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

“ [408] justice. We believe that there are hidden in the armory of the Constitution weapons strong enough to secure it. We are willing yet to try the experiment. Grant us time.” We have doubted, derided the pretence, as we supposed. During these long and weary weeks we have waited to hear the Northern conscience assert its purpose. It comes at last. [An impressive pause.] Massachusetts blood has consecrated the pavements of Baltimore, and those stones are now too sacred to be trodden by slaves [Loud cheers.]

You and I owe it to those young martyrs, you and I owe it, that their blood shall be the seed of no mere empty triumph, but that the negro shall teach his children to bless them for centuries to come. [Applause.] When Massachusetts goes down to that Carolina fort to put the Stars and Stripes again over its blackened walls [enthusiasm], she will sweep from its neighborhood every institution which hazards their ever bowing again to the palmetto. [Loud cheers.] All of you may not mean it now. Our fathers did not think in 1775 of the Declaration of Independence. The Long Parliament never thought of the scaffold of Charles the First, when they entered on the struggle; but having begun, they made thorough work. [Cheers.] It is an attribute of the Yankee blood,slow to fight, and fight once. [Renewed cheers.] It was a holy war, that for Independence: this is a holier and the last,--that for liberty. [Loud applause.]

I hear a great deal about Constitutional liberty. The mouths of Concord and Lexington guns have room only for one word, and that is liberty. You might as well ask Niagara to chant the Chicago Platform, as to say how far war shall go. War and Niagara thunder to a music of their own. God alone can launch the lightnings, that they may go and say, Here we are. The thunderbolts of His throne always abase the proud, lift up the lowly, and execute justice between man and man.