Not that the two men were ever unfriendly, for they were co-workers,
standing side by side in the great movement. Once when the trustees of
yonder Academy refused to allow Mr. Phillips to speak, Mr. Beecher made
it a point of honour with his trustees to let Wendell Phillips speak in
Plymouth Church, and ran the risk of the mob destroying the building.
The tumultuous scenes of that night, when bricks came through the
windows, and the police were stationed in Cranberry and Orange Streets,
were repeated all over the land. Again and again Wendell Phillips was
mobbed. Once, at the very beginning of his career as an abolitionist, he
spoke with an old Quaker. People waited to greet the old Quaker and
asked him home for the night; but they pelted Wendell Phillips with
rotten eggs as he went down the street in the dark. Afterwards Wendell
Phillips said to the old Quaker, "I said just what you did, and yet you
were invited home to fried chicken and a bed, while I received raw eggs
and stone."

"I will tell thee the difference, Wendell. Thou said, 'If thou art a
holder of slaves, thou wilt go to hell.' I said, 'If thou dost not hold
slaves, thou wilt not go to hell.'"

But Wendell Phillips would not butter parsnips with fine words. Once in
Boston four hundred men surrounded him, got possession of the hall, and
jeered him for an hour and a half. Finally he leaned over the desk and
shouted down to a reporter, "Thank God there is no manacle for the
printing-press." Armed friends rescued him, guarded him home, and for a
week, night and day, the Boston police guarded the house. Those were
tumultuous days. But this great man braved and outlived the storm.

When the Emancipation Proclamation was declared, William Lloyd Garrison
said nothing remained now but to die. But Phillips opposed the