In 1863, during the dark days of the Civil War, before the tide had fully
turned in the field, while disaffection showed itself in the North, and
England and France threatened intervention, Mr. Emerson gave a hopeful
lecture, the basis of the present discourse, on the Fortune of the
Republic. After the war it was adapted to the new and happier conditions.
On the 30th of March, 1878, six years after Mr. Emerson had withdrawn
from literary work, and but four years before his death, he was induced
to read the lecture in the Old South Church, in a course planned by the
committee, to save the venerable building. The church was filled, Mr.
Emerson’s delivery was good, and he seemed to enjoy the occasion. It was
probably his last speech in public, and so fitly closes the volume.
[228] _Page 513, note 1._ This passage occurred in the early lecture:—
“It is the distinction of man to think, and all the few men who, since
the beginning of the world, have done anything for us were men who did
not follow the river, or ship the cotton, or pack the pork, but who
thought for themselves. What the country wants is personalities,—grand
persons,—to counteract its materialities, for it is the rule of the
universe that corn shall serve man, and not man, corn.”
[229] _Page 519, note 1._ Here followed: “What we call ‘Kentucky,’ or
‘Vallandigham,’ or ‘Fernando Wood’ is really the ignorance and nonsense
in us, stolid stupidity which gives the strength to those names.... It is
our own vice which takes form, or gives terror with which these persons
affect us.”
[230] _Page 520, note 1._ This refers to a young Massachusetts scholar,
of promise and beauty, whom Mr. Emerson had been pleased with, as a
fellow voyager. He soon was corrupted by politics. Coming up, at a
reception, to shake hands with Mr. Emerson he was thus greeted: “If
what I hear of your recent action be true, I must shake hands with you
under protest.” Soon after, this aspirant for power attended the dinner
given to Brooks after his cowardly assault on Sumner; but the moment the
Emancipation Proclamation had been approved by the people, he became an
ornamental figurehead at Republican and reform gatherings.
[231] _Page 520, note 2._ From the last scene of _Cynthia’s Revels_, by
Ben Jonson.
[232] _Page 521, note 1._ “The one serious and formidable thing in Nature
is a will.”—“Fate,” _Conduct of Life_, p. 30.
See also “Aristocracy,” in _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_, p. 50.
[233] _Page 524, note 1._ Ben Jonson, _The Golden Age Restored_.
[234] _Page 526, note 1._
She spawneth men as mallows fresh.
“Nature,” II., _Poems_.
See also the “Song of Nature,” in the _Poems_.
[235] _Page 526, note 2._ In the earlier lecture was this passage:—
“The roots of our success are in our poverty, our Calvinism, our
thrifty habitual industry,—in our snow and east wind, and farm-life and
sea-life....
“There is in this country this immense difference from Europe, that,
whereas all their systems of government and society are historical, our
politics are almost ideal. We wish to treat man as man, without regard to
rank, wealth, race, color, or caste,—simply as human souls. We lie near
to Nature, we are pensioners on Nature, draw on inexhaustible resources,
and we interfere the least possible with individual freedom.”
[236] _Page 527, note 1._ In the “Historical Discourse” in this volume,
Mr. Emerson tells of the evolution of the town-meeting of New England
and its working excellence, and of the latter also in “Social Aims” and
“Eloquence,” in _Letters and Social Aims_.
[237] _Page 540, note 1._
For you can teach the lightning speech,
And round the globe your voices reach.
“Boston,” _Poems_.
[238] _Page 541, note 1._
I will divide my goods;
Call in the wretch and slave:
None shall rule but the humble,
And none but Toil shall have.
“Boston Hymn,” _Poems_.
[239] _Page 544, note 1._ The following passages came from the earlier
lecture:—
“I must be permitted to read a quotation from De Tocqueville, whose
censure is more valuable, as it comes from one obviously very partial to
the American character and institutions:—
“‘I know no country in which there is so little true independence of
opinion and freedom of discussion as in America’ (vol. i., p. 259).”
“I am far from thinking it late. I don’t despond at all whilst I hear the
verdicts of European juries against us—Renan says this; Arnold says that.
That does not touch us.
“’Tis doubtful whether London, whether Paris can answer the questions
which now rise in the human mind. But the humanity of all nations is now
in the American Union. Europe, England is historical still. Our politics,
our social frame are almost ideal. We have got suppled into a state of
melioration. When I see the emigrants landing at New York, I say, There
they go—to school.
“In estimating nations, potentiality must be considered as well as power;
not what to-day’s actual performance is, but what promise is in the mind
which a crisis will bring out.”
“The war has established a chronic hope, for a chronic despair. It is
not a question whether we shall be a nation, or only a multitude of
people. No, that has been conspicuously decided already; but whether we
shall be the new nation, guide and lawgiver of all nations, as having
clearly chosen and firmly held the simplest and best rule of political
society.
“Culture, be sure, is in some sort the very enemy of nationality
and makes us citizens of the world; and yet it is essential that it
should have the flavor of the soil in which it grew, and combine this
with universal sympathies. Thus in this country are new traits and
distinctions not known to former history. Colonies of an old country, but
in new and commanding conditions. Colonies of a small and crowded island,
but planted on a continent and therefore working it in small settlements,
where each man must count for ten, and is put to his mettle to come up to
the need....
“Pray leave these English to form their opinions. ’Tis a matter of
absolute insignificance what those opinions are. They will fast enough
run to change and retract them on their knees when they know who you
are....
“I turn with pleasure to the good omen in the distinguished reception
given in London to Mr. Beecher. It was already prepared by the advocacy
of Cobden, Bright and Forster, Mill, Newman, Cairnes and Hughes, and
by the intelligent Americans already sent to England by our Government
to communicate with intelligent men in the English Government and out
of it. But Mr. Beecher owed his welcome to himself. He fought his way
to his reward. It is one of the memorable exhibitions of the force of
eloquence,—his evening at Exeter Hall. The consciousness of power shown
in his broad good sense, in his jocular humor and entire presence of
mind, the surrender of the English audience on recognizing the true
master. He steers the Behemoth, sits astride him, strokes his fur,
tickles his ear, and rides where he will. And I like the well-timed
compliment there paid to our fellow citizen when the stormy audience
reminds him to tell England that Wendell Phillips is the first orator
of the world. One orator had a right to speak of the other,—Byron’s
thunderstorm, where
“‘Jura answers from his misty shroud
Back to the joyous Alps who call to him aloud.’
“The young men in America to-day take little thought of what men in
England are thinking or doing. That is the point which decides the
welfare of a people,—_which way does it look?_ If to any other people, it
is not well with them. If occupied in its own affairs, and thoughts, and
men, with a heat which excludes almost the notice of any other people,—as
the Jews, as the Greeks, as the Persians, as the Romans, the Arabians,
the French, the English, at their best times have done,—they are sublime;
and we know that in this abstraction they are executing excellent work.
Amidst the calamities that war has brought on our Country, this one
benefit has accrued,—that our eyes are withdrawn from England, withdrawn
from France, and look homeward. We have come to feel that
“‘By ourselves our safety must be bought;’
to know the vast resources of the continent; the good will that is in the
people; their conviction of the great moral advantages of freedom, social
equality, education and religious culture, and their determination to
hold these fast, and by these hold fast the Country, and penetrate every
square inch of it with this American civilization....
“Americans—not girded by the iron belt of condition, not taught by
society and institutions to magnify trifles, not victims of technical
logic, but docile to the logic of events; not, like English, worshippers
of fate; with no hereditary upper house, but with legal, popular
assemblies, which constitute a perpetual insurrection, and by making it
perpetual save us from revolutions.”