After they had been married thirteen years, having no children of their
own, Mr. and Mrs. Phillips took into their home, as a daughter, Phoebe
Garnaut, twelve years old, the daughter of the lovely Eliza Garnaut, who
had died of cholera the year before, through her unselfish devotion to
others. This child remained to brighten the Phillips' home for ten
years, when she married Mr. George Washburn Smalley, the London
correspondent of the _New York Tribune_, and made her home abroad.
Dr. Buckingham says truly that Wendell Phillips "was a lover all his
life,--not with the instinctive love of youth alone, but with the
secured attachment, the quiet confidence of the heart, the beautiful
affectionateness, which, in the later years of the pure and good, is a
far superior development of character, and a far richer enjoyment, than
the effervescence of youthful days. She was, as he wrote me once, his
counsel, his guide, his inspiration."
As long as Mr. Phillips lived, whenever he was at home, he visited the
markets daily, searching for things which should tempt the appetite of
"Ann." Lovely flowers were in her windows from one year's end to the
other, placed there by his thoughtfulness or that of other dear friends.
Fond of music, he daily left her money for the hand-organs played
beneath her window. Her love, her cheer, her enthusiastic devotion to
the great causes which he pleaded with inimitable grace and power, more
than paid him for all his care and self-sacrifice.
Two months after their marriage came the event which made him, like
Byron, "awake to find himself famous."
On Nov. 7, 1837, the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was murdered by a
pro-slavery mob in Alton, Ill. He was a Presbyterian clergyman from
Maine, a graduate of Waterville College. Going West, he became the
editor of the St. Louis _Observer_, a weekly religious paper of his own
denomination.
A negro having been chained to a tree and burned to death for killing an
officer who attempted to arrest him, the judge decided in favor of the
mob. Rev. Mr. Lovejoy protested against such barbarity, and his
printing-office was at once destroyed by the lawless. He moved his
paper to Alton, Ill., but the slavery sympathizers destroyed his press.
Some citizens reimbursed him for the loss. Another press was purchased
and destroyed, and then another. The fourth press, the mayor and
law-abiding citizens determined should be defended.
In the evening a mob gathered from the saloons,--their usual place of
starting,--and threatened to burn the building where it was stored. The
officials seemed powerless, the building was fired, and the Rev. Mr.
Lovejoy received three balls in his breast.
The death of this young minister in a free State sent a thrill of
indignation throughout the North. Dr. William Ellery Channing and one
hundred others called a meeting at Faneuil Hall, Boston, for the morning
of Dec. 8.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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