Wendell Phillips Quotes

I don't think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion.

Witness, eternal God! Oh, witness that, from this hour, I will do what one man can to drive out this curse of slavery from my land!

We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare. We believe - nay, we know, that that is the only thing that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself.

Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! [...] You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

This will be a great day in our history; the date of a New Revolution - quite as much needed as the old one. Even now as I write they are leading old John Brown to execution in Virginia for attempting to rescue slaves! This is sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind which will come soon!

Once slavery in America was not seen as radical. It became, instead, a revolutionary idea that slaves should be freed. When we have lived under a pernicious power long enough, no matter how oppressive, we grow so accustomed to the yoke that its removal seems frightening, even wrong.

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.

When federal marshals in Boston arrested Anthony Burns in 1854, a vigilance committee gathered at Faneuil Hall and declared that “resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” Heavily armed with axes and pistols, they marched to the courthouse, where, in the ensuing battle, a federal officer was killed. In response, President Franklin Pierce, a Northern Democrat, mobilized the U.S. Army and Navy to transport Burns back to Virginia, at a cost of $ 100,000 (roughly equivalent to $ 4 million in 2012). As soldiers escorted the fugitive down the streets of Boston, church bells tolled in somber protest, and homeowners and shopkeepers turned their American flags upside down in a show of defiance.

I did say, at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread of slavery arrested and to see it placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction.

The investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to a better understanding of my own. I have found the anti-slavery cause to be ... the school in which human rights are more fully investigated and better understood and taught than in any other.

The anti-slavery parties were also called spoilers, including the Republican party that went on not just to abolish slavery but they actually take over the Presidency moving very quickly from third-party into the Presidency.

Free labor has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope.

But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States. I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly, men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.

I believe the bicentenary offers us a chance not just to say how profoundly shameful the slave trade was - how we condemn its existence utterly and praise those who fought for its abolition - but also to express our deep sorrow that it could ever have happened and rejoice at the better times we live in today.

If not for the direct action of a John Brown and his comrades, America would still trade in the flesh of the black man.

Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union. A dissolution, at least temporary, of the Union, as now constituted, would now be certainly necessary. The Union might then be reorganized on the fundamental principle of emancipation.

A slave in the fields one night He's running along Gets far enough to be a free man And he's feeling so strong

We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them, and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.

Many heroic things happened during slavery. And remember that there was a national movement away from it even at the time. The era of Reconstruction and then the subsequent dismantling of Reconstruction sent us in a tailspin. Then we had the Civil Rights movement. Now we have our first non-white president. We have a pattern of moving apart and then coming back together throughout the history of this country. Each time, we come closer.

Death is a slave's freedom.

For me, seeing our history told in this light, the ones who did rebel, the ones who did revolt, the revolutionaries, excited me. Seeing this story of the Underground Railroad ... and that is such a proud part of our history that not a lot of us know about, where these brave men and women, they were heroes, really helped tear down the system of slavery just by running.

They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate.

Slavery will not be overthrown without excitement, a most tremendous excitement.

My great and exceeding joy over these stupendous achievements, especially over the abolition of slavery (which had been the deepest desire and the great labor of my life), was slightly tinged with a feeling of sadness.