Wendell Phillips was one of the most influential and eloquent advocates for social reform in the nineteenth century. He is most prominently associated with the American antislavery movement, in which he worked closely for many years with William Lloyd Garrison, the most famous of all the New England abolitionists. Phillips was exceptional in many ways. Well-educated, handsome, and wealthy, he socialized with a small group of affluent and like-minded reformers known as the "Boston Clique." This group included Maria Weston Chapman and her sisters, Anne and Caroline, and Edmund Quincy. In addition to antislavery, Phillips spent his life supporting a variety of reform causes, including temperance, penal reform, the abolition of capital punishment, the rights of women, emancipated Negroes and Native Americans, and labor reform. He became notorious during his lifetime for his absolute dedication to these causes and his unsparing criticisms of those deemed opponents of social...