Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1

[243] culture and toleration. Easier to preach than to practise. Many lyceums have opened their doors to men of different shades of opinion, and some few have even granted a fair amount of liberty in the choice of subject, and the expression of individual opinion. None of us can forget, on such an occasion as this, the eminently catholic spirit and brilliant success of that course of Antislavery Lectures in the winter of 1854 and 1855, which we owed chiefly to the energy and to the brave and liberal spirit of Dr. James W. Stone. But you go, Gentlemen, an arrow's flight beyond all lyceums; for, recognizing the essential character of civilization, you place upon your platform the representatives of each sex and of both races. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, you will listen to consummate eloquence, never heard in Boston before from the lyceum platform, because “guilty of a skin not colored like our own.” [Applause.] And you will listen, besides, to woman, gracefully standing on a platform which boasts itself the source of national education. For decent justice has not been done to woman, in regard to her influence, either upon literature or society; and I welcome with inexpressible delight the inauguration of a course of lectures national and American in the proper sense of the words.

There are men who prate about “nationality,” and “the empire,” and “manifest destiny,” --using brave word, when their minds rise no higher than some petty mass of white States making money out of cotton and corn. My idea of American nationality makes it the last best growth of the thoughtful mind of the century, treading under foot sex and race, caste and condition, and collecting on the broad bosom of what deserves the name of an empire, under the shelter of noble, just, and equal laws, all races, all customs, all religions, all languages, all literature, and all ideas. I remember, a year or two ago, they told us of a mob at Milwaukie that forced a man to bring out the