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

“ [315] vestries? See how we'll put out this fire of slavery.” But it burned on fiercer, fiercer. ( “What shall we do now?” asked startled Whiggery. “Keep the new States free, abolish slavery in the District, shut the door against Texas.” “Too much,” said Whiggery; “we are busy now making Webster President, and proving that Mr. Everett never had an antislavery idea.” But the flames roll on. Republicanism proposes to blow up a street or two. No, no; nothing but to blow up the Senate-House will do; and soon frightened Hamburg will cry, “Mynherr Garrison, Mynherr Garrison, save us on your own terms!” [Loud applause.]

You perceive my hope of freedom rests on these rocks: 1st, mechanical progress. First man walked, dug the earth with his hands, ate what he could pick up; then he subdues the horse, invents the plough, and makes the water float him down stream; next come sails, wind-mills, and water-power; then sewing-machines lift woman out of torture, steam marries the continents, and the telegraph flashes news like sunlight over the globe. Every step made hands worth less, and brains worth more; and that is the death of slavery. You can make apples grow one half pippin and the other half russet. They say that the Romans could roast one half of a boar, and boil the other side. [Laughter.] But I am sure you cannot make a nation with one half steamboats, sewing-machines, and Bibles, and the other half slaves. Then another rock of my hope is these Presidential canvasses,--the saturnalia of American life,--when slaves like Seward are unchained from the Senate-House, as of old in Rome, and let loose on the prairies, to fling all manner of insult on their masters. He may veil it all hereafter in dignified explanations, but the prairies give back an hundred-fold for all seed dropped there. [Applause.] Then the ghost of

John Brown makes Virginia quick to calculate the profit