FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66  
67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   >>   >|  
ast Sunday night (_forgetting his own vocation_), 'Wendell Phillips is a man of words, instead of a man of deeds.'" Not that the two men were ever unfriendly, for they were co-workers, standing side by side in the great movement. Once when the trustees of yonder Academy refused to allow Mr. Phillips to speak, Mr. Beecher made it a point of honour with his trustees to let Wendell Phillips speak in Plymouth Church, and ran the risk of the mob destroying the building. The tumultuous scenes of that night, when bricks came through the windows, and the police were stationed in Cranberry and Orange Streets, were repeated all over the land. Again and again Wendell Phillips was mobbed. Once, at the very beginning of his career as an abolitionist, he spoke with an old Quaker. People waited to greet the old Quaker and asked him home for the night; but they pelted Wendell Phillips with rotten eggs as he went down the street in the dark. Afterwards Wendell Phillips said to the old Quaker, "I said just what you did, and yet you were invited home to fried chicken and a bed, while I received raw eggs and stone." "I will tell thee the difference, Wendell. Thou said, 'If thou art a holder of slaves, thou wilt go to hell.' I said, 'If thou dost not hold slaves, thou wilt not go to hell.'" But Wendell Phillips would not butter parsnips with fine words. Once in Boston four hundred men surrounded him, got possession of the hall, and jeered him for an hour and a half. Finally he leaned over the desk and shouted down to a reporter, "Thank God there is no manacle for the printing-press." Armed friends rescued him, guarded him home, and for a week, night and day, the Boston police guarded the house. Those were tumultuous days. But this great man braved and outlived the storm. When the Emancipation Proclamation was declared, William Lloyd Garrison said nothing remained now but to die. But Phillips opposed the dissolution of the Anti-Slavery Society, because he saw that when the physical fetters were broken, there still remained the fetters of the mind and heart that must be destroyed. So far from ending his labours, Phillips now redoubled his activities. He threw himself into the labour movement and helped organize the working classes into a solid force against capitalism. He took up the cause of suffrage and the higher education of woman, gave himself to the temperance problem and prohibition. He lectured oftentimes two hundred nights a
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66  
67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Phillips

 

Wendell

 

Quaker

 

police

 

tumultuous

 

hundred

 

Boston

 

slaves

 

guarded

 
remained

fetters
 

trustees

 

movement

 
outlived
 

rescued

 

friends

 
braved
 

education

 
higher
 

Finally


leaned
 

lectured

 

nights

 

jeered

 

oftentimes

 

prohibition

 

shouted

 

suffrage

 

manacle

 

problem


temperance

 

reporter

 

printing

 
declared
 

classes

 

destroyed

 

possession

 
broken
 

activities

 
organize

helped
 
redoubled
 

labours

 

working

 

ending

 

physical

 

William

 

Garrison

 
Proclamation
 

labour