The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips

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B. B. Russell, 1884 - 431 pages

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Page 420 - Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just ; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.
Page 204 - In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it.
Page 223 - Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O UNION strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate.
Page 79 - Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which place the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the Hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American — the slanderer of the dead.
Page 31 - It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those who by stealth and at midnight labor in this work of hell, foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England.
Page 64 - ... and that all oppression is odious in the sight of God. 'Hail Columbia !' Cheers for the Autocrat of Russia, and the Sultan of Turkey! Reader, let this inscription remain till the last slave in this despotic land be loosed from his fetters.
Page 23 - Three years later he was elected a member of the corporation of Harvard College, and in 1820 a member of the convention for the revision of the State Constitution. In this able and dignified body he held a conspicuous rank. His remarks upon the various questions which arose were learned, judicious, and sometimes rendered all the more effective by the flashes of his wit. Speaking, for...
Page 223 - Tis of the wave and not the rock; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale ! In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore. Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Page 53 - ... the law written by the finger of God on the heart of man ; and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they will reject with indignation the wild and guilty phantasy, that man can hold property in man...
Page 171 - March 6, 1820,) which, being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories — as recognized by the legislation of 1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures — is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly...

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