“Mr. Chairman, when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which placed the rioters, incendiaries, and murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American, the slanderer of the dead. [Great applause and counter-applause.] Sir, the gentleman said that he should sink into insignificance if he dared not to gainsay the principles of the resolutions before this meeting. Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up!” I need only tell my readers that this was the _début_ of our Wendell Phillips, who has since become the leading orator of our nation, and the dauntless champion of our enslaved, down-trodden countrymen. He was then just established in the practice of law in Boston, with the most brilliant prospect of success in his profession. No young man would have risen so soon as he, or to so great a height as an advocate at the bar and a speaker in the forum, if he had pursued his course as a lawyer and a politician. But, blessed be the God of the oppressed, the cry of the millions, to whom in our Republic every right of humanity was denied, entered into his bosom. He espoused their cause with no hope of fee or reward, but that best of all compensations, the consciousness of having relieved suffering, and maintained great moral and political principles, and throughout the thirty-two years that have since passed away, he has consecrated his brilliant powers to the service of the enslaved with an assiduity and effect of which our whole nation has been the admiring witness. Another young man, to whom we owe scarcely less than to Mr. Phillips, was brought into our ranks and impelled to take upon himself the odium of an Abolitionist by the awful catastrophe at Alton,--a young man bearing a name illustrious in the history of our country, and still highly honored in our State and nation. I allude to Edmund Quincy, a son of Hon. Josiah Quincy, who, having filled almost every other office in the gift of the people, was then President of Harvard College, and grandson of Josiah Quincy, Jr., one of the leading spirits of the American Revolution. From the beginning of our antislavery efforts Mr. Edmund Quincy had been deeply interested in our undertaking. But, like very many others, he distrusted the wisdom of some of our measures, and especially the terrible severity of Mr. Garrison’s condemnation of slaveholders.