One side of a story is always good, no matter how much untruth it may cover, until you hear the other. The Cincinnati reporter for the associated press committed himself to a falsehood when he telegraphed that Wendell Phillips attempted to lecture in that city and was rotten-egged for avowing himself a disunionist. We have the true statement now through the Cincinnati papers. It seems that the sum of $125 was raised, with which five hundred tickets were purchased and distributed gratuitously among the shoulder-hitters and rowdies of that city, with the understanding that they would prevent Mr. Phillips speaking. Mayor Hatch purposely kept the police away that no interference might be experienced. We quote from the Commercial the Gazette authenticates the same, but as the former is not a Republican paper its evidence will be less prejudiced:
“Mr. Phillips said in so many words that he was an abolitionist, and that he had for fifteen years been a disunionist; but now he was satisfied that the Union meant justice to all men and races, and he was for it – for the measures that in his opinion were essential to its safety. Any one of our citizens could have made the same remarks, to a mass meeting in the market place, without exciting a demonstrative antagonism. But a mob had been organized, and was ravenous for mischief.”
With that remark came a shower of rotten eggs, one of which struck Mr. Phillips in the side and covered him with filth; a paving-stone struck the foot-light at his feet, yet the speaker undismayed proceeded, frequently interrupted, but nothing daunted by the missiles flying around him, until at length he remarked that having spoke for an hour and a half, and passed over the ground which he had intended to discuss, and as his voice was inadequate to further speaking, he would close. This disgraceful scene will react upon the pro-slavery party of Cincinnati, and by no means strengthen the rebel sympathizers throughout the North.
– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, March 28, 1862, p. 2
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