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

There is one other motive; that is, fear. Cobbett and his fellows gathered the people of Great Britain in public meetings of two hundred thousand men; and though the Duke of Wellington ordered his Scotch Greys to rough-grind their swords, as at Waterloo, he feared to order them drawn in the face of two hundred thousand Englishmen. That gathering was for their own rights. Cross the Channel, and you come to the Irish question. How was that dealt with? By fear. When Ireland got no sympathy from the English people, she so ordered her affairs that the dread of anarchy, anchored so close to Liverpool and Bristol, forced the government to treat the question, and they treated it by submission.

Now, I read my lesson in the light of this historical experience. I cannot yet move the selfishness of the white man to help me. On this question I cannot get it on my side. It is just possible that the fugitive slave, taking his defence into his own right hand, and appealing to the first principle of natural law, may so excite the sympathy of some and the fears of others, as to gain the attention of all, and force them to grapple with this problem of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Bill. The time may come when Massachusetts may not be willing to have her cities scenes of bloodshed, in order that one over-ambitious man may gain his point, and smooth his path to the Presidency; or that a human being should be hurried into bondage, that rich men may add field to field and house to house.

I have striven to present this point as slowly, as fully, as deliberately as possible, because I know it is an important one. It is, in some sense, the launching of a new measure in the antislavery enterprise, to countenance the fugitive, who has tried in vain every avenue of escape, in standing even at last at bay, and protecting himself. But