But
Such A Course Of Compromise Was Now At A Discount In Boston, And
Mr. Everett Was Speaking To A Boston Audience.
As an orator, Mr.
Everett's excellence is, I think, not to be questioned; but as a
politician I cannot give him a high rank.
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.
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