After that I heard Mr. Wendell Phillips. Of him, too, as an orator all the world of Massachusetts speaks with great admiration, and I have no doubt so speaks with justice. He is, however, known as the hottest and most impassioned advocate of abolition. Not many months since the cause of abolition, as advocated by him, was so unpopular in Boston, that Mr. Phillips was compelled to address his audience surrounded by a guard of policemen. Of this gentleman, I may at any rate say that he is consistent, devoted, and disinterested. He is an abolitionist by profession, and seeks to find in every turn of the tide of politics some stream on which he may bring himself nearer to his object. In the old days, previous to the selection of Mr. Lincoln, in days so old that they are now nearly eighteen months past, Mr. Phillips was an anti-Union man. He advocated strongly the disseverance of the Union, so that the country to which he belonged might have hands clean from the taint of slavery. He had probably acknowledged to himself, that while the North and South were bound together no hope existed of emancipation, but that if the North stood alone the South would become too weak to foster and keep alive the "social institution." In which, if such were his opinions, I am inclined to agree with him. But now he is all for the Union, thinking that a victorious North can compel the immediate emancipation of southern slaves. As to which I beg to say that I am bold to differ from Mr. Phillips altogether.
It soon became evident to me that Mr. Phillips was unwell, and lecturing at a disadvantage. His manner was clearly that of an accustomed orator, but his voice was weak, and he was not up to the effect which he attempted to make. His hearers were impatient, repeatedly calling upon him to speak out, and on that account I tried hard to feel kindly towards him and his lecture. But I must confess that I failed. To me it seemed that the doctrine he preached was one of rapine, bloodshed, and social destruction. He would call upon the Government and upon Congress to enfranchise the slaves at once,--now during the war,--so that the Southern power might be destroyed by a concurrence of misfortunes. And he would do so at once, on the spur of the moment, fearing lest the South should be before him, and themselves emancipate their own bondsmen. I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so bloodthirsty as a professed philanthropist; and that when the philanthropist's ardour lies negro-wards, it then assumes the deepest die of venom and bloodthirstiness. There are four millions of slaves in the southern States, none of whom have any capacity for self-maintenance or self-control. Four millions of slaves, with the necessities of children, with the passions of men, and the ignorance of savages! And Mr. Phillips would emancipate these at a blow; would, were it possible for him to do so, set them loose upon the soil to tear their masters, destroy each other, and make such a hell upon the earth as has never even yet come from the uncontrolled passions and unsatisfied wants of men. But Congress cannot do this. All the members of Congress put together cannot, according to the constitution of the United States, emancipate a single slave in South Carolina; not if they were all unanimous. No emancipation in a Slave State can come otherwise than by the legislative enactment of that State. But it was then thought that in this coming winter of 1860-61 the action of Congress might be set aside. The North possessed an enormous army under the control of the President. The South was in rebellion, and the President could pronounce, and the army perhaps enforce, the confiscation of all property held in slaves. If any who held them were not disloyal, the question of compensation might be settled afterwards. How those four million slaves should live, and how white men should live among them, in some States or parts of States not equal to the blacks in number;--as to that Mr. Phillips did not give us his opinion.