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

[542] would come, when the master would run away from his slave, the slave arose and said, “Fulfil the pledge; I have invested a generation of submission.” We begged him still to wait, and he sat down in the darkness of despair. God alone counted the moments of his agony. At last the gun sounded at Sumter, and the slave cried, “New York and Massachusetts, fulfil the pledge of your fathers in the name of God and justice.” [Cheers.] We are a nation by all these considerations. To-day, the question is, not merely whether the negro shall be free; not, certainly, whether New York and Massachusetts shall dictate to sister States; but it is, whether the free lips of New York and Massachusetts shall be protected by the laws of the nation wherever the stars and stripes float; whether this great, free, model state, the hope of the nations and their polar star, this experiment of self-government, this normal school of God for the education of the masses, shall survive, free, just, entire, able not only to free the slave, but to pay the further debt it owes him,--protection as he rises into liberty, and a share in the great State he aided to found, not one merely in its ruins. Mr. Jefferson Davis has two hundred thousand men in arms to-day. I do not believe he ever had over three hundred thousand. Great is brag, and they have bragged three hundred thousand into six, and wooden guns into iron ones. He has got two hundred thousand in arms today. Before this body retreats into Mexico,--before, like his great father in the Gospel, he goes “violently down a steep place into the sea” [loud laughter and applause],--he will fight great battles somewhere. Let me grant you that we crush that army out, scatter it, demoralize it, conquer it,--where is it to go? What will become of its materials? What brought it together? Hatred of us. Will being beaten make them love us? Is that the way to make men love you? Can you whip a man into loving