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Wendell Phillips

1811–1884 · 73 years

The Beacon Street heir who refused to say the work was done

Portrait of Wendell Phillips — Mathew Benjamin Brady — 1853 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

His father was Boston's first mayor, and the Beacon Street money came with the name. Wendell Phillips took the expected route out of it: Boston Latin School, Harvard College in 1831, Harvard Law in 1833, the Massachusetts bar in 1834, his own practice in 1835. That October he stood on Court Street and watched a mob put a rope around William Lloyd Garrison's neck. He had also just met Ann Terry Greene on a stagecoach, an abolitionist who held that the cause required not support but everything. They married in October 1837. She made him, he said afterward, an out and out abolitionist. Beacon Street turned its back, the practice went, and his family discussed committing him to a sanatorium.

On December 8, 1837, Boston filled Faneuil Hall to argue about Elijah Lovejoy, shot a month earlier defending his press in Alton, Illinois. Massachusetts attorney general James T. Austin told the room the mob had acted in the spirit of 1776 and that Lovejoy died as the fool dieth. Phillips, 26, went to the platform and answered him without notes. Almost everything after ran from that hour: the Boston Vigilance Committee, the boycott of slave-grown sugar and cotton, the pamphlet arguing the Constitution was a slaveholders' instrument, John Brown's graveside.

In May 1865, with the Thirteenth Amendment ratified, Garrison rose at the American Anti-Slavery Society and moved that it declare the work finished and dissolve. Phillips fought him on the floor. The freedmen had no vote, no land and no protection, and until they did the society had a job. The motion lost, 118 to 48. Garrison resigned the presidency, walked out, and shut down The Liberator in December. Phillips took the chair and kept the society running five more years, to the Fifteenth Amendment. When the Fourteenth passed without black suffrage he put Defeat the Amendment, Impeach the President on the masthead of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, and he went on insisting that a ballot with no acre behind it was nothing but a name.

What he took up next cost him the audience emancipation had won him. He ran for governor of Massachusetts in November 1870 on the Labor Reform ticket, drew 21,946 votes and finished third. He worked the eight-hour day with Ira Steward until the two fell out. He asked the Johnson administration to create a cabinet post for Indian rights, accused General Philip Sheridan of pursuing extermination, and put Standing Bear and Susette LaFlesche on Boston platforms. He and Garrison reconciled in 1873. Phillips died of heart disease on February 2, 1884, in Charlestown, and his body lay in state in Faneuil Hall, where it had started.

Lifespan

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Wendell Phillips's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

The Freedom Speech at Faneuil Hall speech
Delivered without notes at 26 and printed for decades afterward 1837
Review of Spooner's Essay on the Unconstitutionality of Slavery book
Argued the Constitution was built to protect slavery — a Calhoun supporter wanted it circulated in the South 1847
Freedom for Woman speech
His National Woman's Rights Convention address, reprinted as a tract into the 20th century 1851
Toussaint L'Ouverture speech
A lecture on the leader of the Haitian Revolution 1861
Disunion: Two Discourses at Music Hall book
Source of the line about the first duty of society being justice, often misattributed to Hamilton 1861
Speeches, Lectures, and Letters book
The collected platform work, published while the war was still on 1863

Life in brief

with age at each point

November 29, 1811 aged 0 Born in Boston to John Phillips, the city's first mayor
October 21, 1835 aged 23 Watches from Court Street as a Boston mob puts a rope on William Lloyd Garrison He was a 23-year-old lawyer in his first year of practice.
December 8, 1837 aged 26 Answers the state attorney general at Faneuil Hall over the murder of Elijah Lovejoy The extemporaneous reply made him the movement's leading speaker.
1840 aged ~29 Argues at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London that the American women delegates be seated He lost. The women were admitted but seated separately and not allowed to speak.
May 27, 1853 aged 41 Addresses the Massachusetts constitutional convention on woman suffrage alongside Lucy Stone He had drafted both the petition and the appeal for signatures.
December 8, 1859 aged 48 Speaks at John Brown's burial at North Elba, New York He had wanted Brown buried under a monument at Mount Auburn in Cambridge.
May 1865 aged 53 Defeats Garrison's motion to dissolve the American Anti-Slavery Society, 118 to 48 Garrison resigned the presidency and left. Phillips took the chair and ran the society to 1870.
November 8, 1870 aged 58 Runs for governor of Massachusetts on the Labor Reform ticket He took 21,946 votes and finished third behind William Claflin and John Quincy Adams II.
February 2, 1884 aged 72 Dies of heart disease at his home on Common Street in Charlestown His body lay in state in Faneuil Hall. He was buried at the Granary Burying Ground and moved to Milton Cemetery in 1886.