Wendell Phillips

From the Cincinnati Gazette, 26^th.

The character of Wendell Phillips is misunderstood, even by many of those who are willing to listen to reason.  The principle to which he has devoted his life and his brilliant talents, is the freedom of all men.  The sole means on which he relies are reason; addressed to white men.  He has not advocated interference with slavery in the States, but on the contrary, as believed in peaceable secession, in order to relieve the Free States of the responsibility of slavery, and of a Government which that interest has always controlled.  He is no adviser of insurrection or war to abolish slavery, but he now recognizes the issue which slavery has raised in this war.

But, as Mr. Phillips said to the audience at the Opera House, he does not desire to obtrude his opinions, and can employ his time better than to come a thousand miles to shock and prejudices of any.  He cannot even respond to all the requests of those who are anxious to hear him.  He came here on invitation of citizens of Cincinnati.  The large audience assembled, anxious to hear him, warranted the invitation.  But his friends have no desire to risk the life of a man of such intellect, against a grog shop rowdy who can be hired for three drinks of whisky to raise a riot, nor does he desire to enter into a contest of reason against  brute force; but it is probably that rational people will not look for permanent peace in this nation, until men whose way of progress is through the Constitution and law, and whose means are appeals to the reason of the governing class, can speak in safety anywhere from Maine to South Carolina.

The case of Mr. Phillips is the case of every man in Ohio, for so long as men are lynched for Northern sentiments, no Ohio man is safe in the South, without renouncing his manhood and groveling on his belly to slavery; for the process is simple and easy to first charge a Northern man with sentiments obnoxious in that locality, and then lynch him for the bad name.  Do the people of Ohio desire the war to close and restore the old status when to be an Ohio man in the south was prima facie cause for lynching?  Yet so long as men are lynched for Northern sentiments, every man is liable to it.  In this question of free opinions and free speech, we are all in the same boat, and it will not be till argument in favor of lawful progress is secure in every State in this Union, that it can properly be called peace.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Saturday Morning, March 29, 1862, p. 2