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Page 59
The party of which he is the acknowledged head, is one of no
inconsiderable influence in the United States. No man has more bitter
enemies or stauncher friends than he. There are those among his friends
who would stake their all upon his veracity and integrity; and we are
sure that the coloured people throughout America, bond and free, in
whose cause he has so long laboured, will, with one accord, assign the
highest niche in their affection to the champion of universal
emancipation. Every cause has its writers and its orators. We have drawn
a hasty and imperfect sketch of the greatest writer in the Anti-Slavery
field: we shall now call attention to the most distinguished public
speaker. The name of Wendell Phillips is but another name for eloquence.
Born in the highest possible position in America, Mr. Phillips has all
the advantages that birth can give to one in that country. Educated at
the first University, graduating with all the honours which the College
could bestow on him, and studying the law and becoming a member of the
bar, he has all the accomplishments that these advantages can give to a
man of a great mind. Nature has treated him as a favourite. His stature
is not tall, but handsome; his expressive countenance paints and
reflects every emotion of his soul. His gestures are wonderfully
graceful, like his delivery. There is a fascination in the soft gaze of
his eyes, which none can but admire. Being a great reader, and endowed
by nature with a good memory, he supplies himself with the most
complicated dates and historical events. Nothing can equal the variety
of his matter. I have heard him more than twenty different times on the
same subject, but never heard the same speech. He is personal, but there
is nothing offensive in his personalities. He extracts from a subject
all that it contains, and does it as none but Wendell Phillips can. His
voice is beautifully musical, and it is calculated to attract wherever
it is heard. He is a man of calm intrepidity, of a patriotic and warm
heart, with manners the most affable, temper the most gentle, a
rectitude of principle entirely natural, a freedom from ambition, and a
modesty quite singular. As Napoleon kept the Old Guard in reserve, to
turn the tide in battle, so do the Abolitionists keep Mr. Phillips in
reserve when opposition is expected in their great gatherings. We have
seen the meetings turned into a bedlam, by the mobocratic slave-holding
spirit, and when the speakers had one after another left the platform
without a hearing, and the chairman had lost all control of the
assembly, the appearance of this gentleman upon the platform would turn
the tide of events. He would not beg for a hearing, but on the
contrary, he would lash them as no preceding speaker had done. If, by
their groans and yells, they stifled his voice, he would stand unmoved
with his arms folded, and by the very eloquence of his looks put them to
silence. His speeches against the Fugitive Slave Law, and his withering
rebukes of Daniel Webster and other northern men who supported that
measure, are of the most splendid character, and will compare in point
of composition with anything ever uttered by Chatham or Sheridan in
their palmiest days. As a public speaker, Mr. Phillips is, without
doubt, the first in the United States. Considering his great talent, his
high birth, and the prospects which lay before him, and the fact that he
threw everything aside to plead the slave's cause, we must be convinced
that no man has sacrificed more upon the altar of humanity than Wendell
Phillips.
Within the past ten years, a great impetus has been given to the
anti-slavery movement in America by coloured men who have escaped from
slavery. Coming as they did from the very house of bondage, and being
able to speak from sad experience, they could speak as none others
could.
The gentleman to whom we shall now call attention is one of this class,
and doubtless the first of his race in America. The name of Frederick
Douglass is well known throughout this country as well as America. Born
and brought up as a slave, he was deprived of a mother's care and of
early education. Escaping when he was little more than twenty years of
age, he was thrown upon his own resources in the free states, where
prejudice against colour is but another name for slavery. But during all
this time he was educating himself as well as circumstances would admit.
Mr. Douglass commenced his career as a public speaker some ten years
since, as an agent of the American or Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
Societies. He is tall and well made. His vast and well-developed
forehead announces the power of his intellect. His voice is full and
sonorous. His attitude is dignified, and his gesticulation is full of
noble simplicity. He is a man of lofty reason, natural, and without
pretension, always master of himself, brilliant in the art of exposing
and of abstracting. Few persons can handle a subject with which they are
familiar better than Mr. Douglass. There is a kind of eloquence issuing
from the depth of the soul, as from a spring, rolling along its copious
floods, sweeping all before it, overwhelming by its very force,
carrying, upsetting, engulphing its adversaries, and more dazzling and
more thundering than the bolt which leaps from crag to crag. This is the
eloquence of Frederick Douglass. He is one of the greatest mimics of the
age. No man can put on a sweeter smile or a more sarcastic frown than
he: you cannot put him off his guard. He is always in good humour. Mr.
Douglass possesses great dramatic powers; and had he taken up the sock
and buskin, instead of becoming a lecturer, he would have made as fine a
Coriolanus as ever trod the stage.
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