Note I — Chapter XII

In a speech at Cooper Institute in New York City, on the Presidential election (1864), Wendell Phillips said that for thirty years he had labored to break up the Union in the interest of justice, and now he labored to save it in the same interest. The same curse that he invoked on the old Union he would invoke on a new Union if it is not founded on justice to the negro. "Science must either demonstrate that the negro is not a man, or politics must accord to him equality at the ballot-box and in offices of trust." He judged Mr. Lincoln by his words and deeds, and so judging he was "unwilling to trust Abraham Lincoln with the future of the country. Let it be granted that Mr. Lincoln is pledged to Liberty and Union; but this pledge was wrung out of him by the Cleveland movement, and was a mere electioneering pledge. Mr. Lincoln is a politician. Politicians are like the bones of a horse's fore-shoulder,—not a straight one in it. A reformer is like a Doric column of iron,—straight, strong, and immovable. It is a momentous responsibility to trust Mr. Lincoln where we want a Doric column to stand stern and strong for the Nation.... I am an Abolitionist, but I am also a citizen watchful of constitutional Liberty; and I say if President Lincoln is inaugurated on the votes of Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas, every citizen is bound to resist him. Are you willing to sacrifice the constitutional rights of seventy years for your fondness for an individual?"

Mr. Phillips then quoted some opinions from prominent men in the Republican party. "A man in the field said, 'The re-election of Abraham Lincoln will be a disaster.' Another said, 'The re-election of Abraham Lincoln will be national destruction.' Said another, 'There is no government at Washington,—nothing there.' Winter Davis of Maryland testifies to his [Lincoln's] inability. Said another, 'That proclamation will not stand a week before the Supreme Court; but I had rather trust it there than Abraham Lincoln to make the judges.' Mr. Lincoln has secured his success just as the South used to secure its success. He says to the radicals of the Republican party, 'I am going to nominate myself at Baltimore: risk a division of the party if you dare!' and the radicals submitted. Political Massachusetts submitted, and is silent; but Antislavery Massachusetts calls to the people to save their own cause." Mr. Phillips said he "wanted by free speech to let Abraham Lincoln know that we are stronger than Abraham Lincoln, and that he is a servant to obey us. I distrust the man who uses whole despotism in Massachusetts and half despotism in South Carolina, and that man is Abraham Lincoln."