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

But, Mr. Chairman, there is something in the blood which, men tell us, brings out virtues and defects, even when they have lain dormant for a generation. Good and evil qualities are hereditary, the physicians say. The blood whose warm currents of eloquent aid my friend solicited 12 vain in that generation has sprung voluntarily to his assistance in the next,--both from the pulpit and the press,--to rouse the world by the vigor and pathos of its appeals. [Enthusiastic cheers.] Even on that great triumph I would say a word. Marked and unequalled as has been that success, remember, in explanation of the phenomenon,--for “Uncle Tom's cabin” is rather an event than a book,--remember this: if the old antislavery movement had not roused the sympathies of Mrs. Stowe, the book had never been written; if that movement had not raised up hundreds of thousands of hearts to sympathize with the slave, the book had never been read. [Cheers.] Not that the genius of the author has not made the triumph all her own; not that the unrivalled felicity of its execution has not trebled, quadrupled, increased tenfold, if you please, the number of readers; out there must be a spot even for Archimedes to rest his lever upon, before he can move the world, [cheers,] and this effort of genius, consecrated to the noblest purpose, might have fallen dead and unnoticed in 1835. It is-the antislavery movement which has changed 1835 to 1852. Those of us familiar with antislavery literature know well that Richard Hildreth's “Archy Moore,” now “The white Slave,” was a book of eminent ability; that it owed its want of success to no lack of genius, but only to the fact that it was a work born out of due time; that the antislavery cause had not then aroused sufficient numbers, on the wings of whose enthusiasm even the most delightful fiction could have risen into world-wide influence and repute. To the cause which had changed 1835