LIBRARY MOVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS THE STATUE. EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION OF THE STATUE OF WENDELL PHILLIPS JULY ?f 191? CITY OF BOSTON PRINTING DEPARTMENT 1916 CITY OF BOSTON. IN CITY COUNCIL, July 16, 1915. Ordered, That the City Clerk be authorized to prepare and have printed an edition of 500 copies of a volume containing an account of the exercises at the dedication of the Wendell Phillips Memorial; said volume to be distributed under the direction of the Committee on Printing, and the expense to be charged to the appropriation for City Documents. Passed. Approved by the Acting Mayor July 19, 1915. Attest: W. J. DOYLE, Assistant City Clerk. CONTENTS Page INVOCATION BY REV. MONTROSE W. THORNTON, D. D., 8 ADDRESS BY ACTING MAYOR GEORGE W. COLEMAN, 11 ADDRESS BY WILLIAM DEXTER BRIGHAM . . . 15 ADDRESS BY FRANK B. SANBORN 31 ADDRESS BY WILLIAM MONROE TROTTER ... 36 ADDRESS BY MICHAEL J. JORDAN 43 ORIGINAL POEM BY WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON, JR., 52 HISTORY OF WENDELL PHILLIPS STATUE . 54 PROGRAM HON. GEORGE W. COLEMAN, Acting Mayor, will preside. INVOCATION. MONTROSE WILLIAM THORNTON, D. D. ADDRESSES ON MR. PHILLIPS' LIFE WILL BE GIVEN BY THE FOLLOWING SPEAKERS, COVERING THE FOUR PERIODS OF HIS LIFE, UNDER THE TITLES OF " Morning. Youth and Vision." WILLIAM DEXTER BRIGHAM. "Noon. The Abolition Period." FRANKLIN BENJAMIN SANBORN. " Afternoon. Citizenship for the Colored American." WILLIAM MONROE TROTTER. " Evening. What Mr. Phillips did for Ireland; also, his other Philanthropies." MICHAEL J. JORDAN, Esq. Original Poem. " Wendell Phillips." WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON, JR. Unveiling Statue by a lad. JOHN C. PHILLIPS, JR. Music by a chorus of colored singers from the Boston churches, under the direction of Dr. WALTER O. TAYLOR and J. SHERMAN JONES. OPENING EXERCISES The exercises of unveiling and dedicating the Wendell Phillips statue by the City of Boston were opened by Mr. William D. Brigham, as secretary of the Wendell Phillips Memorial Association, who introduced the Acting Mayor, George W. Cole- man, president of the City Council. Mr. Coleman called upon Rev. Montrose William Thornton, pastor of the Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church, for the invocation. 8 WENDELL PHILLIPS DEDICATORY PRAYER BY THE REV. MONTROSE WILLIAM THORNTON, PH. D. Almighty and everlasting God, who art the Sovereign of the universe, and rulest the children of men as seemeth good in thy sight, look down, we beseech thee in mercy, upon this historic gather- ing. We adore thee, God, as the Lord of Hosts. We come unto thee at this hour to acknowledge our gratitude for the blessings of this day, the anniversary of this nation's birth and the illus- trious lives of the great, the patriots whose memory we bless in these exercises. We thank thee and adore thy name for the gift of an Andrew, a Garri- son, a Sumner and the immortal Wendell Phillips, the latter whose life we now extoll and whose deeds we revere. In thy name and by the services that bring us here, as this shaft of bronze and marble is unveiled and dedicated to the great cause for which he gave his precious life, we beseech thy favor and pray as the generations pass this way their gaze upon this monument will perpetuate in their souls the worth and services of one of thy greatest sons. For him we the living do pray; suffer not the wicked to accomplish their ungodly purposes; defeat MEMORIAL STATUE. 9 the designs and machinations of those who would invade the equal rights or abridge the just privi- leges of the people. May law and order, justice and equity and the sound principles of thy Holy Word prevail in our land and in all the nations of the earth. O Lord, put to naught the counsels of those who delight in war and bloodshed, and who will adopt no method to adjust disputes but that of leading thousands into the field of battle, and ushering multitudes unprepared into the presence of an offended and awful God. Lord, hear our prayers for peace, for the rulers of this land and Commonwealth; teach them and those they serve to cultivate harmony and love; make an end of tumult; let all false ideas of dig- nity and glory be buried in the dust, and may all in authority see that it is their greatest glory to legis- late and govern in the fear of the Lord and for the peace and quiet of the nation. Graciously bless these noble spirits, the good men and women inspired in the endeavor of this hour, who have led forth this splendid undertaking to perpetuate the loving memory of their worthy brother, and may the Wendell Phillips Memorial Association live and flourish in humanitarian serv- ice until men everywhere shall be touched with thy spirit of brotherhood and all shall be one with thee. Our trust is in thee; thou livest and reignest on 10 WENDELL PHILLIPS high. Oh, come down and live and reign also among the people, and overrule their agitations to thine own glory and the furtherance of thy pur- poses of wisdom and mercy. From this day forth cause the wrath of man to praise thee, and the remainder of wrath do thou restrain. May peace and harmony take the place of discontent and com- motion, and may love and good will animate the hearts of the children of men everywhere. thou prayer-hearing and prayer-answering God, hear our supplications, and grant us an answering in peace through Jesus Christ, to whom, as the Lamb that was slain to redeem us to God by his blood, be blessing, and honor, and glory, and power forever and ever. Amen. THE SPEAKERS AT THE DEDICATION. MEMORIAL STATUE. 11 ADDRESS BY ACTING MAYOR GEORGE W. COLEMAN It may be interesting for you to hear a little of the history of the Wendell Phillips Memorial Asso- ciation and concerning the statue to be dedicated to-day. Wendell PhiUips died February 2, 1884. Soon after that the Wendell Phillips Association was formed, with the thought of raising money to build a hall for working people as a memorial to Wendell Phillips. In 1894 the name was changed to the Wendell Phillips Memorial Association by act of the Legislature, and the funds, which had been rather slow in gathering, were used to purchase two scholarships, one in Harvard University and one in Tufts College, to be given to some student who showed promise of oratorical powers. Soon after this was done the association slumbered for about twenty-five years. Then it was revived in 1911, and Dr. A. N. Abbott of South Boston, who was treasurer of the original association, has continued treasurer up to the present time. On the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Wendell Phillips, November 29, 1911, a celebration of this event was held in Faneuil Hall under the auspices of the National Equal Rights League, an 12 WENDELL PHILLIPS organization chiefly of colored citizens, and the New England Suffrage League. The suggestion was then made that the City of Boston erect a statue in honor of Wendell Phillips and the matter was brought to the attention of the City Council and of Hon. John F. Fitzgerald, who was then Mayor of Boston, by Mr. Earnest E. Smith, one of the City Council. A meeting was called by the committee appointed at the centenary celebration of fifty representative citizens, who requested the Mayor to provide for this statue. As a result of these conferences Mayor Fitzgerald sent a message to the City Council, requesting them to appropriate $20,000 for the erection of a statue, and the Council heartily agreed to this. So that we are indebted to Mayor Fitzgerald for originating the order, as under the new charter all orders must originate with the Mayor, and we are indebted to the City Council for voting the money. It was first suggested that the money be taken from the Parkman Fund left for the beautifying of public parks, but it was afterwards voted that the money be taken from the general tax levy, so that the humblest citizen of Boston who is a taxpayer con- tributed his share to the erection of this monument. Repeated conferences were held by the committee of the Wendell Phillips Memorial Association with the Art Commission. Differences of opinion devel- oped as to where the statue should be located, whether on Beacon street opposite Walnut, looking down upon the house where Mr. Phillips was born, MEMORIAL STATUE. 13 or on the corner of Charles and Beacon streets; but it was finally decided by concurrent action of the Art Commission and the Park Commission that the statue should be located where it is to-day, with the beautiful Public Garden for a background and facing the wide boulevard of Boylston street, and facing the southwest, as the sculptor desired. The citizens of Boston are especially fortunate that the Art Commission chose for the sculptor Daniel Chester French, whose work in the " Minute Man" at Concord, the statue of John Harvard in Cambridge and " Death Arresting the Sculptor" in Forest Hills Cemetery is so well known. He is one of the most eminent living American sculptors and has been particularly successful in making an impres- sive statue and an accurate representation of Mr. Phillips' expression and figure. The cost of the statue was $20,000 and honors the memory and per- petuates the influence of one of Boston's most illustrious sons, and one who with two or three others changed the world's history and led to the final abolition of slavery and struck the shackles from 4,000,000 slaves. As a young man I went once to hear the great Phillips speak, determined to discover, if I could, the secret of his oratorical power. The subject he was announced to speak upon did not particularly interest me at the time, and I thought I could give my whole attention to an analysis of his speaking gifts. Afterwards at home, when I was asked what I had discovered, I had to admit that in the flow 14 WENDELL PHILLIPS of his smooth rhetoric I had forgotten all about my purpose to study him and had become absorbed in what he was talking about. If I remember cor- rectly that was his last public address and was given in the hall of the Boston Young Men's Christian Union. Another outstanding memory I have of Phillips is the loving partnership that existed between him and his invalid wife. She cheered and encouraged him in his darkest hours when there were but scant sources of comfort to be found anywhere else. Wendell Phillips had the heart and the vision and the courage to step outside the limitations of his own aristocratic, cultured, privileged class and give himself, all that he had and was and all that he hoped to be, to the men and women of another class, unfavored, unprivileged and unchampioned, in order that he might improve their station in life. What we need to-day more than anything else in this great city, in the old Bay State, throughout our country and the world around, is men like Phillips who are sufficiently big-hearted, broad-minded and courageous to sense the difficulties and sufferings of some class or race not their own and devote them- selves to an improvement of their condition. MEMORIAL STATUE. 15 ADDRESS BY MR. WILLIAM D. BRIGHAM Fellow Citizens, Ladies and Gentlemen: The highest peaks of the Alps catch the first rays of the morning light, while the valleys below are still submerged in darkness. So it seems to me a few persons in each century seem to catch the morning light of God's plans and to have what we call vision. Everyone has some ideal to which he tries to measure up. Wendell Phillips was what we might call a practical idealist. We are all interested in the stories of Greek and Roman mythology, for these nations personified everything, war, peace, with their heroes and heroines, the winds, the sea, the skies, the stars, fruits and flowers, and yet, interesting as all these stories are, we always have the feeling, I think, that they were unreal. Wendell Phillips was a man among men, a man of like passions with ourselves, who attended our schools, went to our colleges and walked our streets, and many of us still living remember his beautiful and benignant face as he dwelt among us, in the peaceful evening of life after the storm and stress of his youth and earlier years. 16 WENDELL PHILLIPS I think that sometimes the common blessings of life air, sunshine, home, friendship, liberty - are enjoyed by us with almost unthankful hearts, and I am sure it is well and profitable to-day to pause for a few moments to express our gratitude to one who more than anyone else, with perhaps a single exception, brought about the abolition of slavery in this country. We do well to honor his memory to remember that when friends forsook him, when his own family turned from him and when the church of the living God, which should have led in the conflict, was either indifferent or hostile, he never wavered in his purpose that slavery should be abolished. I think it is impressive to remember how few persons there really were who furnished the inspira- tion, did the work, risked their lives, to free the slaves Phillips, Garrison, Sumner, Andrew, Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Whittier, Theodore Parker and Abraham Lincoln and Julia Ward Howe. Some of our greatest men were born in lowly circumstances and in extreme poverty. President McKinley used to relate how, when he was a boy, on a winter morning he would go out into the pasture with his mother and stand on the place where the cow had been lying all night, to warm his bare feet, while his mother milked the cow. But Wendell Phillips was born of an historic family, in affluence. He had the charm of great personal beauty, an education at the Boston Latin School and at Harvard University and the Harvard Law MEMORIAL STATUE. 17 School, a voice so wonderful that people called him "the silver-tongued orator," and, above all, a heart that went out to every lowly human being. On the 12th of April, 1630, the progenitor of the Phillips family in America, Rev. George Phillips, set sail as fellow passenger with Governor Winthrop, Sir Richard Saltonstall and others equally well known. John Phillips, the father of Wendell, is described as being a good man, true as steel, and always trustworthy in the various relations of life. He lived in the fear of God and from his word received instruction for the guidance of his conduct. In a large mansion house which still stands on the lower corner of Beacon and Walnut streets in this city, Wendell Phillips, the eighth child in a family of nine children, was born on the 29th of November, 1811. His father, John Phillips, was the first mayor of Boston; his mother, who was a diligent student of the scriptures, brought up Wendell carefully in its truths. In August, 1822, in his eleventh year, he entered the Boston Latin School, which was then at the corner of Chapman place and School street, on the site of the present Parker House. He finished at the Latin School when he was sixteen and entered Harvard College. One of his class- mates says of him: "We were in the same class at school and college for five years. To my mind then, he was the most beautiful person I had ever seen, handsome indeed in form and feature, but what I mean by his beauty was his grace of character, his kindly, generous manners, his bright- 18 WENDELL PHILLIPS ness of mind and his perfect purity and whiteness of soul his face had a radiance from which shone forth the soul that dwelt within." At the age of fourteen he joined Lyman Beecher's Congregational Church on Hanover street. A personal friend asked Mr. Phillips not long before his death, "Mr. Phillips, did you ever con- secrate yourself to God?" "Yes," he answered, "when I was a boy of fourteen years of age, in the old church at the North End, I heard Lyman Beecher preach on the theme, 'You belong to God/ and I went home after that service, threw myself on the floor in my room, with locked doors, and prayed, '0 God, I belong to thee; take what is thine own. I ask this, that whenever a thing be wrong, it may have no temptation over me; whenever a thing be right, it may take no courage to do it.' From that day to this it has been so." George William Curtis says of Phillips' first speech in Faneuil Hall, when he was twenty-six years old: "In the annals of American speech there has been no such scene since Patrick Henry's electrical warning to George the Third. It was the greatest of oratorical triumphs, when a supreme emotion, a sentiment which is to mold a people anew, lifted the orator to adequate expression; three such scenes are illustrations in our history, that of the speech of Patrick Henry at Williams- burg, of Wendell Phillips in Faneuil Hall, of Abra- ham Lincoln at Gettysburg, three, and there is no fourth." MEMORIAL STATUE. 19 Among his classmates were Edmund Quincy, George Ticknor, John Lothrop Motley, Charles Sumner and Oliver Wendell Holmes. What led Phillips to espouse the anti-slavery cause? He practised his profession for a while and everything pointed to a great success, when the event came which turned the whole current of his life, leading him to forsake all the high inducements which the law held out. Some say it was the sight of Garrison being dragged by a mob through the streets of Boston, October 21, 1835, after the destruction of the office of The Liberator, which inclined Phillips definitely to align himself with the cause of anti-slavery, but he always claimed it was his wife who brought this about the wife of whom he wrote: "She is my counsel, my guide, my inspiration." He had married Miss Ann Terry Greene, whose uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Henry G. Chapman, were close friends of Garrison, while the niece herself was ardently devoted to all that might better the condition of the slave. Be the cause what it may, Phillips, with his friend Edmund Quincy, joined the New England Anti- Slavery Society, an association founded about this time, and in March of 1836 the former made his maiden speech against slavery at Lynn, encour- aged, among others, by John G. Whittier, himself so whole-souled an agitator in the conflict. Follow- ing this came the speech at Faneuil Hall, occasioned by the horror with which was viewed the assassina- tion of Lovejoy at Alton, HI., for criticising in his 20 WENDELL PHILLIPS journal the lynching of a negro; a speech which certainly struck beyond all evading the keynote of the anti-slavery movement from first to last. On October 30, 1842, he made his great speech in Faneuil Hall, in the case of George Latimer, a fugitive slave arrested in Boston, and in March, 1855, gave special evidence of his wonderful legal gifts, causing many to regret his apparently narrow consecration of them, when he argued before the Committee on Federal Relations of the Massa- chusetts Legislature in support of petitions for the removal of Judge Loring, who had issued the war- rant to arrest a slave named Anthony Burns. The New England Anti-Slavery Society was founded January 6, 1832, when Wendell Phillips was twenty-one, in the schoolroom of the African Baptist Church on Smith court, off Joy street. Said William Lloyd Garrison: "We have met here to-night in this obscure schoolhouse our members are few and our influence limited; but, mark my prediction, Faneuil Hall shall ere long echo with the principles we have set forth. We shall shake the nation with their mighty power." Then began an agitation, says one writer, which for the marvel of its origin, the majesty of its pur- pose, the earnestness, unselfishness and ability of its appeals, the vigor of its assault, the deep, national convulsion it caused, the vast and beneficent changes it wrought and its widespread, indirect influence on all kindred moral questions, is without a parallel in history since Luther. MEMORIAL STATUE. 21 Wendell Phillips was a prophet, for he said: "I love inexpressibly these streets of Boston, over whose pavements my mother held up tenderly my baby feet; and if God grants me time enough, I will make them too pure to bear the footsteps of a slave." I saw not long ago, in a newspaper published in Boston about 100 years ago, an advertisement of a cow for sale, giving so many quarts of milk per day, and directly under it another advertisement of "A young, strong, healthy colored boy for sale, will be sold low, to settle an estate." I blush for my native city that ever a man, made in the image of God and with an immortal soul, was publicly offered for sale and that a fugitive slave, Anthony Burns, was dragged through our streets as he was being returned to his master. Wendell Phillips said: "The Whigs one day invited Daniel Webster to address them in Faneuil Hall, but the great Daniel was pettish that day and declined. It was well," said Mr. Phillips, "for Faneuil Hall is a good refuge for a fugitive slave to flee to, but a poor place of refuge for recreant statesmen." It is interesting to recall that Abraham Lincoln, when a young man, walking with a friend, came to a slave mart at the South where slaves were being sold at auction. He turned to his friend and said: "Some day I will hit that institution and I will hit it hard." Years afterwards he closed the "Emancipation Proclamation" with these words: "Upon this act, taken after great deliberation, I 22 WENDELL PHILLIPS invoke the blessing of Almighty God and the considerate judgment of mankind." Wendell Phillips said he once heard Daniel Webster make a three-hour speech and at its close one could not tell whether Webster loved slavery or hated it. He opposed Webster bitterly in the latter's advocacy of the Fugitive Slave Law. Not to quote his exact words, Webster said that the purpose of abolitionists "was distinctly treasonable/' that the law would be executed in all the great cities. He called upon Massachusetts to discharge her duty of catching fugitive slaves. He said: "You of the South have as much right to recover your fugitive slaves as the North has to any of its rights, privileges of navigation and commerce. The excitement in Boston caused by the Fugi- tive Slave Law is fast subsiding and it is thought there is now no probability of any resistance if a fugitive should be arrested." When Commissioner Loring had given his decision that Anthony Burns should be returned to slavery, Wendell Phillips visited him in his cell. Burns looked up into his face with a pathetic appeal: "Mr. Phillips, has everything been done for me that can be done? Must I go back?" Mr. Phillips said: "I went over in my mind the history of Massachusetts. I thought of her schools, her colleges of learning, her churches, her courts, her benevolent and philanthropic institutions, her great names, her Puritans, her Pilgrims, and I was obliged to say, 'Burns, there isn't humanity, there MEMORIAL STATUE. 23 isn't justice enough here to save you; you must go back.' Then I vowed anew/' Mr. Phillips said, "before the everlasting God, that I would consecrate all the power he had given me to hasten the time when an innocent man should be safe on the sacred soil of the Puritans." Those are the words of the man in whose honor we are dedicating this statue to-day. The worldly side of Phillips' life may be summed up in the words: "He was born on Beacon street and he died on Common street." Wendell Phillips had an exceedingly tender con- science. At the funeral of Theodore Parker, who died in Italy and who was one year older than Mr. Phillips, and his neighbor and intimate friend and one of the early abolitionists, he related this incident of Theodore Parker: "A little boy in petticoats, in my fifth year," said Mr. Parker, "my father sent me from the field home. A spotted tortoise, in shallow water at the foot of a rhodora, caught my sight and I lifted my stick to strike it, when a voice within said: 'It is wrong.' I stood with lifted stick, in wonder at the new emotion, till rhodora and tortoise vanished from my sight. I hastened home and asked my mother what it was that told me it was wrong. Wiping a tear with her apron and taking me in her arms she said : ' Some men call it conscience but I prefer to call it the voice of God in the soul of man. If you listen to it and obey it, then it will speak clearer and clearer and always guide you right. But if you turn a deaf 24 WENDELL PHILLIPS ear or disobey, then it will fade out, little by little, and leave you in the dark and without a guide. " Wendell Phillips also heard the voice of God in his soul through all his life. Wendell Phillips died thirty years ago and I count it a great joy that I often met him and that through one of his family whom I knew he gave me his photograph with his own signature upon it. One day when I was quite a young boy he came into our store and I said: "Mr. Phillips, would you give me your autograph?" and he said: "With pleasure, young man," and he wrote: "Peace, if possible, justice at any rate." And then he said: "Let me add a sentiment which De Tocqueville wrote to my friend Charles Sumner: 'Life is neither pain nor pleasure, but serious business to be entered upon with courage in the spirit of self-sacrifice.' 3 On the 21st of October, 1835, an anti-slavery meeting held at 46 Washington street was broken up and William Lloyd Garrison attacked by what has been called the "Garrison Mob." He was hustled off to the jail in a carriage and the next day was dragged through Court street, with a rope around his waist. Sitting at his window in his law office was Wendell Phillips, and this scene stirred his Puritan blood to the very finger tips. On the 7th of November, 1837, Rev. Elijah Love- joy was murdered by a mob in Alton, 111., and his press destroyed and printing office burned. He had said in his paper: "I have sworn eternal hostility to slavery, and by the blessing of God I will never MEMORIAL STATUE. 25 go back." When news of Love joy's death reached Boston, Rev. William Ellery Channing and one hundred of his fellow citizens applied for permission to hold a meeting of protest in Faneuil Hall. Elo- quent addresses were made by Doctor Channing and others. Suddenly there arose in the gallery James T. Austin, the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth, and with a loud and angry voice declared that Lovejoy had "died as the fool dieth," and compared his murderers with the men who destroyed the tea in Boston Harbor. Probably not more than a dozen persons present knew the young man who stepped upon the stage to reply, as he said: "Sir, when I heard the gentle- man lay down principles which place the mur- derers 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 broken into voice to rebuke the recreant Ameri- can, the slanderer of the dead." Here he was interrupted by hisses and uproar. At length he said: "Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up." Here the uproar became furious, and the chairman, Hon. William Sturgis, and George Bond, Esq., came to his side and besought the audience to allow Mr. Phillips to proceed, which after a while he did, saying: "Fellow citizens, I cannot take back my words. Surely the Attorney-General, so long and well 26 WENDELL PHILLIPS known here, needs not the aid of your hisses against one so young as I am my voice never before heard within these walls." In sharp contrast to this scene I have just described, and fifty years after its occurrence, I was one of that great company who waited in long procession in Faneuil Hall to pass around the casket of Wendell Phillips, which stood in almost the iden- tical spot where he first publicly put himself on the side of the slave and the oppressed. William Lloyd Garrison when twenty-five years old started the publication of his paper called The Liberator, advocating the immediate abolition of slavery, and with the sublime pledge: "I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to speak or write with moderation. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard." On a building at the corner of Devonshire and Water streets in Boston is a bronze tablet with these words: On this spot William Lloyd Garrison Began the publishing of "The Liberator" Jan. 1, 1831. In a small chamber, Friendless and unseen, Toiled o'er his types One poor, unlearned young man; The place was dark, unfurnished and mean, Yet there the freedom of a race began. MEMORIAL STATUE. 27 I suppose we can hardly imagine the horrors of slavery in our country for the fifty years preceding the war. Let me read you a few lines from " Uncle Tom's Cabin" about "The Slave Warehouse," where slaves were sold at auction: THE SLAVE WAREHOUSE. "Then you shall be courteously entreated to call and examine, and shall find an abundance of hus- bands, wives, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, and young children, to be 'sold separately, or in lots to suit the convenience of the purchaser'; and that soul immortal, once bought with blood and anguish by the Son of God, when the earth shook and the rocks rent, and the graves were opened, can be sold, leased, mortgaged, exchanged for groceries or dry goods, to suit the phases of trade, or the fancy of the purchaser." There is a tablet placed by the city on the site of the Phillips homestead on Essex street: Here Wendell Phillips resided during forty years, devoted by him to efforts to secure the abolition of African slavery in this Country. The charms of home, the enjoyment of wealth and learning, even the kindly recognition of his fellow citizens, were by him accounted as naught compared with duty. 28 WENDELL PHILLIPS He lived to see justice triumphant, freedom universal, and to receive the tardy praises of his opponents. The blessings of the poor, the friendless, and the oppressed, enriched him. In Boston he was born 29th November, 1811, and died 2nd February, 1884. This tablet was erected in 1894 by order of the City Council of Boston. Let me quote a few words from Joseph Cook's estimate of Wendell Phillips, given in Tremont Temple on the Monday after Phillips died: "Whom God crowns, let no man try to discrown. There lies dead on his shield in yonder street an unsullied soldier of unpopular reform, a spotlessly disinter- ested champion of the oppressed, the foremost orator of the English-speaking world in recent years, the largest and latest, let us hope not the last, of the Puritans, a servant of the most high God, a man on the altar of whose heart the coals of fire were kindled by a breath from the divine justice and tenderness." "He joined the Anti-Slavery Society in 1836; but his real membership in the anti-slavery ranks began from a time in which he saw Garrison mobbed in 1835. He became a supporter of the Union in his fiftieth year, 1861, and in that very year was MEMORIAL STATUE. 29 himself mobbed in this city. He was twenty-six years old when he delivered his famous address at Faneuil Hall on the murder of Love joy. He was seventy-three years old at his death. It may be said that from 1837 to his last hour he was a pillar of fire, through which God looked in the morning watch of better ages to come, and troubled the host of his enemies, and took off their chariot wheels. "This man almost never unveiled to mortal gaze the holy of holies of his spirit in which he dwelt alone with God. Through all his life he was a Calvinist. He said at Theodore Parker's funeral: 'Mine is not Parker's faith. Mine is the old faith of New England. On these subjects he and I rarely speak. 7 "I heard the authoress of the ' Battle Hymn of the Republic' say to a hushed assembly: 'Wendell Phillips was orthodox of the orthodox. He would not worship with the churches of Boston; but in the darkest days of the struggle with slavery he and some of those who were most nearly of his own heart were accustomed to meet on the Sabbath in private homes to observe the holy service of the Lord's supper. The faith of this servant of human- ity was not a creed merely, but a life." I quote from one of Phillips' speeches: "When I stood upon the pearly shores of Genoa and gazed upon that magnificent ship of the line, 'The Ohio,' her graceful masts tapering towards the sky, the translucent waters reflecting her majestic form, I thanked God I was an American citizen, but when 30 WENDELL PHILLIPS I thought that from underneath those decks there should boom forth a salute to uphold American slavery, I hung my head in shame for my country. " Let me entreat the young people here to-day, by the memory of all Phillips and Garrison and all who were with them suffered, by the sight of the flags in Doric Hall of our State House stained with the life- blood of those who carried them, both white and black, by the beautiful bronze "Shaw Memorial" with its inspiring words, to appreciate this land of ours and to love their country next to their God. No doubt Wendell Phillips, in his hours of strife, when his early friends seemed to have forsaken him and when the battle raged the fiercest, had an abid- ing faith that God would eventually wipe out from this country the curse of slavery and that right should prevail. Faber's words apply to him: "Oh, it is hard to work for God, To rise and take his part Upon this battlefield of earth, And not sometimes lose heart! f Thrice blest is he to whom is given The instinct that can tell That God is on the field when he Is most invisible." Acting Mayor Coleman said the program read " Franklin Benjamin Sanborn," but the state knows the next speaker as plain Frank Sanborn, the sage of Concord. When he was introduced he received an ovation and was given three rousing cheers. MEMORIAL STATUE. 31 REMARKS BY FRANK B. SANBORN Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen: In addressing this vast assembly one would need the far-reaching voice of Phillips, or that more wonderful utterance of his hero, Daniel O'Connell, in whose praise I heard him recite those lines of an unfriendly English poet, Bulwer, in his "New Timon," commencing: "Once to my sight that giant form was given, Walled with wide air, roofed by the boundless heaven"; and to those thousands on thousands, a countless multitude, O'ConnelPs voice glided, easy as a bird might glide. To me that effort would be hopeless; I must address the half that may hear me. Addressing in Faneuil Hall, where in 1834 Phillips' magic voice had not yet been heard, John Quincy Adams, that "old man eloquent," eulogizing Lafa- yette, recently dead in France, said: "We were not needful to his glory; he was needful to ours." So Boston may say to-day of Wendell Phillips. She had many eloquent sons, but he was needed to give Boston the glory of eloquence above all the Americans of his time. But that was not our chief reason for unveiling his statue to-day. Years before, and while Phillips was a Boston schoolboy, 32 WENDELL PHILLIPS Mr. Adams, then in Monroe's cabinet along with Calhoun, and fresh from a cheerless conversation with that champion of negro slavery, wrote in his secret diary: " Slavery is the great and foul stain upon our Union; and it is a contemplation worthy of the most exalted soul, whether its total abolition is practicable, and what means would accomplish it at the smallest cost of human suffering. This object is vast in its compass, awful in its prospects, sublime and beautiful in its issue. A life devoted to it would be nobly spent or sacrificed." Such was the life we honor to-day, and we rejoice that it was not sacrificed, as so many others were, before the great purpose was achieved. For the career that he deliberately chose, putting aside all thought of wealth or fame, Phillips had many qualifications. First of all, intrepid courage; not merely the moral courage which every reformer needs, but that invincible physical courage which distinguishes heroes. It was said of General Wash- ington by Jefferson that he "met personal danger with the calmest unconcern." So did Phillips. I knew him intimately in the period of mobs in Bos- ton, and I was once or twice mobbed with him, He never quailed or was discomposed by the loudest mob. He did not think them dangerous, but had they been so he would not have feared them; he was insensible to fear literally so. Fear is a common and often a useful human quality, but it was lacking in Phillips. The other needful qualities, intellectual and moral, he had tact in dealing with men, MEMORIAL STATUE. 33 courtesy to all, a clear head, a good memory, fidelity in friendship, composure of mind and boundless good nature. He could perform that very difficult feat for a Boston patrician he could change his mind. He disliked to do it, but he did it on more than one occasion; most notably when, in the spring of 1861, he passed from the disunion side to the endangered but finally triumphant side of the Union, and gave his great speech in the Music Hall under the Stars and Stripes. My time is brief, and I shall call to my aid, in portraying concisely the period of his life assigned to me, the testimony of an older friend, who had wit- nessed his whole public mission, and who outlived him. A few years before the death of Wendell Phillips, by a painful disease, his elder associate in the anti- slavery cause, Bronson Alcott, who had in 1829 come up from Connecticut to Boston to teach that confident city the best way to educate children, and had given her grown-up population serious and sincere lessons in liberty and toleration, Bronson Alcott, in the vale of years (it was his eighty-third year), surveying the whole career of Phillips, gave this outline of it in a comprehensive short poem: WENDELL PHILLIPS AT THREE-SCORE AND TEN. People's Attorney, servant of the Right, Pleader for all shades of the solar ray, Complexions dusky, yellow, red or white, Who, in thy country's and thy time's despite, Hast only questioned, "What will Duty say?" And followed swiftly in her narrow way! 34 WENDELL PHILLIPS Tipped is thy tongue with golden eloquence; All-honeyed accents fall from off thy lips, Each eager listener his full measure sips, Yet runs to waste the sparkling opulence. The scorn of bigots and the worldling's flout, If Time long held thy merit in suspense, Hastening repentant now, with pen devout, Impartial History dare not leave thee out. We are assembled here to-day to bear testimony that history has found, and has summoned sculpture to record, in noble lineaments, what this Attorney of the Right was in his outward aspect, as he trod these his native streets, and did much to make them "too free to endure the footsteps of a slave " or a slave trader. He did not live to see the full restoration of the freedman to those rights of education and of suffrage that he should have had; but within the past few weeks, while this monument stood here veiled, awaiting its dedication, that Supreme Court which in our early time was the frowning bastion of oppres- sion, fortified with all the technicalities and the rigmarole of musty law, to protect the chain and the whip of the slave driver, has at last uttered the words of truth and soberness which secure to the negro all the voting rights of the white man and the red man in this Republic, the peacemaker of the world. Phillips would have rejoiced in this slow and grudging decree, rendered unanimously from the high seat of justice, and by those well-gowned men who, some of them, in the follies of their youth, defended MEMORIAL STATUE. 35 negro slavery, some by arms, others by the sophistries of legal interpretation. As Phillips himself used to say, the hour has come "When nations slowly wise and meanly just To buried merit raise the tardy bust"; and when Justice, long held back by selfishness and arrogance, at last holds out her impartial shield over that race, at once the most loyal and forgiving and the most injured of mankind. Acting Mayor Coleman, in introducing William Monroe Trotter, said that nothing was so appro- priate as for the colored race to have a spokesman in dedicating a monument to Wendell Phillips, and that there could be no more fit representative than William Monroe Trotter, whom every Bostonian who is half alive knows. 36 WENDELL PHILLIPS ADDRESS BY WILLIAM MONROE TROTTER Wendell Phillips was the originator of the policy of reconstruction of the United States of America adopted, after the war of the Slave-holders' Rebel- lion, on the basis of freedom. He was the pioneer advocate of the ballot for the Afro-American. No son rendered this Republic greater service or thereby did more for its permanence. No human being ever did more for the colored Americans. Of the great abolition movement Lundy was the pioneer, Garrison the editor and organizer, Phillips the orator, Mrs. Stowe the author, Whittier the poet, Sumner the political statesman, and John Brown the captain and martyr. Of these none made as great personal sacrifice as Phillips, save John Brown; none had such prophetic statesmanship, save Sumner. Declaring human slavery to be the sum of all villainies, hating it with a holy wrath, the worst feature of it in his eyes being the return of the freed- man to bondage, possessing unequaled ability to voice his wrath, Phillips was a most powerful force in creating by organized agitation public sentiment for the abolition of slavery. When, at very thought of the election of the non-abolitionist, Abraham MEMORIAL STATUE. 37 Lincoln, the slave-holding states rushed into seces- sion and made war upon the Union and Massa- chusetts rose in patriotic eagerness to enlist, Wendell Phillips was the first of the moral abolition- ists to welcome war for the eradication of slavery. Early in 1861 he declared that the only mistake the abolitionists had made was in thinking that the nation was enough civilized for slavery to be abol- ished by public discussion and appeal to conscience. The North, he said, was civilized, but the South was barbarous and therefore slavery must be abol- ished by the arbitrament of arms. From the first, Phillips announced that this war of the Slave-holders' Rebellion would result in freedom. He was the first to publicly demand that emancipation be announced as the object of the war. This he said would arouse holy enthusiasm in the North. Before the year 1861 had ended he called for the enlistment of black men as soldiers of the Union and for congressional action abolishing slavery. His cry was " Freedom to every man beneath the stars and death to every institution that threatens the future of the Republic." Wendell Phillips was potent in creating a public sentiment which insisted upon Lincoln's procla- mation of emancipation. Of this immortal docu- ment he said: "To three millions of slaves this proclamation is sunlight, scattering the despair of centuries, and the blessings of the poor bear it up to the throne of God." Then at once he set in to make this emancipation secure. He feared an adverse 38 WENDELL PHILLIPS decision by the Supreme Court, that bulwark of slavery. He wanted not only that slaves be declared free, but that slavery as an institution be abolished. It was yet 1863 when he demanded of Congress a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, providing that "no state shall make any DISTINCTION among its citizens on account of race or colour." Thus Wendell Phillips started the move- ment for the Thirteenth Amendment, which was passed by Congress and ratified by states in 1865. This was the beginning of Phillips' work for the reconstruction into the United States of those states which had attempted secession in order to perpetuate the system of human slavery. For this work are the Afro-Americans most indebted to Wendell Phillips. Of the work for the abolition of African slavery in these United States by agitation and organization, William Lloyd Garrison was the pioneer and leader, with Phillips as his lieutenant and partner. Of the work of securing freedom and gaining citizenship and suffrage for the colored American, Wendell Phillips was the pioneer and leader, with young Frank Sanborn as his lieutenant and Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens as his political partners. It was when emancipation had come that Phillips showed his true greatness, for at the time when it could be said that the band of abolitionists had triumphed Phillips refused to take the easy and pleasurable position of him who has won his fight and received^the plaudits of the people. The great MEMORIAL STATUE. 39 Garrison and his followers, even before the Thirteenth Amendment was enacted, had said that their cause had triumphed, hence the anti-slavery organizations should be disbanded and their newspaper organs discontinued. Phillips said the fight was not over, freedom had yet to be made complete and secure; not until the freed slave had been made an equal citizen with protection was the triumph of the abolitionists complete. Phillips prevailed, Garrison resigned and wrote The Liberator's valedictory. Phillips was elected president of the American Anti- Slavery Society and manager of the Anti-Slavery Standard. Quick and positive was the vindication of Phillips' statesmanship. From 1864 he had been advocating the simple justice of education, land and the ballot for the freedmen. Phillips' reconstruction policy held that human freedom was above all else, and only by entirely uprooting slavery could there be any permanence for the reunited Republic. The only other reconstruction was that adopted by President Andrew Johnson, restoring the government to the unchanged whites, the former masters, who promptly remanded all the blacks to involuntary servitude and peonage by the nefarious " black laws," while the severed ears, hands and feet of ex-slaves strewed the highways of the rural South. Phillips believed with us that there can be no freedom without equality and no equality without the ballot. So he fought on with organization and agitation, creating a public sentiment that enabled 40 WENDELL PHILLIPS the noble, far-sighted Stevens and the great Sumner to bring about the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, establishing full citizenship for the colored American with equality before the law, and then the Fifteenth Amendment, establishing impar- tiality of suffrage for black and white alike. This was the afternoon of the career of Wendell Phillips. He redeemed the United States of America from its great sin of human slavery. He was first to advocate that emancipation be the declared purpose of the war, first to urge that Congress emancipate, among the first to call for emancipation as a war measure, first to urge the enlistment of colored soldiers, which our own Governor Andrew, from yonder State House, was the first Governor to carry out. Phillips led the way to the Thirteenth Amend- ment. He led the way to the Fourteenth, then to the Fifteenth Amendment as the greatest private citizen of the nation. He was the pioneer in advocacy of suffrage for colored Americans. He saw to it that slavery should be torn up by the roots and that as far as concerns federal law every man, white and black, should have citizenship and suffrage. That is why we Americans of color to-day do honor to Wendell Phillips, and we owe our ability to stand here to-day, in possession of suffrage, to him. Long has Boston deferred this honor to her illus- trious son. It is thirty-one years since his death, and meantime statues have arisen to others, to his companions, Garrison and Sumner, to his antago- MEMORIAL STATUE. 41 nist, Daniel Webster, yet none to him. Sad the neglect, yet how meet, yes, providential, that it has ended this day and year. For this is the semi- centennial anniversary of the victory of the army of the Union over the armies of slavery; it is the fiftieth anniversary year of the enactment and ratification of the constitutional amendment which destroyed the system of slavery. It is the fiftieth Independ- ence Day since emancipation, celebrating that immortal document which declared that "all men are born free and equal," that they are "endowed with certain inalienable rights among which are life and liberty," that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." To this Declaration of Independence Phillips was loyal when he refused loyalty to the Constitution which recognized human slavery. That is not all. His statue is dedicated almost at the very time when the Supreme Court which Phil- lips doubted has affirmed and vindicated that Fif- teenth Amendment which was the crowning work of his great career, thus vindicating Wendell Phillips. Thank God for this day, Let us colored Ameri- cans here humbly resolve, standing at this our newest shrine, that so far as in us lies, using his methods of agitation, organization and courage, with the utmost of our power, we shall see to it that this work of Wendell Phillips for freedom, for equality, for the ballot, shall not be destroyed, shall not be defeated, 42 WENDELL PHILLIPS shall not be circumvented, so long as we shall live and our children and our children's children. The last of the four addresses was by Michael J. Jordan, Esq., introduced by Acting Mayor Coleman as an able Boston attorney, prominent in the work for home rule for Ireland and as president of the Boston Central Branch of the United Irish League. MEMORIAL STATUE. 43 ADDRESS BY MICHAEL J. JORDAN On the 30th of March, 1870, President Grant proclaimed the Fifteenth Amendment to the Con- stitution of the United States. This amendment removed the last barrier to the freedom of the colored race. One of the greatest reforms had been perfected; the program of abolition was accom- plished. The actors in that great reform saw their work done. They might well claim that they had done their full duty, but Phillips modestly esti- mated the result of his own work in this great charter of freedom by saying that it had taught him faith in human nature. And the great mind of Phillips realized that a principle only had been established, and his great heart felt that he had reached merely a new stepping- stone on the road of human progress. After thirty years of toil and difficulties which would have dis- heartened most men, Phillips announced his new program in the following words: "Welcome new duties. We sheathe no sword; we only turn the front of the army upon a new foe." With such a belief in the hopes and destinies of mankind, with such a record of past achievement and with such a new program, Phillips immediately 44 WENDELL PHILLIPS turned himself to the next great crying questions of the day. He had been blessed in many ways in his career. He joined a robust body to a brilliant mind. He had the satisfaction of a home life unsur- passed in its beauty, devotion and pathos. It was his own surroundings that influenced his next public step. He early appeared before the committee of the Legislature demanding the right of the ballot for women. It was impossible for Phillips to see merely half of the truth. He realized that freedom under proper bounds was the great panacea for the evils which beset all governments. And if freedom was necessary, half of it could not be sufficient. He therefore demanded it in its entirety, and insisted that the right of voting should be given to women. However people may disagree about the need of this reform, it must be a striking lesson to all stu- dents of political history that such a keen mind as that of Wendell Phillips gave his fiat not only to the right but to the need of women exercising the ballot. It was not only that he thought women in the higher spheres of social and economic life might benefit the world when they obtained the right to speak their mind through the ballot, but what attracted him and determined his action most strongly was the condition of the women crowded in the great industrial centers of New England. Labor should be free. To make labor free one- half the laborers now without the franchise should be given the right to vote. He claimed that the dis- MEMORIAL STATUE. 45 franchisee! half were women. He therefore joined in his mind the labor movement, the franchise move- ment and the temperance movement. They were the great trinity of principles which he now inscribed upon his flag. It was a habit in those days among his enemies to refer to Phillips as a dreamer, but whoever studies his speeches on the labor movement will soon see that he was one of the first of the modern reformers who really understood the needs of the working classes. He was certainly one of the first who outlined a practical program for the advancement of the workingman. He was one of the first who saw the dangers of large corporations and who suggested remedies. It was a curious coincidence that Phillips in America and an Irish economist, Professor Kearns, were the first two public men in modern times to write not only intelligently but sympathetically on the questions of trade unions. The world a few years ago was startled by the claims which Lloyd- George advanced upon the wealth of the British empire. Wendell Phillips forty years ago outlined a similar plan. He challenged the opponents of the labor movement by saying: "We will crumble up wealth by making it unprofitable to the rich." "Is it just or is it safe," he said, "that man should be less valuable than money?" For the purpose of insuring the laborers of America constant employ- ment and for building up the infant industries of the country Phillips proclaimed himself a protec- tionist. It seems at first sight difficult to understand 46 WENDELL PHILLIPS the opponent of monopoly as a protectionist. But Phillips saw that neither peace nor freedom could exist in the country if there was not permanent employment for the masses. And permanent em- ployment for the masses in his time at least could only be secured by the large development of indus- tries. His answer to the free traders he gave in some such form as this: "Free trade is a splendid principle. Any boy can understand when a principle is right. But it takes three-score years and ten to determine when that principle can be tried, when it should be modified, when it should be dropped. Until the Sermon on the Mount becomes not merely a beautiful hymn but the practical guide of business men in life/ 7 he said, "free trade was impossible." O'Reilly justly estimated the great debt of gratitude which the working people owed Phillips, as well as the great accomplishment of Phillips' life in advo- cating the rights of labor, when he said: "And the greatest of all are the unknown wreaths on his coffin lid laid down By the toil-stained hands of workmen, their sob, their kiss, his crown." No call came to him from any cause that was just that he did not receive with sympathy. To the struggle of the Cretans, trying then to throw off the yoke of the Turks, he sent a message burning with the love of freedom. To consolidated Italy he sent a message glorifying the new country which had been built up upon the cradle of Christianity. MEMORIAL STATUE. 47 He recognized the claims of Italy, the mother of the intellectual awakening of Europe, and hailed her as "my country." When Ireland called, Phillips answered with all the chivalry of the unstained champion of freedom. The service Phillips rendered the Irish race in Ireland and America by his splendid espousal of Ireland's cause can scarcely be overestimated. Forty-five years are merely a speck in the develop- ment of the country. In the era of thought forty- five years sometimes mark a long step. Forty-five years ago the real facts concerning Ireland were as little known as are to-day the condition of the troops that are fighting on the peninsula of Gallipoli. England always censored Irishmen. The public knew nothing of Ireland's struggle, and sympathized little with Ireland's claims. Although the streets of Boston, almost from its earliest days, had re-echoed to the weary tread of the Irish emigrant, forty-five years ago Boston knew nothing of the antecedent or actual conditions which sent the emigrants in thousands to our shores. It was then with unbounded assurance that James Anthony Froude reached Boston in the early 70's. How little now we seem to be able to understand that a professor of the University of Oxford should travel across the ocean with the sole purpose of blackening the character of one of the greatest races in Europe. And yet that was Froude's avowed purpose. He hoped to have a sympathetic audience in Boston, but one man made it impossible for him, and that 48 WENDELL PHILLIPS man was the immortal Phillips. There is not in the whole range of human history a more inspiring spectacle than this great man, the descendant of the Puritans, a stanch Protestant in his beliefs, assuming the championship of a race that was despised for its faith as well as for its courage. Phillips answered Froude and drove him from Boston. Froude stated in his address: "We have tried to form a government for thirty years; our alter- native now is extermination." The thought of exterminating a race that had produced countless saints and martyrs, that had given to the modern world the greatest champions of human liberty in the person of Burke and O'Connell, revolted the nature and fired the soul of Phillips. His prompt reply to the traducer of a people will forever preserve immortal the name and memory of Phillips in the archives of Irish history. By his answer to Froude he merits the gratitude of liberty-loving people all over the world. Phillips' acquaintance with Ireland was not a new one. He had early learned the genius of the race in the difficult work of sculpture; for Martin Milmore, a native of the County of Sligo, Ireland, had made the only bust of Phillips. Phillips had visited Ireland. He sat under O'Connell. He was afterwards destined to know O'Reilly as a friend, and to appreciate Parnell as one of the greatest leaders of his day. No one ever better understood them, or more ably taught to the world not only MEMORIAL STATUE. 49 the great genius of O'Connell but the gratitude which the world owes to O'Connell for his great efforts on behalf of mankind. If any other sympathizer with the destinies of Ireland had delivered the eulogy which Phillips made on O'Connell his enthusiasm might have provoked some criticism. Phillips was not a man, however, to allow his reason to be influenced by emotions only. His analysis of O'Connell's life and labors is a logical, philosophical treatise on the power of agitation, and on the genius of its great creator, O'Connell. What do we Americans owe to O'Connell? I shall ask Phillips himself to tell us. He tells us that O'Connell anticipated the wisdom of Lincoln in proclaiming the government of the people. He tells us that he forged the great weapon of agitation which the English abolitionists adopted and which Garrison himself carried to these shores. He taught the tyrants on the throne that they could not withstand the marshaled conscience of the people. He grafted democracy upon the British empire. It took O'Connell thirty years, he says, of patient and sagacious labor to mold the elements whose existence no man, however wise, discerned before. It was not merely the philosophy of O'ConnelPs methods which Phillips admired, but he saw the greatness of O'ConnelPs diplomacy. Phillips knew that Ireland as a small entity could neither attract nor hold the attention of the world. He therefore saw the wisdom of O'ConnelPs movement in asso- 50 WENDELL PHILLIPS ciating Ireland with the great reform movements in England, with anti-slavery, with the corn laws and the ballot laws. "If 'I were an Irishman/' says Phillips, "I would cleave to the empire/' The policy which John E. Redmond, the leader of the Irish parliamentary party, is to-day advocating is that which O'Connell inaugurated and which Phillips approved. No man has ever paid higher tribute to the integrity of O'Connell than has Wen- dell Phillips. He loved to quote the scenes that took place in the House of Commons when O'Con- nell, all alone defying the Parliament that conquered Napoleon, was addressed by some advocates of slavery. They promised him twenty-eight votes on every measure pertaining to Ireland if he would not speak against slavery. O'Connell answered: "May my hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if to save Ireland, even Ireland, I forget the negro one single hour." Wendell Phillips himself has said that no genius can make marble more speaking than the life of a great man and the scenes of his labors. Why, then, do we commemorate Phillips' life by the erection to him of this magnificent monument? It is because the City of Boston wishes that this marble should speak to the generations yet to come of a life of unsullied devotion to the welfare of the human race. The Boston that stood by his cradle, which nursed and mothered him and wept over his bier, has erected this monument to speak not only to the student and to the statesman but to MEMORIAL STATUE. 51 the throbbing masses of our population. She wishes this marble to bespeak forever the life of the noblest purpose given so unselfishly to the good of his fellow man. Let people of the colored race take their chil- dren to this monument as to a shrine, and teach them that while truth and justice may slumber they can never die. The people of Irish birth and blood, as they pass this monument, will pour out their hearts in thankfulness to the Creator that He gave to their new home such a historian of their race and such a defender of their cause. Every good man who looks upon this monument will learn from it the duty of perseverance, even against overwhelming odds, when fighting the cause of humanity and justice. The descendant of the same New England blood which ran in Phillips' veins will ever feel proud of the institutions which have given to America such a spotless champion of truth and liberty. And may the coming generations imbibe from this monu- ment the lesson of the great reformer's life: "The right to be free, the hope to be just, And the guard against selfish greed." 52 WENDELL PHILLIPS WENDELL PHILLIPS BY WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON, JR. Out from the Ages' bloody scroll The names of kings and soldiers roll, Leaving a scanty page to tell What fate the myriads befell. The generations all relate A struggle blurred by strife and hate, Of mankind's tortuous ascent Towards Liberty's enfranchisement. Primeval man of savage lust, Who knew no God of Love to trust, Has now become a citizen Who shares his rights with other men. The bridge that spans this far advance Is no mere edifice of chance, But, stone by stone, and dream by dream, It rose as mankind grew supreme. Aspiring towards the stars, it stands A monument to minds and hands That in each age have sought to free The world from sin and slavery. The new world that Columbus found Is Freedom's richest seeding ground ; Its champions have ever stood As prophets of man's brotherhood. To-day, a champion we greet, Whose purpose never knew defeat; Whose reasoned words in purest flow Could flash with lightning's vivid glow. MEMORIAL STATUE. 53 An orator in Nature's scheme, With Human Rights his lofty theme, He cast his lot with those who gave Their lives to liberate the Slave. Proscribed and hated, scorned and jeered, Erect he stood, nor ever feared The angry outbursts of the mob; He only heard the negro's sob. He lived to see his dreams come true ; Scorn into adulation grew ; Yet trumpet-like came his appeal When he might serve the public weal. Welcome, great soul, to thy loved streets Where Boston's civic heart still beats In deep response and sympathy; Herself she honors, hon'ring thee. 54 WENDELL PHILLIPS HISTORY OF WENDELL PHILLIPS STATUE November 28, 1911. Mayor John F. Fitzgerald sent a letter to the City Council, suggesting some " permanent memorial" to Wendell Phillips, as sug- gestion of Councilor E. E. Smith. November 29, 1911. In Faneuil Hall, at closing session of Phillips Centenary celebration by the National Independent Political (now Equal Rights) League and New England Suffrage League, Mayor Fitzgerald asks citizens to form a committee to pro- mote a Phillips Memorial. Motion made by W. M. Trotter, secretary, for city and state to erect a statue and for chairman, M. J. Jordan, to appoint com- mittee. Committee of three appointed, M. J. Jordan, E. T. Morris, W. M. Trotter, to organize a memo- rial committee to cooperate with Mayor. November 30, 1911. William D. Brigham added to the committee and Brigham, Trotter and Jordan begin campaign, letter writing and seeing members of City Council, etc. December 9, 1911. William D. Brigham has letter in Boston Herald December 12, 1911. Boston Art Commission tell Mayor they plan a statuary mall along Charles street on Public Garden as suitable place for proposed Phillips statue. January 9, 1912. By invitation of the Mayor five of memorial committee, Hon. A. E. Pillsbury, SCULPTOR'S MODEL AS ACCEPTED BY THE BOSTON ART COMMISSION, AND FROM WHICH THE BRONZE STATUE WAS CAST. MEMORIAL STATUE. 55 Mr. F. J. Garrison, M. J. Jordan, Esq., Mr. William D. Brigham and Mr. William Monroe Trotter, appear before Art Commission and argue for full length statue. March 27, 1912. Memorial Committee met in Aldermanic Chamber with Mayor Fitzgerald and Art Commission and ask for heroic size, outdoor statue. Mayor agrees to ask City Council to appro- priate $20,000 for statue. Committee on permanent organization of Wendell Phillips Memorial Associa- tion appointed: William D. Brigham, chairman; W. M. Trotter, secretary; Dr. A. M. Abbott, J. E. Savage, M. J. Jordan. From this came the Wendell Phillips Memorial Association. April 14, 1912. Mayor authorized Art Commis- sion to give prizes for a design for statue. June 24, 1912. City Council vote on appropria- tion of $20,000 from tax levy for Wendell Phillips statue. Messrs. Brigham, Jordan and Trotter tele- graph thanks to Mayor, who was in Baltimore, Md. 56 WENDELL PHILLIPS DEDICATION OF WENDELL PHILLIPS STATUE FROM "THE GUARDIAN" A few minutes before six o'clock Monday after- noon, July 5, 1915, the veil fell from the $20,000 bronze statue of Wendell Phillips in the Public Garden, and a crowd of from 5,000 to 6,000 acclaimed with cheers and patriotic song Daniel Chester French's almost speaking memorial of Boston's famous orator and abolitionist. As the sun was sinking behind rain clouds in the west, Master John C. Phillips, Jr., six years old, the great grandnephew of Wendell Phillips, the man who declared that if he lived long enough he would make Boston streets too pure to bear the footsteps of a slave, supported by his father, Dr. John C. Phillips of Wenham, Mass., pulled the cord releasing the mantle which for several weeks has veiled the statue of Phillips on the Public Garden, and the noble bronze stood revealed, gazing over the throng of citizens assembled for its dedication. As the folds fell away from the figure of the great abolitionist, " Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!" burst from a chorus of colored women gathered from Boston churches, and then the first song gave way to "America." Thirty-one years after his death, fifty years after MEMORIAL STATUE. 57 the victory of the army of the Union over the slave- holders, a half-century after the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, a statue was unveiled of that marvelous Boston orator, that bright star in the constellation of super- lative abolitionists, greatest of all after the Eman- cipation Proclamation, unveiled in the city of his birth, the scene of his wondrous labors for humanity, a statue erected in recognition of his worth and greatness by the city government itself. Though Boston was guilty of neglect and tardiness, as if by the hand of Providence, the consummation came so appropriately in this semicentennial year of abolition, and on Independence Day, set aside to mark the issuance of that document which Phillips declared gave every human being beneath the flag a right to freedom and equality. It was a memorable occasion, from the time when the man who as a boy had loved and revered Wendell Phillips and honored his memory ever since, Mr. William D. Brigham, was privileged to inaugurate the exercises to unveil a statue which he as secretary of the Wendell Phillips Memorial Association had done so much to bring about, until this same man, seeing the triumph of his life accomplished, was called out upon the platform to acknowledge the cheers of the multitude as they stood looking into the triumphant face of the " silver-tongued orator of abolition " in bronze, while the sun sank behind the clouds which had parted to let down the sun- light only when the hour for dedication had come. 58 WENDELL PHILLIPS Except for the comforts which the heavy showers prevented, there was nothing to mar; every feature was fit and appropriate. Fervent was the prayer by Rev. Montrose W. Thornton, pastor of historic Charles Street Church and also chairman of the executive committee of the local Equal Rights League branch. Sterling and practical the tribute of the Acting Mayor, George W. Coleman, a man of Wen- dell Phillips' principles, as was every speaker. Illuminating and forceful was the life story by Secretary Brigham. Sweet and inspiring was the singing by the colored singers, led by Dr. Walter O. Taylor and J. Sherman Jones, and the music by the brass band of Company L, Sixth Regiment, of Massachusetts Militia. Pic- turesque and touching was the encomium by the only survivor of New England abolitionists, Frank Sanborn, now eighty-three years old, still active, a coworker with Phillips. Earnest and unqualified was the praise by the spokesman for colored Ameri- cans; William Monroe Trotter, himself a devotee laboring to save the fruits of Phillips' labors, the hero his father's friend. Fired with eloquence born of love was the eulogy of Ireland's friend and the friend of all oppressed, by Michael J. Jordan, son of O'Connell's island home. Tuneful and noble the paean of the poet of the occasion, grandson of Phil- lips' party leader, bearing his name, William Lloyd Garrison. Beautiful the unveiling by the handsome, sturdy boy of the Phillips family blood, John C. MEMORIAL STATUE. 59 Phillips, Jr. Every participant was an emulator of the " Prophet of Liberty, Champion of the Slave." Not since the enactment of the Fifteenth Amend- ment, Phillips' great work, have so many assembled at an occasion for the presentation of the cause of freedom for the colored American in Massachusetts. The monument, a masterpiece by Daniel Chester French, the sculptor, represents the great aboli- tionist standing at a reading desk, his right hand resting upon the desk, his left outstretched and holding a bit of a broken fetter. Upon the marble background above the head of the statue are the words: "Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories." On the pedestal in front are the words in raised bronze letters : WENDELL PHILLIPS 1811-1884 Prophet of Liberty Champion of the Slave On the reverse side of the background is this quotation from Phillips: "I love inexpressibly these streets of Boston, over whose pavements my mother held up tenderly my baby feet, and if God grants me time enough I will make them too pure to bear the footsteps of a slave." Owing to the location, facing Boylston street and about 200 feet from Charles street and Park square, the great crowd flowed across Boylston street and all 60 WENDELL PHILLIPS around the monument on the Public Garden. The little stand in front of the monument could accommo- date only about 100, including the speakers and the principal invited guests. The cosmopolitanism of Wendell Phillips was well illustrated in the exercises, in the speakers and in the character of the crowd. There were three venerable Germans who were part of the bodyguard of Wendell Phillips at the time when he was escorted to and from his house in the turbulent abolition days. These men were George Gramlich, Henry Foss and John Koch, members of the old German Turnverein, and they laid a wreath on the monument. Dr. George Galvin also laid a wreath on the monument because of Wendell Phillips' great inter- est in the labor movement. There were present many women suffragists because of Wendell Phil- lips' great work for that cause. They placed a wreath on the monument some days previous. Finally there were many of the eminent repre- sentatives of the colored race, for whom Phillips did his greatest work the work which the monument is intended to symbolize. Mr. Thomas P. Taylor, one of Phillips' body- guards, had a platform seat. Among the out-of-town guests on the platform were Congressman William S. Greene of Fall River. The color guard was from the Woman's Relief Corps of the Robert A. BeU Post, 134, Dr. Alice W. McKane, president, with three others. MEMORIAL STATUE. 61 And finally Acting Mayor Coleman presented Mr. Jordan, who moved a vote of thanks to Mr. Brigham for his services for the statue and unveiling. Mr. Trotter seconded it and Acting Mayor Coleman asked ratification by three cheers which he led and the people gave with a will. Then the people crowded up to the statue and lingered about till darkness came on. 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