The opening passages of this speech to his friends and neighbors show
how deeply Mr. Emerson was moved. He could no longer be philosophical,
as in the “Ode” inscribed to his friend William Channing, and in earlier
addresses. The time had come when he might at any moment be summoned to
help the marshal’s men seize and return to bondage the poor fugitive who
had almost reached the safety of England’s protection. Such men were
frequently passing through Concord, concealed and helped by the good
Bigelow, the blacksmith, and his wife, the Thoreaus, Mrs. Brooks, and
even once at a critical moment by her husband, the law-abiding “’Squire”
himself.
Mr. Emerson instantly took his stand, and did not hesitate to run atilt
against the dark giant, once so honored. The question of secession for
conscience’ sake had come up among the Abolitionists. Mr. Emerson had
stood for Union, yet felt that there could be nothing but shame in Union
until the humiliating statute was repealed. Meanwhile he fell back on
the reserve-right of individual revolution as the duty of honest men.
The Free-Soilers soon after renominated Dr. John Gorham Palfrey for a
seat in Congress, and in his campaign Mr. Emerson delivered this speech
in several Middlesex towns. In Cambridge he was interrupted by young
men from the college, Southerners, it was said, but it appears that the
disturbance was quite as much due to “Northern men who were eager to
keep up a show of fidelity to the interest of the South,” as a Southern
student said in a dignified disclaimer. Mr. Cabot in his Memoir gives an
interesting account by Professor James B. Thayer of Mr. Emerson’s calm
ignoring of the rude and hostile demonstration.
Writing to Carlyle, in the end of July, 1857, Mr. Emerson said: “In the
spring, the abomination of our Fugitive Slave Bill drove me to some
writing and speech-making, without hope of effect, but to clear my own
skirts.”
This was the reaction which could not but be felt by him where he had
been forced to descend into the dust and conflict of the arena from the
serene heights. He wrote in his journal next year:—
“Philip Randolph [a valued friend] was surprised to find me speaking
to the politics of anti-slavery in Philadelphia. I suppose because he
thought me a believer in general laws and that it was a kind of distrust
of my own general teachings to appear in active sympathy with these
temporary heats. He is right so far as it is becoming in the scholar to
insist on central soundness rather than on superficial applications. I am
to give a wise and just ballot, though no man else in the republic doth.
I am to demand the absolute right, affirm that, and do that; but not push
Boston into a showy and theatrical attitude, endeavoring to persuade her
she is more virtuous than she is. Thereby I am robbing myself more than
I am enriching the public. After twenty, fifty, a hundred years, it will
be quite easy to discriminate who stood for the right, and who for the
expedient.”
Yet however hard the duty of the hour might be, Mr. Emerson never failed
in his duty as a good citizen to come to the front in dark days.
“In spite of all his gracefulness and reserve and love of the unbroken
tranquillity of serene thought, he was by the right of heredity a
belligerent in the cause of Freedom.”
[128] _Page 181, note 1._ Shadrach was hurried to Concord after his
rescue, and by curious coincidence Edwin Bigelow, the good village
blacksmith who there harbored him and drove him to the New Hampshire
line, was one of the jurors in the trial of another rescue case.
[129] _Page 183, note 1._ Mr. Emerson wrote in his journal, after Mr.
Hoar’s return:—
“The position of Massachusetts seems to me to be better for Mr.
Hoar’s visit to South Carolina in this point, that one illusion is
dispelled. Massachusetts was dishonored before, but she was credulous
in the protection of the Constitution, and either did not believe,
or affected not to believe in that she was dishonored. Now all doubt
on that subject is removed, and every Carolina boy will not fail to
tell every Massachusetts boy whenever they meet how the fact stands.
The Boston merchants would willingly salve the matter over, but they
cannot hereafter receive Southern gentlemen at their tables without a
consciousness of shame.”
[130] _Page 192, note 1._ Apparently from Vattel, book i., ch. i., p. 79.
[131] _Page 201, note 1._
But there was chaff within the flour,
And one was false in ten,
And reckless clerks in lust of power
Forgot the rights of men;
Cruel and blind did file their mind,
And sell the blood of human kind.
Your town is full of gentle names
By patriots once were watchwords made;
Those war-cry names are muffled shames
On recreant sons mislaid.
What slave shall dare a name to wear
Once Freedom’s passport everywhere?
See note to poem “Boston.”
Mr. Charles Francis Adams’s _Life of Richard H. Dana_ gives light on the
phrase used in the first of these verses. The following passage is from
Mr. Dana’s journal during the trial of Anthony Burns, the fugitive:—
“Choate, I had an amusing interview with. I asked him to make one effort
in favor of freedom, and told him that the 1850 delusion was dispelled
and all men were coming round, the Board of Brokers and Board of Aldermen
were talking treason, and that he must come and act. He said he should
be glad to make an effort on our side, but that he had given written
opinions against us in the Sims case on every point, and that he could
not go against them.
“‘You corrupted your mind in 1850.’
“‘Yes. Filed my mind.’
“‘I wish you would file it in court for our benefit.’”