An English Estimate of Wendell Phillips — “An English Traveller” writes from Boston to the London Spectator: — “The real pillar of the abolitionist party is Wendell Phillips. Gifted with great talents, with untiring energy, and, above all, with an eloquence which in my experience I have never heard equaled, he might have risen to any height in public life; and the career open to an ordinary American of talent is higher than we at home can well realize. But, for conscience’ sake, Mr. Phillips refused to enter on a career which necessitated, to say the least, an outward acquiescence in the sin of slavery. He has labored for years past, amidst ridicule and abuse and obloquy, to awaken the nation to a sense of their duty. It is difficult for an Englishman to conceive the amount of moral courage required by an American who preaches the doctrine that the cherished Constitution of Washington and Hamilton was in itself a compact with sin — an evil to be abolished. Right or wrong, you cannot deny Wendell Phillips’s courage. Pro-slavery or anti-slavery, you cannot dispute the power of his eloquence. And his labor has not been in vain.”
(Liberator, July 25, 1862, pg 3)
