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Early Life
Wendell Phillips was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 29, 1811. His father had been a judge and the mayor of Boston. His family's roots in Massachusetts went back to the landing of Puritan minister George Phillips, who arrived aboard the Arbella with Gov. John Winthrop in 1630. -
Education
Phillips received the education befitting a Boston patrician, and after graduation from Harvard he attended Harvard's newly opened law school. Known for his intellectual skills and ease with public speaking, not to mention his family's wealth, he seemed destined for an impressive legal career. And it was generally supposed that Phillips would have a promising future in mainstream politics. -
Office
Phillips was admitted to the bar and opened an office in Boston. From his office window, he saw William Lloyd Garrison being dragged through the street by a mob, an event that changed his attitude toward slavery. -
Marriage
Phillips married to Ann Terry Greene, an active worker in the Boston Female Antislavery Society who increased his interest in the abolition movement. He wrote later that "my wife made an out-and-out abolitionist of me, and always preceded me in the adoption of various causes I have advocated." -
Death of Elijah Lovejoy
Phillips’s reputation as an orator was established at Faneuil Hall, Boston, at a meeting called to protest the murder of abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy at Alton, Illinois, the previous month. When Phillips spontaneously delivered a stirring and passionate denunciation of the mob action against the martyred editor, he was recognized as one of the most brilliant orators of his day. -
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Slavery and the Civil War
Phillips opposed the nomination and election of Abraham Lincoln, as he did not consider him forceful enough in his opposition to slavery. However, once Lincoln was in office as president, Phillips tended to support him. When the Emancipation Proclamation was instituted, Phillips supported it, even though he felt it should have gone further in liberating all the slaves in America. After Garrison resigned, Phillips became president of the American Anti-Slavery Society. -
Unsuccessful Run
With the Constitution amended so that it no longer countenanced slavery, Phillips ran for Governor of Massachusetts unsuccessfully as the candidate of the Labor Reform and Prohibition Parties. -
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Life After Anti-Slavery Career
He continued to lecture on the Lyceum circuits. -
Death of Wendell Phillips
Wendell Phillips died by a heart attack
