January 23, 1861 (Wednesday)

"Let them go!"  Wendell Phillips

An Address by Wendell Phillips at Music Hall in Boston last Sunday--excerpts

"The office of the pulpit is to teach men their duty.  Wherever men's thoughts have any influence on their laws, it is the duty of the pulpit to preach politics. 


'The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice.'  'The Covenant with Death is annulled----the Agreement with Hell is broken to pieces.'  The chain which has held the slave system since 1787 is parted.  Thirty years ago Southern leaders, sixteen years ago Northern Abolitionists, announced their purposes to seek the dissolution of the American Union.  Who dreamed that success would come so soon?


The foundation of our government divides only into two parts:  those who like Slavery and mean it shall last, and those who hate it and mean it shall die.  After drifting, a dreary night of thirty years, before the hurricane, our Ship of State is going to pieces on the lee shore of Slavery.  Everyone confesses that the poison of our body politic is Slavery...The toil of a whole generation, thirty years, has been spent in examining this question of the right and place of the negro----the whole earnest thought of the nation given to it.  It stifles all other questions...it struggles up through all compromises, asserting its right to be heard...nothing can succeed in binding this Samson...the business community begs it to be settled...the whole South is determined to meet it. 


A Union is made up of willing States, not of conquered provinces.  If a husband or wife who can only keep the other partner within the bond by locking the doors and standing armed before them, had better submit to peaceable separation. [Applause.] 


Last month Senator Johnson of Tennessee, said, 'If I were an Abolitionist and wanted to accomplish the abolition of Slavery in the Southern States, the first step I would take would be to break the bonds of this Union.  I believe the continuance of Slavery depends on the preservation of this Union, and a compliance with all the guarantees of the Constitution.' 


Sacrifice anything to keep the Slave-holding States in the Union!  God forbid!  We will rather build a bridge of gold and pay their toll over it -- accompany them out with glad noise of trumpets.  Let them not 'stand on the order of their going, but go at once.'  Take the forts, empty our arsenals and sub-treasuries, and we will lend them...jewels of gold and jewels of silver, and be glad when they are departed. [Laughter and applause.]  But let the world distinctly understand why they go -- to save Slavery. 


Today is the inevitable fruit of our father's faithless compromise in 1787.  What a sad comment on free institutions, that they have produced a South of tyrants and a North of cowards; a South ready to face any peril to save Slavery, and a North unwilling to risk a dollar to serve freedom!  Before the Union existed, Washington and Jefferson uttered the boldest Anti-Slavery opinions. Today they would be lynched in their own homes.  No man who hopes for office dares to insist that it is unconstitutional.  Slavery has turned our churches of Christ into churches of commerce.


[The practice of government] is conciliate, compromise, postpone, practice finesse, make promises, or break them, do anything to gain time and concentrate the North against Slavery.  Our fathers tried that policy in 1787.  They miserably failed.  It was tried in 1821, and failed.  It was tried in 1850, and failed.  What harm and good can come from disunion?  (A discussion follows at page 7 at the link below on the positives and negatives of disunion.)


In my soul,  I believe that a dissolution of the Union, sure to result speedily in the abolition of Slavery, would be a lesser evil than the slow, faltering, diseased 'gradually dying out' of Slavery, constantly poisoning us with the festering remains of this corrupt political, social and literary State.  I believe a sudden, conclusive, definite disunion, resulting in the abolition of Slavery...immediately, would be better, healthier and a more wholesome cure...This is what I mean by coercion! All hail, then, Disunion!"  (The Unholy Alliance:  The Abolitionists Giving the Right Hand of Fellowship to the Disunionists--Wendell Phillips' Address, New York Times article, January 22, 1861.)