Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1884-02-04

20, ISL, was graduated from Harvard in
1881, and admitted to the bar in 1884. His
antsgonism to slavery was Unborn, but
earliest manifested itself publicly in 1885,
at the time of the mobbing of abolitionists
in Boston. The following year Mr. Phil
lips came boldly to the front with the IN
shrinking courage and fearlessness SO
characteristic of the man in all his after
life, and took his place with the ostracised
and prosecuted friends of the African slave.
So intensely did he feel on this subject,
that it will be remembered be retired from
the bar because of his unwillingness to as
sumo responsibilities under an oath to be
loyal to the Constitution, so long as it
recognized the right of property in
human beings. He was one Of the most
stalwsrt defenders of the freedom of the
press, and lifted his voice in perhaps one
of the most eloquent and imprisoned
bursts of oratory of all his life, in denunci.
alton of the murder of Lovejoy, who was
killed at Alton, ILL.,, in 1887, for defending
that principle. 1t was this speech of his
youth which Dr. Charming always re.
ferred to as morally sublime" His in
tense hatred of the institution of slavery
led him early to take the extreme view
that dissolution of the Union would be
justified to accomplish the liberty of the
Southern slaves. He succeeded Garrison
in the Presidency of the American Anti
Slavery Society, and held the post until
the full purpose of the society having been
accomplished in all ripeness, it dissolved
in 1874, Wendell Phillips was an accom-
plished scholar. of high culture, a
profound thinker, an orator of brill
liant ability, reformer who worked
at white heat; one of the class
of intelligences of which rebellions against
wrong are born full-fedged, and one of the
kind of men from among whom martyrs
are chosen. While Phillips will always
rank as one of the foremost, if not the most
brilliant of American orators, and a de-
batter without a superior, he will live in
American history chiefly as an anti-slavery
re;ormer, and as such his memory will
enjoy distinction shared by but exceed
ing few. For his labors on behalf of human
freedom were characterized by far-sighted
reckle5sness, a courageous vigor and de-
votion that have not been equsled. The
spirit that moved him and consecrated his
powerful intellect to the cause of human
freedom made him also a reformer in other
directions but in none did he rise TO the
level of the distinction his anti.slavery
labors won for him. Like all great and
extreme reformers, those who run before
their time, and in their not haste drag
nations after them, Mr.. Phillips lacked
discretion. Had he been more polite, and
estimated the opinions and tastes of men
at greater value, he would not have at
tanned the lofty position to which his
genius and self-sacrifce elevated him as
the leader of the foremost reform Of the
century, While he was tempestuous in
his courageous onslaught upon whatever
he deemed to be error, and applied the
high culture of his scholarship and
the brillisncy and mastery persuasiveness
Of his oratory to whatever cause be es-
poused with a vigor and earnestness and
assertive force all but resistless, in his per-
sonal manner he was gentle, over.liberal
in his charities, OF a benevolent disposition,
and so thoroughly domestic and of ouch
an affectionate nature, that his private life
was model of the virtues and his home
the abiding place Of unalloyed love, peace
aud simplicity.