“The epoch turns on the negro,” Wendell Phillips declared, still able to stir large audiences. “It is not my fanaticism; it is not my prejudice; it is not a fatal conceit. Justice to him saves the nation, ends the strife, and gives us peace; injustice to him prolongs the war. You can’t help it. You may shut yours eyes to it, and say you don’t want to hear about it; but the thunders of a thousand cannons will ring it into your ears, and into the ears of your children.”
