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Writing to his friend Carlyle on March 11, 1854, Mr. Emerson said:—
"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 It was repealed within a few days of the time Mr.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."
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.
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.
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."1 1.1
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."
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:— 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 —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.
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.
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."1 1.2
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.
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.
Page 236, note 2. This is the important key to the essay on Self-Reliance.
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.
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.
Page 241, note 1. See Lectures and Biographical Sketches, pp. 246 and 251.
Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, vol. i., pp. 260, 261.
Epistle of Paul to Philemon, i. 16, 17.
