Letter from Charles A. Phelps to Samuel Downer declining his invitation with reminiscences

Boston Aug 3^d 1877 

Sam^l Downer Esq,

Dear Sir,

I am greatly obliged to you for your kind invitation to the Reunion of the Free Soilers of 1848, on the 9^th of August, and deeply regret that it will not be in my power to be present.  Many of the leaders in that great move-ment, Wilson, Sumner, Burlingame, Phillips have passed on, others, advanced in years,

"Walk thoughtful

On the silent solemn shore

Of that vast ocean

We must sail so soon."

It will be a day of reminiscences of the living and the dead.  You will perhaps pardon me for contributing a few of my own memories.

My first recollection of the great Anti-Slavery struggle began in 1831, in visits as a boy of ten years of age, to the office of the Liber-ator, where William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp, set up the types with their own hands, living on bread and milk, and sleeping in berths in one corner of the office.  There they "fired the shot heard round the world."  The office was in Merchants Hall, at the corner of Congress and Water Streets, where the Shawmut Bank now stands.  The paper was started without subscribers, and continued without capital.

I may be excused for remembering that an hon-ored father now no more, was one of the little band of twelve or fifteen persons who, in Jany[sic] 1832 formed the New England Anti Slavery Society.  In 1833 Mr. Garrison went to England to and labored with Wilburforce, Macaulay and other English abolitionists, in the struggle for West India Emancipation.  When about to return to America, they expressed their gratitude and said, "Now what can we do for you"?  He replied, "Send us George Thompson."  There must be some present at your meeting who remem-ber the man and his eloquent appeals.  The Anti Slavery sentiment in the Northern States was greatly increased and strengthened by his fervid oratory.  Lord Brougham said of him in England, "I rise to take the Crown of this glorious victory of Emanci-pation from every other head, and place it upon George Thompson."  His meetings in Boston were generally held in Juli[a]n Hall at the corner of Congress and Water Street, almost the only hall open in those days to the despised abolition-ists.  I attended most of his meetings to the sad neglect of my school lessons.  I can see and hear him now!  He was a natural orator, a tall, spare man, having the proverbial large mouth given to all great orators and singers.  He had a sonorous voice and an animated delivery.  His face resembled somewhat the face of Rev Joseph Cook.  His mouth when open re-called the story of the Dentist who told his patient that it was "needless to open his mouth any wider, as he should stand on the outside."  He lectured in most of the large towns and cities of New England.  He was a man of gentle manners, of the loftiest courage and of indomitable will.  He was fearless of the mobs which so often greeted him, and was un-sparing in denunciation of the crimes of slavery. 

The fierce hatred of the unwelcome truths of Anti-Slavery, culminated in the Garrison mobs in Boston, Oct 21^st 1835.  The Anti Slavery office was then in the third story of the building now numbered 180 Washington Street.  In front of the building was a large sign lettered "Anti Slavery Office."  The crowd began to assemble about three o clk[sic] in the after-noon, with threats and shouts.  They dispersed a meet-ing of ladies in the hall.  Soon after men appeared at the windows with hammers, took down the sign, lowered it with ropes to the sidewalk, when amid yells and shouts, where it was received by five or six well known citizens, (I never forgot their faces or even their dress) and it was soon broken in pieces.  With the privelege[sic] of a boy, I rushed in and saved a good sized relic.  The next day on showing it to Mr Benjamin F Hallett, he said, "Keep it for years, it is a piece of history," and calling for a pen he wrote a glowing inscription on the wood.  Hearing that Mr Garrison was in the rear of his office, I went around to Wilson's Lane, where soon after, he appeared at the second story window of a carpenter's shop, the mob shouting to those near, to force him to come down.  As he stepped upon the ladder to descend, his hat off, his spectacles removed, his face untroubled, he said quietly- "I shall go down unresisting.  Hail Columbia, land of liberty"!  As soon as he reached the yard, he was seized, led up Wilson's Lane surrounded by a crowd which filled the street and with a man on each side holding <insertion: him> by the collar of his coat.  As they turned into State Street there were shouts, "Tar and feather him," "To the pump, to the pump," which then stood at the east end of the Old State House.  But the crowd surged on up the north side of the Old State House, then the City Hall.  When opposite the north door, several city officials, among them I remember the portly form of Dea[sic] Sam^l Greeley, rushed into the street, seized Garrison, and carried him into the building.  Soon a hack drove up, and Mr Garrison appeared with an overcoat and seal skin cap, he was hurried into the carriage and driven to the Leverett Street jail for safe keeping.  Like all other mobs, it was a cowardly mob.  Not more than a dozen men did the disgraceful work, and fifty determined police men would have scattered the whole crowd.  But it is along such a highway, marked every furlong by scaffolds and gibbets and prisons that Truth has marched to her grandest conquests.

In 1837 I had an opportunity to witness for the first time the methods of calling a Faneuil Hall meeting.  The City Government had refused the use of the hall to the Rev Dr Channing and others to denounce the murder of Lovejoy.  I heard my father remark to a friend, "the refusal of Faneuil Hall for a meeting to denounce mob law is a disgrace to Boston.  We ought to have a meeting to resent such an outrage.[”]  In a few moments I was told to make copies of a call for a meeting in the Old City Hall and was sent out to the newspapers with the notices.  The meeting was held, Faneuil Hall secured, and I shall never forget the surprise and delight with which the brilliant first speech of Wendell Phillips, then twenty six years old, was received, in defence of the objects of the meeting.

My acquaintance with Charles Sumner began in my boyhood when he was a student at Cambridge.  In 1846 in a little Convention of Anti- Slavery men assembled in the piano ware rooms of Dea[sic] Timothy Gilbert I had the honor of nomin-ating Mr Sumner as a candidate for Congress from the Boston District, and was both astonished and pleased at receiving a call from him the next evening to thank me for what he was graciously calls a speech.

The Free Soil movement of 1848, then called by its opponents "a fizzle," heralded the dissolu-tion of the great Whig and Democratic parties.  It was accelerated by Mr Webster's 7^thof March sp-eech on the 7^th of March 1850, and fully accomplished by the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1854.  What a restrospect!  From the little obscured office of the Liberator, the uprising of the loyal millions in 1861, the Emancipation of a race and the re-generation of the republic.  The lesson which the Free Soil movement teaches to young men is that moral truth is invincible, no party organ-ization can resist its power.  Have the courage of your opinions.  Go forth to the people for their verdict-

"As good cause will stand and will abide

Legions of angels fight upon its side."

                                                I am very truly yours

                                Charles A Phelps

Sam^l Downer Esq