Wendell Phillips: Liberty's Hero

EIGHT: Whigs and Slave Hunters

EIGHT Whigs and Slave Hunters In March, 1850, Wendell Phillips consigned his senator to the lowest circle of hell: "If, in the lowest deep, there be a lower deep for profligate statesmen, let all former apostates stand aside and leave it vacant. Hell, from beneath, is moved for thee at thy coming.'" Thus did Phillips greet Daniel Webster's famous Seventh of March Speech in the United States Senate defending the Compromise of 1850. This legislation sought to preserve political balance between North and South and to bury slavery questions forever. When it passed, California was admitted as a free state, and in the remaining territory taken from Mexico, slavery questions wereleft for later resolution bystate-level plebiscitetermed "popular sovereignty." Toplacate the North, slave trading,but not slavery, was prohibited in the District of Columbia, while to recompense the South, Congress greatly strengthened the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law. Now federal commissioners, not statejudges,wouldprocess fugitive cases, andwhites like Phillips who assisted fugitives risked severe penalties. Those accused of escaping weredeprived of the right to jury trials, the protection of writs, and the opportunity to testify, and without these protections legally free blacks as well as authentic escapees were threatened 'with possible seizure and shipment south. YetWebster,the senator from Massachusetts , had voted for these measures and urged Americans to supi . Liberator,March 21, 1850. 146 WHIGS AND SLAVE HUNTERS 147 port them. By his actions he transformed himself, in Wendell Phillips' eyes, into an incarnation of every element corrupting America's body politic. Since 1837, as we have seen, Phillips had identified himself with the heroic abolitionist, the Lovejoy or Garrison who acted with passionate inspiration to disenthrall the Republic from the disruptive tyrannyof slavery. Now, in Webster, Phillips discerned their antithesis, the fleshand -blood embodiment of slavery's triumph disguised as compromise. Webster had been enslaved by slavery, Phillips decided, and, though extremely powerful, had become morally depraved and politically emasculated . As Massachusetts Cotton Whigs held testimonial dinners in Webster's honor for his having saved the Union, Phillips turned the senator into a compelling rhetorical symbol of the South's corrupting power. It was Phillips' first step in a campaign to shatter the new shackles he felt slavery had riveted on his state and nation. Moreover, as he formulated this terrifying image of Webster, he also gave voice to far more personal sources of his hatred of slavery and its supporters. Two weeks after Webster had spoken, Phillips began a series of counterattacks . Joining with antislavery leaders of all persuasions, he helped to organize a mammoth protest meeting in Faneuil Hall, which he then addressed with a particularly condemnatory speech. He also filled aspecial issue of the Liberator with a searing review of Webster's Seventhof March Address.2 Although a host of Massachusetts luminaries, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Samuel Gridley Howe, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Theodore Parker also condemned their "fallen" senator, Phillips allowed Webster to predominate in his rhetoric as had no figure since Elijah Lovejoy's death. Phillips had much more personal reasons than the Compromise of 1850 for launching his savage attacks against Webster. First of all, Webster certainly reminded Phillips of his own unhappy past, those painful years of compromise and misdirection he had endured before embracing abolitionism. Tohis shame, Phillips could not forget that he had admired Webster so greatly at that time as to wish his election as president. Furthermore, Phillips resented Webster as his greatest competitor for forensic dominion in Massachusetts, for their messages and self-assigned political roles were acknowledgedby all as moral opposites. 2. Ibid.; Phillips and Samuel Gridley Howe to Sumner, March 21, 1850, Sumner Papers; Phillips and Howe to Richard Henry Dana, March 21, 1850, Richard Henry Dana Papers, MHS. 148 WENDELL PHILLIPS Phillips, the republican "hero," guarded his independence and flaunted his moral purity. Webster, the unionist "statesman," was also the political insider who took retainers from great textile merchants and spoke as the servant of State Street bankers. Little wonder, then, that Phillips felt so impelled to overwhelm this formidable rival who spoke so majestically for slavery as the senator from "republican" Massachusetts. From platforms throughout Boston, Phillips endlessly proclaimed that, but for Webster, the crisis of 1850 would have resulted in northern victory, not a slaveholder's triumph disguised as compromise. "All the virtue of the North [was] aroused, and needed but a man as a leader to dare all...