Wendell Phillips, orator and agitator

Front matter

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CORNELL

Preface

Wkndell Phillips was so closely identified with the most important episode of American history in the last century that his life must be considered largely in connection with it and its consequences. Known as the anti-slavery agitation, it assumed as one of its early phases the demand for immediate and unconditional abolition. To this cause Phillips gave his best years as the preacher of a crusade against an institution, at first national and later sectional, which finally came to be regarded as bad anywhere. Agitation of a disputed question was the method, untrammeled speech before the people the means, and superlative eloquence the manner of his warfare. In his later years he became the champion of other causes.

To do him and his work justice, both should be contemplated from the present as the day of an accomplished purpose which was' not generally approved in his own time nor correctly estimated. Yet, to be just to his contemporaries, it should be borne in mind that the progress of reforms is slow and the appreciation of them a gradual growth. The difference between him and most men of his generation was in his early apprehension of justice, humanity, and national consistency in a country calling itself free. The interest of his biography gathers around this difference, as well as around the later acceptance and endorsement of his main viii WENDELL PHILLIPS

purpose by a large part of the nation. In both periods he should be accorded a fair presentation of convictions whose sincerity was equalled by their courageous and uncompromising utterance in the face of sufficient antagonism to make his persistence heroic.

Aside from his interest to one and another as a reformer, his oratory is of exceptional value to all who are interested in the art of public speaking. Two volumes have been published, one with his own endorsement, giving all that type can preserve of some fifty examples of his speeches, lectures, and addresses. Besides these there are hundreds more printed in two weekly journals throughout a period of forty years, which have been read in order to trace the course of his thought on national, sectional, and other questions of importance. The drift of his comment is given in such abridgments and' extracts as the limits and design of this book permit, together with examples of his oratory on widely differing occasions. To those who desire further acquaintance with entire addresses the volumes mentioned and files of the Liberator and Anti-Slavery Standard afford ample opportunity.

Besides the privilege of listening to him on several occasions and reading information and comment in contemporary sheets by friend and foe, the author has found particulars of home life in the early biographies of Austin and Martyn, to which have been added reminiscences and letters by some who knew him well. Grateful acknowledgments are especially due to Colonel T. W. Higginson, Messrs. Frank B. Sanborn, Francis J. Garrison, William I. Bowditch, John P. Reynolds, Jr., Edward J. Carpenter, Mrs. Julia G. Blagden, and to others who have done what they could to add to memorials which

PREFACE ix

are remarkably few of a man who was oftener' before the people and for a longer period than any other public speaker of his generation. L. S.

Providence, R. I., Memorial Day, 1909.

Contents

PAGE

Preface . vii

Chapter I. Childhood and Schoolyears . . 3

Ancestry — Home influences — Boston Latin School — Oratorical promise — Companions — Harvard instructors — Studies and reading — Athletic sports — Social leanings — Moral and religious character — A law student — Collateral reading — Admitted to the bar — Early practice.

Chapter II. The Cause 19

An unpopular movement — Introduction of slavery — Early opposition — Emancipation and colonization projects — Garrison and the Liberator — Immediate abolition urged — New England Anti-slavery Society — Garrison mobbed — Views of slavery — Conditions of slave life and labour — Cost and profits of slaveholding — Wrongs and barbarities — Recoiling evils — Estimates of the coloured race — The cause of freedom from bondage and its justification.

Chapter III. An Advocate of Rights ... 31

Phillips witnesses mob — Previous convictions — Influence of one woman — Meets Garrison — Idealism — Declaration of alliance — First anti-slavery speech — Tribute to John Quincy Adams — Defends right of petition — Inconspicuous at first — Renunciation.

Chapter IV. Freedom of the Press ... 49

Strictures on printing — "Incendiary presses" — The Observer of St. Ijouis and Alton — Riot and murder — Faneuil Hall meeting — Phillips's speech a revelation — Recognition of his power and promise — Effect of the speech — Dramatic element.

Chapter V. Labours Afield 63

Increase of anti-slavery societies — Another defence of Lovejoy — On annexation of Texas — Forms Boston Anti-slavery Society — On slavery in District of Columbia — An organizer — Embarrassments — Associates.

xii WENDELL PHILLIPS

Chapter VI. In Europe 76

Tribute to Mr. and Mrs. Phillips on their departure — Winter in Rome — Convention in London — A disturbing question — PhilHps's position — Speech on British cotton raising in India — On the Continent and a winter in Italy — Return and reception — Home life at 26 Essex Street.

Chapter VII. On the Platform .... 89

Readiness of speech — The Lyceum lecture — Noted lecturers — Phillips's early topics — The Lost Arts and Street Life in Europe — Preliminary to anti-slavery subjects — Advantages of lecture system

— On Irish appeal to Americans — O'Coimell's tribute to Phillips — A fugitive slave in Boston — Speech in Faneuil Hall uproar — Compromise in the Constitution — An oratorical victory — Talk of disunion — The nature of it North and South — The Constitution, Union, and slavery — The ministry and abolition — Comment on Phillips's eloquence.

Chapter VIII. Recognition and Leadership . 112

An address to President Tyler — General agent of the Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society — Addresses, arguments and pamphlets — A Massachusetts envoy in South Carolina — Second Irish address — Admiration of O'Connell.

Chapter IX. Protests Against Politics . . 117

Disturbing questions — Primitive abohtion methods — Address to the people — Politicians and reformers — Steadfastness to original principles — Peaceable methods — Appeal to conscience.

Chapter X. Northern Alarm .... 122

A muck-rake speech on Annexation of Texas — A new party in the North — Boston officials capture a fugitive — Abolition protest — On war with Mexico — Remarks on Scotch Address — On right of petition for disunion — Calhoun and Garrison as disunionists — Phillips's position — Cites British statesmen — Emerson's views

— Father Mathew's silence — Phillips's progress in fifteen years — Growth of anti-slavery sentiment.

Chapter XI. Pacification and Agitation . . 135

An era of good feeling — Webster's Seventh of March speech — Phillips's review of it — Faneuil Hall meeting and further criticism by Phillips — The Rynders mob in New York — Speech in Plymouth Church — In Boston convention on the press — On Fugitive Slave Bill — Shadrach a fugitive, and Sims — Phillips addresses mass meeting on the Common — Criticism of Kossuth's silence about slavery.

CONTENTS xiii

PAGE

Chapter XII. Darkness and Daybreak . . 148

Quiet by compromise attacked by Phillips — Stemming the tide against abolition — Defeat imminent — Resistance and non-resistance — Obituary of Webster — Defence of denunciation — Literature of abolition — A hopeful sign — Strife in Congress — Lowell and Whittier — Other men of letters.

Disunion threats — Value of Union — Diverse views — Dred Scott decision — Reviewed by PhiUips — Party leaders criticized — Oration at Yale.

Chapter XVI. Recall to First Principles . . 190 Grounds for encouragement — Forecasts — Endurance as a speaker

— Interpretation of States rights — Insurrection useless — Eulogy

— Reproof of pubUc drinking — On woman's position — John Brown and Harper's Ferry — Address on the Lesson of the Hour — Press comment — Eulogy of Brown.

Chapter XVII. War Imminent .... 208

Spread of anti-slavery sentiment — Ballots rather than bullets — RepubHcan party and abohtion — Criticism of absorption — On the election of Lincoln — Outlook brighter — Eulogy of Theodore Parker — A mob — Secession to end slavery — A Northern confederacy proposed — Lincoln's overtures to the South — Phillips's optimism.

Chapter XVIII. The Culmination of Controversy 223 Fort Sumter — Phillips speaks on the situation — Consistency

— A public censor — Criticizes the Administration — The abolition issue in war — Contrabands — On the war — Ripened opinion from radical sowing — Phillips at the capital — Larger views — Military emancipation — A proclamation of partial freedom — A look forward.

xiv WENDELL PHILLIPS

PAGE

Chapter XIX. Reflections on Government Policy 241

The proclamation by the people — Northern allies of the South — Negro soldiers — Toussaint I'Ouverture — A teinperance lecture — The state of the country — Hopeful vigilance — The press on abolitionism — Strictures on the Government — EngKsh attitude — Sudden gains to the cause — Looking toward reconstruction — Dissolution of Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society — An historic fortnight — Tribute to Lincoln — Work of abolitionists not ended — ■ Total abolition decreed.

Chapter XX. Continuing the Contest . . 261

Phillips as an editor — Address to Boston schools — Freedmen's rights disregarded — Philhps endorsed by Congressmen — Refusal of nomination to Congress — A lecture trip — Attacks Andrew Johnson — Doubt of Grant — Vital questions — Creating public opinion.

Chapter XXI. Reconstruction and Other Issues 273

On release of Jefferson Davis — Criticism of Grant and Congress — Motives in criticizing men and parties — Abolition success by defeats

— Rehgion and social science — Rights of coloured citizens — Negro suffrage — Labour question discussed — Backward movement — On Fifteenth Amendment — American Anti-slavery Society disbanded.

Chapter XXII. New Causes and Old . . . 290

Thirty-three years of service continued. — Intemperance taken up — Christianity and Social Science — Nomination for Governor — Prohibition and Cooperation — Support of General Butler — A coloured Senator — Favours Republican party — Froude and Phillips on Ireland — Questions of finance — Tribute to O'Connell — Rescue of Old South Church — Heroic spirit.

Chapter XXIII. Last Years and Labours . . 307

Nomination to Congress again proposed — Eulogy of Garrison — Religious belief — On liquor trade and Irish question — Oration at Harvard — Courage to the last — Lecturing on labour and capital

— Address in Old South Church — Illness and death — Honoured by thousands.

Chapter XXIV. The Substance of Phillips's Oratory 318

Value of brief citations — As a lecturer — An exordium — Argumentative discourse — Address expository — Judicial argument — ^AboUtion speeches — Denunciation — Defensive and aggressive speech — Eulogy — Academic orations — Dramatic features of his eloquence.

CONTENTS XV

PAGE

Chapter XXV. The Form of His Oratory . . 345

The lecturer and his audiences — Voice — DeKvery — Moods of hearers — Diction — Modes of address — Invective — Versatility — Perorations — Natural gifts and education — Qualities suggested by classic orators — As an epigrammatist — Friendliness and benevolence.

Chapter XXVI. Remainders .... 364

Items of minor interest — Home Ufe — Library — Reading — On lecture trips — Advice to speakers — Table-talk — Readiness — Value to students of oratory.

WENDELL PHILLIPS I

CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL YEARS

(1811-1834)

/"^N MANY accounts it was pleasant and profitable to be ^-^ a Boston boy in the early years of the nineteenth century. Some will say that it is better to be one at the beginning of the twentieth; but happiness does not necessarily increase with the progress of decades. Advantages of several kinds are not augmented by steam heat, electric lights, and gasolene locomotion. Nature and art, thought and affection have not essentially changed in a hundred years, and the sources of material prosperity and of intellectual eminence lie now, as they did then, in natural gifts and abilities employed in wise ways. Many things, too, that contribute to a wholesome satisfaction with life were common a century ago in the Bay City. There were accumulations of wealth with an unostentatious luxury, and a commercial life accompanied by intellectual habits, with Long Wharf on one side and Harvard College on the other. Old South Church and Faneuil Hall standing between as the symbols of religion and liberty.

By 1810, 33,000 inhabitants were living on the peninsula over which William Blackstone had solitary domain when, in 1630, he invited John Winthrop and associates to come from Charlestown and taste his spring water, then seUing out to them and removing toward the Narragansett country. But the purchasers throve in their generations, and after one hundred and eighty years' trade in fish and timber, rum and furs, with an occasional cargo of Negroes — under general protest — comfortable fortimes were amassed in many families. Of these the Phillips family was one of the most prosperous.

The Reverend George Phillips, a graduate of Cambridge University and rector of Boxted, Essex, falling into disagreement with some of his parishioners about conformity to the ritual of the national Church, joined Winthrop's company and landed in Salem in June, 1630. For fourteen years he was pastor of the church at Watertown when that village was as large as Boston then was. His son was the minister at Rowley. Then a goldsmith is found in the succession, although a younger brother entered the ministry. Next, two merchants follow, and then a lawyer appears who, by 1809, had risen through minor oiEces to the dignity of judgeship in the Court of Common Pleas. Two years later his fifth son, Wendell, was b|orn, November 29, 1811, who was to uphold the family name through a good part of the century, but not after the manner of his forefathers. They had filled prominent positions in the standing order of the Puritan Church and State, in commercial affairs, and in social life. He was to distinguish himself and the family name outside these spheres of influence.

Into this inheritance of a good name, ample wealth, and social standing came the child Wendell, who early began to give promise of the man. Those who trace personal qualities and abilities back through a long line of distinguished ancestors can find enough to account for a great deal that is to

HOME INFLUENCES 5

appear if they look over the records, clerical, legal, military, and civil of the "Phillips Genealogies." There were ministers and deacons, judges and captains, legislators and governors; but they were also the progenitors of the five brothers and three sisters of this eighth child in a family of nine, whose distinction is that Wendell was one of them. And if he was the highly favoured legatee, may it not be truly said that he repaid his inheritances in full and even, according to Shinto doctrine, ennobled his honourable ancestry by retroactive and augmented distinction ? In any case, this was sufficient to warrant the above brief summary of ancestral achievement. It is more to the present purpose to note influences that were direct and immediate.'

A century ago the family was the first school and parents the earliest teachers. From his father this boy heard wise counsels of self-dependence, and from a Bible-reading mother lessons of steadfastness to righteousness which became principles of conduct in after life. Instead of the amusement by which instruction is now made palatable in kindergartens, sundry boys of that time in the neighbourhood of the Phillips mansion, at the lower corner of Beacon and Walnut Streets, gathered in the garret of Lothrop Motley's home, and, arraying themselves in the cast-off costumes of other days — "cloaks, doublets, and plumed hats, as heroes and bandits, enacted more or less impromptu melodramas." To this

^The name, Wendell, was the family name of his grandmother, Margaret, daughter of Hon. Jacob Wendell, merchant, and member of the Governor's Council. She became the wife of William Phillips in 1761. Their only son, John, father of Wendell, graduated from Andover and Harvard, became the first public '"prosecutor"^ of the Municipal Court on its establishment in 1800, representative to the General Court in 1803, and Senator for the rest of his life. On the incorporation of the City of Boston in 1822 he was chosen its first Mayor. He died before the close of his term of office in 1823. The children of John and Salley (Walley) Phillips were: 1. Thomas Walley, b. Jan. 16, 1797; d. 1859. 2. Sarah Hard, b. April 24, 1799; d. 1837. 3. Samuel, b. 1801: d. 1817, a member of the Class of 1820, Harvard. 4. Margaret, b. Nov. 29, 1802. 5. Miriam. 6. John Charles, b. Nov. 15, 1807; d. 1878. 7. George William, b. Jan. 3, 1810; d. 1880. 8. Wendell, b. Nov. 29, 1811; d. Feb. 2, 1884. 9. GrenviUe Tudor, b. Aug. 14, 1816; d. 1863.

entertainment the lad Phillips added private exercise at home in the direction of his personal bent, arranging chairs for auditors and discoursing to them at a length worthy of his clerical forebears in the Puritan age. When asked if he did not tire of it, he answered, "No; but it is pretty hard on the chairs," an indication that ancestral rigours had softened since Samuel Sewall tried to equal his contemporaries in his single sermon of two and a half hours. Thus the future orator began to educate himself, without a priggish anticipation of his destiny, but simply because it was a natural gift whose exercise was play. Nor, in subsequent years, did time dispel this morning dew of oratorical promise. Even in boyhood, his friend Thomas Appleton said, "Wendell's voice was a very pleasant one to listen to, and his gestures as graceful as could be. He was a fine, manly little fellow, and I was very proud of him as a playmate."

The Boston Latin School, which he entered in his eleventh year, was his first public educator. His father had prepared for college at Andover, where he had been sent to live with an uncle whose predecessors had founded Phillips Academy there and another at Exeter, N. H. This, however, was not a sufficient reason to send the son from home and away from the school which had been one of the features of the city since Ezekiel Cheever from London established it in 1670, having already taught in New Haven, Ipswich, and Charlestown, thirty-two years in all. Cheever was a veteran of fifty-six when all the dignitaries of the town united in calling him to take charge of a hundred and fifty boys, a task in which he won distinction for thirty-eight years, passing off the academic platform at the age of ninety-four, being buried from his schoolhouse where he

ORATORICAL PROMISE 7

had trained the most eminent citizens of an entire generation; "a skilful, painful, and faithful schoolmaster," as Cotton Mather said of him in his funeral discourse. After his demise no successor made his place good until Mr. B. A. Gould came in 1816. When young Phillips entered the school Gould had been master six years. Although an English department had been started in 1821, instruction was chiefly in Latin and Greek, which since the revival of learning had formed the basis of a liberal education, and so far as this young pupil was concerned, was admirably adapted to give him that command of language for which he became noted.

His oratorical bent became at once apparent. In a land governed by town meetings and legislatures and educated by pulpit, forum, and platform, the school would be a failure that did not teach boys to declaim. Doubtless it is unnatural to assume the position of great orators even for a few moments, and the sense of incongruity is often the cause of much embarrassment, but much is learned by imitation. At any rate, declamation days do not appear to have been dreaded by the boy Wendell, and it is on record that they were anticipated with pleasure by his companions when he was to speak. A fellow student said: "What first led me to observe him and fixed him in my memory was his elocution; and I soon came to look forward to declamation day with interest, mainly on his account; though many were admirable speakers." Of his appearance it is remarked that he was a finely formed boy, vigorous and tall for his age, and, in connection with his friend Motley, "both ranked high among their fellows on account of their beauty, elegant manners, and social position."

Many who have been schoolboys will recall the leading declaimer of their platform and the admiration with which they heard him recite Patrick Henry's "Call to Arms," or Webster's "Appeal for the Union," or as a triumphant achievement, Cicero's "Arraignment of Catiline" in the original Latin. Years afterward they have asked what became of the juvenile orator and the great promise of his boyish eloquence. Rarely he attained distinction; oftener mediocrity or nothing. Not necessarily, as the career of Phillips showed. The root of the matter was in him, and his marvellous endowment increased with the years in symmetry, beauty, and irresistible power.

It was next to inevitable, after five years at the Latin School, and from his antecedents, that the youth, now nearly sixteen, should enter Harvard College. In 1827 the Rev. Dr. John T. Kirkland was President, to be succeeded in two years by the Hon. Josiah Quincy, with whose son, Edmund, though older than himself, Pliillips formed a friendship which was to last through a lifetime. Lothrop Motley had returned from the historian Bancroft's Round Hill School, at Northampton, to enter as the youngest member of the class, which he would have led had he shown the diligence in study that afterward made him the historian of the Dutch Republic. Charles Sumner was in the next class above, a hermit student taking himself seriously, and later to be associated with Phillips in a friendly way. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in the next class, was to be its poet for thirty years. Of the faculty, Edward T. Channing was professor of rhetoric and oratory, important studies to the future orator, and of still greater value under the

INSTRUCTORS AT HARVARD 9

direction of an instructor whose fitness for his work through thirty-two years was exceptional and memorable, maintaining, as he did, high standards of purity and elegance in composition and delivery, and also directing the reading and influencing the literary taste of an entire generation of students. George Ticknor was professor of modern languages and belles-lettres, dispensing the treasures which he had gathered in a five years' residence abroad and by acquaintance with leading authors of Europe. Other distinguished scholars occupied chairs in their several departments; and the personal factor was greater in their relations to pupils than is now possible with larger classes. The class of 1831 numbered only sixty-five at graduation, and there had been but one larger class.

It was with such advantages as these, belonging to an earlier time, that a pupil younger than the present average entered college. Although multiplied courses were not then offered to students to their distraction or delight, a good basis was furnished for an education which was to be continued beyond its collegiate beginnings. Four walls were begun, most often for a plain structure at least, but there were not, as now, a dozen outlying blocks placed on which temple columns can never be reared in a single lifetime. Nor was much time wasted on fragments of ornamentation and decoration to the damage of the essential substructure. Neither did some Simeon Stylites build a solitary pillar on whose top he should expound a specialty for the rest of his days. Minds, nevertheless, were as strong and active then as now, and if they ran in fewer channels at once these were likely to be deeper in consequence, with fewer shallows of mental dissipation. The sciences of mind and of ethics, of nature and of hunaan nature, and as the vehicle of conveying thought about these and related themes the continual study of language, constituted the basic education of that day, conducted on a few broad and definite lines. Yet there was a margin for personal aptitudes and preferences. Phillips used to say that his own were for history and mechanics, the latter possibly as a useful diversion.

In history he gave during one year all the time he could spare to the study of the English Revolution of 1640, reading memoirs, speeches, novels, and plays that could illustrate Clarendon and other writers. Another year was devoted to biographies and memoirs of George III.'s reign and the years of our war for independence. Dutch history also had great interest for him as the story of a republic. Among his heroes were Cromwell, Vane, Pym, and Raleigh in England; in America, Jay, Franklin, Samuel Adams, and Eli Whitney. If he could have foreseen his own need of illustrative material in the future he could not have chosen better examples. In literature his favourites were Tacitus and Juvenal, Rochefoucauld, Pascal, Tocqueville, Guizot, and Victor Hugo; in Enghsh, Ben Jonson, Jeremy Taylor, Massinger, Milton, Southey, Lamb, Disraeli the elder, and Horace Walpole. Richardson and Scott were his favourite earlier English novelists. It was characteristic of the later advocate of the mentally unappreciated sex that he should consider Elizabeth Barrett Browning the first of modern poets, and Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot profounder writers than Dickens and Thackeray. But this was long after his college days. Taking these together, he read widely outside the academic curriculum. Nor did he neglect its routine, ranking high

ATHLETICS 11

in his class, an all-round student with predilections for history and natural science.'

With regard to anticipation of his later distinction as an orator the gist of testimony is that it manifested itself in debate rather than orations, as would naturally happen where these were less frequent than discussion. Still, a classmate wrote that " there was always the same remarkable power of eloquence, whether in extempore debate or studied declamation. It was a great treat to hear him declaim as a college exercise. He was always studying remarkable passages as an exercise in composition and to secure the most expressive forms of language."^ In addition, he took pains to learn by example from such speakers as Harrison Gray Otis and Edward Everett, Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, the last of whom he must have heard somewhere in the North, else he could not have compared the voices of the two great orators as he did, saying that Clay's was musical and Webster's full of strength, his statement argument, and his eloquence sublime — on a great occasion. At other times he thought him ponderous or even dull. It took a crisis to rouse him — then he was sublime.'

In view of the large and wise use Phillips made of academic opportunities, matters of minor employment sink into their proper insignificance. Athletics had not taken their present conspicuous place among student activities ; at least they were

'Based upon the testimony of his roommate, Rev. John Tappen Pierce, of Illinois. Mr. Roscoe Conkling Brnce'in the Harvard Illustrated Magazine, April, looi, quotes one of Phillips's college friends as saying that he "sauntered and gently studied; learned easily and rapidly: was deeply interested in history and chemistry; had a passion for mathematics and attained a standing moderately high; was interested in debating more than oratory and was the easy master of the college platform."

2Rev. JDr. Morrison, sometime editor of the Unitarian Review.

'F. B. Sanborn's "Recollections of Wendell Phillips" (MS.J in Martyn's "Life," p. 48. Phillips's admiration for Webster's gifts should be borne in mind later when that statesman's political course is condemned by him.

not counted among the motives for entering college. Yet there were boats on the Charles, saddles, boxing gloves, and fencing foils — ancient and honourable devices for manly sport; having their values in a rough-and-tumble world in which sudden difficulties sometimes start up to embarrass the unready. In these particulars it is possible that the student of seventy-five years ago may have had an advantage over the abnormally developed specialist of the present time. In any case, it is told of Phillips that as he was known in school as a manly fellow of fine physique, a contrast to some of the prim boys who feared to risk traditional dignity in play, so in college " he was a lover of outdoor sports and helped others to enjoy them, continuing his boating, boxing, fencing, and horse riding, becoming an expert in these manly accomplishments." For the last three he had special fondness.' Socially he belonged to the patrician class, and according to common assent felt his responsibility to maintain the respectability of his birth and breeding. But he had no scorn for democracy if it was not tainted with vulgarity, envy, and bad manners. In the inevitable divisions of college society a small feud was at one time developed, through which he failed of an election to the captaincy of the Harvard Washington Corps, a student from the South being the successful compromise candidate. Nevertheless, though frequent leadership of the aristocracy was forced upon him, he was admired and loved by those who knew him best as an open-hearted, generous, and chivalrous fellow. His own iMartyn, on the "united testimony of his classmates," adds, " Life," p. 35: "He was a champion boxer and marksman, fencer, oarsman, and horseman in a day when Boston discouraged athletics; his passion was for horses, and later he was a personal friend of Rarey, the horse tamer." By his own account he sometimes practised shooting at a mark in mature years when on vacations. His diversions belong to a modem age of chivalry, and his spirit in them was agreeable to it.

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTER 13

appreciation of these qualities in Southern students, and the admiration he received from them in turn as their ardent champion, were recalled in later years when he became a strong opponent of their political principles.

To these qualities of mind, body, and disposition it is natural to ask what moral and religious elements were added to complete his early character. Theodore Weld, in his "Eulogy of Wendell Phillips," states that he "had been the subject of a religious revival before entering college," and Martyn asserts that Phillips not long before his death answered a friend's inquiry to the effect that when he was fourteen, after hearing a sermon of Dr. Lyman Beecher's, he consecrated himself to God and his service. In college. Dr. Buckingham, class secretary, wrote :