Men of Our Times; Or, Leading Patriots of the Day: Being narratives of the lives and deeds of statesmen, generals, and orators. Including biographical sketches and anecdotes of Lincoln, Grant, Garrison, Sumner, Chase, Wilson, Greeley, Farragut, Andrew, Colfax, Stanton, Douglass, Buckingham, Sherman, Sheridan, Howard, Phillips and Beecher.Stowe, Harriet Beecher
History
Men of Our Times; Or, Leading Patriots of the Day: Being narratives of the lives and deeds of statesmen, generals, and orators. Including biographical sketches and anecdotes of Lincoln, Grant, Garrison, Sumner, Chase, Wilson, Greeley, Farragut, Andrew, Colfax, Stanton, Douglass, Buckingham, Sherman, Sheridan, Howard, Phillips and Beecher.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
United States -- Biography; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Biography
It is not wonderful that with such rare experience of how noble a being
woman may be, and with such superior women for friends and associates,
that Wendell Phillips should have formed a high ideal of womanhood, and
become early one of the most enthusiastic supporters of all reforms in
which the interest of woman is concerned.
On the 15th and 16th of October, 1857, he offered at a convention held
in Worcester a series of resolutions in relation to the political
rights of women which cover all the ground contended for by modern
reformers. His speech on this subject is one of the most able and
eloquent on record, and forms a part of the permanent literature of the
movement.
He speaks of womanhood with a solemn and religious earnestness, with
the fervor of knightly times, and pleads against all customs and laws
which bear hardly upon her delicate organization, which mislead her
from following her highest aspirations.
An anecdote in circulation about him shows that he not only held such
theories, but that he was helpful in practice. It is so in keeping with
his general character as to be extremely probable. Notwithstanding the
unpopularity of his abolition sentiments, Mr. Phillips' power as an
orator was such that when lecturing on ordinary subjects he commanded
the very highest prices in the literary market. On one of his tours
he met in the cars a woman who was seeking a self-supporting career
as a lecturer. Mr. Phillips inquired into her success, and found that
independent of her expenses she made at the rate only of five dollars a
time. He declared that such an inequality with his own success was an
injustice, and added that he must beg her to allow him to equalize the
account for once, by accepting the proceeds of his last lecture.
Mr. Phillips had a way of making his fame and reputation gain him a
hearing on the unpopular subject which he had most at heart. Committees
from anxious lyceums used to wait on him for his terms, sure of being
able to fill a house by his name.
"What are your terms, Mr. Phillips?"
"If I lecture on anti-slavery, nothing. If on any other subject one
hundred dollars."
The success of his celebrated lecture on the Lost Arts, which has been
perhaps more than a thousand times repeated, is only a chance specimen
of what he might have done in this department of lecturing, could he
have allowed himself that use of his talent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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