ght. The South is poor; we are rich.
The poor man can do twice the injury to the rich man
that the rich man can do to the poor. War will start up
every man whose livelihood hangs upon trade,
intensifying him into a compromiser. Those guns fired on
Fort Sumter are only to frighten the North into a
compromise. If the Administration provokes war it is a
trick,--nothing else. It is the masterly cunning of that
devil of compromise, the Secretary of State. He is not
mad enough to let the States run into battle. He knows
that the age of bullets is over. If a gun is fired in
Southern waters it is fired at the wharves of New York,
at the bank-vaults of Boston, at the money of the North.
It is meant to alarm. It is policy, not sincerity.

Thus in New Bedford, April 9; and no wonder that the local reporter
records that the lecture was interrupted with frequent hisses. Twelve
days later, on a Sunday, April 21, the same day that Fletcher Webster
addressed an out-door meeting in State Street, speaking from the Old
State House balcony, Phillips addressed an excited, crowded meeting in
Music Hall. That day Phillips was the prophet militant. He began by
saying that he gave this war a welcome "hearty and hot." He would not
recant or retract anything, he said; he needed everything he had been
saying to justify so momentous an evil as civil war.

I rejoice before God to-day for every word that I have
spoken counselling peace; but I rejoice also with an
especially profound gratitude, that now, the first time
in my anti-slavery life, I speak under the stars and
stripes, and welcome the tread of Massachusetts men
marshalled for war. No matter what the past has been or
said; to-day the slave asks God for a sight of this
banner, and counts it the pledge of his redemption.
Hitherto it may have meant what you thought, or what I
did; to-day it represents sovereignty and justice. The
only mistake that I have made was in supposing
Massachusetts wholly choked with cotton-dust and
cankered with gold. The South thought her patience and
generous willingness for peace were cowardice; to-day
shows the mistake....

All winter long I have acted with that party which cried
for peace. The anti-slavery enterprise to which I belong
started with peace written on its banner. We imagined
that the age