Καὶ ἀναβοήσας τοῦτο δὴ Ἡράκλειονὦ τλῆμον ἀρετή, λόγος ἄρ’ ἦσθ’, ἐγὼ δέ σεὡς ἔργον ἤσκουν· σὺ δ’ ἄρ’ ἐδούλευες τύχῃ,—παρακάλεσέ τινα τῶν συνόντων, ἵν’ αὐτὸν ἀποκτείνῃ,—
Καὶ ἀναβοήσας τοῦτο δὴ Ἡράκλειονὦ τλῆμον ἀρετή, λόγος ἄρ’ ἦσθ’, ἐγὼ δέ σεὡς ἔργον ἤσκουν· σὺ δ’ ἄρ’ ἐδούλευες τύχῃ,—παρακάλεσέ τινα τῶν συνόντων, ἵν’ αὐτὸν ἀποκτείνῃ,—
Καὶ ἀναβοήσας τοῦτο δὴ Ἡράκλειονὦ τλῆμον ἀρετή, λόγος ἄρ’ ἦσθ’, ἐγὼ δέ σεὡς ἔργον ἤσκουν· σὺ δ’ ἄρ’ ἐδούλευες τύχῃ,—παρακάλεσέ τινα τῶν συνόντων, ἵν’ αὐτὸν ἀποκτείνῃ,—
Καὶ ἀναβοήσας τοῦτο δὴ Ἡράκλειον
ὦ τλῆμον ἀρετή, λόγος ἄρ’ ἦσθ’, ἐγὼ δέ σε
ὡς ἔργον ἤσκουν· σὺ δ’ ἄρ’ ἐδούλευες τύχῃ,—
παρακάλεσέ τινα τῶν συνόντων, ἵν’ αὐτὸν ἀποκτείνῃ,—
which he renders, “He cried out this sentiment of Heracles, ‘O wretched Virtue, after all, thou art a name, but I cherished thee as a fact. Fortune’s slave wast thou;’ and called upon one of those with him to slay him.”
Professor Wright adds that Theodorus Prodromus, a Byzantine poet of the twelfth century, said, “What Brutus says (O Virtue, etc.) I pronounce to be ignoble and unworthy of Brutus’s soul.” It seems very doubtful whence the Greek verses came.
Page 233, note 1.Just ten years earlier, Hon. Samuel Hoar, the Commissioner of Massachusetts, sent to Charleston, South Carolina, in the interests of our colored citizens there constantly imprisoned and ill used, had been expelled from that state with a show of force. SeeLectures and Biographical Sketches.
Page 234, note 1.The sending back of Onesimus by Paul was a precedent precious in the eyes of pro-slavery preachers, North and South, in those days, ignoring, however, Paul’s message, “Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord. If thou count me therefore a partner, receive him as myself.”[E]
Page 235, note 1.The hydrostatic paradox has been before alluded to as one of Mr. Emerson’s favorite symbols, the balancing of the ocean by a few drops of water. In many places he dwells on the power of minorities—a minority of one. In “Character” (Lectures and Biographical Sketches) he says, “There was a time when Christianity existed in one child.” For the value and duty of minorities, seeConduct of Life, pp. 249 ff.,Letters and Social Aims, pp. 219, 220.
Page 236, note 1.This was a saying of Mahomet. What follows, with regard to the divine sentiments always soliciting us, is thus rendered in “My Garden:”
Ever the words of the gods resound;But the porches of man’s earSeldom in this low life’s roundAre unsealed, that he may hear.
Ever the words of the gods resound;But the porches of man’s earSeldom in this low life’s roundAre unsealed, that he may hear.
Ever the words of the gods resound;But the porches of man’s earSeldom in this low life’s roundAre unsealed, that he may hear.
Ever the words of the gods resound;
But the porches of man’s ear
Seldom in this low life’s round
Are unsealed, that he may hear.
Page 236, note 2.This is the important key to the essay on Self-Reliance.
Page 238, note 1.In the “Sovereignty of Ethics” Mr. Emerson quotes an Oriental poet describing the Golden Age as saying that God had made justice so dear to the heart of Nature that, if any injustice lurked anywhere under the sky, the blue vault would shrivel to a snake-skin, and cast it out by spasms.
Page 240, note 1.There seems to be some break in the construction here probably due to the imperfect adjustment of lecture-sheets. It would seem that the passage should read: “Liberty is never cheap. It is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man—the finished man; earning and bestowing good;” etc.
Page 241, note 1.SeeLectures and Biographical Sketches, pp. 246 and 251.
Page 242, note 1.The occasion alluded to was Hon. Robert C. Winthrop’s speech to the alumni of Harvard College on Commencement Day in 1852. What follows is not an abstract, but Mr. Emerson’s rendering of the spirit of his address.
One evening in May, Judge Hoar came to Mr. Emerson’s house, evidently deeply stirred, and told in a few words the startling news that the great Senator from Massachusetts had been struck down at his desk by a Representative from South Carolina, and was dangerously hurt. The news was heard with indignant grief in Concord, and a public meeting was held four days later in which Mr. Emerson and others gave vent to this feeling.
Among Mr. Emerson’s papers are the fragmentary notes on Sumner, given below, without indication as to when they were used.
CHARLES SUMNERClean, self-poised, great-hearted man, noble in person, incorruptible in life, the friend of the poor, the champion of the oppressed.Of course Congress must draw from every part of the country swarms of individuals eager only for private interests, who could not love his stern justice. But if they gave him no high employment, he made low work high by the dignity of honesty and truth. But men cannot long do without facultyand perseverance, and he rose, step by step, to the mastery of all affairs intrusted to him, and by those lights and upliftings with which the spirit that makes the Universe rewards labor and brave truth. He became learned, and adequate to the highest questions, and the counsellor of every correction of old errors, and of every noble reform. How nobly he bore himself in disastrous times. Every reform he led or assisted. In the shock of the war his patriotism never failed. A man of varied learning and accomplishments.He held that every man is to be judged by the horizon of his mind, and Fame he defined as the shadow of excellence, but that which follows him, not which he follows after.Tragic character, like Algernon Sydney, man of conscience and courage, but without humor. Fear did not exist for him. In his mind the American idea is no crab, but a man incessantly advancing, as the shadow of the dial or the heavenly body that casts it. The American idea is emancipation, to abolish kingcraft, feudalism, black-letter monopoly, it pulls down the gallows, explodes priestcraft, opens the doors of the sea to all emigrants, extemporizes government in new country.Sumner has been collecting his works. They will be the history of the Republic for the last twenty-five years, as told by a brave, perfectly honest and well instructed man, with social culture and relation to all eminent persons. Diligent and able workman, with rare ability, without genius, without humor, but with persevering study, wide reading, excellent memory, high stand of honor (and pure devotion to his country), disdaining any bribe, any compliances, and incapable of falsehood. His singular advantages of person, of manners, and a statesman’s conversation impress every one favorably. He has the foible of most public men, the egotism which seemsalmost unavoidable at Washington. I sat in his room once at Washington whilst he wrote a weary procession of letters,—he writing without pause as fast as if he were copying. He outshines all his mates in historical conversation, and is so public in his regards that he cannot be relied on to push an office-seeker, so that he is no favorite with politicians. But wherever I have met with a dear lover of the country and its moral interests, he is sure to be a supporter of Sumner.It characterizes a man for me that he hates Charles Sumner: for it shows that he cannot discriminate between a foible and a vice. Sumner’s moral instinct and character are so exceptionally pure that he must have perpetual magnetism for honest men; his ability and working energy such, that every good friend of the Republic must stand by him. Those who come near him and are offended by his egotism, or his foible (if you please) of using classic quotations, or other bad tastes, easily forgive these whims, if themselves are good, or magnify them into disgust, if they themselves are incapable of his virtue.And when he read one night in Concord a lecture on Lafayette we felt that of all Americans he was best entitled by his own character and fortunes to read that eulogy.Every Pericles must have his Cleon: Sumner had his adversaries, his wasps and back-biters. We almost wished that he had not stooped to answer them. But he condescended to give them truth and patriotism, without asking whether they could appreciate the instruction or not.A man of such truth that he can be truly described: he needs no exaggerated praise. Not a man of extraordinary genius, but a man of great heart, of a perpetual youth, with the highest sense of honor, incapable of any fraud, little or large; loving his friend and loving his country, with perfect steadiness to his purpose, shunning no labor that his aimrequired, and his works justified him by their scope and thoroughness.He had good masters, who quickly found that they had a good scholar. He read law with Judge Story, who was at the head of the Law School at Harvard University, and who speedily discovered the value of his pupil, and called him to his assistance in the Law School. He had a great talent for labor, and spared no time and no research to make himself master of his subject. His treatment of every question was faithful and exhaustive, and marked always by the noble sentiment.
CHARLES SUMNER
Clean, self-poised, great-hearted man, noble in person, incorruptible in life, the friend of the poor, the champion of the oppressed.
Of course Congress must draw from every part of the country swarms of individuals eager only for private interests, who could not love his stern justice. But if they gave him no high employment, he made low work high by the dignity of honesty and truth. But men cannot long do without facultyand perseverance, and he rose, step by step, to the mastery of all affairs intrusted to him, and by those lights and upliftings with which the spirit that makes the Universe rewards labor and brave truth. He became learned, and adequate to the highest questions, and the counsellor of every correction of old errors, and of every noble reform. How nobly he bore himself in disastrous times. Every reform he led or assisted. In the shock of the war his patriotism never failed. A man of varied learning and accomplishments.
He held that every man is to be judged by the horizon of his mind, and Fame he defined as the shadow of excellence, but that which follows him, not which he follows after.
Tragic character, like Algernon Sydney, man of conscience and courage, but without humor. Fear did not exist for him. In his mind the American idea is no crab, but a man incessantly advancing, as the shadow of the dial or the heavenly body that casts it. The American idea is emancipation, to abolish kingcraft, feudalism, black-letter monopoly, it pulls down the gallows, explodes priestcraft, opens the doors of the sea to all emigrants, extemporizes government in new country.
Sumner has been collecting his works. They will be the history of the Republic for the last twenty-five years, as told by a brave, perfectly honest and well instructed man, with social culture and relation to all eminent persons. Diligent and able workman, with rare ability, without genius, without humor, but with persevering study, wide reading, excellent memory, high stand of honor (and pure devotion to his country), disdaining any bribe, any compliances, and incapable of falsehood. His singular advantages of person, of manners, and a statesman’s conversation impress every one favorably. He has the foible of most public men, the egotism which seemsalmost unavoidable at Washington. I sat in his room once at Washington whilst he wrote a weary procession of letters,—he writing without pause as fast as if he were copying. He outshines all his mates in historical conversation, and is so public in his regards that he cannot be relied on to push an office-seeker, so that he is no favorite with politicians. But wherever I have met with a dear lover of the country and its moral interests, he is sure to be a supporter of Sumner.
It characterizes a man for me that he hates Charles Sumner: for it shows that he cannot discriminate between a foible and a vice. Sumner’s moral instinct and character are so exceptionally pure that he must have perpetual magnetism for honest men; his ability and working energy such, that every good friend of the Republic must stand by him. Those who come near him and are offended by his egotism, or his foible (if you please) of using classic quotations, or other bad tastes, easily forgive these whims, if themselves are good, or magnify them into disgust, if they themselves are incapable of his virtue.
And when he read one night in Concord a lecture on Lafayette we felt that of all Americans he was best entitled by his own character and fortunes to read that eulogy.
Every Pericles must have his Cleon: Sumner had his adversaries, his wasps and back-biters. We almost wished that he had not stooped to answer them. But he condescended to give them truth and patriotism, without asking whether they could appreciate the instruction or not.
A man of such truth that he can be truly described: he needs no exaggerated praise. Not a man of extraordinary genius, but a man of great heart, of a perpetual youth, with the highest sense of honor, incapable of any fraud, little or large; loving his friend and loving his country, with perfect steadiness to his purpose, shunning no labor that his aimrequired, and his works justified him by their scope and thoroughness.
He had good masters, who quickly found that they had a good scholar. He read law with Judge Story, who was at the head of the Law School at Harvard University, and who speedily discovered the value of his pupil, and called him to his assistance in the Law School. He had a great talent for labor, and spared no time and no research to make himself master of his subject. His treatment of every question was faithful and exhaustive, and marked always by the noble sentiment.
Page 252, note 1.With this message of comfort to Sumner, struck down for his defence of Liberty, may be contrasted what is said of Webster when he abandoned her cause:—
“Those to whom his name was once dear and honored, as the manly statesman to whom the choicest gifts of Nature had been accorded, disown him: ... he who was their pride in the woods and mountains of New England is now their mortification,—they have torn his picture from the wall, they have thrust his speeches into the chimney,” etc.—“Address on the Fugitive Slave Law,” at Concord, 1851.
By an act of Congress, passed in May, 1854, the territories of Kansas and Nebraska were organized, and in a section of that act it was declared that the Constitution and all the laws of the United States should be in force in these territories, except the Missouri Compromise Act of 1820, which wasdeclared inoperative and void. The act thereby repealed had confined slavery to the region of the Louisiana Purchase south of latitude 36°, 30´ North. Foreseeing the probable success of this measure to increase the area of slavery, Emigrant Aid Societies had been formed in Massachusetts first, and later, in Connecticut, which assisted Northern emigrants to the settlement of this fertile region. Settlers from the Northwestern States also poured in, and also from Missouri, the latter bringing slaves with them. A fierce struggle, lasting for some years and attended with bloodshed and barbarities, began at once, hordes of armed men from the border state of Missouri constantly voting at Kansas elections and intimidating the free state settlers, and even driving parties of immigrants out of the state. Franklin Pierce was then President, and threw the influence and power of the administration on the side of the pro-slavery party in Kansas. Despairing of redress from Washington, the settlers from the free states appealed in their distress to their friends at home, and sent Mr. Whitman, Rev. Mr. Nute, and later, John Brown, to make known to them their wrongs, and ask moral and material aid, especially arms to defend their rights, and reinforcements of brave settlers. Meetings were held, not only in the cities, but in the country towns, and, certainly in the latter, were well attended by earnest people who gave, a few from their wealth, but many from their poverty, large sums to help “bleeding Kansas.” In response to the petitions of the friends of Freedom, who urged the Legislature of Massachusetts to come to the rescue, a joint committee was appointed by the General Court to consider the petitions for a state appropriation of ten thousand dollars to protect the interests of the North and the rights of her citizens in Kansas, should they be again invaded by Southern marauders. John Brown addressed this committeein February, 1856. He made a clear and startling statement of the outrages he had witnessed and the brave struggles of the settlers, and told of the murder and imprisonment and maltreatment of his sons, seven of whom were in Kansas with him during the struggle.[F]
Mr. Emerson always attended the meetings in aid of Kansas in Concord, gave liberally to the cause, and spoke there and elsewhere when called upon.
Page 263, note 1.George Bancroft, the historian, said of the conclusion of this speech:—
“Emerson as clearly as any one, perhaps more clearly than any one at the time, saw the enormous dangers that were gathering over the Constitution.... It would certainly be difficult, perhaps impossible, to find any speech made in the same year that is marked with so much courage and foresight as this of Emerson.... Even after the inauguration of Lincoln several months passed away before his Secretary of State or he himself saw the future so clearly as Emerson had foreshadowed it in 1856.”[G]
Mr. F. B. Sanborn, in hisFamiliar Letters of Thoreau, says that he introduced John Brown to Thoreau in March, 1857, and Thoreau introduced him to Emerson. This was at the time when Brown came on to awaken the people of Massachusetts to the outrages which the settlers and their families were suffering, and procure aid for them. His clear-cut face, smooth-shaven and bronzed, his firmly shut mouth and mild but steady blue eyes, gave him the appearance of the best type of old New England farmers; indeed he might well have passed for a rustic brother of Squire Hoar. Mr. Emerson was at once interested in him and the story of the gallant fight that the Free-State men in Kansas were making, though Brown was very modest about his own part and leadership. Indeed he claimed only to be a fellow worker and adviser. I think that soon after this time, on one of his visits to Concord, he stayed at Mr. Emerson’s house; certainly he spent the evening there. The last time he came to Concord he was a changed man; all the pleasant look was gone. His gray hair, longer and brushed upright, his great gray beard and the sharpening of his features by exposure and rude experiences gave him a wild, fierce expression. His speech in the Town Hall was excited, and when he drew a huge sheath-knife from under his coat and showed it as a symbol of Missouri civilization, and last drew from his bosom a horse-chain and clanked it in air, telling that his son had been bound with this and led bareheaded under a burning sun beside their horses, by United States dragoons, and in the mania brought on by this inhuman treatment had worn the rusty chain bright,—the old manrecalled the fierce Balfour of Burley in Scott’sOld Mortality. It was a startling sight and sent a thrill through his hearers. Yet on earlier occasions his speech had been really more effective, when a quiet farmer of mature years, evidently self-contained, intelligent, truthful and humane, simply told in New England towns what was going on in Kansas, the outrages committed upon the settlers, the violation of their elementary rights under the Constitution,—and all this connived at by the general government. He opened the eyes of his hearers, even against their wills, to the alarming pass into which the slave power had brought the affairs of the country.
But now wrong and outrage, not only on others but terribly suffered in his own family, had made Brown feel that not he but “Slavery was an outlaw” against which he “held a commission direct from God Almighty” to act. A friend quoted him as having said, “The loss of my family and the troubles in Kansas have shattered my constitution, and I am nothing to the world but to defend the right, and that, by God’s help, I have done and will do.”
The people were not ready to follow him in revolutionary measures, but when on his own responsibility he had precipitated the inevitable conflict by breaking with a government, then so unrighteous, and offered his life as a sacrifice for humanity, they could not but do homage to him as a hero, who was technically a traitor. He had cut the Gordian knot which they had suffered to be tied tighter.
Of course Mr. Emerson had known nothing of John Brown’s plan for a raid into the slave states. It was the motive and courage he honored, not the means. He wrote: “I wish we should have health enough to know virtue when we see it, and not cry with the fools and the newspapers, ‘Madman!’ when a hero passes.”
On the first day of November, John Brown had been sentenced to death. This meeting in Boston, to give aid to his family, was held on the eighteenth, just two weeks before his execution.
The verses which serve as motto are from Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman’s poem written at the time, which Mr. Emerson used to read aloud to his family and friends with much pleasure.
Page 269, note 1.“This court acknowledges, I suppose, the validity of the Law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or, at least, the New Testament. That teaches me that all things ‘whatsoever I would that men should do unto me, I should do even so to them.’ It teaches me further to ‘remember them which are in bonds as bound with them.’ I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted that I have done, in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments—I submit: so let it be done.” From the Speech of John Brown to the Court.
Page 270, note 1.Among the sheets of the lecture “Courage” is one which seems to have been used at that time:—
“Governor Wise and Mr. Mason no doubt have some right to their places. It is some superiority of working brain that put them there, and the aristocrats in every society. Butwhen they come to deal with Brown, they find that he speaks their own speech,—has whatever courage and directness they have, and a great deal more of the same; so that they feel themselves timorous little fellows in his hand; he outsees, outthinks, outacts them, and they are forced to shuffle and stammer in their turn.
“They painfully feel this, that he is their governor and superior, and the only alternative is to kneel to him if they are truly noble, or else (if they wish to keep their places), to put this fact which they know, out of sight of other people, as fast as they can. Quick, drums and trumpets strike up! Quick, judges and juries, silence him, by sentence and execution of sentence, and hide in the ground this alarming fact. For, if everything comes to its right place, he goes up, and we down.”
Page 271, note 1.Commodore Hiram Paulding, in 1857, had broken up Walker’s filibustering expedition at Nicaragua. The arrest of Walker on foreign soil the government did not think it wise wholly to approve.
Page 272, note 1.The allusion is to the trials of the fugitives Shadrach, Sims and Burns in Boston. The story of these humiliations is told in full and in a most interesting manner in the diary of Richard H. Dana,[H]whose zeal in the cause of these poor men did him great honor.
During the trial of Sims, a chain was put up, as a barrier against the crowd, around the United States Court-House, andthe stooping of the judges to creep under this chain in order to enter the court-house was considered symbolic of their abject attitude towards the aggressive slave power.
The second of December, on which day John Brown was executed at Charlestown, Virginia, was bright in that State, but in New England was of a strange sultriness with a wind from the south and a lowering sky. At noon, the hour appointed for his death, in Concord (as in many New England towns) the men and women who honored his character and motives gathered and made solemn observance of a day and event which seemed laden with omens. There was a prayer, I think offered by the Rev. Edmund Sears of Wayland,[I]Mr. Emerson read William Allingham’s beautiful poem “The Touchstone” which is used as the motto to this speech, Thoreau read with sad bitterness Sir Walter Raleigh’s “The Soule’s Errand.” Hon. John S. Keyes read some appropriate verses from Aytoun’s “Execution of Montrose” and Mr. Sanborn a poem which he had written for the occasion.
Page 279, note 1.Here, as often in Mr. Emerson’s speechand writing, is shown his respect for the old religion of New England and its effect on the thought and character of her people. As Lowell said of them in his Concord Ode in 1875:—
“And yet the enduring half they chose,Whose choice decides a man life’s slave or king,The invisible things of God before the seen and known.”
“And yet the enduring half they chose,Whose choice decides a man life’s slave or king,The invisible things of God before the seen and known.”
“And yet the enduring half they chose,Whose choice decides a man life’s slave or king,The invisible things of God before the seen and known.”
“And yet the enduring half they chose,
Whose choice decides a man life’s slave or king,
The invisible things of God before the seen and known.”
Page 279, note 2.I well remember the evening, in my school-boy days, when John Brown, in my father’s house, told of his experiences as a sheep-farmer, and his eye for animals and power over them. He said he knew at once a strange sheep in his flock of many hundred, and that he could always make a dog or cat so uncomfortable as to wish to leave the room, simply by fixing his eyes on it.
Page 281, note 1.“Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right; and although a different breeding, different religion and greater intellectual activity would have modified or even reversed the particular action, yet, for the hero, that thing he does is the highest deed, and is not open to the censure of philosophers and divines.”—“Heroism,”Essays, First Series.
“I can leave to God the time and means of my death, for I believe now that the sealing of my testimony before God and man with my blood will do far more to further the cause to which I have earnestly devoted myself than anything else I have done in my life.”—Letter of John Brown to a friend.
Theodore Parker, worn by his great work in defence of liberal religion and in every cause of suffering humanity, had succumbed to disease and died in Florence in May, 1860, not quite fifty years of age. Born in the neighbor town of Lexington when Emerson was seven years old, they had been friends probably from the time when the latter, soon after settling in Concord, preached for the society at East Lexington, from 1836 for two years. Parker was, during this period, studying divinity, and was settled as pastor of the West Roxbury church in 1837. In that year he is mentioned by Mr. Alcott as a member of the Transcendental Club and attending its meetings in Boston. When, in June, 1838, Mr. Emerson fluttered the conservative and the timid by his Divinity School Address, the young Parker went home and wrote, “It was the most inspiring strain I ever listened to.... My soul is roused, and this week I shall write the long-meditated sermons on the state of the church and the duties of these times.”
Mr. Parker was one of those who attended the gathering in Boston which gave birth to theDial, to which he was a strong contributor. Three years after its death, he, with the help of Mr. James Elliot Cabot and Mr. Emerson, founded theMassachusetts Quarterly Review, vigorous though short-lived, of which he was the editor. Parker frequently visited Emerson, and the two, unlike in their method, worked best apart in the same great causes. Rev. William Gannett says, “What Emerson uttered without plot or plan, TheodoreParker elaborated to a system. Parker was the Paul of transcendentalism.”
Mr. Edwin D. Mead, in his chapter on Emerson and Theodore Parker,[J]gives the following pleasant anecdote:—
“At one of Emerson’s lectures in Boston, when the storm against Parker was fiercest, a lecture at which a score of the religious and literary leaders of the city were present, Emerson, as he laid his manuscript upon the desk and looked over the audience, after his wont, observed Parker; and immediately he stepped from the platform to the seat near the front where Parker sat, grasping his hand and standing for a moment’s conversation with him. It was not ostentation, and it was not patronage: it was admiring friendship,—and that fortification and stimulus Parker in those times never failed to feel. It was Emerson who fed his lamp, he said; and Emerson said that, be the lamp fed as it might, it was Parker whom the time to come would have to thank for finding the light burning.”
Parker dedicated to Emerson hisTen Sermons on Religion. In acknowledging this tribute, Mr. Emerson thus paid tribute to Parker’s brave service:—
“We shall all thank the right soldier whom God gave strength to fight for him the battle of the day.”
When Mr. Parker’s failing forces made it necessary for him to drop his arduous work and go abroad for rest, Mr. Emerson was frequently called to take his place in the Music Hall on Sundays. I think that this was the only pulpit he went into to conduct Sunday services after 1838.
It is told that Parker, sitting, on Sunday morning, on the deck of the vessel that was bearing him away, never to return,smiled and said: “Emerson is preaching at Music Hall to-day.”
Page 286, note 1.Mr. Emerson wrote in his journal:—
“The Duc de Brancas said, ‘Why need I read the Encyclopédie? Rivarol visits me.’ I may well say it of Theodore Parker.”
Page 290, note 1.Richard H. Dana wrote in his diary, November 3, 1853:—
“It is now ten days since Webster’s death.... Strange that the best commendation that has appeared yet, the most touching, elevated, meaning eulogy, with all its censure, should have come from Theodore Parker! Were I Daniel Webster, I would not have that sermon destroyed for all that had been said in my favor as yet.”
Page 293, note 1.I copy from Mr. Emerson’s journal at the time of Mr. Parker’s death these sentences which precede some of those included in this address:—
“Theodore Parker has filled up all his years and days and hours. A son of the energy of New England; restless, eager, manly, brave, early old, contumacious, clever. I can well praise him at a spectator’s distance, for our minds and methods were unlike,—few people more unlike. All the virtues are solitaires. Each man is related to persons who are not related to each other, and I saw with pleasure that men whom I could not approach, were drawn through him to the admiration of that which I admire.”
On January 31, 1862, Mr. Emerson lectured at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington on American Civilization. Just after the outbreak of war in the April preceding, he had given a lecture, in a course in Boston on Life and Literature, which he called “Civilization at a Pinch,” the title suggesting how it had been modified by the crisis which had suddenly come to pass. In the course of the year the flocking of slaves to the Union camps, and the opening vista of a long and bitter struggle, with slavery now acknowledged as its root, had brought the question of Emancipation as a war-measure to the front. Of course Mr. Emerson saw hope in this situation of affairs, and when he went to Washington with the chance of being heard by men in power there, he prepared himself to urge the measure, as well on grounds of policy as of right. So the Boston lecture was much expanded to deal with the need of the hour. There is no evidence that President Lincoln heard it; it is probable that he did not; nor is it true that Mr. Emerson had a long and earnest conversation with him on the subject next day, both of which assertions have been made in print. Mr. Emerson made an unusual record in his journal of the incidents of his stay in Washington, and though he tells of his introduction to Mr. Lincoln and a short chat with him, evidently there was little opportunity for serious conversation. The President’s secretaries had, in 1886, no memory of his having attended the lecture, and the Washington papers do not mention his presence there. The following notice of the lecture, however, appeared in one of the local papers: “Theaudience received it, as they have the other anti-slavery lectures of the course, with unbounded enthusiasm. It was in many respects a wonderful lecture, and those who have often heard Mr. Emerson said that he seemed inspired through nearly the whole of it, especially the part referring to slavery and the war.”
A gentleman in Washington, who took the trouble to look up the question as to whether Mr. Lincoln and other high officials heard it, says that Mr. Lincoln could hardly have attended lectures then:—
“He was very busy at the time, Stanton the new war secretary having just come in, and storming like a fury at the business of his department. The great operations of the war for the time overshadowed all the other events.... It is worth remarking that Mr. Emerson in this lecture clearly foreshadowed the policy of Emancipation some six or eight months in advance of Mr. Lincoln. He saw the logic of events leading up to a crisis in our affairs, to ‘emancipation as a platform with compensation to the loyal owners’ (his words as reported in theStar). The notice states that the lecture was very fully attended.”
Very possibly it may be with regard to this address that we have the interesting account given of the effect of Mr. Emerson’s speaking on a well-known English author. Dr. Garnett, in hisLife of Emerson, says:—
“A shrewd judge, Anthony Trollope, was particularly struck with the note of sincerity in Emerson when he heard him address a large meeting during the Civil War. Not only was the speaker terse, perspicuous, and practical to a degree amazing to Mr. Trollope’s preconceived notions, but he commanded his hearers’ respect by the frankness of his dealing with them. ‘You make much of the American eagle,’ hesaid, ‘you do well. But beware of the American peacock.’ When shortly afterwards Mr. Trollope heard the consummate rhetorician, ⸺ ⸺ he discerned at once that oratory was an end with him, instead of, as with Emerson, a means. He was neither bold nor honest, as Emerson had been, and the people knew that while pretending to lead them he was led by them.”
Mr. Emerson revised the lecture and printed it in theAtlantic Monthlyfor April, 1862. It was afterwards separated into the essay “Civilization,” treating of the general and permanent aspects of the subject (printed inSociety and Solitude), and this urgent appeal for the instant need.
The few lines inspired by the Flag are from one of the verse-books.
Page 298, note 1.Mr. Emerson himself was by no means free from pecuniary anxieties and cares in those days.
Journal, 1862. “Poverty, sickness, a lawsuit, even bad, dark weather, spoil a great many days of the scholar’s year, hinder him of the frolic freedom necessary to spontaneous flow of thought.”
Page 300, note 1.This was during the days of apparent inaction when, after the first reverses or minor successes of the raw Northern armies, the magnitude of the task before them and the energy of their opponents was realized, and recruiting, fortification, organization was going on in earnest in preparation for the spring campaign. General Scott had resigned; General McClellan was doing his admirable work of creating a fit army, and Secretary Cameron had been succeeded by the energetic and impatient Stanton. But the government was still very shy of meddling with slavery for fear of disaffecting the War Democrats and especially the Border States.
Page 307, note 1.A short time before this address was delivered Mr. Moncure D. Conway (a young Virginian, who, for conscience’ sake, had left his charge as a Methodist preacher and had abandoned his inheritance in slaves, losing in so doing the good will of his parents, and become a Unitarian minister and an abolitionist) had read in Concord an admirable and eloquent lecture called “The Rejected Stone.” This stone, slighted by the founders, although they knew it to be a source of danger, had now “become the head of the corner,” and its continuance in the national structure threatened its stability. Mr. Emerson had been much struck with the excellence and cogency of Mr. Conway’s arguments, based on his knowledge of Southern economics and character, and in this lecture made free use of them.
Page 308, note 1.Mason and Slidell, the emissaries sent by the Confederacy to excite sympathy in its cause in Europe, had been taken off an English vessel at the Bermudas by Commodore Wilkes, and were confined in Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. President Lincoln’s action in surrendering them at England’s demand had been a surprise to the country, but was well received.
Page 309, note 1.From the Veeshnoo Sarma.
Page 309, note 2.See in the address on Theodore Parker the passage commending him for insisting “that the essence of Christianity is its practical morals; it is there for use or nothing,” etc.
Page 311, note 1.In the agitation concerning the abolition of slavery in the British colonies, gradual emancipation was at first planned, as more reasonable and politic, but, in the end, not only the reformers but the planters came in most cases to see that immediate emancipation was wiser.
On the 22d of September, President Lincoln at last spoke the word so long earnestly desired by the friends of Freedom and the victims of slavery, abolishing slavery on the first day of the coming year in those states which should then be in rebellion against the United States.
At a meeting held in Boston in honor of this auspicious utterance, Mr. Emerson spoke, with others.
The address was printed in its present form in theAtlantic Monthlyfor November, 1862.
Page 316, note 1.It may be interesting in this connection to recall the quiet joy with which Mr. Emerson in his poem “The Adirondacs” celebrates man’s victory over matter, and its promise to human brotherhood, when the Atlantic Cable was supposed to be a success in 1858.
Page 320, note 1.Milton, “Comus.”
Page 321, note 1.It is pleasant to contrast this passage with the tone of sad humiliation which prevails in the address on the Fugitive Slave Law given in Concord in 1851.
Page 324, note 1.See the insulting recognition of this disgraceful attitude of the North by John Randolph, quoted by Mr. Emerson in his speech on the Fugitive Slave Law in Concord in 1851.
Page 326, note 1.Shakspeare, Sonnet cvii.
Page 326, note 2.The tragedy of the negro is tenderly told in the poem “Voluntaries,” which was written justafter they had gallantly stood the test of battle in the desperate attack on Fort Wagner.
On the first day of the year 1863, when Emancipation became a fact throughout the United States, a joyful meeting was held in Boston, and there Mr. Emerson read his “Boston Hymn.”
In the year 1865, the people of Concord gathered on the Nineteenth of April, as had been their wont for ninety years, but this time not to celebrate the grasping by the town of its great opportunity for freedom and fame. The people came together in the old meeting-house to mourn for their wise and good Chief Magistrate, murdered when he had triumphantly finished the great work which fell to his lot. Mr. Emerson, with others of his townsmen, spoke.
Page 331, note 1.On the occasion of his visit to Washington in January, 1862, Mr. Emerson had been taken to the White House by Mr. Sumner and introduced to the President. Mr. Lincoln’s first remark was, “Mr. Emerson, I once heard you say in a lecture that a Kentuckian seems to say by his air and manners, ‘Here am I; if you don’t like me, the worse for you.’”
The interview with Mr. Lincoln was necessarily short, but he left an agreeable impression on Mr. Emerson’s mind. The full account of this visit is printed in theAtlantic Monthlyfor July, 1904, and will be included among the selections from the journals which will be later published.
Page 332, note 1.Mr. Emerson’s poem, “The Visit,” shows how terrible the devastation of the day of a public man would have seemed to him.
Page 336, note 1.The brave retraction by Thomas Taylor of the hostile ridicule whichPunchhad poured on Lincoln in earlier days contained these verses:—
“Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheetThe Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew,Between the mourners at his head and feet,Say, scurrile jester, is there room foryou?“Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,To lame my pencil, and confute my pen;—To make me own this kind of princes peer,This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.”
“Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheetThe Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew,Between the mourners at his head and feet,Say, scurrile jester, is there room foryou?“Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,To lame my pencil, and confute my pen;—To make me own this kind of princes peer,This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.”
“Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheetThe Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew,Between the mourners at his head and feet,Say, scurrile jester, is there room foryou?
“Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew,
Between the mourners at his head and feet,
Say, scurrile jester, is there room foryou?
“Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,To lame my pencil, and confute my pen;—To make me own this kind of princes peer,This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.”
“Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
To lame my pencil, and confute my pen;—
To make me own this kind of princes peer,
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.”
The whole poem is included in Mr. Emerson’s collectionParnassus.
Page 337, note 1.This thought is rendered more fully in the poem “Spiritual Laws,” and in the lines in “Worship,”—