Details
EMERSON, RALPH WALDO. Autograph letter signed ("R.W. Emerson") to Mr. Laighton, Concord, Massachusetts, 20 August 1861. 4 pages, 8vo. In an unusually bold hand.
THE POET REFLECTS ON THEODORE PARKER AND THE CIVIL WAR: "IN DARK DAYS & AMIDST SINKING MEN""
A fine letter hinting at Emerson's private feelings concerning the outbreak of the Civil War. "I think that I shall not be able to attend the...meeting at Allston Hall, to which you kindly invited me. It is always difficult for me to stay in the City overnight. And I do not know that I could add any facts of interest to the recollections of the occasion.
"Yet Theodore Parker's mind was so lavishly given to the public welfare, that I can easily see how all the new startling events in our politics may associate themselves with his memory. In dark days & amidst sinking men we miss his strength the more, and yet we cannot doubt his relief and joy in the present pronounced state of the Republic, over the so-called integrity of the Republic,' six months ago...." [i.e., before secession and the outbreak of war between North and the South].
Emerson, like Parker, was of the view that the Federal government's countenance of slavery in any state or territory was only a half-hearted compromise which, while it might preserve "the integrity of the Republic," was morally bankrupt and fundamentally wrong. Theodore Parker (1810-1860), a minister from Roxbury, had become an associate of the Transcendentalists in the 1830s but was drawn into many public controversies over religion. A fervent abolitionist, he actively aided fugitive slaves and in speeches urged the forcible freeing of recaptured slaves. He was a member of the secret committee which supported John Brown's armed raid on Harper's Ferry. He is believed to have furnished Lincoln, through his correspondence with his law partner Herndon, with the phrase "of the people, by the people and for the people."
THE POET REFLECTS ON THEODORE PARKER AND THE CIVIL WAR: "IN DARK DAYS & AMIDST SINKING MEN""
A fine letter hinting at Emerson's private feelings concerning the outbreak of the Civil War. "I think that I shall not be able to attend the...meeting at Allston Hall, to which you kindly invited me. It is always difficult for me to stay in the City overnight. And I do not know that I could add any facts of interest to the recollections of the occasion.
"Yet Theodore Parker's mind was so lavishly given to the public welfare, that I can easily see how all the new startling events in our politics may associate themselves with his memory. In dark days & amidst sinking men we miss his strength the more, and yet we cannot doubt his relief and joy in the present pronounced state of the Republic, over the so-called integrity of the Republic,' six months ago...." [i.e., before secession and the outbreak of war between North and the South].
Emerson, like Parker, was of the view that the Federal government's countenance of slavery in any state or territory was only a half-hearted compromise which, while it might preserve "the integrity of the Republic," was morally bankrupt and fundamentally wrong. Theodore Parker (1810-1860), a minister from Roxbury, had become an associate of the Transcendentalists in the 1830s but was drawn into many public controversies over religion. A fervent abolitionist, he actively aided fugitive slaves and in speeches urged the forcible freeing of recaptured slaves. He was a member of the secret committee which supported John Brown's armed raid on Harper's Ferry. He is believed to have furnished Lincoln, through his correspondence with his law partner Herndon, with the phrase "of the people, by the people and for the people."