My wife and Mrs. Chapman wished to go, and I accompanied
them. I remember wearing a long surtout, a brand-new one, with a small
cape (as was the fashion of the day), and after the attorney-general
made his speech denouncing Lovejoy as a fool, I suddenly felt myself
inspired, and tearing off my overcoat, started for the platform. My wife
seized me by the arm, half terrified, and said, 'Wendell, what are you
going to do?' I replied, 'I am going to _speak_, if I can make
myself heard.'" The uproar was so great that the chairman asked Dr.
Channing if he could stand thunder; but the personal beauty and
intrepidity of Phillips,--coming like a meteor out of the night,--so
surprised all hearers, that they paused to listen to him, and were so
charmed by his eloquence that they neglected to make any further
disturbance. The attorney-general was wholly discomfited, and Dr.
Channing's resolutions were carried by a substantial majority.
It is surprising that so thorough an historian as Von Holst should have
omitted to make mention of this speech, which really struck the key-note
of the anti-slavery movement from first to last. As we have it now,
revised by its author from the newspaper reports of the time, it is one
of the purest, most spontaneous and magnetic pieces of oratory in
existence. It deserves a place beside those two famous speeches of James
Otis and Patrick Henry which ushered in the war of separation from
England.
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