Wendell Phillips: "Under the Flag" - Milestone Documents

Wendell Phillips: “Under the Flag”

( 1861 ) Commentary by James Brewer Stewart, Macalester College

Wendell Phillips’s calling was that of the political agitator, and his gifts were those of a compelling public speaker and intellectual. Since his speeches circulated widely in print, his audiences of readers were even more numerous and far-flung than those who heard him in person. His embrace of civil war as a means to annihilate slavery is evident in “Under the Flag“ (1861), a speech Phillips delivered in Boston just nine days after Confederate forces fired on a U.S. military installation at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, marking the beginning of the Civil War.

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Wendell Phillips (Library of Congress)

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