Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1

Mr. Greeley, on the contrary, avowed, in the Tribune, that he had often voted for a slaveholder willingly, and he never expected the time would come when he should lay down the principle of refusing to vote for a slaveholder to office; and that sentiment has not only been reiterated by others of the Republican party, but has never been disavowed by any one. But suppose you could develop politics up to this idea, that the whole patronage of the government should be turned in favor of abolition; it would take two or three generations to overthrow what the Slave Power has done in sixty years, with the strength of aristocracy and the strength of prejudice on its side. With only the patronage of the government in its control, the Republican party must work slowly to regenerate the government against those two elements in opposition, when, with them in its favor, the Slave Power has been some sixty years in bringing about such a result as we see around us. To reverse this, and work only with the patronage of the government, it would take you long to effect the cure. In my soul, I believe that a dissolution of the Union, sure to result speedily in the abolition of slavery, would be a lesser evil than the slow, faltering, diseased, gradual dying-out of slavery, constantly poisoning us with the festering remains of this corrupt political, social, and literary state. I believe a sudden, conclusive, definite disunion, resulting in the abolition of slavery, in the disruption of the Northern mind from all connection with it, all vassalage to it, immediately, would be a better, healthier, and more wholesome cure, than to let the Republican party exert this gradual influence through the power of the government for thirty or sixty years.

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