Each played to the lead of the other.

Whilst Wendell Phillips was preaching the equality of races, death to the slaveholders and the brotherhood of man at the North, William Lowndes Yancey was exclaiming that cotton was king at the South, and, to establish these false propositions, millions of good Americans proceeded to cut one another's throats.
There were agitators and agitators in those days as there are in these.
The agitator, like the poor, we have always with us.

It used to be said even at the North that Wendell Phillips was just a clever comedian.
William Lowndes Yancey was scarcely that.

He was a serious, sincere, untraveled provincial, possessing unusual gifts of oratory.

He had the misfortune to kill a friend in a duel when a young man, and the tragedy shadowed his life.