Page "Wendell Phillips" Paragraph 4

On October 21, 1835, the Boston Female Society announced that George Thompson would be speaking.

Pro-slavery forces posted nearly 500 notices of a $ 100 reward for the citizen that would first lay violent hands on him.

Thompson canceled at the last minute, and William Lloyd Garrison, a newspaper writer who spoke openly against the wrongs of slavery, was quickly scheduled to speak in his place.

A lynch mob formed, forcing Garrison to escape through the back of the hall and hide in a carpenter's shop.

The mob soon found him, putting a noose around his neck to drag him away.

Fortunately, several strong men intervened and took him to the Leverett Street Jail.

Phillips, watching from nearby Court Street, was a witness to the attempted lynching.

After being converted to the abolitionist cause by Garrison in 1836, Phillips stopped practicing law in order to dedicate himself to the movement.

He joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and frequently made speeches at its meetings.

So highly regarded were his oratorical abilities that he was known as " abolition's Golden Trumpet ".

When Phillips joined the Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society, he horrified his family, who tried to have him thrown into an insane sanitarium.

Like many of his fellow abolitionists who honored the free produce movement, Phillips took pains to avoid cane sugar and wear no clothing made of cotton, since both were produced by the labor of Southern slaves.