Boston

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[Abolitionism – Boston] Phillips, Wendell; Yerrinton, J M WABAA

Wendell Phillips on the War

1861réf. List3000Boston Massachusetts: William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp 1861. Single sheet letterpress broadside measuring 18 x 24 ½ inches. Folded with small tears at folds and marginal damage; excellent to Near Fine. Offered here is a “phonographic report” i.e. it includes the audience’s reaction of a speech delivered by abolitionist Wendell Phillips 1811–1884 to the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society in Boston on April 21 1861. The report was printed in an extra of William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator newspaper. Shortly following the first Battle of Fort Sumter the speech finds Phillips throwing his full support behind the cause of war. He insists to his audience: “The anti-slavery enterprise to which I belong started with peace written on its banner. We imagined that the age of bullets was over; that the age of ideas had come; that thirty millions of people were able to stake a great question and decide it by the conflict of opinions; and without letting the ship of State founder lift four millions of men into Liberty and Justice. . Our mistake if any has been that we counted too much on the intelligence of the masses on the honesty and wisdom of statesmen as a class. . The North thinks—can appreciate argument—is in the nineteenth century—hardly any struggle left in it but that between the working class and the money kings. The South dreams—it is the thirteenth and fourteenth century—baron and serf—noble and slave. . Our struggle therefore is no struggle between different ideas but between barbarism and civilization. Such can only be settled by arms. Prolonged cheering.” We find three copies of this newspaper in OCLC. Of interest to scholars of Phillips’ work and of abolitionism especially Boston abolitionists. 1 “Wendell Phillips Dead: The Last Hours Of One Of The Apostles Of Abolition” The New York Times February 3 1884 1. William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp unknown books