Boston’s conservative unionists had no easier a time of it than slaveholders from their famous local agitator. They, after all, had been forced to endure nearly four decades of unceasing Phillips invective. Plainly, they hated him, and for the best of reasons. He slandered their characters, assailed the morality of their economic endeavors, assisted their political enemies, degraded their reputations, sneered at their social pretensions, accused them of racial barbarianism, and indicted them as traitors to their city and state. They, in turn, vilified him in their presses, raised mobs against
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