Work Week

This is a work week for me, and I’m still shutting down the garden for the year. I have started bringing in the tropical plants from the yard and cleaning the area where they go in the house. It’s a big job but is well underway now. There is always something to do.

One of the things I have been working on in Chapter 17 is Wendall Phillips Freedom Speech. An old reference referred to it as one to it as one of three great speeches ever given in America. Patrick Henry’s Liberty or Death speech and the Gettysburg Address. This was before Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech. Way before that.

A Lovejoy brother, Joseph, is present to hear the Freedom Speech in my book. For me, it is thrilling even imagining what it was like on the late fall wintry night to gather at Faneuil Hall in Boston and hear unknown Wendall Phillips get up and speak to that mixed crowd. Needless to say, he was victorious in his speech. That is the scene I will write next. I have been researching it by reading contemporary accounts and reactions to the speech. Phillips had not intended to give the speech so it wasn’t written down. It was later recorded by those who had been present that night.