revolution of 1630, reading everything concerning it that he could find. With equal care he studied the period of George III., and Dutch history also so far as English literature enabled him to do so.
His parents were of the Evangelical faith, and in
one of the revivals of religion that followed the
settlement of Dr.
Lyman Beecher in
Boston he became a
convert, and he did
not at any subsequent
time depart
from the faith of
his fathers. While
he denounced the
churches for their
complicity with
slavery, he made no war
upon their creeds.
A fellow-student
remembers well his
earnest religiousness
in college, and
his “devoutness during
morning and
evening prayers which so many others attended only
to save their credit with the government.” Though
orthodox himself, he welcomed those of other faiths,
and even of no faith, to the anti-slavery platform,
resisting every attempt to divide the host upon
sectarian or theological grounds. He entered the
Harvard law-school for a term of three years, and
in 1834 was admitted to the bar. He was well
equipped for his profession in every respect save
one, viz., that he appears to have had no special
love for it and small ambition for success therein.
“If,” he said to a friend, “clients do not come, I
will throw myself heart and soul into some good
cause and devote my life to it.” The clients would
doubtless have come in no long time if he had
chosen to wait for them, but the “good cause”
presented its claims first, and was so fortunate as to
win the devotion of his life. “The Liberator,”
founded by William Lloyd Garrison in 1831, had
already forced the slavery question upon public
attention and created an agitation that the leaders
of society were vainly endeavoring to suppress. It
has been said, probably with truth, that the first
person to interest Mr. Phillips in this subject was
the lady — Miss Anne Terry Greene — who afterward
became his wife and, as he himself has said, “his
counsel, his guide, his inspiration,” during his whole
subsequent life. Of all the young men of Boston
at that period, there was hardly one whose social
relations, education, and personal character better
fitted him for success as an aspirant for such public
honors as Massachusetts was accustomed to bestow
upon the most gifted of her sons. But if ambitions
or aspirations of this sort were ever indulged, he
had the courage and the moral power to resist their
appeals and devote himself to what he felt to be a
righteous though popularly odious cause. The poet
James Russell Lowell has embalmed the memory
of his early self-abnegation in a sonnet, of which
these lines form a part:
| “ | He stood upon the world's broad threshold; wide The din of battle and of slaughter rose; He saw God stand upon the weaker side That sunk in seeming loss before its foes. . . . . . Therefore he went And joined him to the weaker part, Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content So he could be nearer to God's heart, And feel its solemn pulses sending blood Through all the wide-spread veins of endless good.” |
Looking from his office-window on 21 Oct.,
1835, he saw the crowd of “gentlemen of property
and standing” gathered in Washington and State
streets to break up a meeting of anti-slavery ladies
and “snake out that infamous foreign scoundrel,
Thompson,” and “bring him to the tar-kettle
before dark” — the same Thompson of whom Lord
Brougham said in the house of lords at the time
of the passage of the British emancipation act:
“I rise to take the crown of this most glorious
victory from every other head and place it upon
his. He has done more than any other man to
achieve it”; and of whom John Bright said: “I
have always considered him the liberator of the
slaves in the English colonies; for, without his
commanding eloquence, made irresistible by the
blessedness of his cause, I do not think all the
other agencies then at work would have procured
their freedom.” The mob, disappointed in its
expectation of getting possession of the eloquent
Englishman, “snaked out” Garrison instead, and
Phillips saw him dragged through the streets, his
person well-nigh denuded of clothing, and a rope
around his waist ready to strangle him withal,
from which fate he was rescued only by a desperate
ruse of the mayor, who locked him up in the jail
for safety. This spectacle deeply moved the young
lawyer, who from that hour was an avowed
Abolitionist, though he was not widely known as such
until the martyrdom of Elijah P. Lovejoy (q. v.) in
1837 brought him into sudden prominence and
revealed him to the country as an orator of the
rarest gifts. The men then at the head of affairs
in Boston were not disposed to make any open
protest against this outrage upon the freedom of
the press; but William Ellery Channing, the
eminent preacher and writer, was resolved that the
freedom-loving people of the city should have an
opportunity to express their sentiments in an hour
so fraught with danger to the cause of American
liberty, and through his persistent efforts preparations
were made for a public meeting, which assembled
in Faneuil hall on 8 Dec., 1837. It was the
custom to hold such meetings in the evening, but
there were threats of a mob, and this one on that
account was appointed for a daylight hour.
The hall was well filled, Jonathan Phillips was called to the chair, Dr. Channing made an impressive address, and resolutions written by him, fitly characterizing the outrage at Alton, were introduced. George S. Hillard, a popular young lawyer, followed in a serious and well-considered address. Thus far everything had gone smoothly; but now uprose James T. Austin, attorney-general of the state, a member of Dr. Channing's congregation, but known to be bitterly opposed to his anti-slavery course. He eulogized the Alton murderers, comparing them with the patriots of the Revolution, and declared that Lovejoy had “died as the fool dieth.” Mr. Phillips was present, but with no expectation of speaking. There were those in the hall, however, who thought him the man best fitted to reply to Austin, and some of these urged the managers to call upon him, which they consented to do. As he stepped upon the platform, his manly beauty, dignity, and perfect self-possession won instant admiration. His opening sentences, uttered calmly but with deep feeling, revealed his power and raised expectation to the highest pitch. “When,” said he, “I heard the gentleman [Mr. Austin] lay down principles which placed the rioters, incendiaries, and murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the hall] would have
