Wendell Phillips: Liberty's Hero

THIRTEEN: The Eclipse of Republicanism

THIRTEEN The Eclipse of Republicanism "I am happy to tell you that Wendell Phillips has been handsomely snubbed at the election last week," EdmundQuincy gossiped to Richard D. Webb in November, 1870. Quincy, retired, had come to scorn Phillips, who he felt had degraded himself and thrown aside the last vestiges of his vaunted independence by running for governor as a labor and temperance candidate. According to Quincy, if Phillips "had acted with ordinary common sense and good temper when slavery was abolished," it would have been "very likely that he might have been the next Senator" from Massachusetts and a respected leader of the Republican party.Instead , Phillips was now '"played out,' as we say," fated to be "merely a popular lecturer and small demagogue for the rest of his life."1 Value judgments aside, Quincy's forecast of Phillips' future proved all too accurate . After this one attempt at running for office, his public stature slowly began to decline. During the late 186os, working people had been organizing to achieve results that heartened Phillips and greatly complicated Massachusetts politics. By 1869 they had developed the Labor Reform party into an extension of their own industrial unions and had endorsedsome principles that Phillips could firmly support. Capital and labor, mutually"dependent , needed to be restored to parity, they had declared, calling for an i. Quincyto Webb, November30, 1870, Quincy-Webb Papers. 296 ECLIPSE OF REPUBLICANISM 297 eight-hour day and for laws requiring cooperative investments byworkers in the incorporation of new companies. By 1869, moreover, Massachusetts Republicans were divided between radical Benjamin Butlerand all who despised him. Seeing an opportunity to hold a balance ofpower, the labor reformers ran as a third party and reduced the Republican margin of victory to only 8,000 out of 138,000 votes cast.2 Here, Phillips believed , was just the situation in which an aroused citizenry could confirm his sweeping theory about the social power of the franchise. The upcoming 1870 election for governor certainly seemed to address every aspect ofPhillips' reform programs, andwith its new amendments, the United States Constitution no longer presented moral barriers against his engaging in electoral politics. Once temperance advocates, suffragists, and working-class politicians had all promised support, he took the unprecedented step of declaring himself a candidate. At the same time, a Massachusetts factory owner added greatly to Phillips' interest in the campaign by inflaming the issue of Chinese "coolie labor." Announcing that he would no longer tolerate union-organized workers in his plant, this employer openly negotiated with a coolie importer in San Francisco to the applauseofhis fellow entrepreneurs. In protest, the Weekly American Workman, Massachusetts' leading labornewspaper, published an orientalized cartoon of Simon Legree, over the caption "Coolie Slaveryin Massachusetts!" Phillips addedhis own statement in praise of the Chinese as an "industrious, thrifty, inventive and selfrespectful " people. They could be naturally absorbed into the work force as political equals without lowering wages, he argued, so long as they immigrated voluntarily andhad not been lured by the false inducements of grasping factory owners.3 Finally, as Phillips weighed the merits of seeking the governorship, there were also the intriguing political prospects of Benjamin F.Butler to contemplate. Butler, of course, had always been one of Phillips' favorites—the battlefield liberator of the slaves in 1861, the guardian of black freedom in New Orleans in 1863, the manager of traitorous Johnson's impeachment trial in 1868. Now Butler had succeeded Thaddeus Stevens as the most powerful radical in Congress and had built an impressive political organization in Massachusetts. Whenever Phillips sought a place in government for a deserving friend, Butler was able to accommodate him, 2. Montgomery,Beyond Equality, 369-70. 3. Weekly American Workman, July 2, 28, 1870; National Standard, July 30, 1870. 298 WENDELL PHILLIPS and when Phillips was lobbying in the state legislature for the creation of a bureau of labor statistics, Butler helped out. Butler, moreover, in 1868 had become a "greenbacker," declaring his support for basing the nation's currency on an inflated medium of exchange, a proposal that Phillips and many working-class politicians and labor leaders also favored . That same year Butler had marshaled working-class voters to survive a purge attempted by conservative Massachusetts Republicans, led by former Cotton Whigs like Amos A. Lawrence, whom Phillips, of course, had always despised. Thus, by deciding to run for governor in 1870, Phillips clearly hoped to develop...