On this day in 1862, abolitionist orator Wendell Phillips is
booed while attempting to give a lecture in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The angry crowd was opposed to fighting for the freedom of
slaves, as Phillips advocated. He was pelted with rocks and eggs
before friends whisked him away when a small riot broke out.
Phillips was one of the most outspoken abolitionists of the era.
Born in Boston in 1811 to a wealthy New England family, Phillips
was educated at Harvard and practiced law until he became swept
up in the anti-slave crusade in the 1830s. Abolitionists
denounced slavery as a sin, and framed the debate over slavery
as a moral issue rather than an economic or political one.
Called the "golden trumpet" of the movement, Phillips' shrill
denunciation of slavery won many converts to the abolitionist
cause and attracted many other Northerners to moderate anti-
slave positions. When the Civil War began, Phillips and other
abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd
Garrison exerted pressure on the admin