The tenth anniversary of the emancipation by Act of Parliament of all
slaves in the insular possessions of Great Britain in the West Indies
was celebrated in Concord, in the year 1844, by citizens of thirteen
Massachusetts towns, and they invited Mr. Emerson to make the Address.
The Rev. Dr. Channing, on whose mind the wrongs of the slave had weighed
ever since he had seen them in Santa Cruz, had spoken on Slavery in
Faneuil Hall in 1837, had written on the subject, and his last public
work had been a speech on the anniversary of the West Indian Emancipation
in 1842, in the village of Lenox. The public conscience was slowly
becoming aroused, especially among the country people, who had not the
mercantile and social relations with the Southerner which hampered the
action of many people in the cities. Yet even in Concord the religious
societies appear to have closed their doors against the philanthropists
who gathered to celebrate this anniversary in 1844, but the energy of
the young Thoreau, always a champion of Freedom, secured the use of the
Court-House, and he himself rang the bell to call the people together.
It is said that Mr. Emerson, while minister of the Second Church in
Boston, had held his pulpit open to speakers on behalf of liberty,
and to his attitude in 1835 Harriet Martineau bears witness in her
Autobiography. After speaking of the temperamental unfitness of these
brother scholars, Charles and Waldo, to become active workers in an
Abolitionist organization, she says: “Yet they did that which made me
feel that I knew them through the very cause in which they did not
implicate themselves. At the time of the hubbub against me in Boston,
Charles Emerson stood alone in a large company and declared that he would
rather see Boston in ashes than that I or anybody should be debarred in
any way from perfectly free speech. His brother Waldo invited me to be
his guest in the midst of my unpopularity, and during my visit told me
his course about this matter of slavery. He did not see that there was
any particular thing for him to do in it then; but when, in coaches or
steamboats or anywhere else, he saw people of color ill treated, or heard
bad doctrine or sentiment propounded, he did what he could, and said what
he thought. Since that date he has spoken more abundantly and boldly,
the more critical the times became; and he is now, and has long been,
identified with the Abolitionists in conviction and sentiment, though it
is out of his way to join himself to their organization.”
Mr. Cabot in his Memoir[B] gives several pages of extracts from Mr.
Emerson’s journal showing his feelings at this time, before the slave
power, aggressive and advancing, left him, as a lover of Freedom, no
choice but to fight for her as he could, by tongue and pen, in seasons of
peril.
This Address was printed in England, as well as in America, the autumn
after its delivery here. In a letter to Carlyle written September 1, Mr.
Emerson says he is sending proof to the London publisher.
“Chapman wrote to me by the last steamer, urging me to send him some
manuscript that had not yet been published in America [hoping for
copyright, and promising half profits].... The request was so timely,
since I was not only printing a book, but also a pamphlet, that I came to
town yesterday and hastened the printers, and have now sent him proofs
of all the Address, and of more than half of the book.” He requests
Carlyle to have an eye to its correct reproduction, to which his friend
faithfully attended.
[104] _Page 100, note 1._ It was characteristic of Mr. Emerson that, as a
corrective to the flush of righteous wrath that man should be capable of
laying hands on another
To coin his labor and sweat,
came his sense of justice, and the power of seeing the planter’s side,
born into such a social and political condition, by breeding and climatic
conditions unable to toil, and with his whole inheritance vested in
slaves. In a speech in New York in 1855, Mr. Emerson urged emancipation
with compensation to the owners, by general sacrifices to this great end
by old and young throughout the North, not as the planters’ due, but as
recognizing their need and losses. Yet with all due consideration for the
planters’ misfortune of condition, he said, on the main question, “It is
impossible to be a gentleman and not be an abolitionist.”
[105] _Page 103, note 1._
Sole estate his sire bequeathed,—
Hapless sire to hapless son,—
Was the wailing song he breathed,
And his chain when life was done.
These lines from “Voluntaries” in the _Poems_, and the stanza which there
follows them, are recalled by this passage.
[106] _Page 106, note 1._ Granville Sharp (1734-1813) was a broad-minded
scholar and determined philanthropist. He left the study of law to go
into the ordnance office, which he left, when the American Revolution
came on, disapproving of the course of the government. In the case of one
of the slaves whom he defended, the Lord Mayor discharged the negro, but
his master would not give him up. The case then went before the Court
of Kings Bench, and the twelve judges decided in 1772 that a man could
not be held in, or transported from, England. In June, 1787, Sharp with
Clarkson and ten others, nine of whom were Quakers, formed a committee
“for effecting the abolition of the slave trade;” Sharp was chairman.
Defeated in Parliament in 1788 and 1789, they were joined by Pitt and Fox
in 1790. In 1793 the Commons passed an act for gradual abolition of the
trade, which was rejected by the Peers. This occurred again in 1795 and
1804. In 1806, the Fox and Grenville Ministry brought forward abolition
of the trade as a government measure. It was carried in 1807. Then the
enemies of slavery began to strive for its gradual abolition throughout
the British dominions, Clarkson, Wilberforce and Buxton being the
principal leaders. The course of events, however, showed that immediate
emancipation would be a better measure. The government brought this
forward in 1823, modified by an apprenticeship system. The bill with this
feature and some compensation to owners was passed in 1833.
[107] _Page 108, note 1._ In the essay on Self-Reliance Mr. Emerson said:
“An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as Monachism, of the
Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism,
of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson.”
[108] _Page 112, note 1._ The “prædials” seem to have been the slaves
born into captivity, as distinguished from imported slaves.
[109] _Page 115, note 1._ _Emancipation in the West Indies: A Six Months’
Tour in Antigua, Barbadoes and Jamaica, in the year 1837._ J. A. Thome
and J. H. Kimball, New York, 1838.
[110] _Page 120, note 1._ This was very soon after the coronation of the
young Queen Victoria, which occurred in the previous year.
[111] _Page 125, note 1._ “All things are moral, and in their boundless
changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. Therefore is
nature glorious with form, color and motion; that every globe in the
remotest heaven, every chemical change from the rudest crystal up to the
laws of life ... every animal function from the sponge up to Hercules,
shall hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the
Ten Commandments.”—_Nature, Addresses and Lectures_, p. 40. See also the
last sentence in “Prudence,” _Essays, First Series_.
[112] _Page 131, note 1._ “For he [a ruler] is the minister of God to
thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he
beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger
to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” _Epistle to the Romans_,
xiii. 4.
[113] _Page 132, note 1._ The cause for Mr. Emerson’s indignation was
great and recent. His honored townsman, Samuel Hoar, Esq., sent by
the State of Massachusetts as her commissioner to South Carolina to
investigate the seizures, imprisonments, punishments, and even sale of
colored citizens of Massachusetts who had committed no crime, had been
expelled with threats of violence from the city of Charleston. (See
“Samuel Hoar,” in _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_.)
[114] _Page 133, note 1._
A union then of honest men,
Or union never more again.
“Boston,” _Poems_.
[115] _Page 134, note 1._ John Quincy Adams, who, though disapproving,
as untimely, the legislation urged on Congress by the abolitionists, yet
fought strongly and persistently against the rules framed to check their
importunity, as inconsistent with the right of petition itself.
[116] _Page 144, note 1._ Here comes in the doctrine of the Survival of
the Fittest that appears in the “Ode inscribed to W. H. Channing,” but,
even more than there, tempered by faith in the strength of humanity.
See the “Lecture on the Times,” given in 1841 (_Nature, Addresses
and Lectures_, p. 220), for considerations on slavery more coolly
philosophical than Mr. Emerson’s warm blood often admitted of, during the
strife for liberty in the period between the Mexican and Civil Wars.
[117] _Page 145, note 1._
To-day unbind the captive,
So only are ye unbound;
Lift up a people from the dust,
Trump of their rescue, sound!
“Boston Hymn,” _Poems_.
[118] _Page 146, note 1._ In the early version of the “Boston” poem were
these lines:—
O pity that I pause!
The song disdaining shuns
To name the noble sires, because
Of the unworthy sons.
...
Your town is full of gentle names,
By patriots once were watchwords made;
Those war-cry names are muffled shames
On recreant sons mislaid.