Wendell Phillip's late Speech.
Wendell Phillips, in his late ferocious Speech, threatening fifty thousand of the sons of the South with "exile or death," seems to purpose that these are the greatest evils which could be visited upon man. To such a creature as be is death is no doubt the greatest of sorrow for it introduces him to the punishment which such miscreants do not always receive in this life. Even exiles from a conquered land may appear to him a frightful calamity. Doubtless, if Massachuset were overrun by a race as repugnant in all respects to her people as are the Yankees to the South, Wendell Phillips would prefer to remain in it, and kiss the feet of the conqueror, court their favor and tremble at their frowns, rather than breathe the free air in a foreign land. But men is not the spirit of the South. We have heard our brave women say, with tears in their eyes that they would rather die than behold the subjugation of their native land. And where such is the spirit of the women, the men cannot be expected to be actuated by purposes Lars lofty and resolves less inflexible.And as to "exile," is the event of Yankee conquest, what would it be, but freedom "from daily contact with the things we loathe?" We do not underrate the love of our native land; but dear to its people as is every foot of its entered rail every noble mountain and beautiful river, bellowed as it is by grand historic and honest old traditions, made precious by all the memories of youth, friendship, love, and hope, and made dearer even by the burning tribulations through which it has passed, her people would rather live in any land under Heaven than to abide in Virginia after it has ceased to be their own. When the time comes when all that constitutes Virginia, except the rocks and earth, ceases to exist; when her social and political frame-work passes away; when cold-blooded, nasal Yankee vulgarians have cut up the large estates of her proprietors into ten-acre lots, with a two- story while frame houses on each, with gingerbread and apples in the window and a codfish or two drying on the clothes line, and filling the wide air with their balmy fragrance; when our cities are filled with Yankee traders and manufacturers, and our frank and gentle Virginia women have given place to affected blue stockings and "strong minded" women, when Yankee laws, morality, philosophy, and philanthropy, have pervaded and dominated over all Virginia, and the children of Virginia can no longer remain here except as aliens in their native land, beggars in the midst of their own possessions, and slaves to those whom they scorn and execrate from the profoundest depths of their souls, death would be a deliverer, and exile a blessing, for which we could not be too grateful.
It is possible that many of us may have to choose between abject submission and death, or exile. Thousands have already given up their homes rather than remain even under the temporary despotism of a tyrant. Wendell Phillips, and the persecuting mob whom he represents, may see from these examples that there are no sacrifices which brave men will not make rather than become slaves. The Southern Confederacy and its armies embrace tens of thousands of noble citizens of Maryland, Northwestern Virginia, and Kentucky, who have left the dear homes of their childhood, and have determined never to look upon them again except as freemen. Exile has no terrors compared with the intolerable degradation of being subjugated by Yankees. It is hard to give up one's native land; but, in our own country, men often voluntarily relinquish it for the more purposes of enterprise and money making. Much more readily will they leave the South when it ceases to be the South, and with a more generous spirit and as determined a resolve as the first Pilgrims to America, go forth joyously if need be, to plant the seeds of a purer and higher civilization in another clime. But that necessity will never come The fanatic and the fool who dream of extirpating a her is race are as yet but on the threshold of their wild crusade; a crusade which, even if as multitudinous and warlike as that which threatened to subjugate the Saracens, will be made to recoil upon its authors in an avalanche of ignominy and disaster.
