillips, in the hour of the complete pos- session of the country by the power of slavery, demand- ing immediate and unconditional emancipation. A tone of apology, of deprecation or regret, no more becomes an American in speaking of the abolitionists than in speak- ing of the Sons of Liberty in the Revolution, and every tribute of honor and respect which we gladly pay to the illustrious fathers of American independence is paid as worthily to their sons, the pioneers of American freedom. That freedom was secured, indeed, by the union of many forees. The abolition movement was moral agita- tion. It was a voiee crying in the wilderness. As an American movement it was reproached for holding aloof from the American political method. But in the order of time the moral awakening precedes political action. Poli- tics are founded in compromise and expediency, and had the abolition leaders paused to parley with prejudice and interest and personal ambition, in order to smooth and conciliate and persuade, their duty would have been undone. When the alarm-bell at night has brought the aroused citizens to the street, they will organize their action. But the ringer of the bell betrays his trust when he ceases to startle. To vote was to acknowledge the Constitution. To acknowledge the Constitution was to offer a premium upon slavery by granting more political THE EULOGY. 51 power for every slave. It was to own an obligation to return innocenl men to unspeakable degradation, and to shoot them down if, with a thousandfold greater reason than our fathers, they resisted oppression. Could Ameri- cans do this? Could honest men do this? Could a great country do this, and not learn, sooner or later, by ghastly experience, the truth which George Mason proclaimed, — that Providence punishes national sins by national calami- ties? "The Union," said Wendell Phillips, with a calmness that enchanted while it appalled, — "the Union is called the very ark of the American covenant ; but has not idolatry of the Union been the chief bulwark of slavery, and in the words and deeds and spirit of the most vehement ' Union saviors' who denounce agitation can any hope of eman- cipation be descried? If, then, under the sacred charter of the Union, slavery has grown to this stupendous height, throwing the shadow of death over the land, is not the Union, as it exists, the foe of Liberty, and can we honestly affirm that it is the sole surviving hope of free- dom in the world? Long ago the great leaders of our parties hushed their voices, and whispered that even to speak of slavery waste endanger the Union. I> not this enough? Sons of Otis and of Adams, of Franklin and of Jay, are we ready for Union upon the ruins of freedom? Delenda Carthago! Delenda Carthago!" Even while he spoke there sprang up around him the marshalled host of an organized political party, which, raising the Constitution as a banner of freedom, marched to the polls to make 1 the Union the citadel of Liberty. He. indeed, had rejected the Constitution and the Union, as the bulwark of slavery. Hut he and the political host, 52 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. widely differing, had yet a common purpose, and were confounded in a common condemnation. And who shall count the voters in that political army, and who the gen- erous heroes of the actual war, in whose young hearts his relentless denunciation of the Union had bred the high resolve that, under the protection of the Constitution, and by its own lawful power, the slave Union which he denounced should be dissolved in the fervid glory of a new Union of freedom? His plea, indeed, did not per- suade his friends, and was furiously spurned by his foes. "Hang Phillips and Yancey together; hang the aboli- tionist and the fire-eater, and Ave shall have peace," cried mingled wrath and terror, as the absorbing debate deep- ened toward civil war. But still, through the startling flash and over the thunder-peal with which the tempest burst, that cry rang out undismayed, Delenda Carthago ! The awful storm has rolled away. The warning voice is stilled forever. But the slave Union whose destruction he sought is dissolved, and the glorious Union of freedom and equal rights, which his soul desired, is the blessed Union of to-day. It is an idle speculation, fellow-citizens, to what or to whom chiefly belonged the glory of emancipation. It is like the earlier questions of the Revolution: Who first proposed the Committee on Correspondence? Who first hinted resistance? AVlio first spoke of possible indepen- dence? It is enough that there was a noble emulation of generous patriotism, and happy history forbears to decide. Doubtless the Minutemen fired the first organized shot of the Revolution. But it was Paul Revere, riding alone at midnight and arousing Middlesex, one hundred and THE EULOGY. 53 nine years ago to-night, that brought the Massachusetts farmers to stand embattled on Lexington Green and Con- cord Bridge. For his great work of arousing the countr} and pierc- ing the national conscience Phillips was especially fitted, not only by the commanding will and genius of the orator, but by the profound sincerity of his faith in the people. The party leaders of his time had a qualified faith in the people. His was unqualified. To many of his fellow-citizens it seemed mad, quixotic, whimsical, or merely feigned. To some of them, even now, he appeal's to have been only an eloquent demagogue. But his life is the reply. To no act of his, to no private advantage sought or gained, to no use of his masterly power except to promote purposes which lie believed to be essential to the public welfare, could they ever point who charged him with base motives or personal ends. No man, indeed. can take a chief part in tumultuous national controversy without encountering misjudgment, and reproach, and unmeasured condemnation. But it does not affeel the lofty patriotism of the American Revolution that Adam Smith believed it to be stimulated by the vanity of colonial shopkeepers. It does not dim the lustre of the Methodist revival of religious sentiment in England that the bishops branded it as a vulgar and ignorant enthu- siasm. Wendell Phillips held, with John Bright, thai the first five hundred men who pass in the Strand would make as good a .Parliament as that which sits at St. Stephen's. A student of history, and a close observer of men, he rejected that fear of the multitude which springs from the feeding that the many are ignorant, while 54 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. the few are wise; and he believed the saying, too profound for Talleyrand, to whom it is ascribed, that everybody knows more than anybody. The great argument for popular government is not the essential righteousness of a majority, but the celestial law which subordinates the brute force of numbers to intellectual and moral ascen- dency, as the immeasurable floods of ocean follow the moon. Undisturbed by the most rancorous hostility, as in the meetings at the Music Hall in this city in the winter of secession, he looked calmly at the mob, and behind the drunken Philip he saw Philip the King. The huge wrongs and crimes in the annals of the race, the wars that have wasted the world and deso- lated mankind, he knew to be the work of the crowned and ruling minority, not of the mass of the people. The companion of his boyhood, and his college class- mate, Motley, with generous sympathy and vivid touch, that gave new beauty to the old heroic story, had shown that not from the palace of Charles the Fifth, not from luxurious Versailles, but from the huts of Dutch Island- ers, scattered along the hard coast of the ISTorth Sea, came the genius of Liberty to rescue modern Europe from hopeless despotism. Nay, with his own eyes, sad- dened and surprised, Phillips saw that, in the imme- diate presence of a monstrous and perilous wrong to human nature, prosperous and comfortable America angrily refused to hear; and that, while humanity lay bruised and bleeding by the way, the polished society of the most enlightened city in the Union passed by disdainful on the other side. But while he cherished this profound faith in the THE EULOGY. 55 people, and because he cherished it, he never flattered the mob, nor hung upon its neck, nor pandered to its passion, nor suffered its foaming hate or its exulting enthusiasm to touch the calm poise of bis regnant soul. Those who were eager to insult and deride and .silence him when he pleaded for the negro, wept and shouted and rapturously crowned him when he paid homage to O'Connell, and made O'Connell's cause his own. Bui the crowd did not follow him with huzzas. lie moved in solitary majesty, and if from his smooth speech a light- ning flash of satire or of scorn struck a cherished lie, or an honored character, or a dogma of the parly creed, and the crowd burst into a furious tempesl of dissent, lie beat it into silence with uncompromising iteration. If it tried to drown his voice, be turned to the reporters, and over the raging tumult calmly said, w Howl on: I speak to thirty millions here! " There was another power in bis speech sharper than in the speech of any other American orator, — an unsparing invective. The abolition appeal was essentially iconoclas- tic, and the method of a reformer at close quarters with a mighty system of wrong cannot be measured by the standards of cool and polite debate. Phillips did nol shrink from the sternest denunciation, or ridicule, or scorn of those who seemed to him recreant to freedom and humanity, however enshrined they might be in public admiration, with whatever official dignity invested, with whatever softer graces of accomplishment endowed. The idols ' of a purely conventional virtue he delighted to shatter, because no public enemy seemed to him more deadly than the American who made moral cowardice o<> MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. respectable. He felt that the complacent conformity of Northern communities was the strength of slavery, and the man who would return a fugitive slave, or with all the resources of sophistry defend his return, upon a plea of Constitutional obligation, was, in his view, a man who would do an act of cruel wickedness to-day to avoid a vague and possible mischance hereafter. If the plea were sound in the case of one man; if one innocent man was to be an outcast from protecting laws, from effective sym- pathy, and from humanity, because he had been unspeak- ably wronged, — then it was as sound in the case of every such man, and the Union and the Constitution rested upon three million crimes. Was this endurable? Should an offence so inhuman as deliberate obedience to laws which compelled a man to do to another what he would not hesi- tate, amid the applause of all men, to kill that other for attempting to do to him, — should such an offence be condoned by courteous admonition and hesitating doubt? Should the partiality of friendship, should the learning, renown, or public service of the offender, save him from the pillory of public scorn? If Patrick Henry made the country ring with the name of the dishonest contractor in the war, should the name of the educated American who conspires with the slaveholders against the slave be too sacred for obloquy? No epithetis too blistering for John Brown, who takes his life in his hand that he may break the chain of the slave. Shall the gentleman whose com- pliance weakens the moral Gbre of New England, and fastens the slave's chain more hopelessly, go unwhipped of a single word of personal rebuke? Such questions he did not ask; hut they ask themselves, as to-day we turn TIIK EULOGY. .",7 the pages that still quiver with his blasting words and recall the mortal strife in which he si I. Doubtless his friends, who knew that well-spring <>(* sweel waters, his heart, and who, like him, were sealed to the service of emancipation, sometimes grieved and recoiled amazed from his terrible arraignment. He knew the penalty of his course. He paid it cheerfully. Bui history will record that the orator who, in that supreme exigency of liberty, pitilessly whipped by name the aiders and abettors of the crime against humanity, made such complicity in- every intelligent community infinitely more arduous, and so served mankind, public virtue, and the State. But more than this. The avowed and open opponents of the anti-slavery agitation could not justly complain of his relentless pursuit. Prom them he received the blows that in turn he did not spare, lint others, his friends, soldiers of the same army, although in other divisions and upon a different route, marching against the same foe, — did they, too. feel those shafts of fire? How many a Massachusetts man, whose name the Commonwealth will canonize with his, loyal with his own fidelity to the common cause, he sometimes taunted as recreanl and scourged as laggard! How many leaders in other Slate-, statesmen beloved and revered, who, in other ways than his, fought the battle of liberty, with firmness in the right, as God gave them to see the right, and who live in national gratitude and among the great in histon for- evermore, did not those dauntless lip- seem sometimes cruelly to malign! w Blame not this plainness of speech," he said; "I have a hundred friends, as brave souls as God ever made, whose hearths are not as safe after honored 58 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. men make such speeches." He knew that his ruth- less words closed to him homes of friendship and hearts of sympathy. He saw the amazement, he heard the con- demnation; but, like the great apostle preaching" Christ, he knew only humanity, and humanity crucified. Tongue of the dumb, eyes of the blind, feet of the lame, his voice alone, among the voices that were everywhere heard and heeded, was sent by God to challenge every word, or look, or deed that seemed to him possibly to palliate oppression or to comfort the oppressor. Divinely commissioned, he was not, indeed, to do injustice; but the human heart is very patient with the hero who, in his strenuous and sub- lime conflict, if sometimes he does not clearly see and sometimes harshly judges, yet, in all his unsparing assault, deals never a blow of malice, nor of envy, nor of personal gratification, — the warrior who grasps at no prizes for which others strive, and whose unselfish peace no laurels of Miltiades disturb. For a quarter of a century this was the career of "Wendell Phillips. His life had no events; his speeches were its only incidents. Xo public man could pass from us whose death, like his, would command universal attention, whose story would not display a splendid list of special achievements, of various official services, as of treaties skilfully negotiated, of legislative measures wisely adjusted, of imposing professional triumphs, of devoted party following, of an immense personal associa- tion, such as our ordinary political controversy and the leadership of genius and eloquence produce. But that official participation in political action and that peculiar personal contact with society were wanting in the life THE EULOGY. 59 of Wendell Phillips. How strong, indeed, his moral ascendency over the public mind; how warm the ad- miration; how fond the affection in which, at a little distance, and as became the supreme reserve of his nature, he was held, let this scene, like thai of his burial, bear witness. But during the long- crusade of his life he was the most solitary of eminent American figures. In the general course of affairs he took little part. He had no share in the conduct of* the associations for every purpose, scientific, literary, charitable, moral, or other, with which every American community abounds. In ordinary society, at the club and the public dinner, at the as-embly and upon the ceremonial occasion, he was as unknown as in legislative halls or in public offices. Partly it was thai reserve, partly that method of his pub- lic speech, withheld him; partly he felt the air of social complaisance, like the compromising atmosphere of legis- latures, to be unfriendly to the spirit and objects of his life, and partly his liberal hand preferred to give where there could be no return. Vet, in the political arena, had he cared to engage, no man was more amply equipped than lie, by natural powers and taste and adaptation, by special study and familiarity with history and litera- ture, by exquisite tact and gay humor and abounding affability, by all the qualities that in public life make a great party leader, — a leader honored and beloved. And in that other circle, that "elevated sphere" in which Marie Antoinette appeared, "glittering like the morning-star, full of life and splendor and joy,*' that decorated world of social refinement into which he was born, there would have been no more fascinating 60 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. or courtly figure, could he have forborne the call of conscience, the duty of his life. When the war ended, and the specific purpose of his relentless agitation was accomplished, Phillips was still in the prime of life. Had his mind recurred to the dreams of earlier years; had he desired, in the fulness of his fame and the maturity of his powers, to turn to the political career which the hojjes of the friends of his youth had forecast, — I do not doubt that the Massachusetts of Sumner and of Andrew, proud of his genius, and owning his immense service to the triumphant cause, — although a service beyond the party line, and often apparently directed against the party itself, — would have gladly summoned him to duty. It would, indeed, have been a kind of peerage for this great Commoner. But not to repose and peaceful honors did his earnest soul incline. "Xow that the field is won," he said gayly to a friend, " do you sit by the camp-fire, but I will put out into the under- brush." The slave, indeed, was free; but emancipation did not free the agitator from his task. The client that suddenly appeared before him on that memorable October day was not an oppressed race alone, — it was wronged Humanit}^; it was the victim of unjust systems and unequal laws; it was the poor man, the weak man, the unfortunate man, whoever and wherever he might be. This was the cause that he would still plead in the forum of public opinion. "Let it not be said," he wrote to a meeting of his old abolition com- rades, two months before his death, " that the old abolitionist stopped with the negro, and was never THE EULOGY. I'll able to see that the same principles claimed his utmost effort to protect all labor, white and black, and to further the discussion <>f every claim of humanity." Was this the habit of mere agitation, the restless dis- content that follows great achievement? There were those who thought so. But they were critics of a tem- perament which did not note that, with Phillips, agita- tion was a principle, and a deliberately chosen method to definite ends. There were still vast questions springing from the same root of selfishness and injustice as the question of slavery. They must force a hearing in the same way. He would not adopt in middle life the career of politics, which he had renounced in youth, however seductive that career might be, whatever its opportunities and rewards, because the purpose had grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength, to form public opinion rather than to represent it in making or in exe- cuting the laws. To form public opinion upon vital public questions by public discus-ion, — but by public discussion absolutely fearless and sincere, and conducted with honest faith in the people to whom the argument was addressed, — this was the chosen task of his life; this was the public service which be had long performed, and this he would still perform, and in the familiar way. His comprehensive philanthropy had made him, even during the anti-slavery contest, the untiring advocate of other great reforms. His powerful presentation of the justice and reason of the political equality of women, at Worcester, in L851, more than any other single impulse, launched that question upon the sea of popular contro- versy. In the general statement of principle nothing has 62 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. been added to that discourse; in vivid and effective elo- quence of advocacy it has never been surpassed. All the arguments for independence echoed John Adams in the Continental Congress. All the pleas for applying the American principle of representation to the wives and mothers of American citizens echo the eloquence of Wendell Phillips at Worcester. His, also, was the voice that summoned the temperance voters of the Common- wealth to stand up and be counted; the voice which reso- lutely and definitely exposed the crime to which the busy American mind and conscience are at last turning, — the American crime against the Indians. Through him the sorrow of Crete, the tragedy of Ireland, pleaded with America. In the terrible experience of the early anti- slavery debate, when the Church and refined society seemed to be the rampart of Slavery, he had learned pro- found distrust of that conservatism of prosperity which chills human sympathy and narrows the conscience. So the vast combinations of capital in these later days, with their immense monopolies and imperial power, seemed to him sure to corrupt the government, and to obstruct and threaten the real welfare of the people. He felt, there- fore, that what is called the respectable class is often really — but unconsciously and with a generous purpose, not justly estimating its own tendency — the dangerous class. He was not a party politician; he cared little for parties or for party leaders. But any political party which, in his judgment, represented the dangerous ten- dency was a party to be defeated in the interest of the peace and progress of all the people. But his judgment, always profoundly sincere, was it THE EULOGY. 63 not sometimes profoundly mistaken? N<> nobler friend of freedom and of man than Wendell Phillips ever breathed upon this continent, and no man's service to freedom surpasses his. But before the war he demanded peaceful disunion; yet it was the Union in arms that saved liberty. During the war he would have superseded Lincoln; but it was Lincoln who freed the slaves. He pleaded for Ireland, tortured by centuries of misrule; and while every generous heart followed with sympathy the pathos and the power of his appeal, the jusl mind recoiled from the sharp arraignment of the truest friends in England that Ireland ever had. I know it all: luit I know also, and history will remember, thai the slave Union which he denounced is dissolved; that it was the heart and conscience of the nation, exalted by his moral appeal of agitation, as well as by the enthusiasm of patriotic war, which held up the hands of Lincoln, and upon which Lincoln leaned in emancipating the slaves; and that only by indignant and aggressive appeals like his has the heart of England ever opened to Irish wrong. No man, I say, can take a preeminent and effective part in contentions that shake nations, or in the discussion of great national policies, of foreign relations, of domestic economy and finance, without keen reproach and fierce misconception. "But death," says Bacon, K bringeth good fame." Then, if moral integrity remain unsoiled, the purpose pure, blameless the life, and patriotism, as shining as the sun, conflicting views and differing coun- sels disappear, and, firmly fixed upon character and actual achievement, good fame rests secure. Eighty 64 MEMORIAL OP WENDELL PHILLIPS. years ago, in this city, how unsparing was the denuncia- tion of John Adams for betraying and ruining his party; for his dogmatism, his vanity, and ambition; for his exasperating impracticability, — he, the Colossus of the Revolution! And Thomas Jefferson, — I may truly say what the historian says of the Saracen mothers and Richard Coeur de Leon, that the mothers of Boston hushed their children with fear of the political devil incarnate of Virginia. But when the drapery of mourn- ing shrouded the columns and overhung the arches of Faneuil Hall, Daniel Webster did not remember that sometimes John Adams was imprudent, and Thomas Jefferson sometimes unwise. He remembered only that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were two of the greatest of American patriots, and their fellow-citizens of every party bowed their heads and said. Amen! I am not here to declare that the judgment of Wendell Phil- lips was always sound, nor his estimate of men always just, nor his policy always approved by the event. He would have scorned such praise. I am not here to eulogize the mortal, but the immortal. He, too, was a great American patriot; and no American life — no, not one — offers to future generations of his countrymen a more priceless example of inflexible fidelity to conscience and to public duly; and no American more truly than he purged the national name of its shame, and made the American flag the flag of hope for mankind. Among her noblest children his native city will cherish him, and gratefully recall the unbending Puritan soul that dwelt in a form so gracious and urbane. The plain house in which lie lived, — severely plain, because the THE EULOGY . 65 welfare of the suffering and the slave were preferred to book and picture, and every fair device of art, — the house to which the iNorth Star led the trembling fugitive, and which the unfortunate and the friendless knew; the radiant figure passing swiftly through these streets, plain as the house from which it came, regal with a royalty beyond that of kings; the ceaseless charity untold; the strong, sustaining heart of private friendship; the sacred domestic affection that must not here be named; the eloquence which, like the song of Orpheus, will fade from living memory into a doubtful tale; that great scene of his youth in Faneuil Hall; the surrender of ambition; the mighty agitation and the mighty triumph with which his name is forever blended; the consecration of a life hidden with God in sympathy with man, — these, all these, will live among your immortal traditions, heroic even in your heroic story. But not yours alone. As year- go by, and only the large outlines of lofty American characters and careers remain, the wide republic will confess the bene- diction of a life like this, and gladly own that if, with per- fect faith, and hope assured, America would still stand and "bid the distant generations hail," the inspiration of her national life must be the sublime moral courage, the all-embracing humanity, the spotless integrity, the absolutely unselfish devotion of great powers t<> great public ends, which were the glory of Wendell Phillips. FINAL PROCEEDINGS. FINAL PROCEEDINGS. At a meeting of the Board of Aldermen, held on the twenty- first of April, 1884, Alderman Charles II. Hersey offered the following resolutions, which were unanimously adopted: — Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council be ex- pressed to George William Curtis for his exceed- ingly able and interesting address on the life and character of Wendell Phillips, delivered before the City Council, the 18th inst, and that Mr. Curtis be re- quested to furnish a copy of his address for publication. Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council be ex- pressed to the trustees of Tremont Temple for their courtesy in allowing the city the free use of their hall, the 18th inst., upon the occasion of the memorial services in honor of Wendell Phillips. Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council be ex- pressed to Mrs. Mary E. Blake for the beautiful and appropriate poem composed by her, at the City's request, for the memorial services, on the L8th inst., in honor of Wendell Phillips. Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council be ex- pressed to Miss Belle Cushman Eaton for the grace- ful and acceptable manner in which she tilled the position (69) 70 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. of reader, the 18th inst., upon the occasion of the memo- rial services in honor of Wendell Phillips. Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council arc due to the ladies and gentlemen who so acceptably performed the musical portion, of the memorial services, on the 18th inst., in honor of Wendell Phillips. Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council be ex- pressed to Rev. M. J. Savage for performing the duties of chaplain at the memorial services, on the 18th inst., in honor of Wendell Phillips; and also for his appropri- ate poetical contributions, which added to the interest of the occasion. The Common Council, on the twenty-fourth of April, concurred in the passage of the resolutions, and they were approved by the Mayor, April 28,' 1884. 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