By Richard Smith, who came to Concord in 1998 because of his love for the Concord Authors and Concord history. He can usually be seen around Concord doing Living History as Henry Thoreau, especially at Walden Pond. He is married and his wife, Beth, is also an historian in Concord.

He was born on November 29, 1811, the son of a wealthy Boston family. Wendell was well educated, attending the famous Boston Latin School as a youth and later graduating from Harvard College in 1831. He received his degree from the Harvard Law School in 1834 and started his practice later that year. Phillips did not consider himself a reformer in any sense, but that changed the next year when he heard William Lloyd Garrison speak at a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society.

There was much opposition toward Abolitionists in the 1830's even in Boston. A near riot broke out as anti-abolition hooligans attempted to break up the meeting. Garrison was nearly lynched. As it was, he was dragged through the streets with a rope around his waist, and only a night in jail saved his life.

Outraged, Phillips quit his law practice and thus devoted his life to anti-slavery. His family, particularly his mother, was appalled. They even tried to have him committed to an insane asylum! But Phillips prevailed and married a member of the Boston Anti-slavery Society, Anne Terry. "My wife made me an out-and-out abolitionist" he later said. Two years later he gave his first public lecture at a memorial service for murdered abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy. His gifted, fiery delivery soon made him a favorite on the abolitionist circuit. His speeches (which he always presented for free), along with his writings for various anti-slavery newspapers, established Phillips as one of the Movement's leading lights.

Phillips visited Concord on many occasions and he was well acquainted with the town's abolitionists, including Mary Merrick Brooks, Bronson Alcott and the Hoar and Thoreau families. The minutes of the Concord Lyceum report that Phillips appeared there six times between 1838 and 1860. In addition, he also attended teas and other social functions organized by the Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society.

Mary Merrick Brooks was the cornerstone of the Concord anti-slavery efforts and she corresponded quite frequently with Phillips, understanding that his visits played an important role in raising anti-slavery awareness in Concord. Once, in 1844, when Mrs. Brooks discovered that Phillips might not attend one of her anti-slavery tea parties, she immediately wrote to him. Hoping that "the information is entirely without foundation" she informed Phillips that "having a tea party without you is impossible."

Phillips, on the other hand, recognized the importance of Mrs. Brooks and the Concord Society. In 1849 he wrote to a friend, "they have worked long, but lawyers, ministers, and all, have been obliged, sooner or later, to bend to their influence."

Conservative citizens did not think that the Lyceum was any place for anti-slavery sentiment, so it is a little surprising that Phillips spoke there at all. His appearance did cause a debate between liberal and conservative factions within the Lyceum Board of Directors. After Phillips' first two lectures there, the Honorable John Keyes and other Lyceum curators quit in protest rather than see Phillips appear a third time. More "liberal" curators, Henry Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, replaced them, and anti-slavery lectures were encouraged for future programming. Phillips appeared a third time on March 11, 1845. The Concord newspaper listed his topic as "Slavery".

Henry Thoreau reviewed this third lecture and the review was printed as an editorial in the March 28, 1845 issue of The Liberator. It was only the fourth time that anything written by Thoreau had been printed, and no doubt his friendship with William Lloyd Garrison, the newspaper's editor, got the letter published. It was a glowing endorsement of Phillips and his anti-slavery crusade. "We have now, for the third winter", the letter began, "had our spirits refreshed and our faith in the destiny of the commonwealth strengthened, by the presence and eloquence of Wendell Phillips."

Thoreau called Phillips "a clean, erect, and...consistent man", a person "who...has few cracks or flaws in his moral nature." His praise continued and he called Phillips "one of the most conspicuous and efficient champions of a true church and state now in the field." Not only did Thoreau build up Phillips, but he also took a swipe at his neighbors, sarcastically noting that Phillips' appearance was "strenuously opposed by a respectable portion of our fellow citizens." He noted their conservatism, writing that their "descendants, at least...will be faithful conservers of the true order."

Phillips often dined at the Thoreau house when in Concord and he knew the entire family well. Like Phillips, Henry's mother, Cynthia and his sisters, Helen and Sophia, were militant abolitionists. Twenty-eight year-old Henry was busily building a house at Walden Pond and had not yet put himself whole-heartedly behind the anti-slavery cause.

But the Thoreau women saw eye-to-eye with Phillips' radical views. As "Garrisonians" they demanded immediate emancipation for all slaves. As "non-resistants" they disapproved of all things political and saw the Constitution as "a covenant with death" because of its apparent encouragement of slavery. Like Phillips, the Thoreau women advocated dis-union and believed that the Northern states should secede from the Union in order to ensure a nation truly free of slavery. They also protested the Mexican War and considered it immoral.

Their influence on Henry Thoreau was immense and soon he was an abolitionist in all but name. The ideals behind Thoreau's later essays like "Resistance to Civil Government", "Slavery in Massachusetts" and "A Plea for Captain John Brown" were all formulated during these early years when "ultra-reformers" like Phillips, Garrison and Frederick Douglass all spent many hours in the Thoreau home.

Anti-Slavery was not Wendell Phillips' only cause. Women's suffrage, prison reform, temperance and Indian rights were all espoused by Phillips at one time or another. But he gained his fame as an abolitionist and as such he was a house-hold name in Concord and throughout 19th Century America. The scorn and mistrust that greeted Phillips all across America never swayed him from his chosen calling. He and others agitated, instigated and forced the issue of slavery on the American public -- a public that would have rather ignored the whole thing. Phillips was, as Henry Thoreau wrote, "not born to abolish slavery, but to do right." All but forgotten today, Wendell Phillips was a voice for reform and a true American Hero.

Engraved Portrait (top): Courtesy of the Special Collections, Concord Free Public Library. Artwork: These wonderful images are vintage cigar labels from the remarkable collection of Chip Brooks, Cigar Label Junkie.