After they had been married thirteen years, having no children of their own, Mr. and Mrs. Phillips took into their home, as a daughter, Phœbe Garnaut, twelve years old, the daughter of the lovely Eliza Garnaut, who had died of cholera the year before, through her unselfish devotion to others. This child remained to brighten the Phillips' home for ten years, when she married Mr. George Washburn Smalley, the London correspondent of the New York Tribune, and made her home abroad.
Dr. Buckingham says truly that Wendell Phillips "was a lover all his life,—not with the instinctive love of youth alone, but with the secured attachment, the quiet confidence of the heart, the beautiful affectionateness, which, in the later years of the pure and good, is a far superior development of character, and a far richer enjoyment, than the effervescence of youthful days. She was, as he wrote me once, his counsel, his guide, his inspiration."
As long as Mr. Phillips lived, whenever he was at home, he visited the markets daily, searching for things which should tempt the appetite of "Ann." Lovely flowers were in her windows from one year's end to the other, placed there by his thoughtfulness or that of other dear friends. Fond of music, he daily left her money for the hand-organs played beneath her window. Her love, her cheer, her enthusiastic devotion to the great causes which he pleaded with inimitable grace and power, more than paid him for all his care and self-sacrifice.
Two months after their marriage came the event which made him, like Byron, "awake to find himself famous."
On Nov. 7, 1837, the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Ill. He was a Presbyterian clergyman from Maine, a graduate of Waterville College. Going West, he became the editor of the St. Louis Observer, a weekly religious paper of his own denomination.
A negro having been chained to a tree and burned to death for killing an officer who attempted to arrest him, the judge decided in favor of the mob. Rev. Mr. Lovejoy protested against such barbarity, and his printing-office was at once destroyed by the lawless. He moved his paper to Alton, Ill., but the slavery sympathizers destroyed his press. Some citizens reimbursed him for the loss. Another press was purchased and destroyed, and then another. The fourth press, the mayor and law-abiding citizens determined should be defended.
In the evening a mob gathered from the saloons,—their usual place of starting,—and threatened to burn the building where it was stored. The officials seemed powerless, the building was fired, and the Rev. Mr. Lovejoy received three balls in his breast.
The death of this young minister in a free State sent a thrill of indignation throughout the North. Dr. William Ellery Channing and one hundred others called a meeting at Faneuil Hall, Boston, for the morning of Dec. 8.
The Hon. Jonathan Phillips, a relative of Wendell Phillips, presided over the crowded assemblage. Dr. Channing spoke eloquently. Soon in the gallery, James T. Austin, the Attorney-General of Massachusetts, a prominent lawyer, and member of Dr. Channing's congregation, arose and declared that Lovejoy "died as the fool dieth," and compared his murderers to the men who destroyed the tea in Boston harbor. The audience was intensely excited.