This extreme ground Mr. Phillips
also took,--immediate, unconditional, universal emancipation, at any
cost whatsoever. That is Garrisonism; that is Wendell Phillipsism; and
it would seem as though the Lord rather leaned that way, too.
I shall not discuss the merits of Mr. Garrison or Mr. Phillips in every
direction. I shall say that while the duty of immediate emancipation
without conditions was unquestionably the right ground, yet in the
providence of God even that could not be brought to pass except through
the mediation of very many events. It is a remarkable thing that Mr.
Phillips and Mr. Garrison both renounced the Union and denounced the
Union in the hope of destroying slavery; whereas the providence of God
brought about the love of the Union when it was assailed by the South,
and made the love of the Union the enthusiasm that carried the great war
of emancipation through. It was the very antithesis of the ground which
they took. Like John Brown, Mr. Garrison; like John Brown, Mr. Phillips;
of a heroic spirit, seeking the great and noble, but by measures not
well adapted to secure the end.
Little by little the controversy spread. I shall not trace it. I am
giving you simply the atmosphere in which he sprang into being and into
power. His career was a career of thirty or forty years of undiminished
eagerness. He never quailed nor flinched, nor did he ever at any time go
back one step or turn in the slightest degree to the right or left.
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