RARE "Abolitionist" Wendell Phillips Clipped Signature for Sale

RARE "Abolitionist" Wendell Phillips Clipped Signature For Sale

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RARE "Abolitionist" Wendell Phillips Clipped Signature:
$209.99

Up for sale "Abolitionist" Wendell Phillips Clipped Signature.

ES-5114E

Wendell Phillips (November 29, 1811 – February 2, 1884) was an American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator, and attorney. 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 the Rev. George Phillips who emigrated from England to Watertown in 1630. All of his ancestors migrated to North America from England, and all of them arrived in Massachusetts between the years 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 the same year, he opened a law practice in Boston. His professor of oratory was Edward T. Channing, a critic of flowery speakers such as Daniel Webster. Channing emphasized the value of plain speaking, a philosophy which Phillips took to heart. On October 21, 1835, the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society announced that 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, a newspaper writer who spoke openly against the wrongs of slavery, 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 intervened and took him to 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". Like many of Phillips' fellow abolitionists who honored the free produce movement, he took pains to avoid cane sugar and wear no clothing made of cotton, since both were produced by the labor of Southern slaves. He was a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization that assisted fugitive slaves. It was Phillips's contention that racial injustice was the source of all of society's ills. Like Garrison, Phillips denounced the Constitution for tolerating slavery. He disagreed with the argument of abolitionist Lysander Spooner that slavery was unconstitutional, and more generally disputed Spooner's notion that any unjust law should be held legally void by judges.