For many generations the gift of oratory has been in the blood of the Phillips family. The founder of the family in America, the Rev. George Phillips, first minister of Watertown, Mass., is noted in New England annals for his eloquence. “The irrefragable doctor” he was called by his hearers, we learn from the pedantic Mather, so able was he in dispute, and such readiness had he on all occasions to stand to his guns and to maintain any statement he had once made. But there must have been another strain of blood in Wendell Phillips, added to that in the veins of his ancestor George, for Mather goes on to say that the earlier Puritan was “very averse unto disputation until delivered thereto by extreme necessity.”
The son of George Phillips, of Watertown, was the Rev. Samuel Phillips, first minister of Rowley, so distinguished a preacher that it was said of his father: “He would have been beyond compare, if he had not been the father of Samuel.” This is Mather’s epitaph on the Rev. George Phillips.
The grandson of the first Phillips was another George, a minister like his father and grandfather, who lived at Brookhaven, Long Island. “A good man,” was the second Rev. George, but “thought to be too much addicted to facetiousness and wit;” more dangerous qualities in those Puritan times than nowadays, and suggesting, again, the Phillips of our day.
The great-grandson of the first George Phillips, nephew to the second, was Samuel Phillips, for sixty years minister of Andover, and the father of John and Samuel Phillips, the founders of the Andover and Exeter academies. Strictly orthodox was the Rev. Samuel Phillips, as one may see from his sermons; and the religious tone that he gave to the village of Andover has lasted to this day. His many printed sermons are proof of the popularity of his public speech, and the election sermon, at least, shows that he was not afraid to deal with the living problems of the day.
His sons founded the two Phillips academies, John that at Exeter, and the two together the academy at Andover. Samuel was as well a liberal benefactor to the theological seminary at Andover. It would be fair to say, that with one single exception, where there was perhaps insanity, the family has been distinguished for public spirit, as well as for eloquence. Two of the grandsons of the Rev. Samuel, Samuel and William, were chosen lieutenant-governors of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. Their second cousin, John Phillips, was the first mayor of Boston. Their grandfathers had been brothers, the one Samuel, the Andover minister, and the other John, a Boston merchant. The mother of this second John was Margaret Wendell. She was Wendell Phillips’s grandmother, and from her he had his Christian name. His mother was of another Puritan family. Her maiden name was Walley.
John Phillips, father of Wendell, graduated at Harvard College in 1788, and became a lawyer. He was afterward one of the trustees of the college, and in 1809 was appointed a judge of common pleas. In 1822 Boston was made a city, and John Phillips was chosen the first mayor. He died in the next year of a trouble of the heart. His sudden death took place when Wendell and his brother George were both scholars in the Boston Latin School—the oldest school in America. At that time this school had recently been revived, and set in new order, with great local reputation, under Mr. Benjamin Apthorp Gould. It is said that the mayor, John Phillips, once came into the school to examine it, and, almost of course, had offered to him the seat of most dignity on the platform. This his little boys thought a mistake in etiquette, considering that no one could be of rank as high as the master. They did not hesitate then, more than in later days, to express their disapprobation, and when their father met them at table, told him they had been mortified to see him in that chair. “Ah,” he said, “you were not more ashamed of me than I was of you.”
But this anecdote must only be taken to show that Wendell Phillips at eleven years was not afraid of his father, and was not averse to criticising what he thought mistaken. He took even distinguished rank at school, and another school anecdote shows how early boys can judge correctly of each other’s ability, for it is remembered that when he first spoke before the assembled school, on Saturday, the first class—who sat by themselves, and thought well of their own opinion—were not displeased. Charles Chauncey Emerson, who was a crack scholar, one of the very highest in repute, turned to George Stillman Hillard and said, “That boy will make an orator.” The name of Charles Emerson will not be familiar to all your readers, for he died young. But here he is still remembered by the men of his time as the young man of most promise, who, in those days, left Harvard College. They will not admit that his brother Waldo Emerson has won any renown in the world, or rendered any service which would not have come in the life of Charles, had it been spared to this earth.
From this school, with a distinguished reputation among his fellows, Wendell Phillips entered Harvard College in 1827. The college was not then what it is now. Neither law nor divinity school was large, and these were the only graduate schools at Cambridge. The college proper, or the “seminary,” as President Quincy used to call it, numbered about two hundred students, of whom the greater part were from Massachusetts. A few southern lads, from distant plantation life, struggled up into what, in those days of no railroads and of no coast lines of steamers, was a foreign country. They were generally favorites; there was no such discussion of slavery as to make their position in the least uncomfortable, and, indeed, the general drift of sentiment among the people around them was not in sympathy with Abolitionists or abolitionism. Both these words, if spoken at all in those days in New England, were generally spoken with scorn. After a genial and affectionate administration, Dr. John Thornton Kirkland resigned the presidency of the college in the year 1828. Wendell Phillips was then a freshman. To succeed Dr. Kirkland, Josiah Quincy was appointed. He had won his reputation by steady work in Congress, first as a Federalist, and afterward as a watchful maintainer of northern rights. More lately he had approved himself an admirable administrative officer as Mayor of the city of Boston—the second chosen under its city charter. John Phillips, the father of Wendell Phillips, had been his immediate successor in that duty. The older Ware was professor of Divinity, Levi Hedge of Logic and Metaphysics, Dr. J. S. Popkin of Greek, Dr. Sidney Willard of Hebrew, John Farrar of Mathematics, Edward T. Channing of Rhetoric and Oratory, and George Ticknor of the Modern Languages. A few of these names will be remembered by general readers, though “’tis sixty years since” and more, and I record them because I wish all biographers would tell more than they are apt to do of the circumstances under which the mental powers of their heroes were trained.
Several of Phillips’s classmates survive, and one of them, Mr. Francis Gold Appleton, a gentleman whose wide American sympathies and sterling public spirit have endeared him to the whole community in which he lives, has kindly given to me some personal reminiscences of the young fellow’s life there. Thirteen of his school companions entered college with him. Other Boston boys came from the Round Hill school, and Exeter, so that in a class of sixty there were at least twenty Boston boys. In a sense, therefore, Phillips was not lonely there. But his classmates saw, or fancied they saw, that at one time he was moody, and suffering from what they called religious depression. They knew, even then—for boys know almost everything of the abilities of their companions—that Phillips had remarkable power in elocution. They chose him into the Porcellian Club—which takes its name from the traditional roasting of a little pig (Porcellus)—and of this club he became president. In other days the Porcellians were thought to be specially Southern in their proclivities, and this club used to rally almost all the Southern students. It is therefore rather a queer incident in its history that Wendell Phillips stands as a popular president. His college reputation was that of an amiable and bright young man, with an especial gift for oratory. He took his first degree in 1831—studied at the Law School, then under Professor Greenleaf, and Judge Story—and took the degree of Bachelor of Laws in 1833. He then went into a lawyer’s office in Boston and entered at the bar in 1834. He opened his modest office and waited for clients. But in those days, perhaps in these days, even such a young man waits long. For myself I think that the old dons of money or of business would rather give such scraps of formal business as they have to some young stranger from the country, who has no relatives in Boston, and whom nobody knows there, than to confide private affairs to somebody they have known from childhood, whose father, or uncle, or brother-in-law they meet at the Saturday Club or the Wednesday Club. But Phillips did not flinch from doing what anybody wanted him to do. It has been remembered that in the illness of his brother he did the almost mechanical work of the clerk of the Municipal Court. This means that he was brought into personal relation with every criminal who was brought up there for trial and sentence.
But the skies were thickening, and there was not any danger that a young man of spirit would long lack a chance if he chose to take it. It was in October, 1835, that “a mob of gentlemen of property and standing” broke up a meeting of the Women’s Anti-Slavery Society of Boston. Phillips was an eye witness of the indignities with which Mr. Garrison was then treated. He loyally threw in his fortunes with those of the Abolitionists; and, as it proved, his chance came at a public meeting called at Faneuil Hall.