Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

[147]

To Mrs. S. B. Shaw.

Tired in mind and body, I sit down to write to you and tell you all about it. On Wednesday evening I went to Mrs. Chapman's reception. The hall inside was beautiful with light and banners; and outside the street was beautiful with moonlight and prismatic icicles. All went on quietly. People walked about and talked, occasionally enlivened by music of the Germania Band. They seemed to enjoy themselves, and I (being released from the care of unruly boys, demolishing cake and spilling slops as they did last year) did my best to help them have a good time. But what with being introduced to strangers, and chatting with old acquaintances half forgotten, I went home to Derne Street very weary, yet found it impossible for me to sleep. I knew there were very formidable preparations to mob the anti-slavery meeting the next day, and that the mayor was avowedly on the side of the mob. I would rather have given fifty dollars than attend the meeting; but conscience told me it was a duty. I was excited and anxious; not for myself, but for Wendell Phillips. Hour after hour of the night, I heard the clock strike, while visions were passing through my mind of that noble head assailed by murderous hands, and I obliged to stand by without the power to save him.

I went very early in the morning, and entered the Tremont Temple by a private labyrinthine passage. There I found a company of young men, a portion of the self-constituted body-guard of Mr. Phillips. They looked calm, but resolute and stern. I knew they were all armed, as well as hundreds of others; but their [148] weapons were not visible. The women friends came in gradually by the same private passage. It was a solemn gathering, I assure you ; for though there was a pledge not to use weapons unless Mr. Phillips or some other anti-slavery speaker was personally in danger, still nobody could foresee what might happen. The meeting opened well. The anti-slavery sentiment was there in strong force; but soon the mob began to yell from the galleries. They came tumbling in by hundreds. The papers will tell you of their goings on. Such yelling, screeching, stamping, and bellowing I never heard. It was a full realization of the old phrase, “All hell broke loose.” Mr. Phillips stood on the front of the platform for a full hour, trying to be heard whenever the storm lulled a little. They cried, “Throw him out!” “Throw a brick-bat at him!” “Your house is a-fire; don't you know your house is a-fire? go put out your house!” Then they'd sing, with various bellowing and shrieking accompaniments, “Tell John Andrew, tell John Andrew, John Brown's dead.” I should think there were four or five hundred of them. At one time they all rose up, many of them clattered down-stairs, and there was a surging forward towards the platform. My heart beat so fast I could hear it; for I did not then know how Mr. Phillips's armed friends were stationed at every door and in the middle of every aisle. They formed a firm wall which the mob could not pass. At last it was announced that the police were coming. I saw and heard nothing of them, but there was a lull. Mr. Phillips tried to speak, but his voice was again drowned. Then by a clever stroke of management he stooped forward and addressed his speech to the reporters stationed directly below him. [149] This tantalized the mob, and they began to call out, “Speak louder! We want to hear what you're saying.” Whereupon he raised his voice, and for half an hour he seemed to hold them in the hollow of his hand. But as soon as he sat down they began to yell and sing again, to prevent any more speaking. But Higginson made himself heard through the storm, and spoke in very manly and effective style; the purport of which was that to-day he would set aside the subject of slavery, and take his stand upon the right of free speech, which the members of this society were determined to maintain at every hazard. I forgot to mention that Wendell Phillips was preceded by James Freeman Clarke, whom the mob treated with such boisterous insults that he was often obliged to pause in his remarks. After Mr. Phillips, R. W. Emerson tried to address the people, but his voice was completely drowned. After the meeting adjourned, a large mob outside waited for Mr. Phillips, but he went out by the private entrance, and arrived home safely.

In the afternoon meeting the uproar was greater than it had been in the forenoon. The mob cheered and hurrahed for the Union, and for Edward Everett, for Mayor Wightman, and for Charles Francis Adams. The mayor came at last, and, mounting the platform, informed his “fellow-citizens” in the galleries that the trustees of the building had requested him to disperse the meeting and clear the hall. Turning the meeting out-of-doors was precisely what they wanted him to do.

[The remainder of this letter has been lost, but the purport of it was, that on the mayor's complying with the demand that he should read the letter aloud [150] to the meeting, it appeared that the trustees had desired him to disperse the mob, and not the meeting. The presiding officer (Mr. Edmund Quincy) thereupon called upon him to fulfil his duty and eject the mob from the hall, which was done within ten minutes, to the intense chagrin of the rioters and the discomfiture of the mayor, and the meeting proceeded without further serious interruption. The mayor, on leaving the hall, promised that an adequate police force should be sent to protect the evening meeting, and he then returned to the City Hall to issue an order that the hall should be closed and no meeting permitted there that evening. These events took place at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, on the 24th of January, 1861. -Eds.]