Life span: 11/11/1811 to 02/02/1884TabsLife SummaryFull name: Wendell PhillipsPlace of Birth: Boston, MABurial Place: Boston, MABirth Date Certainty: ExactDeath Date Certainty: ExactGender: MaleRace: WhiteSectional choice: NorthOrigins: Free StateFamily: John Phillips (father), Sarah Walley (mother)Education: HarvardOccupation: Attorney or JudgeOtherOther Occupation: OratorRelation to Slavery: White non-slaveholderOther Affiliations: Abolitionists (Anti-Slavery Society)Women’s RightsWorkingmen’s or Labor Note Cards Wendell Phillips, Abolition and the Civil War (American National Biography) ScholarshipIn the years immediately before the Civil War Phillips's oratory, not his labors for the American Anti-Slavery Society, defined his greatest significance. As the sectional crisis ran its course, he fashioned speeches that dramatized the moral imperative facing the North: people must confront the South and destroy slavery. Collected in books and widely reprinted in newspapers, Phillips's speeches, particularly those urging defiance of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, supporting free-soil struggles in Kansas, and praising John Brown's invasion of Harpers Ferry, gave Yankee political culture a strain of egalitarian extremism that presaged a war for slave emancipation. The onset of the war itself magnified Phillips's stature and influence as "abolition's golden trumpet." Discarding his disunionism, he declared secession to be treason and demanded war aims that would free the slaves, cede them their former masters' lands, grant them full civil rights, furnish them with free public education, and guarantee them full manhood suffrage. Joining other Radical Republicans, Phillips grew increasingly critical of President Abraham Lincoln's reluctance to prosecute a forthright war of slave liberation, a posture that put him much at odds with Garrison and many other Lincoln supporters within the American Anti-Slavery Society. James Brewer Stewart, "Phillips, Wendell," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00548.html. Wendell Phillips, Reconstruction (American National Biography) ScholarshipThe Garrisonians, moreover, did not share Phillips's vision of a radically reconstructed South, and debates over these questions finally fractured the abolitionist movement. After the passage in 1865 of the Thirteenth Amendment, freeing all slaves, Garrison and his supporters declared the abolitionists' crusade a success, retired, and left Phillips as president of a much depleted American Anti-Slavery Society. For the next five years, until the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, Phillips put nearly all of his energies into the struggle for black equality, speaking and writing on the imperative of guaranteeing former slaves the full rights and the protections of citizenship. With the passage of that amendment, Phillips finally conceded that there was little else he could do to help secure the future of African Americans living in the old Confederacy. James Brewer Stewart, "Phillips, Wendell," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00548.html. Events Date span begin Life span End Event 05/26/1854 05/26/1854 Abolitionists meet at Faneuil Hall, Boston to protest the arrest of Anthony Burns 01/27/1859 01/27/1859 The 27th Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society is held in Boston 02/01/1859 02/02/1859 The New York State Anti-Slavery Convention meets in Albany and advocates the dissolution of the Union 05/12/1859 05/12/1859 Ninth National Women's Rights Convention held in New York City 11/01/1859 11/01/1859 At the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, Wendell Phillips praises John Brown in a speech 03/24/1862 03/24/1862 In Cincinnati, Wendell Phillips is forced from the stage as he attempts agitate for abolition and disunion 01/25/1866 01/25/1866 In Boston, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society rejects a proposal to disband since its work is done Documents Subject Docs Date Title 10/10/1855 Boston (MA) Herald, "The Fugitive Slave Case," October 10, 1855 08/13/1857 Washington (DC) National Era, “A Mistake,” August 13, 1857 11/14/1857 Thomas Garrett to William Still, November 14, 1857 06/25/1858 Boston (MA) Liberator, "Anti-Slavery Celebration of Independence Day," June 25, 1858 12/05/1859 Hartford (CT) Courant, “Untitled,” December 5, 1859 01/04/1860 New York Times, “The Trial of Stevens,” January 4, 1860 01/05/1860 New York Herald, "The Underground Railroad and Its Victims," January 5, 1860 01/23/1860 Boston (MA) Herald, “A Conflict of the Races in Canada,” January 23, 1860 02/11/1860 New York Times, “The Senatorial Inquisition,” February 11, 1860 03/22/1860 New York Times, “Newspapers without Labels,” March 22, 1860 03/26/1860 William Wilkins to James Watson Webb, March 26, 1860 05/01/1860 New York Times, “The Charleston Convention,” May 1, 1860 06/20/1860 (Jackson) Mississippian, “The Fourth at John Brown’s Home,” June 20, 1860 09/07/1860 New York Herald, “Massachusetts Thoroughly Abolitionized,” September 7, 1860 10/28/1860 New York Herald, “Helper and His Black Republican Endorsers,” October 28, 1860 12/13/1860 Charlestown (VA) Free Press, “John Brown Anniversary,” December 13, 1860 02/13/1861 New York Herald, “Free Love and Passional Attraction in the New Administration,” February 13, 1861 03/24/1861 New York Herald, “Honor to Abolitionism Pure and Simple,” March 24, 1861 04/12/1861 New York Times, “Slave Insurrections,” April 12, 1861 10/29/1861 Chillicothe (OH) Scioto Gazette, “Disgraceful Fraud,” October 29, 1861 08/09/1862 New York National Anti-Slavery Standard, "Speech of Rev. M.D. Conway," August 9, 1862 02/22/1866 Andrew Johnson, Speech before Washington's Birthday Meeting, Washington, D.C., February 22, 1866 Images Wendell Phillips, engraving, aged 40 Wendell Phillips, engraving, aged 40, detail Wendell Phillips, c1855 Wendell Phillips, c1855, detail Wendell Phillips Wendell Phillips, detail Wendell Philips, April 1866, Thomas Nast cartoon Bibliography Chicago Style Entry Link Phillips, Wendell. Shall Women Have the Right to Vote? Address by Wendell Phillips at Worcester, Mass, 1851. Philadelphia: Equal Franchise Society of Philadelphia, 1910. View Record
Wendell Phillips, Abolition and the Civil War (American National Biography) ScholarshipIn the years immediately before the Civil War Phillips's oratory, not his labors for the American Anti-Slavery Society, defined his greatest significance. As the sectional crisis ran its course, he fashioned speeches that dramatized the moral imperative facing the North: people must confront the South and destroy slavery. Collected in books and widely reprinted in newspapers, Phillips's speeches, particularly those urging defiance of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, supporting free-soil struggles in Kansas, and praising John Brown's invasion of Harpers Ferry, gave Yankee political culture a strain of egalitarian extremism that presaged a war for slave emancipation. The onset of the war itself magnified Phillips's stature and influence as "abolition's golden trumpet." Discarding his disunionism, he declared secession to be treason and demanded war aims that would free the slaves, cede them their former masters' lands, grant them full civil rights, furnish them with free public education, and guarantee them full manhood suffrage. Joining other Radical Republicans, Phillips grew increasingly critical of President Abraham Lincoln's reluctance to prosecute a forthright war of slave liberation, a posture that put him much at odds with Garrison and many other Lincoln supporters within the American Anti-Slavery Society. James Brewer Stewart, "Phillips, Wendell," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00548.html.
Wendell Phillips, Reconstruction (American National Biography) ScholarshipThe Garrisonians, moreover, did not share Phillips's vision of a radically reconstructed South, and debates over these questions finally fractured the abolitionist movement. After the passage in 1865 of the Thirteenth Amendment, freeing all slaves, Garrison and his supporters declared the abolitionists' crusade a success, retired, and left Phillips as president of a much depleted American Anti-Slavery Society. For the next five years, until the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, Phillips put nearly all of his energies into the struggle for black equality, speaking and writing on the imperative of guaranteeing former slaves the full rights and the protections of citizenship. With the passage of that amendment, Phillips finally conceded that there was little else he could do to help secure the future of African Americans living in the old Confederacy. James Brewer Stewart, "Phillips, Wendell," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00548.html.
