Wendell Phillips, who seldom praised Lincoln, also likened the message to “a wedge—a very small wedge, but it is a wedge for all that.” Varying the image, he declared that Lincoln “had opened the door of emancipation a foot, and he (Mr. Phillips) with a coach and six, and Wm. Lloyd Garrison for a driver, would drive right through.” More emphatically, Phillips told Conway: “Thank God for Old Abe! He hasn’t got to Caanan yet but he has set his face Zionward.” On March 18, at the president’s request, Phillips visited the White House, where Lincoln said that for three months he had labored on his address to Congress “all by himself, [with] no conference with his cabinet.” Though the abolitionist spellbinder praised that document, Lincoln evidently did not believe that his guest “valued the message quite enough” and told a story about an Irish toper in the legally-dry state of Maine. Thirsty for alcohol, this son of Erin requested a glass of soda, asking his host: “Couldn’t ye put a drop of the crathur in it unbeknown to meself?” Just so, said Lincoln, “I’ve put a good deal of Anti Slavery in it unbeknown to themselves.” This was evidently a reference to the Border State congressmen and senators, for he went on to inform Phillips that he had instructed them “not to talk to him about slavery. They loved it & meant it should last—he hated it & meant it should die.” The president added that “if only men over 50 voted we could abolish slavery. When men are soon to face their God they are Antislavery—it is the young who support the system—unfortunately they rule too much.” Although the Bostonian was frustrated because Lincoln talked “so fast & constantly” during their one-hour interview that “it was hard to get a word in edgewise,” nevertheless Phillips “felt rather encouraged,” and reported that the president “is better than his Congress fellows.” Still, though Lincoln seemed a “perfectly honest” magistrate “trying to do what he thought his duty,” Phillips condescendingly deemed him “a man of very slow mind.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃