In
commemorative oratory, indeed, he ranked with Webster, but the
dust is settling upon his learned and ornate pages. Rufus Choate,
another conservative Whig in politics, and a leader, like Wirt
and Pinkney, at the bar, had an exotic, almost Oriental fancy, a
gorgeousness of diction, and an intensity of emotion unrivaled
among his contemporaries. His Dartmouth College eulogy of Webster
in 1853 shows him at his best. The Anti-Slavery orators, on the
other hand, had the advantage of a specific moral issue in which
they led the attack. Wendell Phillips was the most polished, the
most consummate in his air of informality, and his example did
much to puncture the American tradition of high-flown oratory. He
was an expert in virulent denunciation, passionately unfair
beneath his mask of conversational decorum, an aristocratic
demagogue. He is still distrusted and hated by the Brahmin class
of his own city, still adored by the children and grandchildren
of slaves. Charles Sumner, like Edward Everett, seems sinking
into popular oblivion, in spite of the statues and portraits and
massive volumes of erudite and caustic and high-minded orations.
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