“One good word closed your letter in September ... namely, that you
might come westward when Frederic was disposed of. Speed Frederic,
then, for all reasons and for this! America is growing furiously, town
and state; new Kansas, new Nebraska looming up in these days, vicious
politicians seething a wretched destiny for them already at Washington.
The politicians shall be sodden, the States escape, please God! The fight
of slave and freeman drawing nearer, the question is sharply, whether
slavery or whether freedom shall be abolished. Come and see.”
Four days before thus writing, he had given this address, to a fairly
large audience, in the “Tabernacle” in New York City, for, however dark
the horizon looked, the very success of the slave power was working
its ruin. Encouraged by the submission of the North to the passage of
the evil law to pacify them, they had resolved to repeal the Missouri
Compromise, which confined slavery to a certain latitude. It was repealed
within a few days of the time Mr. Emerson made this address. During the
debate, Charles Sumner said to Douglas, “Sir, the bill you are about
to pass is at once the worst and the best on which Congress has ever
acted.... It is the worst bill because it is a present victory for
slavery.... Sir, it is the best bill on which Congress has ever acted,
_for it annuls all past compromises with slavery and makes any future
compromises impossible_. Thus it puts Freedom and Slavery face to face
and bids them grapple. Who can doubt the result?” The rendition to
slavery of Anthony Burns from Boston in May wrought a great change in
public feeling there. Even the commercial element in the North felt the
shame.
Though not a worker in the anti-slavery organization, Mr. Emerson had
always been the outspoken friend of freedom for the negroes. Witness
his tribute in 1837 to Elijah Lovejoy, the martyr in their cause (see
“Heroism,” _Essays, First Series_, p. 262, and note). But the narrow
and uncharitable speech and demeanor of many “philanthropists” led him
to such reproofs as the one quoted by Dr. Bartol, “Let them first be
anthropic,” or that in “Self-Reliance” to the angry bigot: “Go love thy
infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good-natured and modest; have that
grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this
incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off.”
But now the foe was at the very gate. The duty to resist was instant and
commanding. Mr. Emerson wrote in his journal, soon after:—
“Why do we not say, We are abolitionists of the most absolute abolition,
as every man that is a man must be?... We do not try to alter your
laws in Alabama, nor yours in Japan, or in the Feejee Islands; but we
do not admit them, or permit a trace of them here. Nor shall we suffer
you to carry your Thuggism, north, south, east or west into a single
rod of territory which we control. We intend to set and keep a _cordon
sanitaire_ all around the infected district, and by no means suffer the
pestilence to spread.
“It is impossible to be a gentleman, and not be an abolitionist, for a
gentleman is one who is fulfilled with all nobleness, and imparts it; is
the natural defender and raiser of the weak and oppressed.”
With Mr. Emerson’s indignation at Webster’s fall was mingled great
sorrow. From his youth he had admired and revered him. The verses about
him printed in the Appendix to the _Poems_ show the change of feeling. He
used to quote Browning’s “Lost Leader” as applying to him, and admired
Whittier’s fine poem “Ichabod” (“The glory is departed,” I. Samuel, iv.,
21, 22) on his apostasy.
Mr. Emerson’s faithfulness to his sense of duty, leading him, against
his native instincts, into the turmoil of politics, striving to undo
the mischief that a leader once revered had wrought in the minds of
Americans, is shown in the extract from his journal with regard to this
lecture:—
“At New York Tabernacle, on the 7th March, I saw the great audience with
dismay, and told the bragging secretary that I was most thankful to those
that staid at home; every auditor was a new affliction, and if all had
staid away, by rain or preoccupation, I had been best pleased.”
[135] _Page 217, note 1._ In _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_, in the
essay on Aristocracy, and also in that on The Man of Letters, the duty of
loyalty to his thought and his order is urged as a trait of the gentleman
and the scholar, and in the latter essay, the scholar’s duty to stand for
what is generous and free.
[136] _Page 219, note 1._ Mr. Emerson in his early youth did come near
slavery for a short time. His diary at St. Augustine, quoted by Mr. Cabot
in his Memoir, mentions that, while he was attending a meeting of the
Bible Society, a slave-auction was going on outside, but it does not
appear that he actually saw it.
[137] _Page 221, note 1._ Carlyle described Webster as “a magnificent
specimen.... As a Logic-fencer, Advocate, or Parliamentary Hercules,
one would incline to back him at first sight against all the extant
world. The tanned complexion, that amorphous, crag-like face, the dull
black eyes under their precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces
needing only to be blown, the mastiff-mouth, accurately closed:—I have
not traced as much of _silent Berserkir-rage_, that I remember of, in any
other man.”[D]
[138] _Page 225, note 1._ Mr. James S. Gibbons (of the _New York
Tribune_) in a letter written to his son two days after this speech was
delivered, says, referring evidently to this passage:—
“Emerson gave us a fine lecture on Webster. He made him stand before
us in the proportions of a giant; and then with one word crushed him to
powder.”
[139] _Page 226, note 1._ Professor John H. Wright of Harvard University
has kindly furnished me with the passage from Dio Cassius, xlvii. 49,
where it is said of Brutus:—
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.
[140] _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. See
_Lectures and Biographical Sketches_.
[141] _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]
[142] _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, see _Conduct of Life_, pp.
249 ff., _Letters and Social Aims_, pp. 219, 220.
[143] _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 ear
Seldom in this low life’s round
Are unsealed, that he may hear.
[144] _Page 236, note 2._ This is the important key to the essay on
Self-Reliance.
[145] _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.
[146] _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.
[147] _Page 241, note 1._ See _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_, pp.
246 and 251.
[148] _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.