day, slavery. It soon became
overwhelming, and was given point and passion by a spectacle which he
witnessed on October 21, 1835.

He had studied for the law, been admitted to the bar, and opened an
office, and looking from his office window on that October day, he saw a
mob break up an anti-slavery meeting on the street below, pull William
Lloyd Garrison off the platform, tear his clothes from his back, throw a
rope around him and drag him through the streets, ready to hang him, and
prevented from doing so only by a ruse of the mayor, who got Garrison
into the jail and locked him up for safety. That spectacle moved the
young lawyer through and through, and from that moment he was an avowed
Abolitionist.

"If clients do not come," he had said to a friend a short time before,
"I will throw myself heart and soul into some good cause and devote my
life to it."

Clients would have come, no doubt, but the good cause came first. His
opportunity came in 1837, when Elijah Lovejoy was murdered by a mob at
Alton, Illinois, for publishing an anti-slavery paper. Phillips, stirred
with indignation, arranged for a public meeting at Faneuil Hall, and was
of course present, but with no expectation of speaking. Dr. Channing
made an impressive address, and one or two others followed, when James
T. Austin, attorney-general of the state, and bitterly opposed to the
anti-slavery agitation, arose. He eulogized the Alton murderers,
comparing them with the patriots of the Revolution, and declared that
Lovejoy had "died as the fool dieth." Some instinct led the chair to
call upon Wendell Phillips to reply. He consented, and as he stepped
upon the platform won instant admiration by his dignity, his
self-possession, and his manly beauty.

"Mr. Chairman," he began, "when I heard the gentleman who has just
spoken lay down principles which placed the rioters, incendiaries, and
murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and
Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the
hall] would have broken into voice, to rebuke the recreant American, the
slanderer of the dead. Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered on soil
consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the
earth should have yawned and swallowed him up."

The effect of the whole speech was tremendous. At last the
abolitionists had found a champion equal to the best, and from that hour
to the end of the anti-slavery conflict,