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

[558] thing that believes in the past, and bring to the front everything that believes there is but one remedy,--that is, to save the Union on the basis of liberty. [Cheers.] I believe that the President may do anything to save the Union. He may take a man's houses, his lands, his bank-stock, his horses, his slaves,--anything to save the Union; the government may make every slave a free man, no matter where he is, Kentucky or Louisiana, now or tomorrow, with compensation or without. We need one step further,--an act of Congress abolishing slavery wherever our flag waves. The same war power and military necessity which made the proclamation constitutional authorizes this act as much. There is but one thing the government can't do to save the nation, and that is to make a free man into a slave; everything else is within its power.

I doubted somewhat when I heard the news from the Rappahannock, until I saw that reverses had taught the nation where its strength lay. God grant us so many reverses that the government may learn its duty. God grant us that the war may never end till it leaves us on the solid granite of impartial liberty and justice. [Cheers.] The government which has had two years of experience, of warning, and of advice, without profiting by it, must abide the consequences. In the words of this old proverb, “He that won't be ruled by the rudder must be ruled by the rock.” [Applause.] If they will not be ruled by wise counsels, they must abide disaster; if they won't hear advice, they must expect reverses. What we have to teach Washington is, that such is the full purpose of the millions, and under it and in it is the certainty of success,--the millions, not the leaders. In my judgment, unless the sky soon clears, the Republican party has proved its own incapacity,--written Ichabod on its own brow. Judging by the past, whose will