Wendell Phillips: Liberty's Hero

ELEVEN: Reconstruction, Capitalism, and the Franchise

ELEVEN Reconstruction, Capitalism, and the Franchise On December 4, 1863, members of the American Anti-Slavery Society convened in Philadelphia to mark three decades of activity. It was a time to reflect and celebrate. Garrison presided, and Samuel J. May, J.Miller McKim, and other veterans made speeches in which they cast their thoughts back to the 18305, when they had been young and their movement small and despised. Now, vindication sat on the platform in the person of Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, who told the abolitionists how great an inspiration the cause had been to him as he promised to work to "break the last fetter ofthe last slave."Then as Garrison read their names, charter members of the society arose to greatapplause. Wendell Phillips did not add to the cheering, however, for he was in New York City's Cooper Institute, assailing Lincoln's Reconstruction plans before a distinguished audience of Republicans. As Garrison well knew, Phillips had boycotted the festival to protest disagreements with its sponsors.1 From the first, Civil War had brought confusion to the American Anti-Slavery Society, for dozens of prominent people joined the organization they had denounced for so long. Some, including Elizur Wright, Jr., Lewis Tappan, Gerrit Smith, and Frederick Douglass, had returned from the Liberty party and its successors, and others, such as GeorgeB. i. Liberator, December 25, 1863; National Anti-Slavery Standard, January 9, 1864; William L.Garrison to Ellen Wright, December11, 1863, Garrison Papers, SCL. 243 244 WENDELL PHILLIPS Cheever and Henry Ward Beecher, were great evangelical preachers. Still others, seasoned politicians like Senator Wilson, George W.Julian, and John A. Andrew, had furnished the best proof of all that the old disunionist community of saints was rapidly vanishing, but in a way that could only make many longtime Garrisonians rejoice. Since the warwas leading the North to abolition, it was now time, some of these veterans had concluded, to lay the cause aside. As early as 1862,, Maria Weston Chapman, the Weston sisters, and J. Miller McKim had resigned from the American Anti-Slavery Society and had called instead for missionary efforts to former slaves.2 Then Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, and Garrison declared his eagerness to dissolve the society, despite Phillips' immediate objection that the nation needed the abolitionists now more than ever. In January, 1863, for example, Garrison hinted at an antislavery gathering that final victory lay just ahead. Phillips praised Garrison's "encouraging faith" in "the progress of the antislavery idea," but he went on to lament the weaknesses of the Emancipation Proclamation and the need to stand by Lincoln for two more years. Phillips heaped praise on John C. Fremont and Benjamin F.Butler, the military governor of Union-occupied New Orleans, whose stringent policies were protecting blacks and repressing white obstructionists. These were men Lincoln ought to emulate. The Fosters and Charles L. Remond, displaying less diplomacy than Phillips, then pointedly reminded Garrison of the original Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society , specifically the clauses that bound abolitionists to eradicate not just chattel slavery but white racism itself across the land. This partof the abolitionists' work was far from complete. Thus, when Garrison again spoke in favor ofdissolution, during the anniversary celebration in Philadelphia, Foster and Frederick Douglass were alreadywell prepared. Denouncing Lincoln's proclamation as the product of expediency, they warned Garrison that white supremacy reigned as widely as ever in American political culture. As Douglass put it, abolitionists must never disband until "the black man of the South, and the black man of the North, shall have been admitted fully and completely into the body politic of America."3 He was clearly reflecting the sentiments of the conspicuously absent Wendell Phillips as well. 2. Friedman, Gregarious Saints, 256-61. 3. Liberator, January 7, 1863; Proceedings of the American Anti-Slavery Society at Its Third Decade Meeting. . . . (New York, 1864), 1-175. RECONSTRUCTION, CAPITALISM, AND FRANCHISE 245 Just prior to this Philadelphia meeting, Lincoln had outlined someof his Reconstruction plans, which seemed to Phillips to reconfirm the folly of Garrison's call for dissolution. The president offered pardons to all who would swear loyalty to a Union without slavery, excludingonly the most prominent Confederates; and he suggested that anyrebel state should be readmitted when one-tenth of its 1860 population had taken this oath and had established an acceptable new state government. As to...