Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1884-02-08
MendeII phlIIIn..

Wendell Phillips.
In tho death of Wendell Phillips, which &C.
Cured at his homo in Boston, last Saturday
evening, after weeks illness from heart
disease, the curtain falls upon tho last of the
great actors in the great anti.savery crusade
in this country. MIR. Phillips was born in
Boston, Nov. 20, 1911. His father, John
Phillips, was tho first mayor of the city.
Graduated from Harvard college in 1881, he
entered the Cambridge law school, and was
soon afterward admitted to the Suffolk bar.
One year afterward occurred the celebrated
attack Of the 'broadcloth mob" on a meet
ing of the Women's Auti-Slavory society at
which William Lloyd Garrison was assisting
and which was obliged to disperse, Mr.. Garri-
son being dragged through the streets by
means Of a rope tied about his body, barely
escaping death. Those were tumultuous
times in Boston, and many souls were stirred
by them there and elsewhere in the north ;
but nowhere was soul fred with greater in
dgnntion than was that of Phillips, who, not
yet % years Of age, witnessed these mon
strous doings. Not only do the biographers
trace to this scene tho beginning of Mr..
Phillips's anti-slavery enthusiasm they also
find in 1t one of the first impulses that after
ward made him an advocate of the rights OF
women.
One year later Mr.. Phillips was found for
mally enrolled among the Garrison abolition
lists, and in 1887 he made his first great mark
as a public orator. 1t was at Faneuil hall in
Boston, when a public meeting had been
called to protest against the murder at Alton,
ILL.,, of the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, the ed
itor of an antislavery newspaper At first
the audience had been indisposed to hear Mr..
Phillips, and some were decidedly opposed to
his being allowed to speak at all, but when
he had once begun they listened with amaze
ment to his eloquence, and the parallel he
drew between Warren at Bunker Hill and
Lovejoy at Alton finally called forth storm
of cheers. From this time forth Mr.. Phil
lips was a famous man, and the fame of his
eloquence soon spread across the continent.
He gave up his commission as a lawyer,
bound to obey the Constitution, which pro-
tected slave holders rights which he had de-
terminod to destroy. In this he made great
personal sacrifice, for his prospects at the bar
were brilliant.
From this date forward Mr.. Phillips, until
1861, was everywhere known as prominent
leader of the abolitionists and their most
gifted aud popular orator. The full measure
of his services to the anti-slavery cause it
would be difficult to mete out nor is it nee
essary to do so for q public with which the
memory OF his services are still vivid. Year
after year he appeared at the anniversaries Of
the AntiSlavery society to review the prog
ress made and cast upon his opponents storms
of invective which are remembered to this
day. Until the opening of the civil war Mr..
Phillips advocated disunion as the only road
to abolition, but after the war began he sus-
tanned the government, aud his reason in this
case was the same as in the first. He advo-
Gated in 1904 the arming, educating, aud
enfranchising of the freedmen, and, in order
to secure the two latter ends, he secured the
continuation of the Anti-Slavery societys
existence until after the adoption of the ff-
teenth amendment in 1869. He had become
now prominent advocate of temperance and
labor reform, and on those issues became
candidate for governor of Massachusetts in
1870, receiving 10000 votes But his work
was done twenty years before he died, and
the activities of his later life served mainly
to show how different are the gifts that are
most serviceAble in revolutionary times from
the gifts that are needed for the slow and or.
derby evolution that is the normal condition
of social progress He had the vice of the
platform speaker, and did not carry that
weight as practical statesman which he had
as an anti-savery orator. But it was one of
the compensations of devotion to truth and
duty which marked his career that the cause
which he pleaded returned to its pleader the
fame and position which he had sacrificed in
the opening of his manhood.
As Ia popular lecturer Mr.. Phillips's reputa
ton is rs broad as his reputation as an adyo-
cate of human rights. On literary and gen
eral themes he had the same felicity of ex-
preston, the same magnetic control of his
audience, and in later days, when age had
mellowed and also cooled his enthusiasm,
there was no diminution in his unparalleled
force of method-A literary skill which is as
Incompatible as it is great, and there was
never time that thousands did not listen to
his utterances with delight and satisfaction.
Though in comfortable circumstances,
worth probably $780, OOO Mr.. Phillips long
lived in an old-fashioned, meagrely furnished
house in Essex street. Though q great lover
of art, he collected no pictures, or bronzes,
or marbles, because he preferred to give the
money they would cost to the poor. No re-
ally needy deserving man or woman, black
or white, ever appealed to him in vain. His
manner in private was wholly simple and
natural it put persons at their ease; yet it
was the manner of a patrician. His wife
was long chronic invalid he had no chill.
dren. To his wife he ascribed oil the best
things he had done. He was member of
the Old South church, but he rarely, if ever,
attended church anywhere, having been re.
PEELED by the course taken by orthodoxy in
slavery times.
In an estimate of his life and character it
has with truth been said, that in his way he
devoted his life to promote the welfare OF his
race. His sympathies were worldwide; and
II he were ever cruel it was when he was
scourging those whom he assailed because he
believed them to be the prosecutors of tho
weak. In that sublime moral courage which
he displayed for a quarter OF century he
was eEcelled by none. In his regard for the
welfare of the human race and in his efforts
to elevate his race and to relieve suffering he
had no superior. His faults were due to the
intensity of his devotion to those whom he
believed to BIO in need of defender. He has
given the world IN illustrious example of the
most sublime devotion, of the most unselfish
purpose and of the highest moral courage.
what Better COmbinatIOnl
From The Greenfield Gazettel
Edmunds and Lincoln, representatives of
the East and the West, satisfying the intel
lectual and the sentimental side of human