Wendell Phillips: Liberty's Hero

Preface and Acknowledgments

Preface and Acknowledgments Recent scholarship on the abolitionists has minimized their importance in shaping the issues of their age. Seen as piously removed from partisan affairs, the abolitionists are said to have had an only marginal impact in the North-South political conflict. Perceived as Victorian paternalists, they are declared to have been largely unable to challenge a white supremacist culture. Defined as "possessive individualists," they are considered to have been incapable of recognizing the social costs of "freelabor " industrial civilization. Understood as seekers of religious purity, they are analyzed in psychological terms that show them as more dedicated to self-discovery than to social struggle. In Wendell Phillips: Liberty 's Hero, the first biography of this towering reform figure in over twenty years, I question or modify each of these interpretations. I do so, however, more often by implication than by direct rebuttal, for I assume that individual biography can not always claim to speak as general history . Moreover, in this book I attempt, above all else, to develop a comprehensive humanistic explanation of Phillips' life and its significance for his age. Hence, I rehearse my scholarly exceptions only when they might not be obvious to specialists or distracting to general readers. All the same, this work varies from current scholarship by presenting Phillips (andby implication his abolitionist colleagues) as a central figure in the Civil Warera. Phillips developed authentic political power as an abolitionist; sought victory in fundamental social conflicts; was a Xll PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vigorous, consistent racial egalitarian; and appreciated (as a champion of free labor) the harsh social consequences of industrialization. I believe that Phillips' reform commitments can best be understood not through psychology but through a humanistic understanding of his acutely personal sense of history and moral order as these were shaped by private circumstances and public events from childhood to old age. Phillips' motives for reforming seldom led him to self-absorption but, instead, thrust him deeply into political and social conflict. But in arguing these positions, I do not wish to reassert the "neoabolitionist " liberal scholarship of the 19605 and early 19705. Instead, as the title itself implies, this book develops as a central theme Phillips' use of inherited republican traditions in defining his personal identity, sustaining his political consciousness, and directing his public behavior . Although republicanism seems to have become a generic term for politics from Machiavelli's time to the IWW's, it was nevertheless, for Phillips, a powerful set of specific family and upper-classBostoniantraditions that stressed liberation as the reward of self-restraint and political liberty as the handmaiden of stern social order. In this respect, the subtitle Liberty's Hero itself suggests the lifelong sense of liberation that Phillips discovered for himself and envisioned for the nation after he had himself claimed to be a literal extension of a past that affirmed these republican values. In a closely related sense, the subtitle Liberty's Hero also conveys Phillips' deeply held conception of himself as a heroic republican actor, who replicated the inspired leadership of Sam Adams, Oliver Cromwell, and others. Acting on this radically republican sense of himself Phillips challenged his contemporaries to explore their fullest understandings of American freedom. At issue were not only an ideologist's abstractions and a moralist's dreams but also the tangible interests of politicians, entrepreneurs, and planters, as well as of slaves, free blacks, and poor industrial laborers. And finally, I have tried to display Phillips' private experiences as fully as possible and to develop their significance for his public life. Since this book incorporates a large body of largely unfamiliar Phillips papers (the Crawford Blagden Papers, Harvard University), it explores as has no other biography Phillips' marriage to a mysterious, reclusive invalid and the enormous influence of Ann Greene Phillips on her husband 's career. Likewise, these sources reveal Phillips' influential roles within the white abolitionist community and his interactions with PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Xlll blacks as well. In addition this book explains the highly personalized nature of Phillips' rhetoric by connecting such expressions to the moral structure of his private world. And by extending such analyses, it also sets forth the sources of Phillips' eloquence and accounts for his great impact on his audiences. There are many whom I must thank for helping me with this book. My colleagues at Macalester College, especially Jeff Nash, Peter Rachleff, Calvin Roetzel, Norm Rosenberg, Paul Solon, and the late...