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

[85] the sympathy and liberal feeling of the French nation, they signed an edict — it was the first from the nascent Republic — abolishing the death-penalty and slavery. The storm which rocked the vessel of state almost to foundering, snapped forever the chain of the French slave. Look. too, at the history of Mexican and South American emancipation; you will find that it was, in every instance, I think, the child of convulsion.

The hour will come--God hasten it I — when the American people shall so stand on the deck of their Union, “built ia tha eclipse, and rigged with curses dark.” If I live to see that hour, I shall say to every slave, “Strike now for Freedom [Long-continued and deafening cheers.] The balance hangs trembling; it is uncertain which scale shall kick the beam. Strain every nerve, wrestle with every power God and nature have put into your hands, for your place among the races of this Western world” ; and that hour will free the slave. The Abolitionist who shall stand in such an hour as that, and keep silence, will be recreant to the cause of three million of his fellow-men in bonds. I believe that probably is the only way in which we shall ever, any of us, see the downfall of American slavery. I do not shrink from the toast with which Dr. Johnson flavored his Oxford Port,--“Success to the first insurrection of the blacks in Jamaica!” I do not shrink from the sentiment of Southey, in a letter to Duppa,--“There are scenes of tremendous horror which I could smile at by Mercy's side. An insurrection which should make the negroes masters of the West Indies is one.” I believe both these sentiments are dictated by the highest humanity. I know what anarchy is. I know what civil war is. I can imagine the scenes of blood through which a rebellious slave-population must march to their rights. They are dreadful. And yet, I do not know that, to an enlightened mind, a scene of civil