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

The trouble now is, that, in regard to the most turbulent question of the age, our politicians and a knot of privileged slaveholders are trying to keep the people in. side of this parchment band. Like Lycurgus, they would mould the people to fit the Constitution, instead of cutting the Constitution to fit the people. Goethe said, “If you plant an oak in a flower-vase, one of two things will happen,--the oak will die, or the vase break.” Our acorn swelled; the tiny leaves showed themselves under the calm eye of Washington, and he laid down in hope. By and by the roots enlarged, and men trembled. Of late, Webster and Clay, Everett and Botts, Seward and Adams, have been anxiously clasping the vase, but the roots have burst abroad at last, and the porcelain is in pieces. [Sensation.] All ye who love oaks, thank God for so much! That Union of 1787 was one of fear; we were driven into it by poverty and the commercial hostility of England. As cold masses up all things,--sticks, earth, stones, and water into dirty ice,--heat first makes separation, and then unites those of the same nature. The heat of sixty years agitation has severed the heterogeneous mass; wait awhile, it will fuse together all that is really one.

Let me show you why I think the present so bright, and why I believe that disunion is gain, peace, and honor.

Why is the present hour sunshine? Because, for the first time in our history, we have a North. That event which Mr. Webster anticipated and prophesied has come to pass. In a real, true sense, we have a North. By which I do not mean that the North rules; though, politically speaking, the crowned and sceptred North does, indeed, take her seat in that council where she has thus far been only a tool. But I mean that freemen, honest labor, makes itself heard in our State. The North ceases to be fox or spaniel, and puts on the lion. She asserts and claims. She no longer begs, cheats, or buys.