Wendell Phillips: Social Justice and the Power of the Past ed. by A. J. Aiséirithe and Donald Yacovone (review)

Studies of antebellum reform often provide an incomplete picture of the efforts of figures such as Wendell Phillips, who became a prominent reformer in the prewar period and continued to agitate in the postwar era. In outlining the continuities and divergences between his antislavery work and his later involvement in the labor movement, women's rights, and Indian reform, the essays in this volume present a more complete image of Phillips, his contexts, and even his afterlives.

In his elegant lead essay, James Brewer Stewart describes Phillips's unique reverence for tradition as a crucial component to his success as one of the period's greatest orators. Stewart demonstrates how Phillips effectively appealed to the Revolution and artfully used republican language, winning over listeners with his conversational tone. W. Caleb McDaniel also outlines Phillips's fascination with the past—the classical era in particular—and shows that Phillips's reading of Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill cultivated his conviction that orators and agitators play essential roles in democracies. Phillips also relied on his Puritan heritage, as Dan McKanan shows in an essay on the abolitionist's concern with social responsibility and individual freedom. Phillips, he notes, viewed figures such as William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker, and John Brown as updated iterations of his Puritan ancestors. These essays challenge depictions of abolitionist disregard for the past and, more generally, complicate accounts of shallow antebellum historical awareness.

The essays also pay careful attention to the differences between Phillips and his colleagues. Dean Grodzins, for example, details Phillips's respect for the rule of law, showing that he, unlike Garrison and Thoreau, would not reject government in all its forms, nor would he support political violence, including Brown's efforts. Though Phillips finally embraced military means during the Civil War, he maintained a strong attachment to the rule of law. He also consistently practiced a constitutional politics, as Michael Les Benedict argues. In response to the 1842 fugitive slave case of George Latimer, Phillips adopted a Garrisonian anti-constitutionalism. He deferred to the Supreme Court's reading but looked to the people to repudiate the Constitution. With the Civil War and disunion, he shifted to a pro-constitutional position, indicating, as Benedict explains, the flexible nature of his constitutional politics.

Changes and continuities are further outlined in essays on Phillips's postbellum involvement in labor reform. Peter Wirzbicki explains that his abolitionism cultivated a lifelong concern with democracy and political rights. He also identifies cross-spatial links: in tracing clear ties between Boston abolitionists and European socialists, he challenges studies that use Phillips's narrow critiques of labor reform to posit a wide ideological gap between abolitionism and labor activism. Millington Bergeson-Lockwood also connects Phillips's abolitionism to his labor reform, showing that his concern for equality persisted even as he embraced electoral politics as the best means to bring about change.

The essays highlight Phillips's progressive views but also attend to their limitations. Hélène Quanquin's essay on women's rights and Angela F. Murphy's piece on Indian reform show that Phillips was, after all, a man of his time. Quanquin describes Phillips's concern with recognizing and involving women in reform efforts and his belief that women's rights advocates such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton were selfish. Phillips, Quanquin demonstrates, was not a disinterested reformer. Similarly, Murphy argues that in applying his abolitionist focus on equal rights to Indian reform Phillips failed to account for Natives' hopes and aims. Murphy demonstrates that Phillips's persistent efforts on behalf of Native peoples left a double legacy, one hampered by misunderstanding though somewhat redeemed in drawing attention to a lagging reform effort and showing the complexities of the race problem.

The last two essays attend to Phillips's afterlives. Donald...