

Wendell Phillips on South Carolina’s Independence
Abolitionist Wendell Phillip’s own State of Massachusetts was the first British colony in America to codify African slavery within its borders, and its maritime fleet dominated the transatlantic slave trade in the first half of the eighteenth century. The speaker below was Major Graham Daves, Memorial Day Address presenter at Raleigh, North Carolina, May 10, 1901. All city businesses were virtually closed that afternoon – all banks and most State offices were closed.
Wendell Phillips on South Carolina’s Independence
“It is a matter of interest and worthy of memory, that the right of secession and the duty of the United States Government to withdraw its forces from the seceded territory were admitted by very distinguished abolitionist authority. By no less a person than Wendell Phillips of Massachusetts, the great and able abolitionist, the ‘silver tongued orator,’ distinguished scholar, bold uncompromising foe of the American South and of her institutions.
In a speech delivered at New Bedford, Massachusetts, on April 9th, 1861, just four days before the reduction of Fort Sumter by Confederate forces, he said:
“Here are a series of States girding the Gulf, who believe their peculiar institutions require that they should have a separate government. They have a right to decide that question without appealing to you or me. A large body of the people sufficient to make a nation, have come to the conclusion that they will have a government of a certain form. Who denies them the right?
Standing with the principles of 1776 behind us, who can deny them the right? What is the matter of a few millions of dollars or a few forts? It is a mere drop in the bucket of the great national question. It is theirs as much as it is ours. I maintain on the principles of 1776 that Abraham Lincoln has no right to a soldier in Fort Sumter.”
Those are the words of Wendell Phillips. Can language be more plain or more forcible in support of the belief and action of the people who united in establishing the Confederate States of America?
(Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume XXXII, R.A. Brock, editor, published by the Society, 1904, pg. 283)