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

[416] if it be indeed so, that democratic institutions are strong enough for such an hour as this. Very terrible as is the conspiracy, momentous as is the peril, Democracy welcomes the struggle, confident that she stands like no delicately-poised throne in the Old World, but, like the Pyramid, on its broadest base, able to be patient with national evils,--generously patient with the long forbearance of three generations,--and strong enough when, after that they reveal themselves in their own inevitable and hideous proportions, to pronounce and execute the unanimous verdict,--Death!

Now, Gentlemen, it is in such a spirit, with such a purpose, that I come before you to-night to sustain this war. Whence came this war? You and I need not curiously investigate. While Mr. Everett on one side, and Mr. Sumner on the other, agree, you and I may take for granted the opinion of two such opposite statesmen,--the result of the common sense of this side of the water and the other,--that slavery is the root of this war. [Applause.] I know some men have loved to trace it to disappointed ambition, to the success of the Republican party, convincing three hundred thousand nobles at the South, who have hitherto furnished us the most of the presidents, generals, judges, and ambassadors we needed, that they would have leave to stay at home, and that twenty millions of Northerners would take their share in public affairs. I do not think that cause equal to the result. Other men before Jefferson Davis and Governor Wise have been disappointed of the Presidency. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Stephen A. Douglas were more than once disappointed, and yet who believes that either of these great men could have armed the North to avenge his wrongs? Why, then, should these pigmies of the South be able to do what the giants I have named could never achieve? Simply because there is a radical difference between the two seetions,