Wendell Phillips

Wendell Phillips (November 29, 1811 – February 2, 1884) was an American abolitionist, labor reformer, temperance activist, advocate for Native Americans, orator, and attorney.

According to George Lewis Ruffin, a black attorney, Phillips was seen by many black people as "the one White American wholly color-blind and free from race prejudice". Another black attorney, Archibald Grimké, saw him as ahead of William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Sumner as an abolitionist leader. From 1850 to 1865 he was the "preeminent figure" in American abolitionism.

Phillips was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 29, 1811, to Sarah Walley and John Phillips, a wealthy lawyer, politician, and philanthropist, who was the first mayor of Boston. He was a descendant of Reverend George Phillips, who emigrated from England to Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1630. All his ancestors migrated to North America from England, and all of them arrived in Massachusetts between 1630 and 1650.

Phillips was schooled at Boston Latin School and graduated from Harvard College in 1831. He went on to attend Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1833. In 1834, Phillips was admitted to the Massachusetts state bar, and in 1835, he opened a law practice in Boston.

In 1836, Phillips was supporting the abolitionist cause when he met Ann Terry Greene. She believed that this movement required not just support but total commitment. Phillips later acknowledged Ann’s influence: “My wife made me an out and out abolitionist and she always preceded me in the adoption of the various causes I have advocated.” Phillips and Greene were engaged that year, and Greene declared Wendell to be her "best three quarters". They were married until Wendell's death, 46 years later.

Phillips’s marriage and his embrace of abolitionism led to his exile from Boston’s elite society and cost him his legal practice. Believing that their son had gone mad, Phillips’s family considered having him placed in a sanatorium.

On October 21, 1835, the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society announced that British abolitionist George Thompson would be speaking. Pro-slavery forces posted nearly 500 notices of a $100 reward for the citizen that would first lay violent hands on him. Thompson canceled at the last minute, and William Lloyd Garrison, editor and publisher of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, was quickly scheduled to speak in his place. A lynch mob formed, forcing Garrison to escape through the back of the hall and hide in a carpenter's shop. The mob soon found him, putting a noose around his neck to drag him away. Several strong men, including the mayor, intervened and took him to the most secure place in Boston, the Leverett Street Jail. Phillips, watching from nearby Court Street, was a witness to the attempted lynching.

After being converted to the abolitionist cause by Garrison in 1836, Phillips stopped practicing law in order to dedicate himself to the movement. Phillips joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and frequently made speeches at its meetings. So highly regarded were Phillips' oratorical abilities that he was known as "abolition's golden trumpet".