Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/806

760 revolution of 1630, reading everything concerning it that he could find. With equal care he studied the period of George III., and Dutch history also so far as English literature enabled him to do so.

His parents were of the Evangelical faith, and in one of the revivals of religion that followed the settlement of Dr. Lyman Beecher in Boston he became a convert, and he did not at any subsequent time depart from the faith of his fathers. While he denounced the churches for their complicity with slavery, he made no war upon their creeds. A fellow-student remembers well his earnest religiousness in college, and his &ldquo;devoutness during morning and evening prayers which so many others attended only to save their credit with the government.&rdquo; Though orthodox himself, he welcomed those of other faiths, and even of no faith, to the anti-slavery platform, resisting every attempt to divide the host upon sectarian or theological grounds. He entered the Harvard law-school for a term of three years, and in 1834 was admitted to the bar. He was well equipped for his profession in every respect save one, viz., that he appears to have had no special love for it and small ambition for success therein. &ldquo;If,&rdquo; he said to a friend, &ldquo;clients do not come, I will throw myself heart and soul into some good cause and devote my life to it.&rdquo; The clients would doubtless have come in no long time if he had chosen to wait for them, but the &ldquo;good cause&rdquo; presented its claims first, and was so fortunate as to win the devotion of his life. &ldquo;The Liberator,&rdquo; founded by William Lloyd Garrison in 1831, had already forced the slavery question upon public attention and created an agitation that the leaders of society were vainly endeavoring to suppress. It has been said, probably with truth, that the first person to interest Mr. Phillips in this subject was the lady &mdash; Miss Anne Terry Greene &mdash; who afterward became his wife and, as he himself has said, &ldquo;his counsel, his guide, his inspiration,&rdquo; during his whole subsequent life. Of all the young men of Boston at that period, there was hardly one whose social relations, education, and personal character better fitted him for success as an aspirant for such public honors as Massachusetts was accustomed to bestow upon the most gifted of her sons. But if ambitions or aspirations of this sort were ever indulged, he had the courage and the moral power to resist their appeals and devote himself to what he felt to be a righteous though popularly odious cause. The poet James Russell Lowell has embalmed the memory of his early self-abnegation in a sonnet, of which these lines form a part:

Looking from his office-window on 21 Oct., 1835, he saw the crowd of &ldquo;gentlemen of property and standing&rdquo; gathered in Washington and State streets to break up a meeting of anti-slavery ladies and &ldquo;snake out that infamous foreign scoundrel, Thompson,&rdquo; and &ldquo;bring him to the tar-kettle before dark&rdquo; &mdash; the same Thompson of whom Lord Brougham said in the house of lords at the time of the passage of the British emancipation act: &ldquo;I rise to take the crown of this most glorious victory from every other head and place it upon his. He has done more than any other man to achieve it&rdquo;; and of whom John Bright said: &ldquo;I have always considered him the liberator of the slaves in the English colonies; for, without his commanding eloquence, made irresistible by the blessedness of his cause, I do not think all the other agencies then at work would have procured their freedom.&rdquo; The mob, disappointed in its expectation of getting possession of the eloquent Englishman, &ldquo;snaked out&rdquo; Garrison instead, and Phillips saw him dragged through the streets, his person well-nigh denuded of clothing, and a rope around his waist ready to strangle him withal, from which fate he was rescued only by a desperate ruse of the mayor, who locked him up in the jail for safety. This spectacle deeply moved the young lawyer, who from that hour was an avowed Abolitionist, though he was not widely known as such until the martyrdom of (q. v.) in 1837 brought him into sudden prominence and revealed him to the country as an orator of the rarest gifts. The men then at the head of affairs in Boston were not disposed to make any open protest against this outrage upon the freedom of the press; but William Ellery Channing, the eminent preacher and writer, was resolved that the freedom-loving people of the city should have an opportunity to express their sentiments in an hour so fraught with danger to the cause of American liberty, and through his persistent efforts preparations were made for a public meeting, which assembled in Faneuil hall on 8 Dec., 1837. It was the custom to hold such meetings in the evening, but there were threats of a mob, and this one on that account was appointed for a daylight hour.

The hall was well filled, Jonathan Phillips was called to the chair, Dr. Channing made an impressive address, and resolutions written by him, fitly characterizing the outrage at Alton, were introduced. George S. Hillard, a popular young lawyer, followed in a serious and well-considered address. Thus far everything had gone smoothly; but now uprose James T. Austin, attorney-general of the state, a member of Dr. Channing's congregation, but known to be bitterly opposed to his anti-slavery course. He eulogized the Alton murderers, comparing them with the patriots of the Revolution, and declared that Lovejoy had &ldquo;died as the fool dieth.&rdquo; Mr. Phillips was present, but with no expectation of speaking. There were those in the hall, however, who thought him the man best fitted to reply to Austin, and some of these urged the managers to call upon him, which they consented to do. As he stepped upon the platform, his manly beauty, dignity, and perfect self-possession won instant admiration. His opening sentences, uttered calmly but with deep feeling, revealed his power and raised expectation to the highest pitch. &ldquo;When,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I heard the gentleman [Mr. Austin] lay down principles which placed the rioters, incendiaries, and murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the hall] would have