HOW WALDO SAW HENRY

(PLUS OTHER PERSONAL SNIPPETS

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(Reminiscing regarding the Reverend Joseph Emerson of Malden, one of Waldo Emerson’s great- grandfathers, the son of Edward Emerson, Esq. of Newburyport and the father of William Emerson, on September-November 1843):

I used often to hear that when William, son of Joseph, was yet a boy walking before his father to church, on a Sunday, his father checked him, “William, you walk as if the earth was not good enough for you.” “I did not know it, sir,” he replied with the utmost humility. This is one of the household anecdotes in which I have found a relationship. ’Tis curious but the same remark was made to me, by Mrs Lucy Brown, when I walked one day under her windows here in Concord. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1810

This would have been at about this point in time: Waldo Emerson would reminisce in his journal, during August 1841, that:

I remember when a child in the pews on Sundays amusing myself with saying over common words as “black,” “white,” “board,” &c twenty or thirty times, until the word lost all meaning & fixedness, & I began to doubt which was the right name for the thing, when I saw that neither had any natural relation, but all were arbitrary. It was a child’s first lesson in Idealism. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1813

In regard to events of approximately this year, Waldo Emerson would reminisce in his journal on February 22-24, 1839:

When I was a boy, I was sent by my mother with a dollar bill to buy me a pair of shoes at Mr Baxter’s shop, & I lost the bill; & remember being sent out by my disappointed mother to look among the fallen leaves under the poplar trees opposite the house for the lost bank note.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

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August 24, Wednesday: Viscount Castlereagh arrived at Paris, where he would be meeting with King Louis XVIII and Talleyrand before traveling on to Vienna.

As part of a conflict that was essentially a continuation of the American Revolution by way of a dispute over the seas and over the border of Canada, on this day and the following one a British army defeated hastily assembled defenders of Washington DC including 114 US Marines at Bladensburg, just north of the capital. The British would go on to burn Washington, including the White House and most of the 3,076 books and 53 maps, charts, and plans of the Library of Congress, along with paintings of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette by Madame Vigee Lebruin. They would also put the chambers of the House and the Senate to the torch — but beware, it is sheer mythology that the books were used as kindling for the fire in the legislative chambers.1

Waldo Emerson would reminisce in his journal in about April or May of 1856 about a British-invasion-of- scare that had occurred in about this period of his childhood:2

I have but one military recollection in all my life. In 1813 or 1814, all Boston, young & old, turned out to build the fortifications on Noddle’s Island; and, the Schoolmaster at the Latin School announced to the boys, that, if we wished, we might all go on a certain day to work on the Island. I went with the rest in the ferry boat, & spent a summer day; but I cannot remember that I did any kind of work. I remember only the pains we took to get water in our tin pails, to relieve our intolerable thirst. I am afraid not valuable effect of my labor remains in the existing defences.

Because of the perceived danger that the English navy would besiege Boston, the Emerson family then moved to Concord. Ralph Waldo attended the wooden schoolhouse in Concord square. He recited not only in school but also from the top of the sugar barrel in Deacon John White’s store nearby. Here is a silhouette of the “pilgrim profile” of Emerson’s aunt Mary Moody Emerson, who would loom large in his life though she stood

1.There is a patriotic or accommodative story in which the invading British army is persuaded not to burn the Library of Congress, by being reminded of the ignominy of the burning of the Library of Alexandria in antiquity. This story sacrifices historical accuracy to patriotism or to accommodationism. Contrast this with another story which has a much greater likelihood of having been the truth, that the British were retaliating to the 1812 burning of the Canadian congressional library in York (Toronto) by an American expeditionary force. 2. We do not know whether Emerson was referring here to Head Master William Bigelow or to his successor Benjamin Apthorp Gould, a senior at Harvard College, for during 1814 after nine trying years Head Master Bigelow was being replaced in an attempt to restore order and scholarship (many features of the Boston Latin School of today –among them the “misdemeanor mark” and the practice of declamation– would be initiated during this disciplinary period.

I (Austin Meredith) have my own recollections similar to this, from World War II in San Diego CA. Have you seen the movie “1943”? –It is exceedingly accurate to the spirit of the times, while the necessary task of routing all Americans of Japanese ancestry into the new concentration camps in the inland desert was still going on, and the utter cooperation of the civilian (white) population, real Americans, was vitally needed by our government authorities. As a 6-year-old my parents had me in a class digging lines of foxholes across a football field, and marching around the parade ground of a religious school where my father was Chaplain, named Brown Military Academy, with a wooden rifle. I lost my first baby tooth when I Left-Ho’d in formation when I should have Right- Ho’d –because the butt of the “rifle” of the boy next to me in formation slapped me up alongside the head– and I sat down on the parade ground and began to cry and was afraid I was going to be courts-martialed. The vicious little yellow Japs were going to invade, the Hearst newspapers were reporting that already they might be lurking offshore in their submarines, just out of sight, and in a port city on the Pacific Ocean we were on the front lines and we needed to be utterly ready to defend our soil with our blood. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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at most 5 feet 0 inches tall, as she appeared in her youth, probably before her return to Malden MA:

THE DEACONS OF CONCORD Joshua Barney was wounded and captured at Bladensburg, Maryland.

THE FALLACY OF MOMENTISM: THIS STARRY UNIVERSE DOES NOT CONSIST OF A SEQUENCE OF MOMENTS. THAT IS A FIGMENT, ONE WE HAVE RECOURSE TO IN ORDER TO PRIVILEGE TIME OVER CHANGE, A PRIVILEGING THAT MAKES CHANGE SEEM UNREAL, DERIVATIVE, A MERE APPEARANCE. IN FACT IT IS CHANGE AND ONLY CHANGE WHICH HDT WHAT? INDEX

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WE EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, TIME BEING BY WAY OF RADICAL CONTRAST UNEXPERIENCED — A MERE INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT. THERE EXISTS NO SUCH THING AS A MOMENT. NO “INSTANT” HAS EVER FOR AN INSTANT EXISTED. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1815

Reminiscing in regard to approximately this year of 1815, would confide to his journal in November 1842:

I was a little chubby boy trundling a hoop in Chauncey Place and spouting poetry from Scott & Campbell at the Latin School.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

May 25, Saturday: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 13th birthday. Would the following have occurred in about the year 1816 or 1817 (per his reminiscing to his journal on about September 29th or 30th, 1839)?

When I was thirteen years old, my uncle Samuel Ripley one day asked me, “How is it Ralph, that all the boys dislike you & quarrel with you, whilst the grown people are fond of you?”

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of A Week and Walden: Emerson HDT WHAT? INDEX

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For sure Emerson was nothing like James Holley Garrison, the more obstreperous of the two Garrison boys, who would later brag in his BEHOLD ME ONCE MORE about how he and his buddy teenager had so much blackstrap rum one day, in Lynn in like this year, that his clothing fell off:

Blackstrap sold for 16 cents per quart and Satarday every apprentice an boy laid in his half a gallon for Sunday. One Sunday I with another boy had 2 gallons. This we stowed in a field adjoining the turnpike road. About 12 o’clock in the day both of us being drunk we resolved to have some sport as we called it. When the meeting was let out, we stripped off our clothes and like naked savages in their barbarous state, persued all the girls as they came along from meeting. Colonel Brimblecoms dauthers I chased into their house and nothing was said to me about it, only as a joke. ... In L[ynn] tidemen went around every Sunday to keep people from walking about in church time. It so happened that one of these came across a young fellow by the name of James Phineous Winthrop and my self. He asked us why we want in church. I told him I did not make a practice of going there. “If your not in Church this afternoon you must suffer the consequences,” said he, and left us. In the afternoon he came into a shoemakers shop were we were drinking and ordered us to Church. We took him neck and heels and put him out door. The next morning I received a note saying he was willing to settle it by my paying 15 dollers. I had not 16 cents in the world to bless myself, my clothes most all gorn and I nothing before me but a prison. We immediately sold our tools, but not all of them keeping one set for our selves. All the money we could raise was two dollers with hardly a shift of clothes to our back. We scarcely had got our tools packed before the High Sherrif and his brother a constable made their appearance. Snatching up what we had got we fled to the hills and traveling through Sagus we crossed the Ma[r]shes and arrived in Boston that night. My partner had been to sea. Taken me to a sailors boarding house we got supper and lodgeing. That night we played cards for Rum and lost all our money but one quarter of a doller. In the morning we got a pint of black strap, some tobacco, a few smoked herring, and brisket — which took all our money and we started for Providence penniless.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON

George Gordon, Lord Byron arrived at Geneva and took lodgings at the Hôtel d’Angleterre, Sécheron.

Caroline Lamb’s GLENARVON, the hero of which roman-à-clef was meant to be identified as her lover Lord Byron.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge published his incomplete “Christabel” (three editions in May-June 1816), his HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“Kubla Khan” (written in 1797), and his “Pains of Sleep,” and republished his “The Ancient Mariner.”

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day [sic] 25th of 5 M / This morning early, the news of the decease of Capt John Earl of Smithfield reached Town. His age was about 72 Years an affective event to his family & all his connections & friends, of the latter but a few men had More RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1818

Waldo Emerson to his journal on February 22-24, 1839, reminiscing about approximately this year:

When I was in College, Robert Barnwell, the first scholar in my class put his hand on the back of my head to feel for the bump of ambition, & pronounced that it was very very small.

(What goes around comes around. 43 years later, as we know, Waldo would place his hand on the back of Henry Thoreau’s skull, so to speak, feeling for his bump of ambition — and pronounce it distressingly small. Was this his revenge for the put-down he had suffered from the Robert Barnwell who had been the first scholar of Harvard College’s Class of 1821?) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 2, Friday: Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

Spring has returned and has begun to unfold her beautiful array, to throw herself on wildflower couches, to walk abroad on the hills and summon her songsters to do her sweet homage. The Muses have issued from the library and costly winter dwelling of their votaries, and are gone up to build their bowers on Parnassus, and to melt their ice-bound fountains. Castalia is flowing rapturously and lifting her foam on high. The hunter and the shepherd are abroad on the rock and the vallies echo to the merry, merry horn. The Poet, of course, is wandering, while Nature's thousand melodies are warbling to him. This soft bewitching luxury of vernal gales and accompanying beauty overwhelms. It produces a lassitude which is full of mental enjoyment and which we would not exchange for more vigorous pleasure. Although so long as the spell endures, little or nothing is accomplished, nevertheless, I believe it operates to divest the mind of old and worn-out contemplations and bestows new freshness upon life, and leaves behind it imaginations of enchantment for the mind to mould into splendid forms and gorgeous fancies which shall long continue to fascinate, after the physical phenomena which woke them have ceased to create delight. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1820

January 25, Tuesday: While yet 16 years of age Waldo Emerson began his lifelong journal at Harvard College, calling this at first “The Wide World” and referring to himself by his current pen name, “Junio.” There are 12 of 13 booklets in existence, made out of sheets of unlined foolscap, folded folio and hand-stitched into gatherings which were then re-stitched to form a simple uncovered booklet. Book 5 has never been located.

Mixing with the thousand pursuits & passions & objects of the world as personified by Imagination is profitable & entertaining. These pages are intended at this their commencement to contain a record of new thoughts (when they occur); for a receptacle of all the old ideas that partial but peculiar peepings at antiquity can furnish or furbish; for tablet to save the wear & tear of weak Memory & in short for all the various purposes & utility real or imaginary which are usually comprehended under that comprehensive title Common Place book. O ye witches assist me! enliven or horrify some midnight lucubration or dream (whichever may be found more convenient) to supply this reservoir when other resources fail. Pardon me Fairy Land! rich region of fancy & gnomery, elvery, sylphery, & Queen Mab! pardon me for presenting my first petition to your enemies but there is probably one in the chamber who maliciously influenced me to what is irrevocable; pardon & favor me! — & finally Spirits of Earth, Air, Fire, Water, wherever ye glow, whatsoever you patronize, whoever you inspire, hallow, hallow, this devoted paper. — Dedicated & Signed Jan 25, 1820, Junio. — HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In his journal for this year, on the road to Stonewall,3 Waldo Emerson would attempt to deal with a disturbingly homoerotic attraction: In an 1820 journal Emerson addresses what was for him apparently an anxiety-ridden collision with homoerotic experience. There he describes a passion, inexplicable even to him who had explained Nature itself, for a young man named Martin Gay. This passion both unnerved and fascinated him. His puzzlement echoes in his diary entry asking of Gay, “Why do you look after me? I cannot help looking out as you pass.” The friendship, frustratingly, remained distant, and so Emerson transformed what little reality he possessed into a more useful fiction, writing a brief play that he accredited to an invented author. The author is Froedmer; his play is “The Friends.” Gay appears in it as Malcolm, and Emerson drew a little sketch in the text, beneath which he wrote as a plea to his friend, “grant me still in joy or sorrow / In grief or hope to claim thy heart.” Froedmer/ Emerson writes lines even more intense: “Malcolm I love thee more than women love” (Gilman et al., 1: 291-92). Malcolm and Froedmer join hands there with David and Jonathan, whose love in the Bible was described as passing the love of woman.

There is a strange face in the Freshman class whom I should like to know very much. He has a great deal of character in his features & should be a fast friend or a bitter enemy. His name is Gay. I shall endeavour to become acquainted with him & wish if possible that I might be able to recall at a future period the singular sensations which his presence produced at this.

(The last name only is used, and it is crossed out in the journal.)

3. Refer to Bryne R.S. Fone’s A ROAD TO STONEWALL: MALE HOMOSEXUALITY AND HOMOPHOBIA IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1750-1969. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 21, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 21 of 10th M / Our Morng Meeting seemed to be a remarkably solid season, soon after we were settled, life rose HDT WHAT? INDEX

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in my mind, & I thought spread - Mary Morton was engaged in a very lively solid & pertinent testimony In the Afternoon we were favoured with a good degree of the Mornings Solidity & some reverences & the Meeting closed in Silence. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

In England they are hardened by long unquestioned custom to survey with indifference this odious spectacle [of political corruption]. Indeed I know not what of malignant crime, of dark enormity, or wide-spread wickedness would startle the public mind there. I am proud and thankful when I contrast this with the uncontaminated innocence of my own country and it is this comparative purity joined to the energy of a youthful people still free from the complicated difficulties of an old government which constitutes the distinction and promise of this nation [the USA].

1822

May 1, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

The peace of Europe of right belongs to the perfection of its police. There is no such mixture of disagreeable truth, in the quiet of our own nation. The entire internal repose of this country owes nothing to vigorous restriction or armed law. The spirit of the people is peace, & the sword at its side is for ornament rather than use.

John Phillips became Boston’s 1st Mayor.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day This morning Walked again to Greenwich - took quarters with cousin Wanton - & went to Select Meeting which was a season of quiet, but I believe no great flow of life tho’ a sense of thankfulness was felt undebr a sense of unity among the brethren.— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 7, Tuesday: The Church of St. Pancras was consecrated in London (this Greek Revival structure was a design by William and Henry Inwood).

Die Rose, a song by Franz Schubert to words of von Schlegel, was published in the Zeitschrift fur Kunst, Vienna.

Waldo Emerson confessed in his journal that he has just recovered from a recurrence of an annual depression:

I have a return of the identical thoughts & temperament which I had a year ago. But this Sun shines upon ... a changed person in condition, in hope.... now I’m a hopeless Schoolmaster.... Hope, it is true, still hangs out, though at a further distance, her gay banners; but I have found her a cheat once, twice, many times, and shall I trust the deciever [sic] again? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE 1ST TUESDAY IN MAY WAS THE ANNUAL “MUSTER DAY,” ON WHICH ALL THE ABLEBODIED WHITE MEN OF A TOWN WERE SUPPOSEDLY REQUIRED TO FALL INTO FORMATION, WITH THEIR PERSONAL FIREARMS, TO UNDERGO THEIR ANNUAL DAY OF MILITARY TRAINING AND MILITIA INDOCTRINATION. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 12, Sunday: “My manner was not such as to satisfy myself.” The Reverend Convers Francis of Watertown, exchanged pulpits for the day with the Reverend Ezra Ripley of Concord. His prooftext for the Concord morning service was John 14:6 and his topic was “The Way, the truth, and the Life.” His prooftext for the afternoon service was Romans 14:12 and his topic was “On the Accountability of God.”

Waldo Emerson to his journal (a crossed out entry):

I have a nasty appetite which I will not gratify.

(We may wonder for how many minutes he was able to hold out.)

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s boat, the Don Juan, arrived.

Gaetano Donizetti’s dramma La zingara to words of Tottola was performed for the initial time, in the Teatro Nuovo, Naples. The composer would remark “the public was certainly not stingy with compliments.”

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: [obscured] day 12 of 5 M / A favoured Meeting this morning H Dennis was [obscured] afed in a lively testimony — In the Afternoon rather lean to m RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

THE FALLACY OF MOMENTISM: THIS STARRY UNIVERSE DOES NOT CONSIST OF A SEQUENCE OF MOMENTS. THAT IS A FIGMENT, ONE WE HAVE RECOURSE TO IN ORDER TO PRIVILEGE TIME OVER CHANGE, A PRIVILEGING THAT MAKES CHANGE SEEM UNREAL, DERIVATIVE, A MERE APPEARANCE. IN FACT IT IS CHANGE AND ONLY CHANGE WHICH WE EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, TIME BEING BY WAY OF RADICAL CONTRAST UNEXPERIENCED — A MERE INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THERE EXISTS NO SUCH THING AS A MOMENT. NO “INSTANT” HAS EVER FOR AN INSTANT EXISTED.

June 9, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Upon a mountain-solitude a man instantly feels a sensible exaltation and a better claim to his rights in the universe. He who wanders in the woods percieves [sic] how natural it was to pagan imagination to find gods in every deep grove & by each fountain head. Nature seems to him not to be silent but to be eager & striving to break out into music. Each tree, flower, and stone, he invests with life & character; and it is impossible that the wind which breathes so expressive a sound amid the leaves — should mean nothing.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 9 of 6 M / Having been very unwell for some days, was bled this morning in my right Arm, which prevented my attending the morning Meeting - In the Afternoon Father Rodman & D Buffum were engaged in lively & pertinent testimony — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Emerson’s Journals “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 4, Monday: Camillus Griffith, a slaveowner’s agent, arrived in New Bedford on this day. It soon became clear that he had come to search out a black man who had been known in Virginia as William, who had arrived in New Bedford in 1817 or 1818.

In New Bedford, this man had been introducing himself as John Randolph, and he had been so listed on the occasion of the 1820 census, with two others in his household. Griffith asserted that Randolph had helped two slaves, Arthur and Lucy Cooper, escape from a Virginia plantation on board the Regulator, a New Bedford coasting vessel owned by John Avery Parker and Weston Howland. Griffith had already been to Nantucket to attempt to recover the Coopers, but although he had found them, the white Nantucketers apparently had interfered with his making off with them. So, he had decided to see if he would have better luck in New Bedford with the John Randolph case. Griffith went to Randolph’s New Bedford home and, according to the New Bedford Mercury, “dragged [Randolph] from his family, manacled, and forced towards perpetual bondage, and all for no other crime than the exercise of that freedom to which, by the law of nature every man is entitled.” A Boston district court judge had assured him he would need no warrant to make such an arrest — to justify his seizure of Randolph, therefor, he merely displayed his power of attorney to act on behalf of the estate to which the slaves were said to belong. Nathan Johnson would attend a local hearing of the case. It would seem that the white men at this hearing suspected Johnson, for a half-century later he would remark to a reporter for the New Bedford Republican Standard that a white man positioned himself behind him “with a heavy pair of tongs in his hand ready to brain him if there was any attempt made for Randolph’s liberation.” The New Bedford magistrates would refuse to hear the case, so Griffith would go to court instead in Taunton. At some point, according to Griffith, Randolph, despite his handcuffs, made a dash for a window. “When I attempted to stop him, I received some blows.” Then, while Griffith was leading Randolph into a carriage to take him to Taunton, “he was rescued from me by ten writs of debts alleged to be due by him.” These writs of debt had been constructed as a delaying tactic by Friend William W. Swain and Friend Thomas Rotch. Eventually Swain and Rotch would file charges against Griffith, of assault and battery and false imprisonment, and get him thrown into the local jail. Waldo Emerson was teaching/tutoring in Chelmsford MA when on November 4th he recorded in his journal:

[Daniel] Webster was chosen representative to Congress by a majority of 1078 votes this morning. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 8, Friday-14, Thursday: According to Anita Haya Patterson’s FROM EMERSON TO KING: DEMOCRACY, RACE, AND THE POLITICS OF PROTEST (NY: Oxford UP, 1997, pages 131-2), at this point Waldo Emerson’s journal demonstrates that Emerson was so thoroughly bemused by the scientistic legitimations of prejudice common in his era that he went with that sort of crap even when it contradicted the very principles upon which our republic ostensibly had been founded, as to be discovered for instance in such foundational documents as the Declaration of Independence:

I believe that nobody now regards the maxim “that all men are born equal,” as any thing more than a convenient hypothesis or an extravagant declamation.... For all the reverse is true, — that all men are born unequal in personal powers and in those essential circumstances, of time, parentage, country, fortune. The least knowledge of the natural history of man adds another important particular to these; namely, of what class of men he belongs to — European, Moor, Tartar, African? Because nature has plainly assigned different degrees of intellect to these different races, and the barriers between are insurmountable. This inequality is an indication of the design of Providence that some should lead, and some should serve.... If we speak in general of the two classes Man and Beast, we say that they are separated by the distinction of Reason, and the want of it.... I saw ten, twenty, a hundred large lipped, lowbrowed black men in the streets who, except in the mere matter of language, did not exceed the sagacity of the elephant. Now is it true that these were created superior to this wise animal, and designed to controul [sic] it? And in comparison with the highest orders of men, the Africans will stand so low as to make the difference which subsists between themselves & the sagacious beasts inconsiderable. It follows from this, that this is a distinction which cannot be much insisted on. [I’ll cut Emerson’s musings short here, and leap to his conclusion:]...are not they an upper order of inferior animals?

She points out that like so many of his contemporaries who were presuming their own race to be inherently and intrinsically superior, Emerson was wont to speculate bloodily that the inferior races, those which could not achieve national status, would most likely be exterminated, but that it would be a serious mistake for us simply to disregard what Emerson has to say on the basis of such a repellent race politics — as we have such a great deal to learn in the process of considering and considering and reconsidering and reconsidering the manner in which his thinking was wrong, and viciously wrong: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The sheer weight of evidence that proves the fact of Waldo Emerson’s racism is disturbing. However, we would miss the focus of this discussion –namely, the historical function of racism in Emerson’s writings– were we simply to dismiss him for exhibiting the racist perceptions of his time.... Emerson’s racism is central to his vision of American nationality — a compelling, myopic vision that must be viewed in the context of a violent policy of westward expansion that prevailed in nineteenth-century America. In NATURE, Emerson’s unmistakable reference to the raciality of the American self allows him to situate that self at the brink of egocentric absolutism: at the same time he expresses a near disavowal of human society represented by ties to the liberal-democratic state in NATURE, Emerson’s racist imagination of the white, male body of Columbus is a framework for social cohesion. For Emerson, race functions to express both a threat to and an affirmation of social order. Generally speaking, Emerson’s racist vision of the representative self is essential for his articulation of a call to revolution — what Henry Thoreau (and, much later, [the Reverend] Martin Luther King, Jr.) would designate as “civil disobedience.”

“Waldo Emerson’s profound racism abated over time, but it never disappeared, always hovering in the background and clouding his democratic vision. Like all too many of his fellow intellectuals, throughout his life and works Emerson remained convinced that the characteristics that made the , for all its flaws, the great nation of the world were largely the product of its Saxon heritage and history. Here, alas, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s democratic imagination largely failed him.” — Peter S. Field HDT WHAT? INDEX

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YOU SEE, I’M A WHITE MAN HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1823

March 6, Thursday: At the urging of the bride’s mother, Elizabeth Oakes Prince, although still a teenager, and Seba Smith, the editor of a Portland weekly, were wed. From this point into 1838 Elizabeth Oakes Smith would manage the Smith household, which would include not only the members of the blood family but also the boarding apprentices and printers of their The Eastern Argus.

Waldo Emerson mused sophomoronically in his JOURNAL about the rights of man:

My brother Edward asks me Whether I have a right to make use of animals? I answer “Yes,” ... the positive law of Necessity asserts our right. But the use of the sheep for clothing, the ox, the horse, & the ass, for beasts of burden is parallel to these [Arabian & his camel; Northern Islanders & their Whales], and their necessity though less seen is equally strong. “Increase & Multiply” said the Creator to Man; and caused all the brute creation to pass before him & recieve [sic] their names in token of subjection. The use of these enables man to increase & multiply a thousand fold more rapidly, than would be practicable if he abstained from their use. Their universal application to our purposes & especially that remarkable adaptation that is observed in many instances of the Animal to the wants of the country in which he is found constitute the grand Argument on this side.

Franz Schubert’s song Die abgebluhte Linde D.514 to words of Szechernyi was performed for the initial time, in the Vienna Musikverein.

In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 6 of 3 M / Our meeting small in consequence of bad Walking & to me a low time — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 23, Saturday: Waldo Emerson to his JOURNAL at Rice’s Hotel in South Brookfield:

After passing through Leicester, Spencer & North Brookfield I am comfortably seated in South B. 60 miles from home.... My good landlord’s [Mr. Stevens of North Brookfield’s] philanthropic conclusion was, that there was a monitor within and if we minded that, no matter how we speculated.

August 24, Sunday, evening: Waldo Emerson to his JOURNAL:

I rested this Sabbath day on the banks of the Quebog. Mr. Stone, a worthy Calvinist, who had been already recommended to my respect, by the hearty praises of my last-named landlord, preached all day, and reminded me forcibly of one of my idols, Dr. N. of Portland.

In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 22nd [?] of 8 M / Silent Meeting in the forenoon, which was a solid time. — At the conclusion of it I rode with Richard Mitchell to his house & dined, from thence walked to Uncle Stantons to See my Mother who has been there some time & desirous to see me, which I thought a reason for leaving Meeting & which I did in some streightness of Mind - After tea Uncle sent the Waggon to bring me home, rode as far as John Woods where [—?] chaise [—?]ome, [—]oining up took me along the rest of the Distance Set the evening with My H & Sister Ruth at Abigail Robinsons. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

August 25, Monday, afternoon: Waldo Emerson to his JOURNAL at Clapp’s Hotel in Belchertown:

After passing through W. Brookfield I breakfasted among some right worshipful waggoners at the pleasant town of Western, and then passed through a part of Palmer (I believe) & Ware to this place.

By the evening of the 25th, Emerson had made it to Bartlett’s in Amherst. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 28, Thursday: Giacomo Costantino Beltrami arrived at what he conjectured to be the source of the Mississippi River, as well as the Red River of the North, in what eventually would become the Minnesota Territory, naming the place Giulia after his deceased friend back in Italy, Giulia Spada dei Medici, and naming other lakes nearby after her eight children.

In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 28th of 8th M / Rode with my H to Portsmouth to attend the Monthly Meeting - went out the West Road stoped at Uncle Peter Lawtons — In the first Meeting [—] Dennis & Father Rodman bore short testimonies — [—] the last Jonathon Nichols of Salem published his intentions of Marriage with Sister Elizabeth Rodman & Welcome Congdon of Providence his intentions of marriage with Mary Dennis. — The young folk behaved with circumspection, their countenances bespeaking that [their] minds were impressed with the importance of the [—] State of life they were about to enter. — we dined at Uncle Thurstons, as did also Jonathon & Elizabeth, Father & Mother Rodman, David Buffum & wife, Brother David Rodman & his wife, & Sister Ruth & Mary Rodman. After dinner Rode down to Uncle Stantons & took tea with them, where I found My Mother ins usual health & spirits. — The Life of religion has been low with me today, but have made some [— ausens] after it, with a little success. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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On approximately this day, Waldo Emerson wrote in his JOURNAL:

Tuesday Morning I engaged Mr Bartlett to bring me to Mrs Shepard’s.... After spending three days very pleasantly at Mrs Shepard’s, among orators, botanists, mineralogists, & above all, Ministers, I set off on Friday Morning with Thos Greenough & another little cousin in a chaise to visit Mount Holyoke. How high the hill may be, I know not; for, different accounts make it 8, 12, & 16 hundred feet from the river. The prospect repays the ascent and although the day was hot & hazy so as to preclude a distant prospect, yet all the broad meadows in the immediate vicinity of the mountain through which the Connecticutt [sic] winds, make a beautiful picture seldom rivalled. After adding our names in the books to the long list of strangers whom curiosity has attracted to this hill we descended in safety without encountering rattlesnake or viper that have given so bad fame to the place. We were informed that about 40 people ascend the mountain every fair day during the summer. After passing through Hadley meadows, I took leave of my companions at Northampton bridge, and crossed for the first time the far famed Yankee river.... In the afternoon I set out on my way to VENUS Greenfield intending to pass the Sabbath with George Ripley.... GEORGE RIPLEY By the light of the Evening star, I walked with my reverend uncle [the Reverend Ripley], a man who well sustains the character of an aged missionary.... After a dreamless night, & a most hospitable entertainment I parted from Greenfield & through an unusually fine country, crossed the Connecticut (shrunk to a rivulet in this place somewhere in Montagu).... From Mr Haven’s garret bed I sallied forth Tuesday morng [sic] towards Hubbardston, but my cramped limbs made little speed. After dining in Hubbardston I walked seven miles farther to Princeton designing to ascend Wachusett with my tall cousin Thomas Greenough if I should find him there, & then set out for home in the next day’s stage. But when morning came, & the stage was brought, and the mountain was a mile & a half away — I learned again an old lesson, that, the beldam Disappointment sits at Hope’s door. I jumped into the stage & rode away, Wachusett untrod.... Close cooped in a stage coach with a score of happy dusty rustics the pilgrim continued his ride to Waltham, and alighting there, spent an agreeable evening at Rev. Mr Ripley’s Home he came from thence the next morning, right glad to sit down once more in a quiet wellfed family — at Canterbury. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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One Sunday in October: Waldo Emerson was deeply impressed by a “Discourse upon Revelation” by the Reverend William Ellery Channing, preaching in the Reverend Frederic Henry Hedge’s Federal Street Church in Boston:

I heard Dr Channing deliver a discourse upon Revelation as standing in comparison with Nature. I have heard no sermon approaching in excellence to this, since the Dudleian Lecture. The language was a transparent medium, conveying with the utmost distinctness, the pictures in his mind, to the minds of the hearers. He considered God’s word to be the only expounder of his works, & that Nature had always been found insufficient to teach men the great doctrines which Revelation inculcated. Astronomy had in one or two ways an unhappy tendency. An universe of matter in which Deity would display his power & greatness must be of infinite extent & complicate relations and of course too vast to be measured by the eye & understanding of man. Hence errors. Astron. reveals to us infinite number of worlds like our own accommodated for the residence of such beings as we of gross matter. But to kindle our piety & urge our faith, we do not want such a world as this but a purer, a world of morals & of spirits. La Place has written in the mountain album of Switzerland his avowal of Atheism. Newton had a better master than Suns & Stars. He learned of heaven ere he philosophized, & after travelling through mazes of the universe he returned to bow his laurelled head at the feet of Jesus of Nazareth. Dr C. regarded Revelation as much a part of the order of things as any other event. It would have been wise to have made an abstract of the Discourse immediately.

ASTRONOMY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 21, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his JOURNAL:

Who is he that shall controul [sic] me? Why may not I act & speak & write & think with entire freedom? What am I to the Universe, or, the Universe, what is it to me? Who hath forged the chains of Wrong & Right, of Opinion & Custom? And must I wear them? Is Society my anointed King? Or is there any mightier community or any man or more than man, whose slave I am? I am solitary in the vast society of beings; I consort with no species; I indulge no sympathies. I see the world, human, brute & inanimate nature; I am in the midst of them, but not of them; I hear the song of the storm — the Winds & warring Elements sweep by me — but they mix not with my being. I see cities & nations & witness passions — the roar of their laughter — but I partake it not; — the yell of their grief — it touches no chord in me; their fellowships & fashions, lusts & virtues, the words & deeds they call glory & shame — I disclaim them all. I say to the Universe, Mighty one! thou art not my mother; Return to chaos, if thou wilt, I shall still exist. I live. If I owe my being, it is to a destiny greater than thine. Star by Star, world by world, system by system shall be crushed — but I shall live.

Horace Mann, Sr. was admitted to practice law before the Norfolk Court of Common Pleas in Massachusetts.

In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 21st of 12 M 1823 / Solid good testimonys in the Morng from D Buffum & H Dennis — Nearly silent in the Afternoon — My mind not wholly destitute of good, but a low time, Oh that I may receive half from whence it is only to be substantially derived. Set the evening mostly with our fr Abigail Robinson, by whom I learned the Severe illness of her Sister Mary Morton. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

January 10?: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Aristocracy is a good sign. Aristocracy has been the hue & cry in every community where there has been anything good, any society worth associating with, since men met in cities. It must be every where. ’Twere the greatest calamity to have it abolished.... Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

The theological notions of a Chinese are anomalous I trust in besotted perversity. The godhead that infests his thoughts is a certain cleverness & skill that implies no merit in the divinity but of which the yellow man may avail himself as he would of the swiftness of a horse or the fecundity of the earth. So he prays to his God for an event; if his prayer be answered he puts a copper or two on his shrine; if not, he curses & kicks him; the day, it may be, is not distant when the huge & sluggard wave of oriental population shall be stirred & purified by the conflict of counter currents, when the Resurrection of the East shall cast off the incubus that has so long ridden its torpid mind. Metaphysicians are mortified to find how entirely the whole materials of understanding are derived from sense. No man is understood who speculates on mind or character until he borrows specific imagery of Sense. A mourner will try in vain to explain the extent of his bereavement better than to say a chasm is opened in society. I fear the progress of Metaphysical philosophy may be found to consist in nothing else than the progressive introduction of apposite metaphors.

CHINESE

February 17, Tuesday: Giacomo Costantino Beltrami accepted an invitation to address the Freemasons of New Orleans, about his adventures.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Pliny’s uncle had a slave read while he eat [sic]. In the PLINY progress of Watt & Perkin’s philosophy the day may come when the scholar shall be provided with a Reading Steam Engine; when he shall say Presto — & it shall discourse eloquent history — & Stop Sesame & it shall hush to let him think. He shall put in a pin, & hear poetry; & two pins, & hear a song. that age will discover Laputa. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February-March: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I notice that Words are as much governed by Fashion as dress, both in written & spoken style. A negro said of another today “That’s a curious genius.”

March: Waldo Emerson had recourse in his journal, in this year in which a prisoner would hang in Boston for murder, to the very available metaphor of hanging as a conventional vehicle for the expression of contempt or annoyance toward China and things Chinese:

The Celestial Empire — hang the Celestial Empire! I hate Pekin. I will not drink of the waters of the Yellow Sea.... I hate China. ’Tis a tawdry vase. Out upon China. Words! Words.

Nowadays, of course, to express such a sentiment of contempt or annoyance, we would likely utilize instead of a piss metaphor, “drink the waters of the Yellow Sea,” a sexual metaphor that would be equally HDT WHAT? INDEX

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questionable, and exclaim “China — fuck China! I hate Beijing.”4

How different this is from the manner in which Thoreau would speak of the Celestial Empire:

WALDEN: I have always endeavored to acquire strict business PEOPLE OF habits; they are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with WALDEN the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough. You will export such articles as the country affords, purely native products, much ice and pine timber and a little granite, always in native bottoms. These will be good ventures. To oversee all the details yourself in person; to be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the accounts; to read every letter received, and write or read every letter sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and day; to be upon many parts of the coast almost at the same time; –often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore;– to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise; to keep up a steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of the markets, prospects of war and peace every where, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and civilization, –taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in navigation;– charts to be studied, the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendly pier, –there is the untold fate of La Perouse;– universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phoenicians down to our day; in fine, account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand. It is a labor to task the faculties of a man, – such problems of profit and loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a universal knowledge.

JEAN-FRANÇOIS DE GALOUP I offer, however, that it is worth taking into account, in this Emersonian usage of the expression “hang” to express contempt or annoyance, “hang the Celestial Empire,” that hanging is not only a practice of American state murder, but is also a practice of American household torture. For instance, in this same year of 1824 in which

4. Actually, my sister-in-law, who as a simultaneous translator used to have to fly CAAC into Beijing several times a year, used to be saying this constantly — Cantonese has a whole lot of very expressive swear words. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Emerson is sitting in his study in Concord employing that locution in his journal, farther south, at Holm Hill

Farm where he had been born to Lloyd Plantation on the Wye River, a six-year-old slave named Freddy (later to be better known under the name ) is observing his young and pretty Aunt Hester being tortured by Aaron Anthony –the white owner who, apparently, was Freddy’s father– by being suspended from HDT WHAT? INDEX

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a joist in the kitchen and horse-whipped.

The child notices how his father/owner rolls up his sleeves before beginning to lash his aunt. He runs and hides in a closet not so much out of horror at the sight of the splattering gore, he says, as out of terror of being himself suspended and whipped, for as a child would see such things primally, “I expected it would be my turn next” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to be thus hung from the kitchen ceiling and lashed:

The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin. I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing.

April 18, Easter Sunday: In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 18 of 4 M 1824 / Hard meetings but a degree of favour in the Afternoon - H Dennis & J D was engaged in short testimony in the forenoon & in the Afternoon Jonathon spoke pertinently in a few words RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I cannot accurately estimate my chances of success, in my profession, & in life. Were it just to judge the future from the past, they would be very low. In my case I think it is not. I have never expected success in my present employment. My scholars are carefully instructed, my money is faithfully earned, but the instructor is little wiser. & the duties were never congenial with my disposition. Thus far the dupe of hope I have trudged on with my burden at my back, and my eye fixed on the distant hill where my burden would fall. It may be I shall write dupe a long time to come & the end of life shall intervene betwixt me & the release. My trust is that my profession shall be my regeneration of mind, manners, inward & outward estate; or rather my starting point, for I have hoped to put on eloquence as a robe, and by goodness and zeal and the awfulness of virtue to press & prevail over the false judgments, the rebel passions & corrupt habits of men. We blame the past, we magnify & gild the future and are not wiser for the multitude of days. Spin on, Ye of the adamantine spindle, spin on, my fragile thread. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1825

February: Waldo Emerson visited ex-President John Adams:5

To-day, at Quincy, with my brother, by invitation of Mr. Adams’s family. The old President sat in a large stuffed arm-chair, dressed in a blue coat, black small-clothes, white stockings, and a cotton cap covered his bald head. We made our compliment, told him he must let us join our congratulations to those of the nation on the happiness of his house. He thanked us, and said, “I am rejoiced, because the nation is happy. The time of gratulation and congratulations is nearly over with me: I am astonished that I have lived to see and know of this event. I have lived now nearly a century: [he was ninety in the following October:] a long, harassed, and distracted life.”— I said, “The world thinks a good deal of joy has been mixed with it.”— “The world does not know,” he replied, “how much toil, anxiety, and sorrow I have suffered.”— I asked if Mr. Adams’s letter of acceptance had been read to him.— “Yes,” he said, and added, “My son has more political prudence than any man that I know who has existed in my time; he never was put off his guard: and I hope he will continue such; but what effect age may work in diminishing the power of his mind, I do not know; it has been very much on the stretch, ever since he was born. He has always been laborious, child and man, from infancy.”— When Mr. J.Q. Adams’s age was mentioned, he said, “He is now fifty-eight, or will be in July” and remarked that “all the Presidents were of the same age: General Washington was about fifty-eight, and I was about fifty-eight, and Mr. Jefferson, and Mr. Madison, and Mr. Monroe.”— We inquired, when he expected to see Mr. Adams.— He said, “Never: Mr. Adams will not come to Quincy, but to my funeral. It would be a great satisfaction to me to see him, but I don’t wish him to come on my account.”— He spoke of Mr. Lechmere, whom he “well remembered to have seen come down daily, at a great age, to walk in the old townhouse,”— adding, “And I wish I could walk as well as he did. He was Collector of the Customs for many years, under the Royal Government.”— E. said, “I suppose, Sir, you would not have taken his place, even to walk as well as he.”— “No,” he replied, “that was not what I wanted.”— HDT WHAT? INDEX

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He talked of Whitefield, and “remembered, when he was a Freshman in college, to have come in to the Old South, [I think,] to hear him, but could not get into the house;— I, however, saw him,” he said, “through a window, and distinctly heard all. He had a voice such as I never heard before or since, he cast it out so that you might hear it at the meeting-house, [pointing towards the Quincy meeting-house,] and he had the grace of a dancing master, of an actor of plays. His voice and manner helped him more than his sermons. I went with Jonathan Sewall.”— “And you were pleased with him, Sir?”— “Pleased! I was delighted beyond measure.”— We asked, if at Whitefield’s return the same popularity continued.— “Not the same fury,” he said, “not the same wild enthusiasm as before, but a greater esteem, as he became more known. He did not terrify, but was admired.”

5. The Reverend had been the great evangelical preacher of the 18th Century. He had been opposed by the pastor of Boston’s First Church, the Reverend Charles Chauncy, who was a rationalist, and after whom the Reverend William Emerson, who succeeded him at First Church in 1799, named his firstborn son: Charles Chauncy Emerson. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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We spent about an hour in his room. He speaks very distinctly for so old a man, enters bravely into long sentences, which are interrupted by want of breath, but carries them invariably to a conclusion, without ever correcting a word. He spoke of the new novels of Cooper, and “Peep at the Pilgrims,” and “Saratoga,” with praise, and named with accuracy the characters in them. He likes to have a person always reading to him, or company talking in his room, and is better the next day after having visitors in his chamber from morning to night. He received a premature report of his son’s election, on Sunday afternoon, without any excitement, and told the reporter he had been hoaxed, for it was not yet time for any news to arrive. The informer, something damped in his heart, insisted on repairing to the meeting-house, and proclaimed it aloud to the congregation, who were so overjoyed that they rose in their seats and cheered thrice. The Reverend Mr. Whitney dismissed them immediately. We were told that his son Judge Adams can at any time excite him in a moment to great indignation. He mentioned to us that he had spoken to the President of the late Plymouth oration & said Mr Everett had ambition enough to publish it doubtless. The old gentleman exclaimed with great vehemence “I would to God there were more ambition in this country, ambition of that laudable kind to excel.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1826

August 3, Thursday: Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal about having on the previous day been present at to hear ’s eulogy for the deceased Thomas Jefferson and John Adams:

Yesterday I attended the funeral solemnities in Faneuil Hall in honor of John Adams & Thomas Jefferson. The Oration of Mr Webster was worthy of his fame & what is much more was worthy of the august occasion.

Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin traveled to Bad Reinerz in Lower Silesia accompanied by his sisters Emilia and Ludwika and his mother. They were there for treatment, especially for Emilia, who was showing symptoms of tuberculosis and was probably contagious. Fryderyk, although ill himself, possibly contracted the disease from her. They would remain there for five weeks.

The family of Samuel Ringgold Ward arrived in New-York, and lodged for the first night with their relatives, the parents of the Reverend Henry Highland Garnet: We lived several years at Waldron’s Landing, in the neighbourhood of the Reeves, Woods, Bacons, and Lippineutts, who were among my father’s very best friends, and whose children were among my schoolfellows. However, in the spring and summer of 1826, so numerous and alarming were the depredations of kidnapping and slave-catching in the neighbourhood, that my parents, after keeping the house armed night after night, determined to remove to a place of greater distance and greater safety. Being accommodated with horses and a waggon by kind friends, they set out with my brother in their arms for New York City, where they arrived on the 3rd day of August, 1826, and lodged the first night with relations, the parents of the Rev. H.H. Garnett, now of Westmoreland, Jamaica. Here we found some HDT WHAT? INDEX

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20,000 coloured people. The State had just emancipated all its slaves — viz., on the fourth day of the preceding month — and it was deemed safer to live in such a city than in a more open country place, such as we had just left. Subsequent events, such as the ease with which my two relatives were taken back in 1828 — the truckling of the mercantile and the political classes to the slave system — the large amount of slaveholding property owned by residents of New York — and, worst, basest, most diabolical of all, the cringing, canting, hypocritical friendship and subserviency of the religious classes to — have entirely dissipated that idea. I look upon Greenwich, New Jersey, the place of my earliest recollections, very much as most persons remember their native place. There I followed my dear father up and down his garden, with fond childish delight; the plants, shrubs, flowers, &c., I looked upon as of his creation. There he first taught me some valuable lessons — the use of the hoe, to spell in three syllables, and to read the first chapter of John’s Gospel, and my figures; then, having exhausted his literary stock upon me, he sent me to school. There I first read the BIBLE to my mother, and read in her countenance (what I then could not read in the book) what that BIBLE was to her. Were my native country free, I could part with any possession to become the owner of that, to me, most sacred spot of earth, my father’s old garden. Had I clung to the use of the hoe, instead of aspiring to a love of books, I might by this time have been somebody, and the reader of this volume would not have been solicited by this means to consider the lot of the oppressed American Negro.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day — Our public Meeting was large & favourd Our frd Wm Almy was alone in service & was large acceptable & edifying - in the last the appointment of Hannah Almy from our Moy [Monthly] Meeting & Jos Metcalf & Lydia Smith from Providence Moy [Monthly] Meeting to the Station of Elders was confirmed. — After Meeting & dined at B Freeborns, & went on to Providence in the Waggon with Nicholas Congdon to attend the School Committee, & arrived at the School House about dark - found John well & spent the evening pleasantly with him & friends there & there lodged — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1827

January: The brown children of Sally Hemings, Eston and Madison, who had not like the very light Beverly and Harriet been able to steal themselves away into white anonymity, were manumitted in the will of Thomas Jefferson.6 During this month Jefferson’s estate went on the market at an asking price of $70,000 for the mansion with its 5,682 acres.

Monticello’s furnishings and slaves were auctioned, and in the years that followed various sightseers would visit the home, finding “souvenirs” of Jeffersoniana among any remaining items, including plants, architectural elements, and chips off his limestone gravestone.

6. Jefferson had lived so profligately that he could not afford to be similarly generous with those of his slaves who were not his relatives or personal progeny — even had he so desired. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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After his death a family member would discover the above sketch prepared by Jefferson, containing instructions for his tombstone. Jefferson had desired that his grave be marked by an obelisk inscribed with the three accomplishments for which he most wished to be remembered, “and not a word more.” This original limestone tombstone is now on Francis Quadrangle at the University of Missouri. It is about 3 feet high. No inscription which had been carved on it is any longer legible. A question of interest is, what was the inscription if any on this original tombstone? (The photographs which follow were taken by my niece Zakiyyah binte Wahab, who is currently a student at the University of Missouri. The bronze tablet she has photographed and photo-enhanced for me is obviously nothing more than a stone lie, since the blocks of material it points itself at are clearly not limestone at all and clearly have not been chipped away at by generations of souvenir-seeking Monticello tourists, and since the inscription this bronze plaque alleges to have copied from the original headstone is not that at all, but is instead a mere copy of what appears now on the belated grave marker at Monticello, which was based on Jefferson’s instructions discovered only after the fact and thus could not have been on that original limestone gravestone. You mustn’t believe every touristy attraction you see in a public place!) Another question of interest is, in precisely what year was the present tall celebratory “grave marker” installed at Monticello? Eston and Madison would live for a time in the mixed-race community of Charlottesville, Virginia, until forced out of the state during its campaign to rid itself of free persons of color. They would emigrate to Ohio, and then Eston would move on from there to Wisconsin, where he would transform himself into the white man “E.H. Jefferson.” Some of his descendants, finding out belatedly about their family’s heritage, would take the opportunity of the 2000 census to declare themselves “black.” Recently, when asked why a middle-class woman who had lived all her life as a white would check “black” on the census, Julia Jefferson Westerinen has responded “Because I can.”

I want to show people I am not afraid to be black.

During this month Emerson jotted in his journal:

We generalize very fast. I very readily learned the Jew face.

January/February: During this month or the following one the Reverend Waldo Emerson made an entry in his journal listing “Peculiarities of the present Age”:

2. It is said to be the age of the first person singular. ... 4. Transcendentalism: Metaphysics & ethics look inward — and France produces Madame de Staël; England, William Wordsworth; America, Sampson Reed; as well as Germany, Emanuel Swedenborg.... HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 10, Wednesday: The Reverend Waldo Emerson sailed for St. Augustine, which had belonged to the US for six years. While there he heard slaves being sold in a . He also met and shared quarters with a nephew of Napoléon Bonaparte (Achille Charles Louis Napoléon, Crown Prince of Naples, Hereditary Prince of Berg, 2nd Prince Murat), a young gentleman of nudist tendencies with precisely the noble atheistic attitudes one might expect of a youth with such connections and a slavemaster whom the young Emerson found he could much admire. On February 27th he would note a piquant detail in his journal:

A fortnight since I attended a meeting of the Bible Society. The Treasurer of this institution is Marshal of the district, and by a somewhat unfortunate arrangement had appointed a special meeting of the Society, and a slave-auction, at the same time and place, one being in the Government house, and the other in the adjoining yard. One ear therefore heard the glad tidings of great joy, while the other was regaled with “Going, gentlemen, going!” And almost without changing our position we might aid in sending the Scriptures into Africa, or bid for “four children without the mother” who had been kidnapped therefrom.

On April 6th in Charleston he would jot in his journal:

A new event is added to the quiet history of my life. I have connected myself by friendship to a man who with as ardent a love of truth as that which animates me, with a mind that surpasses mine in the variety of its research, & sharpened & strengthened to an energy for action to which I have no pretension by advantages of birth & practical connection with mankind beyond almost all men in the world, — is, yet, that which I had ever supposed only a creature of the imagination — a consistent Atheist, — and a disbeliever in the existence, and, of course, in the immortality of the soul. My faith in these points is strong and I trust, as I live, indestructible. Meantime I love and honour this intrepid doubter. His soul is noble, and his virtue, as the virtue of a Sadducee must always be, is sublime. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 3, Thursday: The Reverend Waldo Emerson arrived in Alexandria, Virginia.

Mr Adams went out aswimming the other day into the Potomac and went near to a boat which was coming down the river. Some rude blackguards were in it who not knowing the character of the swimmer amused themselves with laughing at his bald head as it popped up & down in the water & as they drew near threatened to crack open his round pate if he came nigh them. The President of the United States was I believe compelled to wave the point of honour & seek a more retired bathing place.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1828

January 8, Tuesday: In Concord, New Hampshire, the Reverend Waldo Emerson went on the prison tour:

In Concord, N.H. I visited the prison & went into the cells. At this season, they shut up the convicts in these little granite chambers at about 4 o’clock P.M. & let them out, about 7 o’clock A.M. — 15 dreadful hours.

New-York’s annual Tammany Hall dinner, in commemoration of the , was attended by many of the important men of the Republican (democratic) party, such as Benjamin Bailey.

On the verge of impeachment, British Prime Minister Viscount Goderich burst into tears as he presented his resignation to King George IV. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1829

January 17, Saturday: The Yeoman’s Gazette carried a report of an “adjourned meeting of a large number of the Citizens of Concord” which had taken place on January 7th and which had been about the planned formation of a town Lyceum.

The Reverend Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

I am called by an ancient and respectable church to become its pastor. I recognize in these events, ... the hand of my heavenly Father. This happiness awakens in me a certain awe: I know my imperfections: I know my ill-deserts; and the beauty of God makes me feel my own sinfulness the more.... O God direct and guard and bless me, and ... especially her [his fiancée Miss Ellen Louisa Tucker] in whom I am blessed.

In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 17th of 1 M 1829 / I trust I am under a thankful sense of the many favours & mercies which I receive from the good hand & providence of God, who I know has [?] extended kindness towards me far beyond my deserts Various occurrences to day have called to mind some very interesting Scenes & incidents of my early life, & may they long remain. — Yesterday we had a satisfactory letter from our dear John, on his acct we feel a mixture of gratitude & fear - Gratitude that he is doing as well as he is doing, & Fear as to what may befall him in his tender Years. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1830

March 3, Wednesday: Funeral and burial of Elias Hicks.

From the Azores Islands, Queen Maria II of Portugal would rule in opposition to Dom Miguel.

Waldo Emerson in his journal:

Read with admiration and delight Mr. Webster’s noble speech in answer to Hayne. What consciousness of political rectitude, and what confidence in his intellectual treasures must he have to enable him to take this master’s tone. Mr. Channing said he had great “self-subsistence.” The beauty and dignity of the spectacle he exhibits should teach men the beauty and dignity of principles. [He] has mind great enough to see the majesty of moral nature and to apply himself in all his length and breadth to it and magnanimously trust thereto.

DANIEL WEBSTER HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1832

In this year Waldo Emerson made a journal entry which would find its way, in 1841, into his essay “SELF-RELIANCE”:

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Sciopionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 4, Sunday: Jean-François Champollion died in Paris. For his immense symbolic significance during the period of Thoreau’s life, it would be good to refer to John T. Irwin’s “The Symbol of the Hieroglyphics in the American Renaissance.” American Quarterly 26 (1974):103-26.

WALDEN: Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle of all the operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth but patented a leaf. What Champollion will decipher this hieroglyphic for us, that we may turn over a new leaf at last? This phenomenon is more exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fertility of vineyards. True, it is somewhat excrementitious in its character, and there is no end to the heaps of liver lights and bowels, as if the globe were turned wrong side outward; but this suggests at least that Nature has some bowels, and there again is mother of humanity. This is the frost coming out of the ground; this is Spring. It precedes the green and flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry. I know of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and indigestions. It convinces me that Earth is still in her swaddling clothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every side. Fresh curls springs from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag of a furnace, showing that Nature is “in full blast” within. The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit, –not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviæ from their graves. You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it, are plastic like clay in the hands of the potter.

JEAN-FRANÇOIS CHAMPOLLION Waldo Emerson to his journal:

In the year 1832 died Cuvier, Scott, Mackintosh, Goethe, Champollion, Leslie.

In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 4 of 3 M 1832 / Silent Meetings & to me pretty good ones — Trials & I may add tribulations await us - the Conduct of R R in NYork has been such as all true sensibility sickens & revolts at the Idea of. — I am more & more confirmed that The religion of Jesus Christ is the only firm Anchorage for the mind & that as it is lived in, will support under every affliction & will lead & guide in such way & manner as will satisfy the mind of the course to be persued both to obtain happiness here & in an HDT WHAT? INDEX

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after State - I have many times rejoiced in this & been consoled in time of streight & trial RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

March 29, Thursday: After a funeral service, the remains of Muzio Clementi were laid to rest in the Cloisters of Westminster Abbey. The Abbey was packed with mourners, among them were many musicians, including Clementi’s most famous pupil John Field.

A cholera epidemic was officially announced in Paris. Before it would recede during September, some 18,000 would succumb in the city to the disease — some 13,000 during April alone. 7 Waldo Emerson “visited Ellen’s tomb & opened the coffin.”

“Dead Bride”: A Piece of 1804 Necrophilia (notice there’s a nipple peeking at you) ELLEN LOUISA TUCKER EMERSON

I visited Ellen’s tomb & opened the coffin.

7. JOURNALS AND MISCELLANEOUS NOTEBOOKS IV:7. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Emerson biographer Gay Wilson Allen has observed that this act “remains so unnatural as to seem almost insane.” Emerson’s biographer Robert D. Richardson has, however, assured us that this was not some grisly gothic gesture, that what Emerson did in opening not only the family vault but also the coffin itself was in fact not unique to American history. He cites two other contemporary examples of this sort of thing: “The act was essential Emerson. He had to see for himself.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 28, Tuesday: On approximately this evening upon his return from his hiking near Northampton, Waldo Emerson took a walk in Waltham, Massachusetts with his reverend uncle the Reverend George Ripley just after sunset, and in his journal he commented on it as a walk “[b]y the light of the Evening star”! Well

now, obviously, barring a supernova, and barring the surreptitious use of a military night-scope device or perhaps the surreptitious use of the light-gathering power of a pair of 50-power binoculars, no-one can walk by the light of the stars,

so here we have an Emersonian and therefore valuable trope in which Venus is considered as if it were Luna or Sol! Well now, if Emerson used this trope in his journal, he might well also have been using it in his unrecorded conversations, and he had unrecorded conversations with Henry David Thoreau! Therefore Thoreau could have heard Emerson considering Venus as if it were Luna or Sol! Therefore Thoreau may in the concluding chapter of WALDEN have merely been quoting Emerson! –Mein Gott the diligent scholar can HDT WHAT? INDEX

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traverse a great distance in this manner of scholarship! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Tuesday Morning I engaged Mr Bartlett to bring me to Mrs Shepard’s.... After spending three days very pleasantly at Mrs Shepard’s, among orators, botanists, mineralogists, & above all, Ministers, I set off on Friday Morning with Thos Greenough & another little cousin in a chaise to visit Mount Holyoke. How high the hill may be, I know not; for, different accounts make it 8, 12, & 16 hundred feet from the river. The prospect repays the ascent and although the day was hot & hazy so as to preclude a distant prospect, yet all the broad meadows in the immediate vicinity of the mountain through which the Connecticutt [sic] winds, make a beautiful picture seldom rivalled. After adding our names in the books to the long list of strangers whom curiosity has attracted to this hill we descended in safety without encountering rattlesnake or viper that have given so bad fame to the place. We were informed that about 40 people ascend the mountain every fair day during the summer. After passing through Hadley meadows, I took leave of my companions at Northampton bridge, and crossed for the first time the far famed Yankee river.... In the afternoon I set out on my way to Greenfield intending to pass the Sabbath with George Ripley.... By the light of the Evening star, I walked with my reverend uncle, a man who well sustains the character of an aged missionary.... After a dreamless night, & a most hospitable entertainment I parted from Greenfield & through an unusually fine country, crossed the Connecticut (shrunk to a rivulet in this place somewhere in Montagu).... From Mr Haven’s garret bed I sallied forth Tuesday morng [sic] towards Hubbardston, but my cramped limbs made little speed. After dining in Hubbardston I walked seven miles farther to Princeton designing to ascend Wachusett with my tall cousin Thomas Greenough if I should find him there, & then set out for home in the next day’s stage. But when morning came, & the stage was brought, and the mountain was a mile & a half away — I learned again an old lesson, that, the beldam Disappointment sits at Hope’s door. I jumped into the stage & rode away, Wachusett untrod.... Close cooped in a stage coach with a score of happy dusty rustics the pilgrim continued his ride to Waltham, and alighting there, spent an agreeable evening at Rev. Mr Ripley’s Home he came from thence the next morning, right glad to sit down once more in a quiet wellfed family — at Canterbury.

MOUNT HOLYOKE We can see that Emerson made it as far as Princeton MA before he gave up his agenda to climb Mt. Wachusett. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1833

January 2, Wednesday: Il furioso nell’isola di San Domingo, a melodramma by Gaetano Donizetti to words of Ferretti after an anonymous play on the Don Quixote story, was performed for the initial time, in Teatro Valle, Rome. It was an immediate success.

Waldo Emerson to his journal, at sea:

Sailed from Boston for Malta Dec. 25, 1832 in Brig Jasper, Capt Ellis, 236 tons laden with logwood, mahogany, tobacco, sugar, coffee, beeswax, cheese, &c.

February 2, Saturday: The Liberator.

The Jasper, conveying Waldo Emerson, cast anchor at Malta.

So here we are in Malta ... the Quarantine roads for a fortnight ... imprisoned for poor dear Europe’s health lest it should suffer prejudice from the unclean sands & mountains of America. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 7, Thursday: Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka arrived in Venice during his sojourn in Italy, and was most impressed.

At noon Waldo Emerson embarked on a steamboat and passed through the strait of Scylla and Charybdis, between Sicily and the toe of the Italian peninsula. He would view the harborless islands of Stromboli and Lipari and disembark that night in Palermo. He would visit Palermo’s cathedral and palace and university, the tourist-trap monastery of the Capuchins with its stacks of corpses, the public gardens and the gardens of the prince di Buttera, the marina, and the Spedale dei Pazzi. Later he would compare the American Shakers to what he witnessed at this asylum:

A second visit to the Shakers with Mr Hecker. Their family worship was a painful spectacle. I could remember nothing but the Spedale dei Pazzi at Palermo; this shaking of their hands like the paws of dogs before them as they shuffled in this dunce- dance seemed the last deliration. If there was anything of heart & life in this it did not appear to me: and as Swedenborg said that the angels never look at the back of the head so I felt that I saw nothing else. My fellow men could hardly appear to less advantage before me than in this senseless jumping. The music seemed to me dragged down nearly to the same bottom. And when you come to talk with them on their topic, which they are very ready to do, you find such exaggeration of the virtue of celibacy, that you might think you had come into a hospital-ward of invalids afflicted with priapism. Yet the women were well dressed and appeared with dignity as honoured persons. And I judge the whole society to be cleanly & industrious but stupid people. And these poor countrymen with their nasty religion fancy themselves the Church of the world and are as arrogant as the poor negroes on the Gambia river. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 13, Saturday: The Liberator.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I carried my ticket from Mr. Warden to the Cabinet [museum] of Natural History in the Garden of Plants. How much finer things are in composition than alone. ’Tis wise in man to make cabinets. When I was come into the Ornithological Chambers I wished I had come only there. The fancy-coloured vests of these elegant beings make me as pensive as the hues and forms of a cabinet of shells, formerly. It is a beautiful collection and makes the visitor as calm and genial as a bridegroom. The limits of the possible are enlarged, and the real is stranger than the imaginary. Some of the birds have a fabulous beauty. One parrot of a fellow called Psittacus erythropterus from New Holland deserves a special mention as a picture of Raphael in a gallery. He is the beau of all birds. Then the humming birds, little and gay. Least of all is the Trochilus Niger. I have seen beetles larger. Here we are impressed with the inexhaustible riches of nature. The universe is a more amazing puzzle than ever, as you glance along this bewildering series of animated forms, — the hazy butterflies, the carved shells, the birds, beasts, fishes, insects, snakes, and the upheaving principle of life everywhere incipient, in the very rock aping organized forms. Not a form so grotesque, so savage, nor so beautiful but is an expression of some property inherent in man the observer, — an occult relation between the very scorpions and man. I feel the centipede in me, — cayman, carp, eagle, and fox. I am moved by strange sympathies; I say continually “I will be a naturalist.”

During a speech at Exeter hall in London, Nathaniel Paul ridiculed the town fathers of Canterbury, Connecticut. Paul described Prudence Crandall as having “been most inhumanly assailed by the advocate of the Colonization Society, who, in town meetings, passed resolutions against her benevolent object, as spirited as if the cholera were about to break out in the village, and they by a single effort of this kind could hinder its devastations. They could not have acted with more promptness, and energy, and violence, than they did, in persecuting this excellent lady, because her compassion led her to espouse the cause of the suffering blacks.” Especially due to the fact that Nathaniel Paul was a black man, such ridicule, when reported to the white town leaders, would paralyze them with rage.

Robert Schumann wrote Clara Wieck that “a chain of sparks now attracts us or reminds us of one another.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 2, Saturday: The Liberator.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Nature is a language, and every new fact that we learn is a new word; but rightly seen, taken all together, it is not merely a language, but the language put together into a most significant and universal book. I wish to learn the language, not that I may learn a new set of nouns and verbs, but that I may read the great book which is written in that tongue.

The waters of the Thames River passing through London were extraordinarily high (but not as high as they had been on February 16, 1736 when it had been necessary to use boats to convey counsel from Westminster Hall to their carriages, or as they would be on January 29, 1834 when it would be necessary to have watermen to convey Londoners from street to street). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1834

April 11, Friday: Concerto da camera op.10/2 by Valentin Alkan was performed for the initial time, in Bath, England.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Went yesterday to Cambridge and spent most of the day at Mount Auburn [cemetery]; got my luncheon at Fresh Pond, and went back again to the woods. After much wandering and seeing many things, four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see — not to eat, not for love, but only gliding; then a whole bed of Hepatica triloba, cousins of the Anemone, all blue and beautiful, but constrained by niggard nature to wear their last year's faded jacket of leaves; then a black-capped titmouse, who came upon a tree, and when I would know his name, sang chick-a-dee-dee; then a far-off tree full of clamorous birds, I know not what, but you might hear them half a mile; I forsook the tombs, and found a sunny hollow where the east wind would not blow, and lay down against the side of a tree to most happy beholdings. At least I opened my eyes and let what would pass through them into the soul. I saw no more my relation, how near and petty, to Cambridge or Boston; I heeded no more what minute or hour our Massachusetts clocks might indicate — I saw only the noble earth on which I was born, with the great Star which warms and enlightens it. I saw the clouds that hang their significant drapery over us. It was Day — that was all Heaven said. The pines glittered with their innumerable green needles in the light, and seemed to challenge me to read their riddle. The drab oak-leaves of the last year turned their little somersets and lay still again. And the wind bustled high overhead in the forest top. This gay and grand architecture, from the vault to the moss and lichen on which I lay, — who shall explain to me the laws of its proportions and adornments? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I had a visitor today in my ancient oak tree. Walking across the yard I saw a shadow and glanced up in time to see a very large bird light in my tree. It was a red tailed hawk — not unusual for these parts, but fairly uncommon in town. Interestingly, the fellow had caught and was in the process of plucking a very large mourning dove held firmly in his talons. I crept closer for a look as feathers floated downwards. Unfortunately, my sudden presence startled the hawk who released his still living prey. The dove dropped to the ground, but quickly seemed to come to its senses and flew off without even so much as a nod of gratitude to me. (I have two ancient mourning doves in my home as pets, ring necks they are — Pip and Hazel and they are very expressive birds. Their soft cooing is much admired by the neighbors as they spend their summer months in a large cage on my front porch.) I felt both guilty for losing the hawk his dinner and relief for the dove who had narrowly escaped becoming dove tar-tar.

May 21, Wednesday: At Harvard College’s compulsory morning chapel, the prayers became impossible due to the shuffling of student feet and groaning from members of the Sophomore class — save for three students, the entire class would be “rusticated,” that is, sent packing with readmission being only a contingent and eventual possibility.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I will thank God of myself & for that I have. I will not manufacture remorse of the pattern of others, nor feign their joys. I am born tranquil, not a stern economist of Time but never a keen sufferer. I will not affect to suffer. Be my life then a long gratitude. I will trust my instincts. For always a reason halts after an instinct, & when I have deviated from the instinct, comes somebody with a profound theory teaching that I ought to have followed it. Some Goethe, Swedenborg, or Carlyle. I stick at scolding the boy, yet conformably to rule, I scold him. By & by the reprimand is a proven error. “Our first & third thought coincide.” I was the true philosopher in college, & Mr Farrar & Mr Hedge & Dr Ware the false. Yet what seemed then to me less probable? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 26, Thursday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Next door to us lives a young man who is learning to drum. He studies hard at his science every night. I should like to reward his music with a wreath of smilax peduncularis.

Emerson’s “Smilax peduncularis” would be the Smilax herbacea L., also known as “stinkweed” and “carrion flower” on account of its odor, and congratulations to Waldo for having been able to recognize at least one member of the vegetable kingdom! Do you suppose possibly that Emerson’s “drummer” would have been the male Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus, whirring his wing feathers atop a sounding log during the Concord night? Females can lose an initial clutch of eggs to predators and try again, so the males continue into the early summer to advertise their services with their “drum beat at dead of night” (Thomas Campbell’s 1800 poem “Hohenlinden”). –Not until slow-motion moving pictures could be made in 1931 would it be established that this woodland sound was being produced by the male grouse fanning the air. CURRENT YOUTUBE VIDEO

July 18, Friday: Etienne Maurice, comte Gerard replaced Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult, duc de Dalmatie as Prime Minister of France.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

What is there of the divine in a load of bricks? What is there of the divine in a barber’s shop or a privy? Much. All.

December 21, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Blessed is the day when the youth discovers that Within and Above are synonyms.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 21 of 12 M / Our Meetings were both times of some favour, especially in the Morning - Father Rodman was engaged in testimony in both & I thought with useful effect — It is now a time of great stir among the religious professors in many places & Newport comes in for its share. — I hope some good will arise from it, but it is greatly to be feared many will take up with a false rest, as rest short of that which is HDT WHAT? INDEX

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in God thro’ Jesus Christ — Many have gone into the water today & been Baptised, who I fear have not yet known that of the Holy Ghost & Fire to have passed in them. — Oh! that people knew that true Religion does not consist in their own willing & runnings, & that of themselves they can do nothing aright but that all must come from God thro’ Jesus Christ, that is able to effect salvation & that not in the Whirlwind & Fire, but the small still voice must be known & heard, before true progress can be made in Religion — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1835

February 2, Monday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Let Christianity speak ever for the poor & the low. Though the voice of society should demand a defence of slavery from all its organs that service can never be expected from me. My opinion is of no worth, but I have not a syllable of all the language I have learned, to utter for the planter. If by opposing slavery I go to undermine institutions, I confess I do not wish to live in a nation where slavery exists. The life of this world has but a limited worth in my eyes & really is not worth such a price as the toleration of slavery. Therefore though I may be so far restrained by unwillingness to cut the planter’s throat as that I should refrain from denouncing him, yet I pray God that not even in my dream or in madness may I ever incur the disgrace of articulating one word of apology for the slave trader or slave- holder.

In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 2 of 2 M 1835 / Set out this morng on the Stage for Providence - before we got to Durfees Tavern in Portsmouth the Stage Broke down - concluding it would be sometime before they could get repaired I walked on, but by the way got a Man to take his Waggon & carry me to the Ferry - when the Passengers arrived they inform’d me they succeeded in getting under way again in the Stage but they had not proceeded far before the Axle tree broke & the Coach turned bottom upward & tho’ several were hurt none Seriously injured - I could but rejoice that I had taken another way to get to the ferry for if my weight had been added to the others the consequence might have been more serious - Crossed the ferry & again took a Coach & arrived safe at Providence, tho’ we again came near being oversett - the horses taking a shear & running on a side Bank in the road, in consequence of one of the bridles giving way. — Lodged at my Kind friend Moses Browns who was very glad to see me & received me in a kind & affectionate manner. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 19, Thursday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Standing on the bare ground with my head bathed by the blithe air, & uplifted into the infinite space, I become happy in my universal relations.

June 29, Monday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I replied this morn. to the Committee that I would do what I could to prepare a Historical Discourse for the Town Anniversary. Yet why notice it? Centuries pass unnoticed. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 15, Saturday: AThe Liberator.

t a pro-slavery rally in Faneuil Hall, 1,500 prominent Bostonians signed the pledge to support all the constitutional protections of an American’s free right to own other human beings.

Meanwhile, out in Concord, using some of his ready funds from the Tucker estate, Waldo Emerson was paying cash for the 7-year-old “Coolidge Castle” between Revolutionary Ridge and Mill Brook, beside the Cambridge Turnpike near where it joins the Lexington Road in Concord. About $50000 worth of remodeling and landscaping would turn out to be necessary.

I bought my house & two acres six rods of land of John T. Coolidge for 3500 dollars.

The name of the home would be changed by the Emersons to “Bush.” The location of this two-acre plot was not ideal for there was a lot of commerce by wagon and cart, and fast, dust-raising stagecoaches, on these roads, there was an elementary school across the road, and if the windows were open one could occasionally hear screams from the red brick poorhouse on the other side of the brook.8

8. Putt Meriam owned a narrow triangle of land opposite the Emerson home, and wanted to get a good sum of money from Emerson for this land. So he dragged a miserable shed along the road and placed it on this land, where it could be seen from the Emerson home. Under cover of darkness, a band of neighbors equipped with ladders and ropes would pull this spite shed down, but they would make so much noise in the process that Meriam would hear them and run out and manage to jerk a green jacket off one of them as they made their escape. Unfortunately, Meriam would be unable to determine from this green jacket who exactly it was who had pulled down his ugly spite shed. [RE-SITUATE THIS NOTE IF I CAN FIND OUT THE YEAR IN WHICH THIS OCCURRED] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 14, Monday: Miguel Ricardo de Alava Esquivel replaced Jose Maria Queipo de Llano Ruiz de Saravia, conde de Toreno as Prime Minister of Spain.

At the estate of Count Thun-Hohenstein in Cieszyn, Silesia, Frédéric François Chopin said goodbye to his parents for the final time — after spending a month together in Karlsbad and Cieszyn his parents were returning to Poland.

The Waldo Emerson / Lydia Jackson nuptials took place in Plymouth, Massachusetts and waldo began to address his new bride as “Lidian” (also, as “Asia” and as “Queen of Sheba” and as “Queenie”) She would continue to know him as “Mr. Emerson.”

I was married to Lydia Jackson.

During their courtship he had assured her that he was eager to jump her bones: “I do sympathize with the homeliest pleasures and attractions by which our good foster mother Nature draws her children together.” So, this was the night on which the lady found out whether or not the gentleman had been telling the truth.

October 21, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson made a note in his journal about an initial visit to his home in Concord by Bronson Alcott:

Last Saturday night came hither Mr Alcott & spent the Sabbath with me. A wise man, simple, superior to display. & drops the best things as quietly as the least. Every man, he said, is a Revelation, & ought to write his Record. But few with the pen.

That night, just back in Boston from his visit to Emerson in Concord, Alcott would be visiting William Lloyd Garrison in the jail on Leverett Street. (What was Garrison doing in the Boston lockup? –Read on.)

Having met with brickbats in Concord, New Hampshire and garbage, raw eggs, and rocks in Lowell MA, and having been seriously injured by being hit in the face with a rock in Ohio, and having been denounced by President in a message to Congress, the English anti-slavery reformer George Thompson had been reduced to making his return plans in secret because of concern that pro-slavery activists would attempt to kidnap him (presumably to tar and feather him).9 He had fled Boston Harbor in a rowboat in order to board a British ship leaving for New Brunswick.

9. Safely back in England, George Thompson would be elected to Parliament. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Back ashore, in what would come to be known as the “Gentlemen’s Riot” carried out by a downtown Boston group of swells associated with State Street and Milk Street which sometimes referred to itself as “the broadcloth mob,” what had been planned as a protest against a scheduled lecture by Thompson on behalf of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society transformed itself into a mob of several thousand persons which stormed the meeting while the women prayed for the protection of God. They came uncomfortably close to tarring and feathering the substitute speaker.10

STATE STREET, BOSTON

This substitute, Garrison, was saved only by the intervention of Boston’s mayor, who –despite the fact that there was a mayoral election coming up in December– dealt personally with this proslavery mob.

To the people who were engaging in the antislavery struggle, this year of 1835 would become known as “the mob year.” The riot against Garrison in Boston was far from the only one. The North was having what Grimsted refers to as a “riot conversation” with the South, in an attempt to reassure it that its institution of human enslavement would be tolerated, and that opposition to this institution would not be allowed to interfere with the flow of business. There was therefore also an assault on this day upon Henry B. Stanton in Newport, and an assault upon Samuel May in Montpelier. No great personal injury or property damage resulted, as that was not the point: PAGE 27 GRIMSTED: The day’s riotous work was the North’s final offering of works to prove the sincerity of its stream of words against abolition ... few in the South noted how little damage to property and none to people these careful mobs perpetrated.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould recorded in his journal: 4th day 21 of 10 M / We rode to Portsmouth to attend the Select Meeting - After which we went to Aunt Stantons & spent the Afternoon with her in sympathy with her lonely situation

10. This mob was witnessed by , who, being himself a person of color, of course was unable to interfere. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This is the house that jack bought. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Eyeballing Emerson HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At this annual meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society at the Anti-Slavery Hall, the women were trapped in rooms on the 3d floor as the mob roamed the corridors of the building. The mayor of Boston belatedly arrived with a group of policemen and got the women to disperse, but Garrison was in his office and was left alone in the building with the mob. When he crawled through the back window and jumped down into the street, someone saw him and the mob gave chase. He was cornered in a 2d-floor room above a carpenter’s shop into which he had dodged, whereupon there was a wrestling match to see whether he would be flung from the window, or into a tar kettle that had been prepared. The police jailed for the night for his own safety, in the jail on Leverett Street, and he inscribed on the wall there that his offense was “preaching the abominable and dangerous doctrine that all men have been created equal.” Here is a fuller account of the action: It was in the midst of such intense and widespread excitement that Boston called its meeting to abolish the Abolitionists. It was the month of August, and the heat of men’s passions was as great as the heat of the August sun. The moral atmosphere of the city was so charged with inflammable gases that the slightest spark would have sufficed to produce an explosion. The Abolitionists felt this and carried themselves the while with unusual circumspection. They deemed it prudent to publish an address to neutralize the falsehoods with which they were assailed by their enemies. The address drawn up by Garrison for the purpose was thought “too fiery for the present time,” by his more cautious followers and was rejected. The Liberator office had already been threatened in consequence of a fiery article by the editor, denouncing the use of Faneuil Hall for the approaching pro-slavery meeting. It seemed to the unawed and indignant champion of liberty that it were “better that the winds should scatter it in fragments over the whole earth — better that an earthquake should engulf it — than that it should be used for so unhallowed and detestable a purpose!” The anti- abolition feeling of the town had become so bitter and intense that Henry E. Benson, then clerk in the anti-slavery office, writing on the 19th of the month, believed that there were persons in Boston, who would assassinate George Thompson in broad daylight, and doubted whether Garrison or Samuel J. May would be safe in Faneuil Hall on the day of the meeting, and what seemed still more significant of the inflamed state of the public mind, was the confidence with which he predicted that a mob would follow the meeting. The wild-cat-like spirit was in the air — in the seething heart of the populace. The meeting was held August 21st, in the old cradle of liberty. To its call alone fifteen hundred names were appended. It was a Boston audience both as to character and numbers, an altogether imposing affair, over whom the mayor of the city presided and before whom two of the most consummate orators of the commonwealth fulmined against the Abolitionists. One of their hearers, a young attorney of twenty-four, who listened to Peleg Sprague and Harrison Gray Otis that day, described sixteen years afterward the latter and the effects produced by him on that audience. Our young attorney vividly recalled how “‘Abolitionist’ was linked with contempt, in the silver tones of Otis, and all the charms that a divine eloquence and most felicitous diction could throw around a bad cause were given it; the excited multitude seemed actually ready to leap up beneath the magic of his speech. It would be something, if one must die, to die by such a hand — a hand somewhat worthy and able to stifle HDT WHAT? INDEX

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anti-slavery, if it could be stifled. The orator was worthy of the gigantic task attempted; and thousands crowded before him, every one of their hearts melted by that eloquence, beneath which Massachusetts had bowed, not unworthily, for more than thirty years.” Here is a specimen of the sort of goading which the wild-cat-like spirit of the city got from the orators. It is taken from the speech of Peleg Sprague. The orator is paying his respects to George Thompson, “an avowed emissary” “a professed agitator,” who “comes here from the dark and corrupt institutions of Europe to enlighten us upon the rights of man and the moral duties of our own condition. Received by our hospitality, he stands here upon our soil, protected by our laws, and hurls firebrands, arrows, and death into the habitations of our neighbors and friends, and brothers; and when he shall have kindled a conflagration which is sweeping in desolation over our land, he has only to embark for his own country, and there look serenely back with indifference or exultation upon the widespread ruin by which our cities are wrapt in flames, and our garments rolled in blood.” The great meeting was soon a thing of the past but not so its effects. The echoes of Otis and Sprague did not cease at its close. They thrilled in the air, they thrilled long afterward in the blood of the people. When the multitude dispersed Mischief went out into the streets of the city with them. Wherever afterward they gathered Mischief made one in their midst. Mischief was let loose, Mischief was afoot in the town. The old town was no place for the foreign emissary, neither was it a safe place for the arch-agitator. On the day after the meeting, Garrison and his young wife accordingly retreated to her father’s home at Brooklyn, Conn., where the husband needed not to be jostling elbows with Mistress Mischief, and her pals. Garrison’s answer to the speeches of Otis and Sprague was in his sternest vein. He is sure after reading them that, “there is more guilt attaching to the people of the free States from the continuance of slavery, than those in the slave States.” At least he is ready to affirm upon the authority of Orator Sprague, “that New England is as really a slave-holding section of the republic as Georgia or South Carolina.” Sprague, he finds, “in amicable companionship and popular repute with thieves and adulterers; with slaveholders, slavedealers, and slave-destroyers; ... with the disturbers of the public peace; with the robbers of the public mail; with ruffians who insult, pollute, and lacerate helpless women; and with conspirators against the lives and liberties of New England citizens.” To Otis who was then nearly seventy years of age Garrison addressed his rebuke in tones of singular solemnity. It seemed to him that the aged statesman had transgressed against liberty “under circumstances of peculiar criminality.” “Yet at this solemn period,” the reprobation of the prophet ran, “you have not scrupled, nay, you have been ambitious, to lead and address an excited multitude, in vindication of all imaginable wickedness, embodied in one great system of crime and blood — to pander to the lusts and desires of the robbers of God and his poor — to consign over to the tender mercies of cruel taskmasters, multitudes of guiltless men, women, and children — and to denounce as an ‘unlawful and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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dangerous association’ a society whose only object is to bring this nation to repentance, through the truth as it is in Jesus.” These audacious and iconoclastic performances of the reformer were not exactly adapted to turn from him the wrath of the idol worshipers. They more likely added fuel to the hot anger burning in Boston against him. Three weeks passed after his departure from the city, and his friends did not deem it safe for him to return. Toward the end of the fourth week of his enforced absence, against which he was chafing not a little, an incident happened in Boston which warned him to let patience have its perfect work. It was on the night of September 17th that the dispositions of the city toward him found grim expression in a gallows erected in front of his house at 23 Brighton street. This ghastly reminder that the fellow-citizens of the editor of the Liberator continued to take a lively interest in him, “was made in real workmanship style, of maple joist five inches through, eight or nine feet high, for the accommodation of two persons.” Garrison and Thompson were the two persons for whom these brave accommodations were prepared. But as neither they nor their friends were in a mood to have trial made of them, the intended occupants consented to give Boston a wide berth, and to be somewhat particular that they did not turn in with her while the homicidal fit lasted. This editing his paper at long range, and this thought of life and safety Garrison did not at all relish. They grew more and more irksome to his fearless and earnest spirit. For his was a “pine-and-fagot” that knew not the fear of men or their wrath. But now he must needs have a care for the peace of mind of his young wife, who was, within a few months, to give birth to a child. And her anxiety for him was very great. Neither was the anxiety of devoted friends and followers to be lightly disregarded. All of which detained the leader in Brooklyn until the 25th of the month, when the danger signals seemed to have disappeared. Whereupon he set out immediately for his post in Boston to be at the head of his forces. He found the city in one of those strange pauses of popular excitement, which might signify the ebb of the tide or only the retreat of the billows. He was not inclined to let the anti-Abolition agitation subside so soon, before it had carried on its flood Abolition principles to wider fields and more abundant harvests in the republic. Anxious lest the cat- like temper of the populace was falling into indifference and apathy, he and his disciples took occasion to prod it into renewed wakefulness and activity. The instruments used for this purpose were anti-slavery meetings and the sharp goad of his Liberator editorials. The city was possessed with the demon of slavery, and its foaming at the mouth was the best of all signs that the Abolition exorcism was working effectively. So, in between the glittering teeth and the terrible paws was thrust the maddening goad, and up sprang the mighty beast horrible to behold. One of these meetings was the anniversary of the formation of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society which fell on October 14th. The ladies issued their notice, engaged a hall, and invited George Thompson to address them. Now the foreign emissary was particularly exasperating to Boston sensibility on the subject of slavery. He was the veritable red rag to the pro- HDT WHAT? INDEX

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slavery bull. The public announcement, therefore, that he was to speak in the city threw the public mind into violent agitation. The Gazette and the Courier augmented the excitement by the recklessness with which they denounced the proposed meeting, the former promising to Thompson a lynching, while the latter endeavored to involve his associates who were to the “manner born” in the popular outbreak, which was confidently predicted in case the “foreign vagrant” wagged his tongue at the time appointed. Notwithstanding the rage of press and people the meeting was postponed through no willingness on the part of the ladies, but because of the panic of the owners of the hall lest their property should be damaged or destroyed in case of a riot. The ladies, thereupon, appointed three o’clock in the afternoon of October 21st as the time, and the hall adjoining the Anti- Slavery Office, at 46 Washington street, as the place where they would hold their adjourned meeting. This time they made no mention of Mr. Thompson’s addressing them, merely announcing several addresses. In fact, an address from Mr. Thompson, in view of the squally outlook, was not deemed expedient. To provide against accidents and disasters, he left the city on the day before the meeting. But this his enemies did not know. They confidently expected that he was to be one of the speakers. An inflammatory handbill distributed on the streets at noon of the 21st seemed to leave no doubt of this circumstance in the pro- slavery portion of the city. The handbill referred to ran as follows: THOMPSON, THE ABOLITIONIST! That infamous foreign scoundrel, THOMPSON, will hold forth this afternoon at the Liberator office. No. 48 Washington street. The present is a fair opportunity for the friends of the Union to snake Thompson out! It will be a contest between the Abolitionists and the friends of the Union. A purse of $100 has been raised by a number of patriotic citizens to reward the individual who shall first lay violent hands on Thompson, so that he may be brought to the tar-kettle before dark. Friends of the Union, be vigilant! Boston, Wednesday, 12 o’clock. That Wednesday forenoon Garrison spent at the anti-slavery office, little dreaming of the peril which was to overtake him in that very spot in the afternoon. He went home to an early dinner, since his wife was a member of the society, and he himself was set down for an address. As he wended his way homeward, Mischief and her gang were afoot distributing the aforesaid handbills “in the insurance offices, the reading- rooms, all along State street, in the hotels, bar-rooms, etc.,” and scattering it “among mechanics at the North End, who were mightily taken with it.” Garrison returned about a half hour before the time appointed for the meeting. He found a small crowd of about a hundred individuals collected in front of the building where the hall was situated, and on ascending to the hall more of the same sort, mostly young men, choking the access to it. They were noisy, and Garrison pushed his way through them with difficulty. As he entered the place of meeting and took his HDT WHAT? INDEX

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seat among the ladies, twenty had already arrived, the gang of young rowdies recognized him and evinced this by the exclamation: “That’s Garrison!” The full significance of the crowd just without the hall did not seem to have occurred to the man whom they had identified. He did not know that they were the foam blown from the mouth of a great mob at the moment filling the streets in the neighborhood of the building where he sat with such serenity of spirit. His wife who had followed him from their home saw what Garrison did not see. The crowd of a hundred had swelled to thousands. It lay in a huge irregular cross, jammed in between the buildings on Washington street, the head lowering in front of the anti-slavery office, the foot reaching to the site where stood Joy building, now occupied by the Rogers, the right arm stretching along Court street to the Court House, and the left encircling the old State House, City Hall and Post- office then, in a gigantic embrace. All hope of urging her way through that dense mass was abandoned by Mrs. Garrison, and a friend, Mr. John E. Fuller, escorted her to his home, where she passed the night. Meantime the atmosphere upstairs at the hall began to betoken a fast approaching storm. The noises ominously increased on the landing just outside. The door of the hall was swung wide open and the entrance filled with rioters. Garrison, all unconscious of danger, walked over to these persons and remonstrated in his grave way with them in regard to the disturbance which they were producing, winding up with a characteristic bit of pleasantry: “Gentlemen,” said he, “perhaps you are not aware that this is a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, called and intended exclusively for ladies, and those only who have been invited to address them. Understanding this fact you will not be so rude and indecorous as to thrust your presence upon this meeting.” But he added, “If, gentlemen, any of you are ladies in disguise — why only apprise me of the fact, give me your names, and I will introduce you to the rest of your sex, and you can take seats among them accordingly.” The power of benignity over malignity lasted a few moments after this little speech, when the situation changed rapidly from bad to worse. “The tumult continually increased,” says an eye-witness, “with horrible execrations, howling, stamping, and finally shrieking with rage. They seemed not to dare to enter, notwithstanding their fury, but mounted on each other’s shoulders, so that a row of hostile heads appeared over the slight partition, of half the height of the wall which divides the society’s rooms from the landing place. We requested them to allow the door to be shut; but they could not decide as to whether the request should be granted, and the door was opened and shut with violence, till it hung useless from its hinges.” Garrison thinking that his absence might quiet these perturbed spirits and so enable the ladies to hold their meeting without further molestation volunteered at this juncture to the president of the society to retire from the hall unless she desired him to remain. She did not wish him to stay but urged him to go at once not only for the peace of the meeting but for his own safety. Garrison thereupon left the hall meaning at the time to leave the building as well, but egress by the way of the landing and the stairs, he directly perceived was impossible, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and did what seemed the next best thing, entered the anti- slavery office, separated from the hall by a board partition. Charles C. Burleigh accompanied him within this retreat. The door between the hall and the office was securely locked, and Garrison with that marvelous serenity of mind, which was a part of him, busied himself immediately with writing to a friend an account of the scenes which were enacting in the next room. The tempest had begun in the streets also. The mob from its five thousand throats were howling “Thompson! Thompson!” The mayor of the city, Theodore Lyman, appeared upon the scene, and announced to the gentlemen of property and standing, who were thus exercising their vocal organs, that Mr. Thompson was not at the meeting, was not in the city. But the mayor was a modern Canute before the sea of human passion, which was rushing in over law and authority. He besought the rioters to disperse, but he might as well have besought the waves breaking on Nastasket Beach to disperse. Higher, higher rose the voices; fiercer, fiercer waxed the multitude; more and more frightful became the uproar. The long-pent-up excitement of the city and its hatred of Abolitionists had broken loose at last and the deluge had come. The mayor tossed upon the human inundation as a twig on a mountain stream, and with him for the nonce struggled helplessly the police power of the town also. Upstairs in the hall the society and its president are quite as powerless as the mayor and the police below. Miss Mary S. Parker, the president, is struggling with the customary opening exercises. She has called the meeting to order, read to the ladies some passages from the Bible, and has lifted up her voice in prayer to the All Wise and Merciful One “for direction and succor, and the forgiveness of enemies and revilers.” It is a wonderful scene, a marvelous example of Christian heroism, for in the midst of the hisses and threats and curses of the rioters, the prayer of the brave woman rose clear and untremulous. But now the rioters have thrown themselves against the partition between the landing-place and the hall. They are trying to break it down; now, they have partially succeeded. In another moment they have thrown themselves against the door of the office where Garrison is locked. The lower panel is dashed in. Through the opening they have caught sight of their object, Garrison, serenely writing at his desk. “There he is! That’s Garrison! Out with the scoundrel!” and other such words of recognition and execration, burst from one and another of the mob. The shattering of the partition, the noise of splitting and ripping boards, the sharp crash caused by the shivering of the office door, the loud and angry outcries of the rioters warn the serene occupant of the office that his position has become one of extreme peril. But he does not become excited. His composure does not forsake him. Instead of attempting to escape, he simply turns to his friend, Burleigh, with the words, “You may as well open the door, and let them come in and do their worst.” But fortunately, Burleigh was in no such extremely non-resistant mood. The advent of the mayor and the constables upon the scene at this point rescued Garrison from immediately falling into the hands of the mob, who were cleared out of the hall and from the stairway. Now the voice of the mayor was heard urging the ladies to go home as it was HDT WHAT? INDEX

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dangerous to remain; and now the voice of Maria Weston Chapman, replying: “If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere.” The ladies finally decided to retire, and their exit diverted, while the operation lasted, the attention of the huge, cat-like creature from their object in the anti-slavery office. When the passing of the ladies had ceased, the old fury of the mob against Garrison returned. “Out with him!” “Lynch him!” rose in wild uproar from thousands in the streets. But again the attention of the huge, cat-like creature was diverted from its object in the second story of the building before which it was lashing itself into frenzy. This time it was the anti-slavery sign which hung from the rooms of the society over the sidewalk. The mob had caught sight of it, and directly set up a yell for it. The sensation of utter helplessness in the presence of the multitude seemed at this juncture to return to the chief magistrate of the city. It was impossible to control the cataract-like passions of the rioters. He heard their awful roar for the sign. The din had risen to terrific proportions. The thought of what might happen next appalled him. The mob might begin to bombard the sign with brickbats, and from the sign pass to the building, and from the building to the constables, and then — but the mayor glanced not beyond, for he had determined to appease the fury of the mob by throwing down to it the hateful sign. A constable detached it, and hurled it down to the rioters in the street. But by the act the mayor had signified that the rule of law had collapsed, and the rule of the mob had really begun. When the rioters had wreaked their wrath upon the emblem of freedom, they were in the mood for more violence. The appetite for destruction, it was seen, had not been glutted; only whetted. Garrison’s situation was now extremely critical. He could no longer remain where he was, for the mob would invade the building and hunt him like hounds from cellar to garret. He must leave the building without delay. To escape from the front was out of the question. A way of escape must, therefore, be found in the rear. All of these considerations the mayor and Garrison’s friends urged upon him. The good man fell in with this counsel, and, with a faithful friend, proceeded to the rear of the building, where from a window he dropped to a shed, but in doing so was very nearly precipitated to the ground. After picking himself up he passed into a carpenter’s shop, meaning to let himself down into Wilson’s Lane, now Devonshire street, but the myriad-eyed mob, which was searching every portion of the building for their game, espied him at this point, and with that set up a great shout. The workmen came to the aid of the fugitive by closing the door of the carpenter’s shop in the face of his pursuers. The situation seemed desperate. Retreat from the front was cut off; escape from the rear anticipated and foiled. Garrison perceived the futility of any further attempts to elude the mob, and proposed in his calm way to deliver himself up to them. But his faithful Achates, John Reid Campbell, advised him that it was his duty to avoid the mob as long as it was possible to do so. Garrison thereupon made a final effort to get away. He retreated up stairs, where his friend and a lad got him into a corner of the room and tried to conceal his whereabouts by piling HDT WHAT? INDEX

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some boards in front of him. But, by that time, the rioters had entered the building, and within a few moments had broken into the room where Garrison was in hiding. They found Mr. Reid, and demanded of him where Garrison was. But Reid firmly refused to tell. They then led him to a window, and exhibited him to the mob in the Lane, advising them that it was not Garrison, but Garrison’s and Thompson’s friend, who knows where Garrison is, but refuses to tell. A shout of fierce exultation from below greeted this announcement. Almost immediately afterward, Garrison was discovered and dragged furiously to the window, with the intention of hurling him thence to the pavement. Some of the rioters were for doing this, while others were for milder measures. “Don’t let us kill him outright!” they begged. So his persecutors relented, coiled a rope around his body instead, and bade him descend to the street. The great man was never greater than at that moment. With extraordinary meekness and benignity he saluted his enemies in the street. From the window he bowed to the multitude who were thirsting for his destruction, requesting them to wait patiently, for he was coming to them. Then he stepped intrepidly down the ladder raised for the purpose, and into the seething sea of human passion. Garrison must now have been speedily torn to pieces had he not been quickly seized by two or three powerful men, who were determined to save him from falling into the hands of the mob. They were men of great muscular strength, but the muscular strength of two or three giants would have proven utterly unequal to the rescue, and this Mr. Garrison’s deliverers evidently appreciated. For while they employed their powerful arms, they also employed stratagem as well to effect their purpose. They shouted anon as they fought their way through the excited throng, “He is an American! He shan’t be hurt!” and other such words which divided the mind of the mob, arousing among some sympathy for the good man. By this means he was with difficulty got out of Wilson’s lane into State street, in the rear of the old State House. The champion was now on historic ground, ground consecrated by the blood of and his fellow-martyrs sixty-five years before. His hat was lost, much of his clothing was stripped from his body, he was without his customary glasses, and was therefore practically blind. He could hear the awful clamor, the mighty uproar of the mob, but he could not distinguish them one from another, friend from foe. Nevertheless he “walked with head erect, calm countenance flashing eyes like a martyr going to the stake, full of faith and manly hope” according to the testimony of an eye-witness. Garrison himself has thrown light on the state of his mind during the ordeal. “The promises of God,” he afterward remembered, sustained his soul, “so that it was not only divested of fear, but ready to sing aloud for joy.” The news now reached the ears of the mayor that Garrison was in the hands of the mob. Thereupon the feeble but kindly magistrate began to act afresh the role of the twig in the mountain stream. He and his constables struggled helplessly in the human current rushing and raging around City Hall, the head and seat of municipal law and authority. Without the aid of private citizens Garrison must inevitably have perished in the commotions which presently reached their climax in violence and terror. He was HDT WHAT? INDEX

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in the rear of City Hall when the mayor caught up to him and his would-be rescuers. The mayor perceived the extremity of the situation, and said to the Faneuil Hall giants who had hold of Garrison, “Take him into my office,” which was altogether more easily said than done. For the rioters have raised the cry “to the Frog Pond with him!” Which order will be carried out, that of the magistrate or that of the mob? These were horrible moments while the two hung trembling in the balance. But other private citizens coming to the assistance of the mayor struck the scales for the moment in his favor, and Garrison was finally hustled, and thrust by main force into the south door of the City Hall and carried up to the mayor’s room. But the mob had immediately effected an entrance into the building through the north door and filled the lower hall. The mayor now addressed the pack, strove manfully in his feeble way to prevail upon the human wolves to observe order, to sustain the law and the honor of the city, he even intimated to them that he was ready to lay down his life on the spot to maintain the law and preserve order. Then he got out on the ledge over the south door and spoke in a similar strain to the mob on the street. But alas! he knew not the secret for reversing the Circean spell by which gentlemen of property and standing in the community had been suddenly transformed into a wolfish rabble. The increasing tumult without soon warned the authorities that what advantage the mayor may have obtained in the contest with the mob was only temporary and that their position was momentarily becoming more perilous and less tenable. It was impossible to say to what extreme of violence a multitude so infuriated would not go to get their prey. It seemed to the now thoroughly alarmed mayor that the mob might in their frenzy attack the City Hall to effect their purpose. There was one building in the city, which the guardians of the law evidently agreed could resist the rage of the populace, and that building was the jail. To this last stronghold of Puritan civilization the authorities and the powers that were, fell back as a dernier resort to save Garrison’s life. But even in this utmost pitch and extremity, when law was trampled in the streets, when authority was a reed shaken in a storm, when anarchy had drowned order in the bosom of the town, the Anglo-Saxon passion for legal forms asserted itself. The good man, hunted for his life, must forsooth be got into the only refuge which promised him security from his pursuers by a regular judicial commitment as a disturber of the peace. Is there anything at once so pathetic and farcical in the Universal history of mobs? Pathetic and farcical to be sure, but it was also well meant, and therefore we will not stop to quarrel with men who were equal to the perpetration of a legal fiction so full of the comedy and tragedy of civilized society. But enough — the municipal wiseacres having put their heads together and evolved the brilliant plan of committing the prophet as a disturber of the peace, immediately set about its execution, which developed in the sequence into a bird of altogether another color. For a more perilous and desperate device to preserve Garrison’s life could not well have been hit upon. How was he ever to be got out of the building and through that sea of ferocious faces surging and foaming around it. First then by HDT WHAT? INDEX

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disguising his identity by sundry changes in his apparel. He obtained a pair of trousers from one kindly soul, another gave him a coat, a third lent him a stock, a fourth furnished him a cap. A hack was summoned and stationed at the south door, a posse of constables drew up and made an open way from the door to it. Another hack was placed in readiness at the north door. The hack at the south door was only a ruse to throw the mob off the scent of their prey, while he was got out of the north door and smuggled into the other hack. Up to this point, the plan worked well, but the instant after Garrison had been smuggled into the hack he was identified by the mob, and then ensued a scene which defies description; no writer however skillful, may hope to reproduce it. The rioters rushed madly upon the vehicle with the cry: “Cut the traces! Cut the reins!” They flung themselves upon the horses, hung upon the wheels, dashed open the doors, the driver the while belaboring their heads right and left with a powerful whip, which he also laid vigorously on the backs of his horses. For a moment it looked as if a catastrophe was unavoidable, but the next saw the startled horses plunging at break-neck speed with the hack up Court street and the mob pursuing it with yells of baffled rage. Then began a thrilling, a tremendous race for life and Leverett street jail. The vehicle flew along Court street to Bodoin square, but the rioters, with fell purpose flew hardly less swiftly in its track. Indeed the pursuit of the pack was so close that the hackman did not dare to drive directly to the jail but reached it by a detour through Cambridge and Blossom streets. Even then the mob pressed upon the heels of the horses as they drew up before the portals of the old prison, which shut not an instant too soon upon the editor of the Liberator, who was saved from a frightful fate to use a Biblical phrase but by the skin of his teeth. Here the reformer safe from the wrath of his foes, was locked in a cell; and here, during the evening, with no abatement of his customary cheerfulness and serenity of spirit, he received several of his anxious friends, Whittier among them, whom through the grated bars he playfully accosted thus: “You see my accommodations are so limited, that I cannot ask you to spend the night with me.” That night in his prison cell, and on his rude prison bed, he slept the sleep of the just man, sweet and long: “When peace within the bosom reigns, And conscience gives th’ approving voice; Though bound the human form in chains. Yet can the soul aloud rejoice. “’Tis true, my footsteps are confined — I cannot range beyond this cell — But what can circumscribe my mind, To chain the winds attempt as well!” The above stanzas he wrote the next morning on the walls of his cell. Besides this one he made two other inscriptions there, to stand as memorabilia of the black drama enacted in Boston on the afternoon of October 21, 1835. After being put through the solemn farce of an examination in a court, extemporized in the jail, Garrison was discharged from arrest as a disturber of the peace! But the authorities, dreading a repetition of the scenes HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of the day before, prayed him to leave the city for a few days, which he did, a deputy sheriff driving him to Canton, where he boarded the train from Boston to Providence, containing his wife, and together they went thence to her father’s at Brooklyn, Conn. The apprehensions of the authorities in respect of the danger of a fresh attack upon him were unquestionably well founded, inasmuch as diligent search was made for him in all of the outgoing stages and cars from the city that morning. In this wise did pro-slavery, patriotic Boston translate into works her sympathy for the South. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1836

January 16, Saturday: The Liberator.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

What can be more clownish than this foolish charging of Miss Martineau with ingratitude for differing in opinion from her Southern friends? I take the law of hospitality to be this:— I confer on the friend whom I visit the highest compliment, in giving him my time. He gives me shelter and bread. Does he therewith buy my suffrage to his opinions henceforward? No more than by giving him my time, I have bought his. We stand just where we did before. The fact is, before we met he was bound to “speak the truth (of me) in love “; and he is bound to the same now. On Truth.—The story of Captain Ross’s company is good example of the policy of honesty. “What do the guns speak?” asked the Esquimaux, when they saw the English levelling them. The English replied that they told what Esquimaux stole files and iron. “Where shall I find seals and musk oxen?” said the Esquimaux. The English ventured to point where, and the hunter was lucky. Presently the Esquimaux boy was killed by an accident, and the tribe ascribed it to English magic and had almost exterminated the English crew. Then the saying of George Fox’s father: “Truly I see that if a man will but stand by the truth it will carry him out.” Then the sublimity of keeping one’s word across years and years.

317 B.C., Attica had seven hundred and twenty square miles with a population of five hundred and twenty-seven thousand souls, and nearly four fifths of that number were slaves.

January 21, Thursday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

The Spartan is respectable and strong who speaks what must be spoken; but these gay Athenians that go up and down the world making all talk a Recitation, talking for display, disgust.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 21st of 1 M 1831 / Preparative Meeting In the first Father had a short testimony & in the last there was no buisness but the Queries & a report of the School Committee was read HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In the Afternoon took a walk on the Hill & went round across the fields & visited cousin Henry Gould at his Mill. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 22, Friday: In Philadelphia, the cornerstone of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane was laid. The building would cost $265,000 and transfer of the patients of the Pine Street Hospital (founded 1751) would begin on January 1, 1841.11 PSYCHOLOGY

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I think profanity to be as real a violation of nature as any other crime. I have as sensible intimations from within of any profanation as I should have if I stole. Upham [Charles Wentworth Upham, Emerson’s classmate and friend, a distinguished citizen of Salem, and author of a work on SALEM WITCHCRAFT, and other books] thinks it fatal to the happiness of a young man to set out with ultra-conservative notions in this country. He must settle it in his mind that the human race have got possession, and, though they will make many blunders and do some great wrongs, yet on the whole will consult the interest of the whole. Let not the mouse of my good meaning, Lady, Be snapped up in the trap of your suspicion, To lose the tail there, either of her truth, Or swallowed by the cat of misconstruction. BEN JONSON, Tale of a Tub, Act iv, Scene 4.

Wherein Minerva had been vanquished Had she by it her sacred looms advanced And thro’ thy subject woven her graphick thread. GEORGE CHAPMAN, ON SEJANUS.

11. Street, W.R. A CHRONOLOGY OF NOTEWORTHY EVENTS IN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 1994 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Swedenborg said, “Man, in proportion as he is more nearly conjoined to the Lord, in the same proportion appeareth to himself more distinctly to be his own, and perceiveth more evidently that he is the Lord’s....” [Here follow several quotations from Swedenborg’s Apocalypse Revealed, some of them now in Representative Men.] The scholar works with invisible tools to invisible ends, so passes for an idler, or worse, brain-sick, defenceless to idle carpenters, masons, and merchants, that, having done nothing most laboriously all day, pounce on him fresh for spoil at night. Character founded on natural gifts as specific and as rare as military genius; the power to stand beside his thoughts, or to hold off his thoughts at arm’s length and give them perspective; to form it piu nell’ uno; he studies the art of solitude; he is gravelled in every discourse with common people; he shows thought to be infinite which you had thought exhausted. There is a real object in nature to which the grocer turns, the intellectual man praestantia norat Plurima, mentis opes amplas sub pectore servans, Omnia vestigans sapientum docta reperta. EMPEDOCLES, ON PYTHAGORAS, Cudworth, vol. ii. So Bacon’s globe of crystal and globe of matter. The thinker, like Glauber, keeps what others throw away. He is aware of God’s way of hiding things, i.e., in light; also he knows all by one. Set men upon thinking, and you have been to them a god. All history is poetry; the globe of facts whereon they trample is bullion to the scientific eye. Meanest life a thread of empyrean light. Scholar converts for them the dishonored facts which they know, into trees of life; their daily routine into a garden of God, by suggesting the principle which classifies the facts. We build the sepulchres of our fathers: can we never behold the universe as new, and feel that we have a stake as much as our predecessors? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 24, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Cudworth is an armory for a poet to furnish himself withal. He should look at every writer in that light and read no poor book. Why should the poet bereave himself of the sweetest as well as grandest thoughts by yielding deference to the miserly, indigent unbelief of this age, and leaving God and moral nature out of his catalogue of beings? I know my soul is immortal if it were only by the sublime emotion I taste in reading these lines of Swedenborg: “The organical body with which the soul clothes itself is here compared to a garment, because a garment invests the body, and the soul also puts off the body and casts it away as old clothes (exuviae), when it emigrates by means of death from the natural world into its own spiritual world.” Influx, p. 26.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 24th of 1 M 1836 / On 6th day last I recd letters & pamphlets from my Friend Thos Thompson which on various accounts were highly interesting & his account of the comfortable progress of our Friend Anna W Thorn among them. — Our Meetings today were well attended & comfortable - Father was exercised in both In the evening our interesting young Cousin called & set some time with us. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

February: Waldo Emerson to his journal:12

“Nothing is complete until it is enacted. A fact is spirit having completed its mission, attained its end, fully revealed itself.” Alcott Manuscripts. “Her dreams are so vivid and impressive that they are taken for realities of sense, and she refers to them afterwards as facts in her experience. So strong is her faith in them, that no reasoning, not even the faith she places in the assurance of her parents, makes her relinquish the conviction. “Thus unconsciously, even to us perchance, doth our waking and sleeping life coalesce and lose their separate forms in one predominating sentiment or idea, and take a common unity in the spirit from whence they sprung into life and shaping.” ALCOTT.

12. Bronson Alcott probably was writing of one of his little daughters. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 8, Monday: Former Congressman David Crockett arrived in San Antonio de Béxar with a dozen volunteers.

REMEMBERING THE ALAMO Captain George Back was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

“The sinner is the savage who hews down the whole tree in order to come at the fruit.” Piickler-Muskau [Count von Piickler- Muskau, later Prince, a soldier, scholar, traveller, and prolific writer (1785-1871). His TOUR IN ENGLAND was translated by Mrs. Sarah Austin in 1832.] describes the English dandy. His highest triumph is to appear with the most wooden manners as little polished as will suffice to avoid castigation; nay, to contrive even his civilities so that they may appear as near as may be to affronts. Instead of a noble, high-bred ease —to have the courage to offend against every restraint of decorum: to invert the relation in which our sex stands to women so that they appear the attacking and he the passive or defensive party,” etc. Women have less accurate measure of time than men. There is a clock in Adam: none in Eve. The philosopher, the priest, hesitates to receive money for his instructions,—the author for his works. Instead of this scruple, let them make filthy lucre beautiful by its just expenditure. It becomes the young American to learn the geography of his country in these days as much as it did our fathers to know the streets of their town; for steam and rails convert roads into streets and regions into neighborhoods. Steam realizes the story of IEolus’s bag. It carries the thirty-two winds in the boiler. Sentences of Confucius (From Marshman’s Confucius) “Have no friend unlike yourself.” “Chee says, Grieve not that men know not you; grieve that you are ignorant of men.” “How can a man remain concealed? How can a man remain concealed?” “Chee entered the great temple. Frequently inquiring about things, one said, ‘Who says that the son of the Chou man understands propriety? In the great temple he is constantly asking questions.’ Chee heard and replied, ‘This is propriety.’” “Koong Chee is a man who, through his earnestness in seeking knowledge, forgets his food, and in his joy for having found it, loses all sense of his toil; who, thus occupied, is unconscious that he has almost arrived at old age.” “Chee was in the Chhi country for three months hearing Sun’s music, and knew not the taste of his meat. He said, ‘had no idea of music arriving at this degree of perfection.’” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 24, Wednesday: In Boston, Winslow Homer was born.

It was the end of an era. The East India Company was no more. The Company flag was lowered and replaced by the Standard of Great Britain, and Brigadier-General Charles Dallas of the East India Company, who had continued as acting governor of the island after its takeover by the Crown on April 22, 1834, was out of a job. Major-General George Middlemore took office in the name of King William IV as the initial Crown governor of St. Helena (Middlemore would be “long remembered for his bad manners and his discourtesy,” and for his unenviable task of making savage spending cuts and sacking former Company servants).

Waldo Emerson to his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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We are idealists whenever we prefer an idea to a sensation, as when we make personal sacrifices for the sake of freedom or religion... As character is more to us, our fellow men cease to exist to us in space and time, and we hold them by real ties. The idealist regards matter scientifically; the sensualist exclusively. The physical sciences are only well studied when they are explored for ideas. The moment the law is attained, i.e., the Idea, the memory disburthens herself of her centuries of observation. The book is always dear which has made us for moments idealists. That which can dissipate this block of earth into shining ether is genius. I have no hatred to the round earth and its gray mountains. I see well enough the sand-hill opposite my window. I see with as much pleasure as another a field of corn or a rich pasture, whilst I dispute their absolute being. Their phenomenal being I no more dispute than I do my own. I do not dispute, but point out the just way of viewing them. Religion makes us idealists. Any strong passion does. The best, the happiest moments of life are these delicious awakenings of the higher powers and the reverential withdrawing of nature before its god. It is remarkable that the greater the material apparatus, the more the material disappears, as in Alps and Niagara, in St. Peter’s and Naples. We are all aiming to be idealists, and covet the society of those who make us so, as the sweet singer, the orator, the ideal painter. What nimbleness and buoyancy the conversation of the spiritualist produces in us. We tread on air; the world begins to dislimn. For the education of the Understanding the earth and world serve.... Nature, from an immoveable god, on which, as reptiles, we creep, and to which we must conform our being, becomes an instrument, and serves us with all her kingdoms: then becomes a spectacle. To the rude it seems as if matter had absolute existence, existed from an intrinsic necessity. The first effect of thought is to make us sensible that spirit exists from an intrinsic necessity, that matter has a merely phenomenal or accidental being, being created from spirit, or being the manifestation of spirit. The moment our higher faculties are called into activity we are domesticated, and our awkwardness or torpor or discomfort gives place to natural and agreeable movements. The first lesson of Religion is, The things that are seen are temporal; the unseen, eternal. It is easy to solve the problem of individual existence. Why Milton, Shakspear, or Canova should be, there is reason enough. But why the million should exist, drunk with the opium of Time and Custom, does not appear. If their existence is phenomenal, they serve so valuable a purpose to the education of Milton, that, grant us the Ideal theory, and the universe is solved. Otherwise, the moment a man discovers that he has aims which his faculties cannot answer, the world becomes a riddle. Yet Piety restores him to Health. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 28, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Cold, bright Sunday morn, white with deep snow. Charles thinks if a superior being should look into families, he would find natural relations existing, and man a worthy being, but if he followed them into shops, senates, churches, and societies, they would appear wholly artificial and worthless. Society seems noxious. I believe that against these baleful influences Nature is the antidote. The man comes out of the wrangle of the shop and office, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. He not only quits the cabal, but he finds himself. But how few men see the sky and the woods! Good talk to-day with Charles of motives that may be addressed by a wise man to a wise man. First, Self-improvement; and secondly, it were equipollent could he announce that elsewhere companions, or a companion, were being nourished and disciplined whose virtues and talents might tax all the pupil’s faculties in honorable and sweet emulation. Charles thinks it a motive also to leave the world richer by some such bequest as the Iliad or Paradise Lost, a splendid munificence which must give the man an affection to the race he had benefitted wherever he goes. Another is the power that virtue and wisdom acquire. The man takes up the world into his proper being. The two-oared boat may be swamped in a squall. The vessels of Rothschild every wind blows to port. He insures himself. The Revival that comes next must be preached to man’s moral nature, and from a height of principle that subordinates all persons. It must forget historical Christianity and preach God who is, not God who was. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Eripitur persona, manet res. It must preach the Eternity of God as a practical doctrine. God manifest in the flesh of every man is a perfect rule of social life. Justify yourself to an infinite Being in the ostler and dandy and stranger, and you shall never repent. The same view might hinder me from signing a pledge. There is such an immense background to my nature that I must treat my fellow as Empire treats Empire, and God, God. My whole being is to be my pledge and declaration, and not a signature of ink. That life alone is beautiful which is conformed to an Idea. Let us not live from hand to mouth now, that we may not ever. I would not have a man dainty in his conduct. Let him not be afraid of being besmirched by being advertised in the newspapers, or by going into Athenaeums and town meetings, or by making speeches in public. Let his chapel of private thoughts be so holy that it shall perfume and separate him unto the Lord, though he lay in a kennel. Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.

This passing Hour is an edifice Which the Omnipotent cannot rebuild.

Goethe writes to his friend, September 22, 1787, from Rome, “It is really cheering that these four pretty volumes, the result of half a life, should seek me out in Rome. I can truly say, there is no word therein which has not been lived, felt, enjoyed, suffered, thought, and they speak to me now all the livelier.” The vessel that carried him from Palermo to Naples was in danger, and the ship’s company roared at the master. “The master was silent, and seemed ever to think only of the chance of saving the ship; but for me, to whom from youth anarchy was more dreadful than death itself, it was impossible longer to be silent.” “For the narrowed mind, whatever he attempts is still a trade; for the higher an art; and the highest, in doing one thing, does all: or, to speak less paradoxically, in the one thing which he does rightly, he sees the likeness of all which is done rightly.” (Volume xxi, p. 51.)....

Waldo lectured in Salem. This was the 3rd lecture of the series. THE LIST OF LECTURES

Hymne an den Unendlichen D.232 for vocal quartet and piano by Franz Schubert to words of Schiller was performed for the initial time, in the Vienna Redoutensaal. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Alert arrived in Santa Barbara and Richard Henry Dana, Jr. had a chance to catch up on Boston news and also news of the graduation of some of his Harvard College classmates.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: We just missed of seeing the California, for she had sailed three days before, bound to Monterey, to enter her cargo and procure her license, and thence to San Francisco, etc. Captain Arthur left files of Boston papers for Captain T______, which, after they had been read and talked over in the cabin, I procured from my friend the third mate. One file was of all the Boston Transcripts for the month of August, 1835, and the rest were about a dozen Daily Advertisers and Couriers, of different dates. After all, there is nothing in a strange land like a newspaper from home. Even a letter, in many respects, is nothing, in comparison with it. It carries you back to the spot, better than anything else. It is almost equal to clairvoyance. The names of the streets, with the things advertised, are almost as good as seeing the signs; and while reading “Boy lost!” one can almost hear the bell and well-known voice of “Old Wilson,” crying the boy as “strayed, stolen, or mislaid!” Then there was the Commencement at Cambridge, and the full account of the exercises at the graduating of my own class. A list of all those familiar names, (beginning as usual with Abbot, and ending with W.,) which, as I read them over, one by one, brought up their faces and characters as I had known them in the various scenes of college life. Then I imagined them upon the stage, speaking their orations, dissertations, colloquies, etc., with the gestures and tones of each, and tried to fancy the manner in which each would handle his subject,

* * * * *, handsome, showy, and superficial; * * * *, with his strong head, clear brain, cool self-possession; * * *, modest, sensitive, and underrated; * * * * *, the mouth-piece of the debating clubs, noisy, vaporous, and democratic;

and so following. Then I could see them receiving their A.Bs. from the dignified, feudal-looking President, with his “auctoritate mihi commissa,” and walking off the stage with their diplomas in their hands; while upon the very same day, their classmate was walking up and down California beach with a hide upon his head. Every watch below, for a week, I pored over these papers, until I was sure there could be nothing in them that had escaped my attention, and was ashamed to keep them any longer. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 5, Saturday: The Liberator.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:13

A man should stand among his fellow men as one coal lies in the fire it has kindled, radiating heat, but lost in the general flame. Task work is good for idlers, and man is an idler. Its greatest disadvantage is that when you accept mechanical measures instead of spiritual ones, you are prone to fill up the chasms of your prophecy with prose. The moment we enter into the higher thoughts, fame is no more affecting to the ear than the faint tinkle of the passing sleigh bell. Gradation: that is one of the lessons which human life is appointed to learn....

Nature has that congruity that all its parts make a similar impression on one mind; of the beautiful on the poet; of the lucrative on the merchant; etc. In the talk this afternoon I was instructed that every man has certain questions which always he proposes to the Eternal, and that his life and fortune, his ascetic, are so moulded as to constitute the answers, if only he will read his consciousness aright. I ask one question with eagerness; my friend, another. I have no curiosity respecting historical Christianity; respecting persons and miracles: I take the phenomenon as I find it, and let it have its effect on me, careless whether it is a poem or a chronicle. Charles would know whether it covers the dimensions of what is in man; whether the Cross is an idea in the divine mind? I am the practical Idealist in the view mentioned above. The comfort is great of looking out of the straw and rags of our fortune steadfastly to the First Cause, and saying, Whilst I hold my faith, I have the virtue that can turn these cobwebs into majesty, whilst I remain a watcher for what thought, what Revelation, Thou canst yet impart.... All cultivation tends steadily to degrade nature into an organ, a spectacle, an expedient. Man’s enchanted dust. Strange is it to me how man is holden on a curb-rein and hindered from knowing, and drop by drop or shade by shade thoughts trickle and loiter upon him, and no reason under heaven can he give, or get a glimpse of why he should not grow wiser faster, moving about in worlds not realized. All things work together for good unto them that love God. No man is the Idealist’s enemy. He accepts all. Last week I went to Salem. At the Lafayette Hotel where I lodged, every five or ten minutes the barkeepers came into the sitting-room to arrange their hair and collars at the looking-glass. So many joys has the kind God provided for us dear creatures.

Giuseppe Verdi was appointed maestro di musica in Busseto.

Sam Houston left the Texas Constitutional Convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos on his way to San 13. At “Man’s enchanted dust,” Emerson adds in a footnote that “Charles thinks that Homer is the first Poet, Shakspear the second, and that the third will be greatest of all, the reflective.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Antonio. Richard Henry Dana, Jr. received news that from that point forward, his ship the Alert would be generally coasting south in preparation for eventually sailing back home around the Horn to Boston harbor.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Saturday, March 5th. This was an important day in our almanac, for it was on this day that we were first assured that our voyage was really drawing to a close. The captain gave orders to have the ship ready for getting under weigh; and observed that there was a good breeze to take us down to San Pedro. Then we were not going up to windward. Thus much was certain, and was soon known, fore and aft; and when we went in the gig to take him off, he shook hands with the people on the beach, and said that he never expected to see Santa Barbara again. This settled the matter, and sent a thrill of pleasure through the heart of every one in the boat. We pulled off with a will, saying to ourselves (I can speak for myself at least)– “Good-by, Santa Barbara!– This is the last pull here– No more duckings in your breakers, and slipping from your cursed south-easters!” The news was soon known aboard, and put life into everything when we were getting under weigh. Each one was taking his last look at the mission, the town, the breakers on the beach, and swearing that no money would make him ship to see them again; and when all hands tallied on to the cat- fall, the chorus of “Time for us to go!” was raised for the first time, and joined in, with full swing, by everybody. One would have thought we were on our voyage home, so near did it seem to us, though there were yet three months for us on the coast. We left here the young Englishman, George Marsh, of whom I have before spoken, who was wrecked upon the Pelew Islands. He left us to take the berth of second mate on board the Ayacucho, which was lying in port. He was well qualified for this, and his education would enable him to rise to any situation on board ship. I felt really sorry to part from him. There was something about him which excited my curiosity; for I could not, for a moment, doubt that he was well born, and, in early life, well bred. There was the latent gentleman about him, and the sense of honor, and no little of the pride, of a young man of good family. The situation was offered him only a few hours before we sailed; and though he must give up returning to America, yet I have no doubt that the change from a dog’s berth to an officer’s, was too agreeable to his feelings to be declined. We pulled him on board the Ayacucho, and when he left the boat he gave each of its crew a piece of money, except myself, and shook hands with me, nodding his head, as much as to say,– “We understand one another.” and sprang on board. Had I known, an hour sooner, that he was to leave us, I would have made an effort to get from him the true history of his early life. He knew that I had no faith in the story which he told the crew, and perhaps, in the moment of parting from me, probably forever, he would have given me the true account. Whether I shall ever meet him again, or whether his manuscript narrative of his adventures in the Pelew Islands, which would be creditable to him and interesting to the world, will ever see the light, I cannot tell. His is one of those cases which are more numerous than those suppose, who have never lived anywhere but in their own homes, and never walked but in one line from their cradles to their graves. We must come down from our heights, and leave our straight paths, for the byways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts; and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been wrought upon our fellow-creatures by accident, hardship, or vice. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 9, Saturday: The Liberator.

The HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin sailed from Port Louis, Mauritius.

Waldo Emerson’s greatly beloved brother and close friend and adviser, Charles Chauncy Emerson, died in New-York of tuberculosis (Waldo would mention this in his journal on the 16th):

Charles died at New York Monday afternoon, 9 May.... He rode out on Monday afternoon with Mother, promised himself to begin his journey with me on my arrival, the next day; on reaching home, he stepped out of the carriage alone, walked up the steps & into the house without assistance, sat down on the stairs, fainted, & never recovered.

WALDO’S RELATIVES HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 14, Tuesday: On this day or the following one, Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

Power is one great lesson which Nature teaches Man. The secret that he can not only reduce under his will, that is, conform to his character, particular events but classes of events & so harmonize all the outward occurrences with the states of mind, that must he learn. Worship, must he learn.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 14th of 6 M 1836 / Select Meeting met at 8 OClock this Morning - Our friend John Warren returned the certificates he recd two years ago to visit Friends in England & Ireland & produced very lively & satisfactory - The queries & Answers were read & the subjects before treated in a weighty manner. — The Meeting at large in the Afternoon was also a season of favour - In the eveng a committee met at our house which has been the case each evening, including first Day which has made hard service for us. — I find my time is so much occupied that I must neglect a daily entry of events & must defer to the close of the Meeting any further attempts at writing in my diary & then insert a general clause according to my rememberance & feeling of what occured. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

August 12, Friday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Yesterday Margaret Fuller returned home after making us a visit of three weeks — a very accomplished & very intelligent person.

MARGARET FULLER

Sergeants of the Guard forced the queen regent of Spain to accept a radical ministry, and restored the Constitution of 1812 and the national militia.

The Alert and Richard Henry Dana, Jr. sighted the island of Trinidad.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Friday, August 12th. At daylight made the island of Trinidad, situated in lat. 20 28S., long. 29 08W. At twelve M., it bore N. W. 1/2 N., distant twenty-seven miles. It was a beautiful day, the sea hardly ruffled by the light trades, and the island looking like a small blue mound rising from a field of glass. Such a fair and peaceful-looking spot is said to have been, for a long time, the resort of a band of pirates, who ravaged the tropical seas. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 27, Saturday: The Liberator.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Today came to me the first proof-sheet of “Nature” to be corrected.

The Reverend Leonard Withington’s chapter on huckleberrying appeared, minus a few paragraphs, on the front page of the Bunker Hill Aurora and Boston Mirror.

September 13, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I went to the College on the 8th instant.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 13 of 9M / I had thought till this Morning that I should have been at Providence with the committee, an adjournment of which meet today - but on looking the subject over it seemed to me it was rather best to stay at home. — I sometimes think my services at the School is nearly over — but then again in taking another view of the subject I hardly know how to relax my care for an Institution I have loved so well RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 6, Thursday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Transcendentalism means, says our accomplished Mrs B., with a wave of her hand, A little beyond.

October 31, Monday: Elizabeth Wells Cummings Cheney was born to John Milton Cheney and Louisa Hosmer Cheney.

Waldo Emerson gave birth to a son:

Last night at 11 o’clock, a son was born to me.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 31 of 10 M / Attended the funeral of Mary Hazard the divorced wife of Dr Enoch Hazard & daughter of old Nicholas Easton - she was buried near the parental homestead near Seschuest Beach — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

November 29, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

But in analysing history do not be too profound, for often the causes are quite superficial. In the present state of Spain, in the old state of France, and in general in the reigns of Terror, everywhere, there is no Idea, no Principle. It is all scrambling for bread and money. It is the absence of all profound views; of all principle. It is the triumph of the senses, a total skepticism. They are all down on the floor striving each to pick the pocket, or cut the throat that he may pick the pocket, of the other, and the farthest view the miscreants have is the next tavern or brothel where their plunder may glut them. If presently one among the mob possesses ulterior aims, and these inspire him with skill, he masters all these brutes, as oxen and dogs are mastered by a man, and turns them to work for him and his thought. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 2, Friday: Charles Darwin having returned to London from the Beagle expedition, Professor Thomas Bell, FRS accepted the task of describing his reptile specimens. Bell would also be entrusted with the specimens of Crustacea collected on the voyage.

Waldo Emerson lectured at the Concord Lyceum. THE LIST OF LECTURES

He wrote in his journal:

The present state of the colony at is a memorable fact. It is found that the black merchants are so fond of their lucrative occupations that it is with difficulty that any of them can be prevailed upon to take office in the colony. They dislike the trouble of it. Civilized arts are found to be as attractive to the wild negro, as they are disagreeable to the wild Indian.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 2nd of 12 M 1836 / This morning took the Stage & came home, finding our family & other things as well as when I left them HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 10, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Pleasant walk yesterday, the most pleasant of days. At Walden Pond I found a new musical instrument which I call the ice-harp. A thin coat of ice covered a part of the pond, but melted around the edge of the shore. I threw a stone upon the ice which rebounded with a shrill sound, and falling again and again, repeated the note with pleasing modulation. I thought at first it was the “peep, peep” of a bird I had scared. I was so taken with the music that I threw down my stick and spent twenty minutes in throwing stones single or in handfuls on this crystal drum.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

1837

January 14, Saturday: The Liberator.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Lidian’s grandmother had a slave Phillis whom she freed. Phillis went to the little colony on the outside of Plymouth which they called New Guinea. Soon after, she visited her old mistress. “Well, Phillis, what did you have for dinner on Thanksgiving Day?” “Fried ’taturs, Missy;” replied Phillis. “And what had you to fry the potatoes in?” said Mrs Cotton. “Fried in Water, Missy;” answered the girl. “Well Phillis,” said Mrs Cotton, “how can you bear to live up there, so poor, when here you used to have every thing comfortable, & such good dinner at Thanksgiving?” — “Ah Missy, Freedom’s sweet,” returned Phillis.

MANUMISSION

May 14, Sunday: A depression began –one of the worst in the nation’s history– as banks of New-York and Boston suspended payment in specie. In the midst of the economic malaise, Waldo Emerson confided to his Journal:

The humblebee & the pine warbler seem to me the proper objects of attention in these disastrous times.

He wrote a poem, “The Humble-Bee.” The Erie Canal Company would be able to get away with paying its workmen a mere $0.75 for a workday of 18 hours. The piecework rate for binding a woman’s kid buskin shoe at home would fall to $0.03 and at rates like that it would take a desperate mother, doing piecework in her home, a truly awesome length of time to earn a dollar.14

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 14th of 5th M / Silent Meetings all day - In the Morning it was pretty full & in the Afternoon thin as usual -both solid

14. To really appreciate this, you have to have come from this sort of a background. I grew up in a single-parent household, for instance, in Indiana in the 1940s and 1950s, and when Mother came home to our two-room flat from schoolteaching, after supper she and my little sister Carolyn and I would sit around two laundry tubs full of small pieces from a local factory, in Mother’s bedroom, and spend the evening taking items out of one tub, doing something to them, and pitching them into the other tub. The rate of pay per piece, which constantly varied and which constantly had to be re-negotiated –bargained over with well-off people who knew desperation when they saw it and took advantage of it in every possible manner– was what made the difference between having lunch money to take with me to school (this was 75 cents per school week, payable if I had it in one lump sum on a Monday morning), and not being allowed to eat with the other children in the lunchroom, but being forced instead to bring a mashed potato sandwich from home and eat it alone out in the swings of the schoolyard. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

seasons RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

May 20, Saturday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 20 of 6th M / Our friend John Wilbur appointed a Meeting this Afternoon at the Union Meeting House in Portsmouth which with Sister Mary Rodman I attended there were a considerable gathering of people, & the Gospel of our Lord & Saviour Jesus Christ was freely preached to them — I trust that Truth lost no ground, but that some were brought to see & feel it in a manner which they had not seen or felt it before, so as to understand what it was which opperated upon them — The Longer I live & the more I experience, the More my mind is confirmed that the Lord will prepare an offering for himself, & that it is not the outward blood of Goats or of Bulls or the Ashes of an heffer that is to do the work for us, but the blood of Jesus Christ (which is his life) Sprinkled on our hearts, & faithfulness to what is thereby manifested as our Duty. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

May 20, Saturday, or 21, Sunday: In the midst of this economic malaise, Waldo Emerson confided to his Journal:

The land stinks with suicide.

August 2, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

An enchanting night of south wind and clouds; mercury at 73°; all the trees are wind-harps; blessed be light and darkness; ebb and flow, cold and heat; these restless of pulsations of nature which by and by will throb no more.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 2nd of 8th M 1837 / Rode with my wife to Portsmouth & attended the Select Quarterly Meeting which was a solid good season. Dined at Susan Hathaways & on our way home, called & set a while with Aunt Hannah Almy Wm & Anna Jenkins being there RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

August 21, Monday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

What means all the monitory tone of the world of life, of literature, of tradition? Man is fallen, Man is banished; an exile; he is in earth whilst there is a heaven. What do these apologues mean? These seem to him traditions of memory. But they are the whispers of hope and Hope is the voice of the Supreme Being to the Individual. We say Paradise was; Adam fell, the Golden Age; & the like. We mean man is not as he ought to be; but our way of painting this is on Time, and we say Was.

Samuel Ripley Bartlett was baptized in Concord.

Richard Wagner arrived in Riga, with Christine Wilhelmine “Minna” Planer Wagner, to take up a position as musical director of the theater there.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 21 of 8 M / This Afternoon I unexpectedly met with the Widow of Wm Shotwell who recently died at Edw Wings in Tiverton. I was glad to fall in with her & spend a few moments in sympathy with her & her children tho’ it was on the Head of the Long Wharf while they were waiting for the Steam Boat to come from Providence to take them in - Wm Shotwell & his wife came from NYork some weeks ago on a visit to his brother in Law Edw Wing & wife in Tiverton & after spending some time Pleasantly, he was taken sick of Cholera Morbus, which was corrected by Medicine after which he was soon taken in a fit & died & was buried on 5th day last the 17th in Friends burying ground at Fall River. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

October 1, Sunday: In Japan, after a rule of 44 years, the 11th Tokugawa shogun Ienari resigned and the shogunate of Tokugawa Ieyoshi began.

Felix Mendelssohn arrivedin Leipzig from London via Frankfurt only hours before he was scheduled to conduct the 1st concert of the new Gewandhaus season.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Lidian grieves aloud about the wretched negro in the horrors of the ; and they are bad enough. But to such as she, these crucifixions do not come. They come to the obtuse & barbarous to whom they are not horrid but only a little worse than the old sufferings. They exchange a cannibal war for a stinking hold. They have gratifications which would be none to Lidian.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 1st of 10th M 1837 / Our Morning Meeting was a good solid silent one — In the Afternoon after Meeting had been gathered about a quarter of an hour a friend came looking very plain whom I did not recognize at all & made his way for the high seat & took his seat on the first rising after he had sat some time he rose & preached a very good lively & Spiritual sermon & soon after kneeled in solemn supplication much to our satisfaction & comfort - It proved to be our friend William Gifford from Falmouth on Cape Cod, who was bound in a vessel to NYork but the Wind being a head put into Newport & arrived here so as to be at Meeting rather late but very Satisfactory to all.— he drank tea with Job Sherman & after coming in & sitting with us a while, I gave him some books, & waited on him to the Wharf where he took a boat & went on board his vessel which lay in the harbour RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

October 24, Tuesday: At Bad Salzbrunn, Silesia (Szczawno-Zdroj, Poland), Adolf von Henselt got married with recently divorced Rosalie (Mangen) Vogel.

Henry Thoreau to his journal:

THE MOULD OUR DEEDS LEAVE Oct. 24. Every part of nature teaches that the passing away of one life is the making room for another. The oak dies down to the ground, leaving within its rind a rich virgin mould, which will impart a vigorous life to an infant forest. The pine leaves a sandy and sterile soil, the harder woods a strong and fruitful mould. So this constant abrasion and decay makes the soil of my future growth. As I live now so shall I reap. If I grow pines and birches, my virgin mould will not sustain the oak; but pines and birches, or, perchance, weeds and brambles, will constitute my second growth. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I find in town the  Oration, of which 500 copies were printed, all sold, in just one month.

November 2, Thursday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 2nd of 11th M 1837 / Our Qry Meeting at Somersett was well attended & the Public Meeting favourd - Joseph Davis & Ruth Davis were favourd in testimony & Abijah Johnson in testimony & supplication — In the last meeting John Wilbur recd an endorsement on the Certificate of his Moy [Monthly] Meeting to travel in the Ministry in Connecticut & the Southern Qry Meetings in NYork Yearly Meeting, which was the only buisness out of the usual course — After meeting we took our carriage & without dinner rode to Providence & lodged at the School House. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Immense curiosity in Boston to see the delegation of the Sacs & the Ioways. I saw the Sacs & Foxes at the Statehouse on Monday — about 30 in number. Edward Everett addressed them & they replied. One chief said “They had no land to put their words upon, but they were nevertheless true.” One chief wore the skin of a buffaloe’s [sic] head with the horns attached, on his head, others birds with outspread wings. Immense breadth of shoulder & very muscular persons. Our Picts were so savage in their headdress & nakedness that it seemed as if the bears & catamounts had sent a deputation. They danced a war-dance on the Common, in the center of the greatest crowd ever seen on that area. The Governor cautioned us of the gravity of the tribe & that we should beware of any expression of the ridiculous; and the people all seemed to treat their guests gingerly as the keepers of lions & jaguars do those creatures whose taming is not quite yet trustworthy. Certainly it is right & natural that the Indian should come & see the civil White man, but this was hardly genuine but a show so we were not parties but spectators.... At Faneuil Hall they built a partition between the two tribes because the tribes are at war.

Emerson wrote to Walter Savage Landor: Dear Sir, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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You will hardly remember my name, & I will remind you that in the Spring of the year 1833, I was indebted to your hospitality & courtesy at Florence, as I had already been & shall always be to your wisdom. It was my design as soon as I returned home, to send you one or two books, which, I then thought, might give you a good hope of New England. But I found the opportunities of direct communication between Florence & Boston so rare & uncertain, that I feared my pacquet might come to you charged with some expense; and I have waited until one of the books is out of print, & with regard to the other, I have changed my mind. You are now in England, as I learn by your recent paragraphs in the papers. My friend, Mr Sumner, offers to take charge of letters to Paris & London, & I venture to send you a pamphlet & a little book of my own. [Presumably this would have been Nature and the Phi Beta Kappa address.] They can have little value to you except as an acknowledgement of the delight & instruction I have found in the Imaginary Conversations. With great respect, Your humble servant, R. Waldo Emerson.

When Landor would receive the above he would respond that he considered himself “highly honored,” and indicate that it would gratify him very much to “see you” at Bath — he noted that he would be able to offer Emerson a bed, and indicated that customarily he dined at the old-fashioned hour of four.

November 6, Monday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Fuller at Providence explained to me his plans, “that he was to keep the school 5 years — income so much; outlay so much; then he should be able to go to Europe; &c, &c.” When I repeated all this to Alcott, he express chagrin & contempt. For Alcott holds the School in so high regard that he would scorn to exchange it for the Presidency of the United States. The School is his Europe. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

1838

According to Anita Haya Patterson’s FROM EMERSON TO KING: DEMOCRACY, RACE, AND THE POLITICS OF PROTEST (NY: Oxford UP, 1997, pages 131-2), at this point Waldo Emerson’s journal demonstrates that Emerson was ready to naturalize genocide:

Each race of man resembles an apple or a pear, the Nubian, the Negro, the Tartar, the Greek, he vegetates, thrives, & multiplies, usurps all the soil & nutriment, & so kills the weaker races.

She goes on to point up the fact that although Emerson, like so many of his contemporaries who were presuming their own race to be inherently and intrinsically superior, was wont to speculate bloodily that the inferior nonwhite races would most likely be exterminated, this is far from all the information and guidance that we might extrapolate from these foul droppings of his pen — if we can bring ourselves to pay careful attention: HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

The sheer weight of evidence that proves the fact of Waldo Emerson’s racism is disturbing. However, we would miss the focus of this discussion –namely, the historical function of racism in Emerson’s writings– were we simply to dismiss him for exhibiting the racist perceptions of his time.... Emerson’s racism is central to his vision of American nationality — a compelling, myopic vision that must be viewed in the context of a violent policy of westward expansion that prevailed in nineteenth-century America. In NATURE, Emerson’s unmistakable reference to the raciality of the American self allows him to situate that self at the brink of egocentric absolutism: at the same time he expresses a near disavowal of human society represented by ties to the liberal-democratic state in NATURE, Emerson’s racist imagination of the white, male body of Columbus is a framework for social cohesion. For Emerson, race functions to express both a threat to and an affirmation of social order. Generally speaking, Emerson’s racist vision of the representative self is essential for his articulation of a call to revolution — what Henry Thoreau (and, much later, [the Reverend] Martin Luther King, Jr.) would designate as “civil disobedience.”

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

“Waldo Emerson’s profound racism abated over time, but it never disappeared, always hovering in the background and clouding his democratic vision. Like all too many of his fellow intellectuals, throughout his life and works Emerson remained convinced that the characteristics that made the United States, for all its flaws, the great nation of the world were largely the product of its Saxon heritage and history. Here, alas, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s democratic imagination largely failed him.” — Peter S. Field HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

YOU SEE, I’M A WHITE MAN

February 7, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson lectured in Boston.

This was the 10th and final lecture of the series, the one entitled “General Views.” THE LIST OF LECTURES HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

He confided to his journal that he’d thought up a piece of free advice to offer to the newbie, Henry Thoreau:

I told him he should write out the history of his college life.... HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

February 9, Friday: The Liberator.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

In Boston, Wednesday Night, I read at the Masonic Temple the tenth & last lecture of my Course on Human Culture.... The Pecuniary advantage of the Course has been considerable. Season tickets sold 319 for $620 Single tickets sold 373 for 186 ____ 806 deduct error somewhere 13 793 deduct expenses 225 ____ $568.net profit The attendance on this course adding to the above list 85 tickets distributed by me to friends, will be about 439 persons on the average of an evening — & as it was much larger at the close than at the beginning I think 500 persons at the closing lectures. A very gratifying interest on the part of the audience was evinced in the views offered — which were drawn chiefly out of the materials already collected in this Journal. The ten lectures were read on ten pleasant winter evenings on consecutive Wednesdays. Thanks to the Teacher of me & of all, the Upholder, the Health giver; thanks & lowliest wondering acknowledgment.

THE LIST OF LECTURES Henry Thoreau wrote to David Greene Haskins from Concord.15 Concord. Feb. 9th 1838.

Dear Classmate, I wrote to Mr Hawkins on Monday last, but not knowing the gentle- man’s terms, was unable to say whether I would accept or not. But since I have heard from friend Hayward that you have given up all thoughts of going south, and are moreover empowered to procure a substitute, I have thought it would be better to ascertain those terms from you, so that I might close with that gentleman at once.

15. A relative of Ruth Haskins Emerson, and therefore of Waldo Emerson. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

I do not quite understand Hayward’s letter, that part at least relat- ing to a larger school in the “building.”

Will you take the trouble to write me immediately, as definitely as possible on this point, so that one more letter to Mr Hawkins ma y suffice?

Please inform me what are the expenses of the journey, and also what prospect there is of obtaining scholars.

Should you meet H–—, please thank him for me for his kind letters, and friendly exertions in my behalf, not forgetting to appropriate a share to yourself.

That you are located, in all respects, to your mind, is the wish of

your friend and classmate

Thoreau.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 9 of 2 M / Attended the funeral of Benjamin Cornell Aged about 87 Years - he died on the 6th inst & was buried in Friends burying ground by his particiular request tho’ his family have been buried in the Common burying ground - he was not a Member of Society but for many years a very dilligent attender of our Meetings both on 1st days & in the Middle of the Week — he was a descendent from Govr. Walter Clarke by his daughter Deliverance who Married a Cornell - It appeared to me I have seldom known a man the aspects of whose nature was more humbled. — from being cours in his nature, he became tender & sweet in his mind & attended Friends Meetings as long as he was able to go out, which was only about two weeks before he died— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

February 11, Sunday: The Reverend Waldo Emerson preached his sermon number XLIII in Concord, and in the afternoon took a walk with Henry Thoreau. When he came to his journal, he recounted this and also told about a meeting of Sunday-school teachers at which he had been present on the previous evening with Thoreau and with Edmund Hosmer:

At the “teacher’s meeting” last night ... as any I have ever met. He told me as we walked this afternoon a good story about a boy who went to school with him, Wentworth, who resisted the school mistress’ command that the children should bow to Dr Heywood & other gentlemen as they went by, and when Dr Heywood stood waiting & cleared his throat with a Hem! Wentworth said, “You need not Hem, Doctor; I shan’t bow.”

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 11th of 2nd M / Our Morning Meeting was well attended & a good solemn Meeting Father attended & had a good solid & pertinent testimony In the Afternoon we were silent. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

February 17, Saturday: Zulus attacked Boer settlements along the Tugela River, killing about 300 of the Boers and about 200 of their servants.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

My good Henry Thoreau made this else solitary afternoon sunny with his simplicity & clear perception. How comic is simplicity in this doubledealing quacking world. Every thing that boy says makes merry with society though nothing can be graver than his meaning. I told him he should write out the history of his College life as Thomas Carlyle has his tutoring. We agreed that the seeing the stars through a telescope would be worth all the Astronomical lectures. Then he described Mr Quimby’s electrical lecture here & the experiment of the shock & added that “College Corporations are very blind to the fact that that twinge in the elbow is worth all the lecturing.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

March 6, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Montaigne is spiced throughout with rebellion as much as Alcott or my young Henry T.

Waldo Emerson delivered in Framingham, Massachusetts the 4th lecture of his “Human Culture” series. THE LIST OF LECTURES

Preparing its annual report, the Concord School Committee included a comment about their experience with as-rebellious-as-Montaigne teacher Henry Thoreau: “None of Concord’s schools this year has fallen below mediocrity. We would however mention an interruption, in the fall term of the Centre Grammar School, and the winter term of District number 4, which was occasioned by a change in masters and produced the usual evil attendant on that event.”

April 1, Sunday: Waldo Emerson discoursed on theism to some half dozen of Harvard’s Divinity School students. They invited him to address them again, in the Harvard Divinity School chapel, upon their graduation:

Cool or cold windy clear day. The Divinity School youths wished to talk with me concerning theism. I went rather heavyhearted for I always find that my views chill or shock people at the first opening. But the conversation went well & I came away cheered. I told them that the preacher should be a poet smit with love of the harmonies of moral nature.

Franz Liszt played the 2d of 2 concerts in Venice, in Teatro San Benedetto.

Deuxieme Trio Concertant for violin, cello and piano by César Franck was performed for the initial time, in Salle Chntereine, Paris.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 1st of 4th M 1838 / Attended both meetings, but sat rather uncomfortable in the Afternoon, but was not obliged to leave my seat - Father Rodman had short offerings in both Meetings.- Yesterday we had an intersting call from our fr H Dannis —it was interesting to me in that it afforded an opportiunity for me to discharge my duty in great plainness, as to what I apprehended to be her State & the State of society, & particualry of our Monthly Meeting. & of an existing case before it, which is a very trying one — I endeavoured to be plain & honest, & feel satisfaction in my labours. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

April 19, Thursday: Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal,

Then is this disaster of Cherokees brought to me by a sad friend to blacken my days & nights. I can do nothing. Why shriek? Why strike ineffectual blows?

TRAIL OF TEARS Festgesang for chorus and piano by Felix Mendelssohn was performed for the initial time, in Schwaz.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 19th of 4th M / Our Public & Preparative Meeting got along pretty well T B Goulds the Clerk being absent Thos P Nichols served well in his place The Select Meeting held after the Preparative Meeting was a time of search & close exercise, & tho’ things were plainly stated as to some defects among us — I hope some good was done, at any rate some of us felt as if we had discharged our Duty & am willing to leave the result. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

April 23, Monday: Congress had tabled the memorials protesting the Cherokee Nation removal, and the federal cavalry had begun to prepare their roundup.

Waldo Emerson had written to President about the situation and at this point he commented on this in exasperation in his journal:

This tragic Cherokee business which we stirred at a meeting in the church yesterday will look to me degrading & injurious do what I can. It is like dead cats around one’s neck. It is like School Committees & Sunday School classes & Teachers’ meetings & the Warren street chapel & all the other holy hurrahs. I stir in it for the sad reason that no other mortal will move & if I do not, why it is left undone. The amount of it, be sure, is merely a Scream but sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

TRAIL OF TEARS

Here is Emerson’s “letter to the president” as released to the media: HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

TO MARTIN VAN BUREN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES CONCORD, MASS., April 23, 1838. SIR: The seat you fill places you in a relation of credit and nearness to every citizen. By right and natural position, every citizen is your friend. Before any acts contrary to his own judgment or interest have repelled the affections of any man, each may look with trust and living anticipation to your government. Each has the highest right to call your attention to such subjects as are of a public nature, and properly belong to the chief magistrate; and the good magistrate will feel a joy in meeting such confidence. In this belief and at the instance of a few of my friends and neighbors, I crave of your patience a short hearing for their sentiments and my own: and the circumstance that my name will be utterly unknown to you will only give the fairer chance to your equitable construction of what I have to say. Sir, my communication respects the sinister rumors that fill this part of the country concerning the Cherokee people. The interest always felt in the aboriginal population –an interest naturally growing as that decays– has been heightened in regard to this tribe. Even in our distant State some good rumor of their worth and civility has arrived. We have learned with joy their improvement in the social arts. We have read their newspapers. We have seen some of them in our schools and colleges. In common with the great body of the American people, we have witnessed with sympathy the painful labors of these red men to redeem their own race from the doom of eternal inferiority, and to borrow and domesticate in the tribe the arts and customs of the Caucasian race. And notwithstanding the unaccountable apathy with which of late years the Indians have been sometimes abandoned to their enemies, it is not to be doubted that it is the good pleasure and the understanding of all humane persons in the Republic, of the men and the matrons sitting in the thriving independent families all over the land, that they shall be duly cared for; that they shall taste justice and love from all to whom we have delegated the office of dealing with them. The newspapers now inform us that, in December, 1835, a treaty contracting for the exchange of all the Cherokee territory was pretended to be made by an agent on the part of the United States with some persons appearing on the part of the Cherokees; that the fact afterwards transpired that these deputies did by no means represent the will of the nation; and that, out of eighteen thousand souls composing the nation, fifteen thousand six hundred and sixty-eight have protested against the so-called treaty. It now appears that the government of the United States choose to hold the Cherokees to this sham treaty, and are proceeding to execute the same. Almost the entire Cherokee Nation stand up and say, “This is not our act. Behold us. Here are we. Do not mistake that handful of deserters for us;” and the American President and the Cabinet, the Senate and the House of Representatives, neither hear these men nor see them, and are contracting to put this active nation into carts and boats, and to drag them over mountains and rivers to a wilderness at a vast distance beyond the Mississippi. And a paper purporting to be HDT WHAT? INDEX

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an army order fixes a month from this day as the hour for this doleful removal. In the name of God, sir, we ask you if this be so. Do the newspapers rightly inform us? Men and women with pale and perplexed faces meet one another in the streets and churches here, and ask if this be so. We have inquired if this be a gross misrepresentation from the party opposed to the government and anxious to blacken it with the people. We have looked in the newspapers of different parties and find a horrid confirmation of the tale. We are slow to believe it. We hoped the Indians were misinformed, and that their remonstrance was premature, and will turn out to be a needless act of terror. The piety, the principle that is left in the United States, if only in its coarsest form, a regard to the speech of men, — forbid us to entertain it as a fact. Such a dereliction of all faith and virtue, such a denial of justice, and such deafness to screams for mercy were never heard of in times of peace and in the dealing of a nation with its own allies and wards, since the earth was made. Sir, does this government think that the people of the United States are become savage and mad? From their mind are the sentiments of love and a good nature wiped clean out? The soul of man, the justice, the mercy that is the heart’s heart in all men, from Maine to Georgia, does abhor this business. In speaking thus the sentiments of my neighbors and my own, perhaps I overstep the bounds of decorum. But would it not be a higher indecorum coldly to argue a matter like this? We only state the fact that a crime is projected that confounds our understandings by its magnitude, –a crime that really deprives us as well as the Cherokees of a country? for how could we call the conspiracy that should crush these poor Indians our government, or the land that was cursed by their parting and dying imprecations our country, any more? You, sir, will bring down that renowned chair in which you sit into infamy if your seal is set to this instrument of perfidy; and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, will stink to the world. You will not do us the injustice of connecting this remonstrance with any sectional and party feeling. It is in our hearts the simplest commandment of brotherly love. We will not have this great and solemn claim upon national and human justice huddled aside under the flimsy plea of its being a party act. Sir, to us the questions upon which the government and the people have been agitated during the past year, touching the prostration of the currency and of trade, seem but motes in comparison. These hard times, it is true, have brought the discussion home to every farmhouse and poor man’s house in this town; but it is the chirping of grasshoppers beside the immortal question whether justice shall be done by the race of civilized to the race of savage man, — whether all the attributes of reason, of civility, of justice, and even of mercy, shall be put off by the American people, and so vast an outrage upon the Cherokee Nation and upon human nature shall be consummated. One circumstance lessens the reluctance with which I intrude at this time on your attention my conviction that the government HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ought to be admonished of a new historical fact, which the discussion of this question has disclosed, namely, that there exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, a general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill? –We ask triumphantly. Our counsellors and old statesmen here say that ten years ago they would have staked their lives on the affirmation that the proposed Indian measures could not be executed; that the unanimous country would put them down. And now the steps of this crime follow each other so fast, at such fatally quick time, that the millions of virtuous citizens, whose agents the government are, have no place to interpose, and must shut their eyes until the last howl and wailing of these tormented villages and tribes shall afflict the ear of the world. I will not hide from you, as an indication of the alarming distrust, that a letter addressed as mine is, and suggesting to the mind of the Executive the plain obligations of man, has a burlesque character in the apprehensions of some of my friends. I, sir, will not beforehand treat you with the contumely of this distrust. I will at least state to you this fact, and show you how plain and humane people, whose love would be honor, regard the policy of the government, and what injurious inferences they draw as to the minds of the governors. A man with your experience in affairs must have seen cause to appreciate the futility of opposition to the moral sentiment. However feeble the sufferer and however great the oppressor, it is in the nature of things that the blow should recoil upon the aggressor. For God is in the sentiment, and it cannot be withstood. The potentate and the people perish before it; but with it, and as its executor, they are omnipotent. I write thus, sir, to inform you of the state of mind these Indian tidings have awakened here, and to pray with one voice more that you, whose hands are strong with the delegated power of fifteen millions of men, will avert with that might the terrific injury which threatens the Cherokee tribe. With great respect, sir, I am your fellow citizen, RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

In a paper by Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., “They Ought to Enjoy the Home of Their Fathers”: The Treaty of 1838, Seneca Intellectuals, and Literary Genesis,” pages 83-103 in Helen Jaskoski’s EARLY NATIVE AMERICAN WRITING: NEW CRITICAL ESSAYS (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), I have come across references to early Quakerism that were by me entirely unexpected. It seems that there is a reason why there was not “Trail of Tears” for the Senecas of New York during the 1840s, the period in which the Cherokees of Georgia were under the rule of the US Cavalry and were in the process of being removed to the Oklahoma Indian Territory beyond the Mississippi River, and that reason was the considerable influence of the Religious Society of Friends. Although Quakers established a mission among the Allegany Senecas in 1798, other mission groups were not successful until the second and third decades of the nineteenth century. With the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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missions came schools as part of the machinery for “civilizing” the Senecas.... By [the 1820s] the Senecas were split into factions known as the “Christian party” and the “Pagan party.” The former embraced the efforts of the missionaries and advocated adoption of lifestyles and institutions like those of the whites. The Pagans rejected the missionary influence, and many followed the teachings of Handsome Lake, the Seneca prophet. His visions in 1799 revealed his famous Code, which reflected obvious Quaker influence but which revitalized Seneca society and formed the basis of the Longhouse religion, still vital among modern-day Senecas.16 The first Seneca to make a significant public response to the treaty [of 1838, the one in which they “agreed” to sell the remainder of their New York reservation lands to the Ogden Land Company and emigrate to the Kansas Territory] was Maris Bryant Pierce (1811-1874). Born on the Allegany Reservation, Pierce was educated in a Quaker primary school, at Fredonia Academy, at a college preparatory school in Thetford, Vermont, and finally at Dartmouth College, which he entered in 1836. By that time, he had converted to Christianity and was a member of the Presbyterian Church.... The Senecas were not alone in their efforts to defeat the treaty. Whites in Washington and elsewhere immediately joined them, publicizing the fraud, intimidation, and bribery that had surrounded the signing. Pierce’s Buffalo address [of August 28, 1838 at the Baptist Church there] was published [as ADDRESS ON THE PRESENT CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF NORTH AMERICA, WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE SENECA NATION. DELIVERED AT BUFFALO, NEW YORK, BY M.B. PIERCE, A CHIEF OF THE SENECA NATION, AND A MEMBER OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE. (Philadelphia PA: J. Richards, 1839)] and widely distributed.... Substantial support also came from the Society of Friends. The Quakers battled the pro-Ogden spokesmen in the press and through pamphlets, issuing in early 1840 their most significant pamphlet, THE C ASE OF THE S ENECA I NDIANS, in which they attempted to sum up the case. Despite these and other efforts, however, the treaty was ratified on March 25, 1840, and proclaimed by President Martin Van Buren on April 4.... It was an old story. The Ogden Land Company, claiming to be generous, offered one to two dollars per acre for land that to the whites was worth much more ... besides buying chiefs, the land agents and pro-treaty factions used money, brandy, and intimidation to secure the treaty.... The strong public case that Pierce and the Quakers had made to support charges of fraud and intimidation surrounding the Treaty of 1838 at length drew a major response from Senecas on the pro-removal side. It was drafted by the young Seneca chief Nathaniel Thayer Strong (1810- 1872).... There is ... sound evidence that Strong was involved in the bribery efforts by the Ogden agents. Strong published his response to the Quakers in January 1841 as APPEAL TO THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY ON THE CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF THE NEW YORK INDIANS, IN ANSWER TO A BOOK ENTITLED THE CASE OF THE NEW YORK INDIANS, AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS 16. Anthony F.C. Wallace, “Origins of the Longhouse Religion” in Trigger, Bruce G., ed. NORTHEAST. Volume 15 of HANDBOOK OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS, ed. William C. Sturtevant (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1978, pages 445-8). Handsome Lake and the Longhouse religion are the subject of Wallace’s THE DEATH AND REBIRTH OF THE SENECA (NY: Vintage Books, 1972). For an account of religious factionalism among the Senecas, see Robert H. Berkhofer, Jr.’s _Salvation and the Savage: An Analysis of Protestant Missions and American Indian Response 1787-1862_ (Lexington KY: U of P, 1965, pages 135-6). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS (Buffalo NY: Press of Thomas & Co., 1841; New York: E.B. Clayton, 1841).... Strong defended the actions of the council. Here he was twice concerned, for he had not only signed the treaty but had also interpreted it. The Quakers had charged that the council was called at the instigation of the Ogden Land Company.... Strong’s APPEAL answered the Quakers’ charges of bribery. Customarily, since the first land sale, he argued, the Seneca chiefs had demanded and gotten personal allowances in negotiations. Among those who had benefited from former treaties were Cornplanter, Farmer’s Brother, and Red Jacket.... Addressing his APPEAL “To the Christian Public,” he depicted the Society of Friends as hypocrites, doubly dangerous because of the quietistic posture they assumed. In this case, he said, under the “false banner of friendship and good will,” they had published “gross abuses, garbled statements, and repeated misrepresentations,” which were “as incompatible with the law of Christian charity, as with the rules of candor and fair discussion.” He labeled the Quaker charges that the Senecas had been defrauded an “envenomed arrow shot from the bow of the meek and gentle Quakers.” At the end of his APPEAL, Strong called attention to the Quakers’ stand for abolition, although they were not for freeing the Indians, who were “more effectively shut out from all the privileges which render freedom a blessing, than are the negroes!” It was true that the Indians were not forced to labor, as slaves were, but when they were hungry, sick, or old, he said, they could not ask the whites to take care of them.... [T]he Quakers responded in a pamphlet titled A FURTHER ILLUSTRATION OF THE CASE OF THE SENECA INDIANS, which appeared the following July. In the main, the pamphlet brought the history of the controversy up-to-date and refuted Strong’s major arguments with evidence amassed by the writers, including detailed analysis of documents relating to Senate and executive considerations of the treaty. In addition, they defended William Penn’s record at length, berating Strong as the first and only Indian to attack not only Penn’s good name but that of the Society of Friends as well. They also challenged Strong’s credibility and questioned his motives, pointing out his ties to the Ogden Land Company. As a chief, he had violated his duty as a representative of the Seneca nation and had perverted the authority conferred on him. he was a traitor to his country, they charged. His purpose was “to veil from the public eye” the true condition of the Senecas and “to enlist the sympathy of religious professors” in an unholy cause. He had become the instrument of “selfish and cruel men,” his conduct “perhaps more the result of weakness than wickedness.” Strong’s “literary attainments,” they argued, refuted the basic argument of the Ogden forces that the Senecas were not civilized and should therefore be removed. Although Maris Bryant Pierce had declined to answer Strong’s pamphlet, his mark was on the Quaker response. In refuting Strong’s arguments, the Quakers had quoted extensively from Pierce’s Buffalo ADDRESS of 1838.... The public debate that had raged over the treaty for four years finally led to a compromise. In early 1842 there was a meeting of the secretary of the interior, agents of the Ogden Land Company, and a Friends delegation. The Ogden Company agreed to the writing HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of a supplemental treaty whereby the Senecas retained title to the Cattaraugus and Allegany reservations but gave up Buffalo Creek and Tonawanda. The Senecas approved this agreement as the best arrangement they could make under the circumstances [Kelsey, Rayner Wickensham. FRIENDS AND THE INDIANS, 1655-1917. Philadelphia PA: Associated Executive Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs, 1917, page 123].... Although [Wa-o-wa-wa-na- onk, or Peter Wilson, a Cayuga living with the Senecas at Cattaraugus] had signed the treaty in 1838, Wilson, like Pierce, had worked earnestly to prevent its ratification by the Senate. In a speech before the annual meeting of Friends at Baltimore on October 29, 1848, Wilson defended efforts by constitutional advocates to wrest control of Seneca affairs from the hereditary chiefs. In the published version of his speech [SPEECH OF WA-O- WA-WA-NA-ONK, AN INDIAN CHIEF, Baltimore MD, 1848], he charged the chiefs with bad management and a betrayal of trust in their mishandling of affairs in 1838. He condemned removal as a failed policy and argued that the Senecas could achieve their destiny in New York.... Thus the debate that followed the Treaty of 1838 formed the backdrop for the beginnings of Seneca literature in English.

April 26, Thursday: George Sand sent a mash note to Frédéric François Chopin in Paris: “One adores you. George.”

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 26th of 4th M / The weather being unfavourable in the Morning & my health being such as not to permit of exposure - neither my wife nor I attended the Moy [Monthly] Meeting this Day held at Portsmouth. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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President Basil Manly of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Alabama noted in his diary that: “This morning at 20 minutes before 11 o’clock arrived Prof. F.A.P. Barnard. He had sailed from New York on the 24th of March, via Mobile.” Barnard would become professor of mathematics and natural philosophy, and while in the South, would be a slaveholder.

Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal about his reluctance to make a stir “in the philanthropic mud”:

I fully sympathise, be sure, with the sentiment I write, but I accept it rather from my friends than dictate it. It is not my impulse to say it & therefore my genius deserts me ... Bah!

TRAIL OF TEARS On this day, or possibly the 27th or 28th, Waldo wrote in his journal:

Yesterday P.M. I went to the Cliff with Henry Thoreau. Warm, pleasant, misty weather which the great mountain ampitheatre seemed to drink in with gladness. A crow’s voice filled all the miles of air with sound. A bird’s voice, even a piping frog enlivens a solitude & makes world enough for us. At night I went out into the dark & saw a glimmering star & heard a frog & Nature seemed to say Well do not these suffice? Here is a new scene, a new experience. Ponder it, Emerson, & not like the foolish world hanker after thunders & multitudes & vast landscapes, the sea or Niagara. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 11, Friday: The Liberator.

A man in a smoking-room in Boston asked Nathaniel Hawthorne about the Canadian Rebellion, and was informed that

all is finished except the hanging of the prisoners. Then we talk over the matter, and I tell him the fates of the principal men –some banished to New-South Wales, one hanged, others in prison– others, conspicuous at first, now almost forgotten.

WOMEN HANGED IN ENGLAND DURING 1838

Date Name Age Place of execution Crime

May 5 Ann Wycherly 28 Stafford Murder

May 21 Elizabeth Nicholson (Jeffrey) 36 Glasgow Murder

Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

Last night the moon rose behind four distinct pine-tree tops in the distant woods and the night at ten was so bright that I walked abroad. But the sublime light of night is unsatisfying, provoking; it astonishes but explains not. Its charm floats, dances, disappears, comes and goes, but palls in five minutes after you have left the house. Come out of your warm, angular house, resounding with few voices, into the chill, grand, instantaneous night, with such a Presence as a full moon in the clouds, and you are struck with poetic wonder. In the instant you leave far behind all human relations, wife, mother and child, and live only with the savages — water, air, light, carbon, lime, and granite. I think of Kuhleborn. I become a moist, cold element. “Nature grows over me.” Frogs pipe; waters far off tinkle; dry leaves hiss; grass bends and rustles, and I have died out of the human world and come to feel a strange, cold, aqueous, terraqueous, aerial, ethereal sympathy and existence. I sow the sun and moon for seeds. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 6, Wednesday: After negotiations between Principal Chief John Ross and General , a band of the Cherokee nation, in the charge of Lieutenant Edward Deas, was permitted to depart the concentration camps into which they had been herded as they had been driven from their farms in the Cherokee ancestral territory in the Appalachians by the US Cavalry, to travel by river to Fort Coffee in the new Cherokee Nation Territory in Oklahoma Territory. Further removal would be temporarily suspended due to drought and the “sickly season.”

TRAIL OF TEARS

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

When I told Alcott that I would not criticise his compositions; that it would be absurd to require them to conform to my way of writing & aiming, as it would be to reject Wordsworth because he was wholly unlike Campbell; that here was a new mind & it was welcome to a new style; — he replied, well pleased, “That is criticism.”

June 16, Saturday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 2d day.

It was on about this day that Waldo Emerson confided to his journal:

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody brought me yesterday Hawthorne’s Footprints on the seashore to read. I complained that there was no inside to it. Alcott & he together would make a man.

ELIZABETH PALMER PEABODY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 24, Sunday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 10th day. A whole lot remained to be said about the statehood of Texas, and the state of the nation, and the idea of admitting another slave state to our Union.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Alcott has the great merit of being a believer in the soul. I think he has more faith in the Ideal than any man I have known.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 24th of 6th M / Both our Meetings were solid seasons & father had offerings in both — In the Afternoon the gathering was rather smaller than usual. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

August 31, Friday: The Liberator.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Yesterday at  anniversary. Steady, steady. I am convinced that if a man will be a true scholar, he shall have perfect freedom. The young people & the mature hint at odium, & aversion of faces to be presently encountered in society. I say no: I fear it not. No scholar need fear it.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 8th M 31st 1838 / Today Our friend Benjamin Mott was intered in the burying ground at our Meeting House in Portsmouth He was in the 81 Year of his Age - He was son of Jacob Mott & Hannah his wife & the last Male of a long & Noble line of Ancestors who have been ornaments in our Monthly Meeting on Rhode Island from its commencement - & tho’ he is the last of much standing being himself an Elder in society - yet there is some reason to hope the respectability will or may not, be lost in his son Jacob & his family who I hope may come up in the line of usefulness — And altho’ Benjamin has not appeared to be so deeply baptized as some of his predecessors, yet he has been concerned for the welfare of our Society & that the principles of it may be kept HDT WHAT? INDEX

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pure as professed by the primitive Quakers - This he manifested on various occasions, particularly to me when I returned with my wife to his House after our Select Meeting 18th of 7th M last when we had an interesting visit at his house - He was out at Meeting Several times afterwards & attended our Qry Meeting held at Portsmouth 4th & 5th of this Month & the Morning he died he went out & walked round his House attending to some little buisness, on returning to his house went in & set down on which he family perceived him to be in some difficulty & went to him, but found him quite gone before they could lay him on a Couch which stood handy - I have no doubt his last days were his best days & that his end was in Peace. — Sister E R Nichols & Br D Rodman arrived last evening from Salem & Lynn on a visit To Father Rodman, who is evidently wearing out & sinking fast This evening Br David called to see us we were glad to see him. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

September 8, Saturday: Giuseppe Verdi and his wife arrived in Milan during the coronation festivities for Emperor Ferdinand as King of Lombardy. He was there in an attempt to stage his opera Oberto.

For Lysander Spooner it was “a self-evident truth that all men are naturally and rightfully free.” That human beings are born with the inalienable quality of freedom underlay all his arguments. Nathaniel Peabody Rogers outlined Spooner’s principle in this day’s issue of his newspaper, The Herald of Freedom. “A man cannot be a subject of human ownership; neither can he be the owner of humanity. There is a clear and eternal incompetency on both sides A man cannot alienate his right to liberty and to himself, — still less can it be taken from him.” Spooner also argued that “the principle of natural law, which makes a calf belong to the owner of the cow, does not make the child of a slave belong to the owner of the slave because both cow and calf are naturally subjects of property; while neither men nor children are naturally subjects of property.”

Waldo Emerson to his JOURNAL:

Henry Thoreau told a good story of William Parkman, who (kept store) lived in the house he now occupies, & kept a store close by. He hung out a salt fish for a sign, & it hung so long & grew so hard, black & deformed, that the deacon forgot what thing it was, & nobody in town knew, but being examined chemically it proved to be salt fish. But duly every morning the deacon hung it on its peg.

(During this year, on the Georges Bank, a fisherman brought up a humongous cod that would weigh in at 180 pounds.)

This early story about Deacon William Parkman of the general store on Main Street (near where the Concord HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Free Public Library now stands) would later be worked into the WALDEN text as:

WALDEN: This closed car smells of salt fish, the strong New PEOPLE OF England and commercial scent, reminding me of the Grand Banks and WALDEN the fisheries. Who has not seen a salt fish, thoroughly cured for this world, so that nothing can spoil it, and putting the perseverance of the saints to the blush? with which you may sweep or pave the streets, and split your kindlings, and the teamster shelter himself and his lading against sun wind and rain behind it, –and the trader, as a Concord trader once did, hang it up by his door for a sign when he commences business, until at last his oldest customer cannot tell surely whether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral, and yet it shall be as pure as a snowflake, and if it be put into a pot and boiled, will come out an excellent dun fish for a Saturday’s dinner.

WILLIAM PARKMAN

September 13, Thursday-14, Friday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I went to New Bedford & Mr D. was in a frolicsome mood, & got up from supper in the evening, & said, “Come let us have some fun,” & went about to tickle his wife & his sisters. I grew grave, &, do what I could, I felt that I looked like one appointed to be hanged.

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September 18, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal in regard to the annular (partial) solar eclipse (#7260) that passed from Hudson Bay down across northern New England: SUN

This P.M. the Eclipse. Peter Howe did not like it for his rowan would not make hay: and he said “the sun looked as if a nigger was putting his head into it.”

Well, in some sense Peter Howe of Concord was right, black people were indeed raising their head into the sunshine. For on this day of eclipse Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray Douglass, as free Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Johnson, were arriving in their new hometown, New Bedford:

We arrived at Newport the next morning, and soon after an old fashioned stage-coach, with “New Bedford” in large yellow letters on its sides, came down to the wharf. I had not money enough to pay our fare, and stood hesitating what to do. Fortunately for us, there were two Quaker gentlemen who were about to take passage on the stage, —Friends William C. Taber and Joseph Ricketson,— who at once discerned our true situation, and, in a peculiarly quiet way, addressing me, Mr. Taber said: “Thee get in.” I never obeyed an order with more alacrity, and we were soon on our way to our new home. When we reached “Stone Bridge” the passengers alighted for breakfast, and paid their fares to the driver. We took no breakfast, and, when asked for our fares, I told the driver I would make it right with him when we reached New Bedford. I expected some objection to this on his part, but he made none. When, however, we reached New Bedford, he took our baggage, including three music-books, —two of them collections by Dyer, and one by Shaw,— and held them until I was able to redeem them by paying to him the amount due for our rides. This was soon done, for Mr. Nathan Johnson not only received me kindly and hospitably, but, on being informed about our baggage, at once loaned me the two dollars with which to square accounts with the stage-driver. Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Johnson reached a good old age, and now rest from their labors. I am under many grateful obligations to them. They not only “took me in when a stranger” and “fed me when hungry,” but taught me how to make an honest living. Thus, in a fortnight after my flight from Maryland, I was safe in New Bedford, a citizen of the grand old commonwealth of Massachusetts....

WILLIAM C. TABER JOSEPH RICKETSON NATHAN JOHNSON Mary J. Tabor would allege in 1907 something that does not jibe with the popular appreciation of Frederick Douglass that is gathered from reading of his NARRATIVE, to wit, that at this point, with him arriving at HDT WHAT? INDEX

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freedom in New Bedford, he was not yet able to read, let alone to write. She would allege that in New Bedford after his escape from slavery, it had been her relative William C. Taber who had found for Douglass the stevedoring work he mentions on the wharves (help not acknowledged in Douglass’s written account), and she would allege that at this point Douglass had been taught to read by her relative, the New Bedford bookseller Charles Taber: Owing to the anti-slavery principles of Friends, New Bedford early became a station on the “,” and if a fugitive slave could once reach this haven of rest, he felt almost safe from pursuit, public opinion being so strong that in the days of the Fugitive Slave Law it would have been impossible to capture a runaway slave in this town. Frederick Douglass, one of the most remarkable of colored men, passed some time here in safety, and always retained a most grateful recollection of his sojourn among the Quakers. It happened on this wise: Having made his escape from slavery and reached Newport after many perils, he was very anxious to come to New Bedford, that place being known among the slaves as a heaven upon earth. Hearing the name called out, he peeped shyly around the corner of a building and gazed longingly at the state coach which was filled with “women Friends” on their way home from New England Yearly Meeting. William C. Taber, sitting on the top of the coach, observed the pleading eyes, and said, “Yes, friend, it is all right, climb up here beside me.” No sooner said than done, William C. Taber paid his fare, brought him to his own house, and found work for him on the wharves, as he had been a stevedore at the South. While in New Bedford, he was taught to read by Charles Taber. Thus the distinguished orator was launched on the road to fame. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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What we have, above, is essentially an assertion that when Douglass arrived in New Bedford aboard that stage from Newport, Rhode Island, he could not yet read, let alone write. —That that is importantly discordant with the fulsome manner in which the NARRATIVE is now conventionally read, is something that goes without saying.

For their wedding document, the newlyweds had adopted the family name Johnson, but soon this came to seem an unwise selection. At the time the Douglasses were there, New Bedford had the highest per capita income in America. When the fugitive slave Freddy Bailey, then calling himself Frederick Johnson, arrived at the home of Nathan Johnson and Mary “Polly” Johnson in New Bedford (the Douglasses are not the only guests

This is the recent dedication of a plaque at the site, attended by descendants of the original participants:

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Nathan was reading Robert Burns, and within a day or two Johnson would rename him after the hero Douglas

in LADY OF THE LAKE, as Frederick Douglass. (Frederick decided to spell it “Douglass” because there were some black families in New Bedford who were spelling their name that way.)17

17. But why did Freddy Bailey alias Fred Johnson accept the proffered name “Douglass”? Merely because it had been suggested to him? I think not! The Following is from a collection of Douglass’s speeches entitled LECTURES ON AMERICAN-SLAVERY, which would be published in 1851:

It is often said, by the opponents of the Anti-slavery cause that, the condition of the people of Ireland is more deplorable than that of the American slaves. Far be it from me to underrate the sufferings of the Irish people. They have been long oppressed; and the same heart that prompts me to plead the cause of the American bondman, makes it impossible for me not to sympathize with all the oppressed of all lands. Yet I must say that there is no analogy between the two cases. The Irishman is poor, but he is not a slave. He may be in rags, but he is not a slave. He is still the master of his own body and can say with the poet, “The hand of Douglass is his own.”

Thus in all probability the name was chosen because although it was intentionally opaque it nevertheless suggested, at least to its bearer, in the idea that “The hand of Douglass is his own,” the same sort of thing that was suggested in that time by the more usual name “Freeman” meaning “the free man.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ANNA MURRAY DOUGLASS FREDERICK DOUGLASS

The first thing these Douglasses with a wedding certificate in the name of Johnson, but with no papers to produce for the husband whether he was named “Mr. Douglas” or “Mr. Johnson,” discovered in “free” New Bedford was that racial prejudice would prevent the husband from using his skills as a ship caulker. It was explained that all the white caulkers would quit. Work was found for him, by Friend William C. Taber, as a stevedore, carrying oil aboard a vessel, and he then had to saw wood, shovel coal, sweep chimneys, and roll casks in an oil refinery. However, accounts of such Jim Crow experiences would not fit into the narrative he later needed to tell to righteous Northern abolition audiences, for whom South=Them=Evil meant North=Us=Good, and so Douglass ordinarily suppressed this experience of racial prejudice in New Bedford.18

Finding my trade of no immediate benefit, I threw off my calking habiliments, and prepared myself to do any kind of work I could get to do.

Although a skilled craftsman could not get work in his craft in that city at that time, due entirely to the color of his skin, Frederick Douglass did not speak of this until 1881 , when in a reference to “the test of the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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real civilization of the community,” he suggested that the New Bedford of the 1840s had failed that test:

I am told that colored persons can now get employment at calking in New Bedford.

18. If “French” innocence consists in the refusal to be shamed by the nature of one’s pleasures, and if the “German” variety consists in an awareness that so long as one is sacrificing oneself, no-one has a right to object to one’s sacrificing them as well, and if the “English” consists in a principled refusal to take responsibility for one’s obedience to improper instructions from one’s betters, and the “Italian” in not happening to notice where you have your hand, then the innocence of the USer must consist in a refusal or a failure to recognize evil of which we ourselves are the beneficiaries. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In fuller detail:

... The name given me by my dear mother was no less pretentious and long than Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. I had, however, while living in Maryland, dispensed with the Augustus Washington, and retained only Frederick Bailey. Between Baltimore and New Bedford, the better to conceal myself from the slave-hunters, I had parted with Bailey and called myself Johnson; but in New Bedford I found that the Johnson family was already so numerous as to cause some confusion in distinguishing them, hence a change in this name seemed desirable. Nathan Johnson, mine host, placed great emphasis upon this necessity, and wished me to allow him to select a name for me. I consented, and he called me by my present name—the one by which I have been known for three and forty years—Frederick Douglass. Mr. Johnson had just been reading the “Lady of the Lake,” and so pleased was he with its great character that he wished me to bear his name. Since reading that charming poem myself, I have often thought that, considering the noble hospitality and manly character of Nathan Johnson —black man though he was— he, far more than I, illustrated the virtues of the Douglas of Scotland. Sure am I that, if any slave-catcher had entered his domicile with a view to my recapture, Johnson would have shown himself like him of the “stalwart hand.” ...My “Columbian Orator,” almost my only book, had done nothing to enlighten me concerning Northern society. I had been taught that slavery was the bottom fact of all wealth. With this foundation idea, I came naturally to the conclusion that poverty must be the general condition of the people of the free States. In the country from which I came, a white man holding no slaves was usually an ignorant and poverty-stricken man, and men of this class were contemptuously called “poor white trash.” Hence I supposed that, since the non-slave-holders at the South were ignorant, poor, and degraded as a class, the non-slave-holders at the North must be in a similar condition. I could have landed in no part of the United States where I should have found a more striking and gratifying contrast, not only to life generally in the South, but in the condition of the colored people there, than in New Bedford. I was amazed when Mr. Johnson told me that there was nothing in the laws or constitution of Massachusetts that would prevent a colored man from being governor of the State, if the people should see fit to elect him. There, too, the black man’s children attended the public schools with the white man’s children, and apparently without objection from any quarter. To impress me with my security from recapture and return to slavery, Mr. Johnson assured me that no slave-holder could take a slave out of New Bedford; that there were men there who would lay down their lives to save me from such a fate. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 10, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

“Everything must come round, & be told in proper time” said Belzoni.

October 16, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Here came on Sunday Morning (14th) Edward Palmer & departed today, a gentle, faithful, sensible, well-balanced man for an enthusiast. He has renounced since a year ago last April the use of money. When he travels he stops at night at a house & asks if it would give them any satisfaction to lodge a traveller without money or price? If they do not give him a hospitable answer he goes on but generally finds the country people free & willing. When he goes away he gives them his papers or tracts. He has sometimes found it necessary to go 24 hours without food & all night without lodging. Once he found a wagon with a good buffalo under a shed & had a very good nap. By the seashore he finds it difficult to travel as they are inhospitable. He presents his views with great gentleness; & is not troubled if he cannot show the way in which the destruction of money is to be brought about; he feels no responsibility to show or know the details. It is enough for him that he is sure it must fall & that he clears himself of the institution altogether. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 19, Friday: The Liberator.

Waldo Emerson confided to his journal that he considered vehemence to be a feminine characteristic (the religion of women is exterior, that of men interior):

The feminine vehemence with which the Andrews Norton of the Daily Advertiser beseeches the dear people to whip that naughty heretic is the natural feeling in the mind whose religion is external.... The aim of a true teacher now would be ... to teach the doctrine of the perpetual revelation.

Here is the message of the Reverend Doctor Andrews Norton, on Transcendentalism and the influence of Emerson: he suggested that the danger was that what high minds would hold as high ideas, of individuality and self-reliance, ordinary minds would establish as low ideas, enabling a boundless self-conceit. Not that this sentiment was unique to the Reverend Norton — but seldom has the issue been paraphrased so politely.

A student fable of record, from this period, is that a number of Unitarian divines went to Heaven in a group. Perhaps they were all in the same train accident? The Reverend Doctor Henry Ware, Sr., who held the Hollis Chair of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School, is characterized in this fable as going “It is better than we deserve.” The Reverend William Ellery Channing of the Federal Street Church in Boston goes “This is another proof of the dignity of human nature.” The Reverend Ezra Stiles Gannett goes “There must be some mistake,” and hurries away. The Reverend Doctor Andrews Norton goes “It is a very miscellaneous crowd.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 21, Sunday: Gaetano Donizetti arrived in Paris, moving into the apartment house in which Adolphe Adam resided.

The steamboat Gypsy bearing Dr. John Emerson and his bride and their slaves reached Fort Snelling at the juncture of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. During this trip up from St. Louis one of the children of Harriet Robinson Scott and Dred Scott, Eliza, the first child to survive and the first daughter, had been born. She had been born north of the Missouri line, which is to say, in free territory. –Would that mean that she had been born free?

A few old citizens who were youths in 1835-1838, and who have died recently, remembered Dred Scott and Harriet when they were at Fort Snelling. Wm. L. Quinn, the noted half-blood scout, son of Peter Quinn, who lived near the fort, often said that Dred and his wife were apparently of pure African blood, jet black and shiny; that they were mildly disposed, inoffensive people, but of a low order of intelligence and did not like the Indians. Dred was fond of hunting and quite successful as a deer- stalker.... At first the Sioux were greatly diverted by the negroes. They called the black people “black Frenchmen” (Wahsechon Sappa), followed them about, felt their wooly heads, and then laughed heartily. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 10, Saturday/11, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

My brave Henry Thoreau walked with me to Walden this P.M. and complained of the proprietors who compelled him to whom as much as to any the whole world belonged, to walk in a strip of road & crowded him out of all the rest of God’s earth. he must not get over the fence; but to the building of that fence he was no party. Suppose, he said, some great proprietor, before he was born, had bought up the whole globe. So had he been hustled out of nature. Not having been privy to any of these arrangements he does not feel called on to consent to them & so cuts fishpoles in the woods without asking who has a better title to the wood than he. I defended of course the good Institution as a scheme not good but the best that could be hit on for making the woods & waters & fields available to Wit & Worth, & for restraining the bold bad man. At all events, I begged him, having this maggot of Freedom & Humanity in his brain, to write it out into good poetry & so clear himself of it. He replied, that he feared that that was not the best way; that in doing justice to the thought, the man did not always do justice to himself: the poem ought to sing itself: if the man took too much pains with the expression he was not any longer the Idea himself. I acceded & confessed that this was the tragedy of Art that the Artist was at the expense of the Man; & hence, in the first age, as they tell, the Sons of God printed no epics, carved no stone, painted no picture, built no railroad; for the sculpture, the poetry, the music, & architecture, were in the Man. And truly Bolts & Bars do not seem to me the most exalted or exalting of our institutions. And what other spirit reigns in our intellectual works? We have literary property. The very recording of a thought betrays a distrust that there is any more or much more as good for us. If we felt that the Universe was ours, that we dwelled in eternity & advance into all wisdom we should be less covetous of these sparks & cinders. Why should we covetously build a St Peter’s, if we have the seeing Eye which beheld all the radiance of beauty & majesty in the matted grass & the overarching boughs? Why should a man spend years upon the carving an Apollo who looked Apollos into the landscape with every glance he threw?

November 16, Friday: The Liberator. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 18, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal, in a comment that probably had to do with Thoreau and may have had to do with something that happened at the picnic on November 12th:

The manners of young men who are still engaged heart & soul in uttering their Protest against society as they find it, are perchance disagreeable; their whole being seems rough & unmelodious; but have a little patience. And do not exaggerate the offence of that particular objection which with such undue and absurd dogmatism they make every day from morn till dewy eve. The institutions of society come across each ingenuous & original soul in some different point. One feels the jar in Marriage; one in Property; one in Money; one in Church; one in social Conventions; one in Slavery; one in War; each feels it in some one & a different point according to his own circumstance & history & for a long time does not see that it is a central falsehood which he is contending against, & that his protest against a particular superficial falsehood will surely ripen with time & insight into a deeper & Universal grudge.

Oakley, the estate of Harrison Gray Otis

1839 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 25, Monday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Yesterday morning, 24 Feb. at 8 o’clock a daughter was born to me, a soft, quiet, swarthy little creature, apparently perfect & healthy. My second child. Blessings on thy head, little winter bud! & comest thou to try thy luck in this world & know if the things of God are things for thee? Well assured & very soft & still, the little maiden expresses great contentment with all she finds, & her delicate but fixed determination to stay where she is, & grow. So be it, my fair child! Lidian, who magnanimously makes my gods her gods, calls the babe Ellen. I can hardly ask more for thee, my babe, than that name implies. Be that vision & remain with us, & after us.

LIDIAN “ASIA” JACKSON EMERSON ELLEN TUCKER EMERSON ELLEN LOUISA TUCKER EMERSON HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 27, Monday: Birth of Friend Daniel Ricketson’s second son Walton.19 He would be educated at the Friends Academy of New Bedford, would become an artist, and would never marry.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

A great genius must come & preach self reliance. Our people are timid, desponding, recreant whimperers. If they fail in their first enterprises they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is RUINED. If the finest genius studies at the Cambridge Divinity College, and is not ordained within a year afterwards in Boston, or New York, it seems to his friend & himself that he is justified in being disheartened & in complaining for the rest of his life. a sturdy New Hampshire man or Vermonter who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, & so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these Boston dolls. My brave Henry here who is content to live now, & feels no shame in not studying any profession, for he does not postpone his life but lives already — pours contempt on these crybabies of routine & Boston. He has not one chance but a hundred chances. Now let a stern preacher arise who shall reveal the resources of Man, & tell men they are not leaning willows, but can & must detach themselves, that a man, a woman, is a sovereign eternity, born to shed healing to the nations; that he should be ashamed of our compassion; & that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, the idolatries, the customs, out of the window, we pity him, we pity her no more, but thank & revere them; that with the exercise of self trust new powers shall appear.

19. An alleged runic signature of Leif Eriksson with date MI would be observed on a boulder lying on the beach at No Man’s Land, an island off Martha’s Vineyard, around 1920. It would form the basis of a book by Edward F. Gray, LEIF ERIKSSON DISCOVERER OF AMERICA (Oxford, 1930), in which it is illustrated. Opinions of runic experts were so disappointing that Mr. Gray finally concluded (page 159) that it was carved by some later explorer such as Verrazzano or Gosnold as a “monument to Lief” [sic]. The inscription has been thoroughly investigated by Edmund B. Delabarre and Charles W. Brown for The New England Quarterly, VIII (1935), 365-78. They concluded that it had been carved in the twentieth century by some joker, probably Walton Ricketson (1839- 1923) of New Bedford. Refer to Samuel Eliot Morison’s THE EUROPEAN DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. THE NORTHERN VOYAGES A.D. 500-1600. NY: Oxford UP, 1971. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 30, Sunday: Waldo Emerson mused in his journal about the wu wei nature of the Transcendentalist enterprise:

It is proposed to form a very large Society to devise & execute means for propping in some secure & permanent manner this planet. It has long filled the minds of the benevolent & anxious part of the community with lively emotion, the consideration of the exposed state of the globe; the danger of its falling & being swamped in absolute space; the danger of its being drawn too near the sun & roasting the race of mankind & the daily danger of its being overturned & if a stage coach overset costs valuable lives what will not ensue on the upset of this Omnibus? It has been thought that by a strenuous & very extensive concert aided by a committee of master builders & blacksmiths, a system of booms & chains might be set round the exterior surface & that it might be underpinned in such a manner as to enable the aged & the women & children to sleep & eat with greater security henceforward. It is true that there is not a perfect unanimity on this subject at present & it is much to be regretted. A pert & flippant orator remarked to the meeting last Sunday, that the World could stand without linch pins & that if you should cut all the ropes & knock away the whole underpinning, it would swing & poise perfectly for the poise was in the globe itself. But this is Transcendentalism. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 14, Saturday: With the Thoreau brothers back in town, Waldo Emerson heard of their great summer adventure down the Concord River and up the Middlesex Canal and the Merrimack River, possibly from Dr. Josiah Bartlett, and considered that it must truly have been a learning experience, of a class with being able to grow up as a farm boy rather than a city boy:

An education in things is not: we are all involved in the condemnation of words, an Age of words. We are shut up in schools & college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years & come out at last with a bellyfull of words & do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands or our legs or our eyes or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods. We cannot tell our course by the stars nor the hour of the day by the sun. It is well if we can swim & skate. We are afraid of a horse, of a cow, of a dog, of a cat, of a spider. Far better was the Roman rule to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. Now here are my wise young neighbors who instead of getting like the wordmen into a railroad-car where they have not even the activity of holding the reins, have got into a boat which they have built with their own hands, with sails which they have contrived to serve as a tent by night, & gone up the river Merrimack to live by their wits on the fish of the stream & the berries of the wood. My worthy neighbor Dr Bartlett expressed a true parental instinct when he desired to send his boy with them to learn something. the farm, the farm is the right school. The reason of my deep respect for the farmer is that he is a realist & not a dictionary. The farm is a piece of the world, the School house is not. The farm by training the physical rectifies & invigorates the metaphysical & moral nature.

Between this day and the 17th, Waldo Emerson manifested to his journal that his readings about the Peace Testimony of the Religious Society of Friends had left him in the approximate state of awareness of a 9-year- old boy playing with a sabre made out of a stick:

I do not like to speak to the Peace Society if so I am to restrain me in so extreme a privilege as the use of the sword & bullet. For the peace of the man who has forsworn the use of the bullet seems to me not quite peace, but a canting impotence: but with knife & pistol in my hands, if I, from greater bravery & honor, cast them aside, then I know the glory of peace. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 30, Monday: Miss Prudence Ward wrote to a friend describing the visit which John Thoreau, Jr. had paid to Miss Ellen Devereux Sewall in Scituate in the absence of her parents, the Reverend and Mrs. Edmund Quincy Sewall.

Waldo Emerson had reminisced in his journal:

When I was thirteen years old, my uncle Samuel Ripley one day asked me, “How is it Ralph, that all the boys dislike you & quarrel with you, whilst the grown people are fond of you?” — Now am I thirty six and the fact is reversed — the old people suspect & dislike me, & the young love me.

William Basset (Jr.), only child of the Quaker couple William Basset and Mary Boyce Basset, was born in Lynn, Massachusetts. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 18, Friday: Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

In these golden days it behoves me once more to make my annual inventory of the world. For the five last years I have read each winter a new course of lectures in Boston, and each was my creed & confession of faith. Each told all I thought of the past, the present, & the future. Once more I must renew my work and I think only once in the same form though I see that he who thinks he does something for the last time ought not to do it at all.... So I submit to sell tickets again.

December 4, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson lectured at the Masonic Temple in Boston:

In Boston ... I read the first lecture of my course on the Present Age; with the old experience that when it was done, & the time had come to read it, I was then first ready to begin to write.

This had been the initial lecture of a 10-lecture private series on “The Present Age,” and would be summarized 50 in 1888 by James Elliot Cabot in A MEMOIR OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON. The net returns would be $325. THE LIST OF LECTURES

1840

February 19, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

I closed last Wednesday, 12th instant, my Course of Lectures in Boston, “On the Present Age.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 9, Thursday: Jones Very appeared in Concord on this bright spring day, and he and Waldo Emerson found they were able to resume their relationship as if nothing had occurred. They walked in the afternoon to Edmund Hosmer’s (Gleason G9) and then to Walden Pond, and later Emerson recorded in his journal that Very had been a “treasure of a companion.”

We walked this P.M. to Edmund Hosmer’s & Walden Pond — The south wind blew & filled with bland & warm light the dry sunny woods. The last year’s leaves flew like birds through the air. As I sat on the bank of the Drop or God’s Pond & saw the amplitude of the little water, what space what verge the little scudding fleets of ripples found to scatter & spread from side to side & take so much time to cross the pond, & saw how the water seemed made for the wind, & the wind for the water, dear playfellows for each other — I said to my companion, I declare this world is so beautiful that I can hardly believe it exists. At Walden Pond, the waves were larger and the whole lake in pretty uproar. Jones Very said, “See how each wave rises from the midst with an original force, at the same time that it partakes the general movement!”

Very informed Emerson of the event at the home of the Reverend Henry Ware, Jr. during his September 1839 visit to Cambridge. Emerson enjoyed his story of Christian’s return to the realm of the Romans. Later, he mused in his journal about the manner in which he had behaved toward Very. Edwin Gittleman’s reading of this is that Emerson “placed his former antipathy in perspective, and attributed most of the blame to his own narrow, cold, distrustful nature.” By June this self-critique had been moved into the essay “Friendship”:

We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man who under a certain religious frenzy cast off this drapery, and omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting –as indeed he could not help doing– for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plain- dealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Gittleman parses this paragraph as indicating that

The impersonal “we” employed by the essayist concealed something more than belated regret at having failed to respect a friend’s integrity. It was an admission of his own hypocrisy and restlessness of spirit, and a condemnation of his earlier reluctance to abandon an uncharitably moralistic attitude toward Very. His radical manifestation of a religious individualism at least should have been tolerated, even if it were directed toward Lidian Emerson.

April 9: I read in Cudworth how “Origen determines that the stars do not make but signify; and that the heavens are a kind of divine volume, in whose characters they that are skilled may read or spell out human events.” Nothing can be truer, and yet astrology is possible. Men seem to be just on the point of discerning a truth when the imposition is greatest.

May 27, Wednesday: By this day Waldo Emerson had written in his journal:

I went to the circus.

At 5:20PM, Nicolò Paganini died in Nice at the age of 57. According to Paolo Agostino he died “in the arms of his son who was alone in the apartment with him.” The son, Baron Achille Paganini, would inherit the bulk of what remained his estate.

June 18, Thursday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:20

I like Henry Thoreau’s statement on Diet. “If a man does not believe that he can thrive on board nails, I will not talk with him.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 24, Wednesday-28, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Now for near five years I have been indulged by the gracious Heaven in my long holiday in this goodly house of mine entertaining & entertained by so many worthy & gifted friends and all this time poor Nancy Barron the madwoman has been screaming herself hoarse at the poorhouse across the brook & I still hear her whenever I open my window.

20. This statement, which of course has nothing whatever to do with “Diet,” would eventually find its way into WALDEN:

WALDEN: There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone; and to strike at the root of the matter at once, –for the root is faith,– I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say. For my part, I am glad to hear of experiments of this kind being tried; as that a young man tried for a fortnight to live on hard, raw corn on the ear, using his teeth for all mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the same and succeeded. The human race is interested in these experiments, though a few old women who are incapacitated for them, or who own their thirds in mills, may be alarmed. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 1, Wednesday:Publication of THE DIAL: A MAGAZINE FOR LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND RELIGION (Volume I, Number 1, July 1840), a journal of Transcendentalist thought named in honor of the sundial, began at this point and continued into 1844:

“The name speaks of faith in Nature and in Progress.” – The Reverend James Freeman Clarke

This initial issue of THE DIAL included Henry Thoreau’s essay on the Roman satirist Aulus Persius Flaccus, which has been termed his “first printed paper of consequence.”

“AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS”: The life of a wise man is most of all PEOPLE OF extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity that includes all A WEEK time. He is a child each moment, and reflects wisdom. The far darting thought of the child’s mind tarries not for the development of manhood; it lightens itself, and needs not draw down lightning from the clouds. When we bask in a single ray from ZOROASTER the mind of Zoroaster, we see how all subsequent time has been an idler, and has no apology for itself. But the cunning mind travels farther back than Zoroaster each instant, and comes quite down to the present with its revelation. All the thrift and industry of thinking give no man any stock in life; his credit with the inner world is no better, his capital no larger. He must try his fortune again to-day as yesterday. All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed, but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it. From a real sympathy, all the world is forward to prompt him who gets up to live without his creed in his pocket.

PERSIUS

THE DIAL, JULY 1840

Thoreau would later recycle this paper on the satirist Persius with 28 minor modifications into the “Thursday” chapter of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS:

A WEEK: The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, PEOPLE OF for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time. The cunning mind travels further back than Zoroaster each A WEEK instant, and comes quite down to the present with its revelation. The utmost thrift and industry of thinking give no man any stock in life; his credit with the inner world is no better, his capital no larger. He must try his fortune again to-day as yesterday. All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed, but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it. All the world is forward to prompt him who gets up to live without his creed in his pocket.

ZOROASTER PERSIUS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau’s effort turned two tricks of interest. First, he espoused an attitude of turning away from creedal closedness, associating creedal closedness with immodesty and openness with modesty rather than vice versa and developing that attitude out of comments such as Haud cuivis promptum est, murmurque humilesque susurros / Tollere de templis; et aperto vivere voto which translates as “It’s not easy to take murmurs and low whispers out of the temple and live with open vow.” Second, Thoreau perversely insisted on translating ex tempore in its literal etymological sense “out of time” ignoring what had become the primary sense of the phrase: “haphazard,” “improvised.” Thoreau mobilized this phrase to summon people to live not in time but in eternity: “The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity that includes all time. He is a child of each moment, and reflects wisdom.… He must try his fortune again to-day as yesterday. All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed, but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it. From a real21 sympathy, all the world is forward to prompt him who gets up to live without his creed in his pocket.” The force of the essay, then, was to provide Thoreau an opportunity to preach his own doctrines by satirizing a minor Roman satirist, and he admits as much: “As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps criminis.” Thoreau is of course that poet, that accessory to the crime. Robert D. Richardson, Jr. points out that Thoreau ignored a trope in Persius that had been admired by John Dryden, in order to do quite different things with this material:

With the cool effrontery of an Ezra Pound, Thoreau declares that there are perhaps twenty good lines in Persius, of permanent as opposed to historical interest. Ignoring the elegant shipwreck trope Dryden so admired in the sixth satire, Thoreau gives the main weight of his essay to a careful reading of seven of those lines. Two lines,

It is not easy for every one to take murmurs and low Whispers out of the temple –et aperto vivere voto– and live with open vow,

permit Thoreau to insist on the distinction between the “man of true religion” who finds his open temple in the whole universe, and the “jealous privacy” of those who try to “carry on a secret commerce with the gods” whose hiding place is in some building. The distinction is between the open religion of the fields and woods, and the secret, closed religion of the churches.

EZRA POUND

21. EARLY ESSAYS AND MISCELLANIES 126. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I would point out here that those who are familiar with the poetry of the West Coast poet of place, Robinson Jeffers (and I presume Richardson to be as innocent of knowledge of Jeffers as was Jeffers of knowledge of Thoreau), rather than see a linkage to the spirit of a poet who worshiped the Young Italy of Benito Mussolini, will choose to perceive a more direct linkage to Jeffers’s stance of “inhumanism.” But to go on in Richardson’s comment about the “Aulus Persius Flaccus” essay:

Thoreau’s best point takes a rebuke from the third satire against the casual life, against living ex tempore, and neatly converts it into a Thoreauvian paradox. Taking ex tempore literally, Thoreau discards its sense of offhand improvisation and takes it as a summons to live outside time, to live more fully than our ordinary consciousness of chronological time permits.

The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time.

Interpreting Persius through the lens of Emerson’s “History,” Thoreau contends that

All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself.

Thoreau’s Persius has gone beyond Stoicism to transcendentalism, insisting on open religious feelings as opposed to closed institutional dogmatic creeds, and on a passionate articulation of the absolute value of the present moment.

(Well, first we have Thoreau being like a later poet who was renowned for his personal as well as his political craziness, and then we have Thoreau being an Emerson impersonator, interpreting things through the lens of the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. That’s about par for the course, on the Richardson agenda.)

This initial issue also contained some material from Charles Emerson: The reason why Homer is to me like a dewy morning is because I too lived while Troy was, and sailed in the hollow ships of the Grecians to sack the devoted town. The rosy-fingered dawn as it crimsoned the tops of Ida, the broad seashore dotted with tents, the Trojan host in their painted armor, and the rushing chariots of Diomede and Idomeneua, all these I too saw: my ghost animated the frame of some nameless Argive.... We forget that we have been drugged with the sleepy bowl of the Present. But when a lively chord in the soul is struck, when the windows for a moment are unbarred, the long and varied past is recovered. We recognize it all. We are no more brief, ignoble creatures; we seize our immortality, and bind together the related parts of our secular being. — Notes from the Journal of a Scholar, The Dial, I, p. 14

This initial issue also contained on page 123 the poem by Ellen Sturgis Hooper “I slept and dreamed that life was Beauty” from which Thoreau would quote a large part as the conclusion of his “House-Warming” chapter:22

22. Would she be married to Concord’s Harry Hooper, and would he possibly be related to the signer of the Declaration of Independence who lived in the south after attending Boston’s Latin School? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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WALDEN: The next winter I used a small cooking-stove for economy, PEOPLE OF since I did not own the forest; but it did not keep fire so well as the open fire-place. Cooking was then, for the most part, no WALDEN longer a poetic, but merely a chemic process. It will soon be forgotten, in these days of stoves, that we used to roast potatoes in the ashes, after the Indian fashion. The stove not only took up room and scented the house, but it concealed the fire, and felt as if I had lost a companion. You can always see a face in the fire. The laborer, looking into it at evening, purifies his thoughts of the dross and earthiness which they have accumulated during the day. But I could no longer sit and look into the fire, and the pertinent words of a poet recurred to me with new force.– “Never, bright flame, may be denied to me Thy dear, life imaging, close sympathy. What but my hopes shot upward e’er so bright? What by my fortunes sunk so low in night? Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall, Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all? Was thy existence then too fanciful For our life’s common light, who are so dull? Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold With our congenial souls? secrets too bold? Well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit, Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire Warms feet and hands – nor does to more aspire By whose compact utilitarian heap The present may sit down and go to sleep, Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked, And with us by the unequal light of the old wood fire talked.” Mrs. Hooper

ELLEN STURGIS HOOPER

It is to be noted, as an exercise in becoming aware of how much our attitudes toward copyright have changed, that in the original edition the last line, indicating that the poem was by a Mrs. Hooper, did not appear.

The poem as it had been published in THE DIAL had been entitled “The Wood Fire.” It would appear that Thoreau had intended to quote even more of the poem, and that seven beginning lines had been suppressed in HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the process of shortening the WALDEN manuscript for publication:

“When I am glad or gay, Let me walk forth into the briliant sun, And with congenial rays be shone upon: When I am sad, or thought-bewitched would be, Let me glide forth in moonlight’s mystery. But never, while I live this changeful life, This Past and Future with all wonders rife, Never, bright flame, may be denied to me, Thy dear, life imaging, close sympathy. What but my hopes shot upward e’er so bright? What by my fortunes sunk so low in night? Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall, Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all? Was thy existence then too fanciful For our life’s common light, who are so dull? Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold With our congenial souls? secrets too bold? Well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit, Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire Warms feet and hands – nor does to more aspire By whose compact utilitarian heap The present may sit down and go to sleep, Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked, And with us by the unequal light of the old wood fire talked.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau’s poem “Sympathy,” or “To a gentle boy” also appeared in this 1st issue of THE DIAL.

Sophia Peabody (Hawthorne)’s Illustration for the 1st Edition of “To a Gentle Boy” in TWICE-TOLD TALES

The title of the journal came from a phrase that Bronson Alcott had been planning to use for his next year’s diary,

DIAL ON TIME THINE OWN ETERNITY

and the “dial” in question was a garden sundial.23 For purposes of this publication Bronson strove to emulate the selections from his writings that Waldo Emerson had excerpted at the end of the small volume NATURE, attempted, that is, to cast his wisdom in the form of epigrams or “Orphic Sayings” which, even if they were unchewable, at least could be fitted into one’s mouth. In the timeframe in which these were being created, Alcott was reading Hesiod (he had in his personal library HESIOD’S WORKS, TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK, BY MR. T[HOMAS] COOKE, SECOND EDITION, 1740), Dr. Henry More, the Reverend Professor Ralph Cudworth, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. When these were finally published, they were the only transcendental material to appear in THE DIAL, of 24 pieces, that would bear the full name of the author rather than be offered anonymously or bear merely the author’s initials. It was as if the other transcendentalist writers associated with THE DIAL were saying to their readers, “Look, this is A. Bronson Alcott here, you’ve got to make allowances.” Here is one of the easier and more pithy examples:

Prudence is the footprint of Wisdom.

Some of these things, however, ran on and on without making any sense at all, and here is one that was seized upon by the popular press and mocked as a “Gastric Saying”:

The popular genesis is historical. It is written to sense not to the soul. Two principles, diverse and alien, interchange the Godhead and sway the world by turns. God is dual, Spirit is derivative. Identity halts in diversity. Unity is actual merely....

Well, I won’t quote the whole thing. Was Alcott a disregarded Hegelian who had never heard of Hegel?

23. The name, of course, carried metaphysical freight. For instance, in his 1836 essay NATURE Emerson had quoted the following from Emmanuel Swedenborg — the Swedish religious mentor whom he would later characterize, in REPRESENTATIVE MEN, as the type of “the mystic”:

The visible world and the relation of its parts, is the dial plate of the invisible.

And in December 1839, Emerson had written in his journal:

I say how the world looks to me without reference to Blair’s Rhetoric or Johnson’s Lives. And I call my thoughts The Present Age, because I use no will in the matter, but honestly record such impressions as things make. So transform I myself into a Dial, and my shadow will tell where the sun is. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Wouldn’t this be a better world if G.W.F. Hegel also had been ignored? Go figure.24The initial issue included

Americans of Thoreau’s day accepted as axiomatic the Lockean-Jeffersonian principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and Thoreau did not challenge this axiom. But he applied it in an unorthodox way. The unit that gives consent, he asserts, is not the majority but the individual. The reason, he explains, is that consent is a moral judgment, for which each individual is accountable to his own conscience. The majority, on the other hand, is not a moral entity and its right to rule not a moral entitlement. As Bronson Alcott, who set Thoreau the example of resistance to civil government, aptly put it, “In the theocracy of the soul majorities do not rule.” The alleged right of the majority to rule, Thoreau declared, is based merely on the assumption that “they are physically the strongest.”

a poem by Christopher Pearse Cranch, “To the Aurora Borealis”: Arctic fount of holiest light, Springing through the winter night, Spreading far behind yon hill, When the earth lies dark and still, Rippling o'er the stars, as streams O'er pebbled beds in sunny gleams; O for names, thou vision fair, To express thy splendours rare! Blush upon the cheek of night, Posthumous, unearthly light, Dream of the deep sunken sun, Beautiful, sleep-walking one, Sister of the moonlight pale, Star-obscuring meteor veil, Spread by heaven's watching vestals; Sender of the gleamy crystals Darting on their arrowy course From their glittering polar source, Upward where the air doth freeze Round the sister Pleiades;-- Beautiful and rare Aurora, In the heavens thou art their Flora, Night-blooming Cereus of the sky, Rose of amaranthine dye, Hyacinth of purple light, Or their Lily clad in white! Who can name thy wondrous essence, Thou electric phosphorescence? Lonely apparition fire! Seeker of the starry choir! Restless roamer of the sky, Who hath won thy mystery? Mortal science hath not ran With thee through the Empyrean, Where the constellations cluster 24. July 1840, The Dial, “Orphic Sayings,” xvii. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Flower-like on thy branching lustre. After all the glare and toil, And the daylight's fretful coil, Thou dost come so milt and still, Hearts with love and peace to fill; As when after revelry With a talking company, Where the blaze of many lights Fell on fools and parasites, One by one the guests have gone, And we find ourselves alone; Only one sweet maiden near, With a sweet voice low and clear, Whispering music in our ear,-- So thou talkest to the earth After daylight's weary mirth. Is not human fantasy, Wild Aurora, likest thee, Blossoming in nightly dreams, Like thy shifting meteor-gleams?

Thoreau’s own copy of this issue of THE DIAL is now at Southern Illinois University. It exhibits his subsequent pencil corrections.

Aulus Persius Flaccus

IF you have imagined what a divine work is spread out for the poet, and approach this author too, in the hope of finding the field at length fairly entered on, you will hardly dissent from the words of the prologue, “Ipse semipaganus Ad sacra Vatum carmen affero nostrum.” Here is none of the interior dignity of Virgil, nor the elegance and fire of Horace, nor will any Sibyl be needed to remind you, that from those older Greek poets, there is a sad descent to Persius. Scarcely can you distinguish one harmonious sound, amid this unmusical bickering with the follies of men. One sees how music has its place in thought, but hardly as yet in language. When the Muse arrives, we wait for her to remould language, and impart to it her own rhythm. Hitherto the verse groans and labors with its load, but goes not forward blithely, singing by the way. The best ode may be parodied, indeed is itself a parody, and has a poor and trivial sound, like a man stepping on the rounds of a ladder. Homer, and Shakspeare, and Milton, and Marvel, and Wordsworth, are but the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and not yet the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing. Most of all satire will not be sung. A Juvenal or Persius do not marry music to their verse, but are measured faultfinders at best; stand but just outside the faults they condemn, and so are concerned rather about the monster they have escaped, than the fair prospect before them. Let them live on an age, not a secular one, and they will have travelled out of his shadow and harm's way, and found other objects to ponder. [“nature” should As long as there is nature, the poet is, as it were, particeps read “satire”] criminis. One sees not but he had best let bad take care of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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itself, and have to do only with what is beyond suspicion. If you light on the least vestige of truth, and it is the weight of the whole body still which stamps the faintest trace, an eternity will not suffice to extol it, while no evil is so huge, but you grudge to bestow on it a moment of hate. Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest correction. Horace would not have written satire so well, if he had not been inspired by it, as by a passion, and fondly cherished his vein. In his odes, the love always exceeds the hate, so that the severest satire still sings itself, and the poet is satisfied, though the folly be not corrected. A sort of necessary order in the development of Genius is, first, Complaint; second, Plaint; third, Love. Complaint, which is the condition of Persius, lies not in the province of poetry. Ere long the enjoyment of a superior good would have changed his disgust into regret. We can never have much sympathy with the complainer; for after searching nature through, we conclude he must be both plaintiff and defendant too, and so had best come to a settlement without a hearing. I know not but it would be truer to say, that the highest strain of the muse is essentially plaintive. The saint’s are still tears of joy. But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire; as impersonal as nature herself, and like the sighs of her winds in the woods, which convey ever a slight reproof to the hearer. The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire. Hence have we to do only with the rare and fragmentary traits, which least belong to Persius, or, rather, are the properest utterance of his muse; since that which he says best at any time is what he can best say at all times. The Spectators and Ramblers have not failed to cull some quotable sentences from this garden too, so pleasant is it to meet even the most familiar truths in a new dress, when, if our neighbor had said it, we should have passed it by as hackneyed. Out of these six satires, you may perhaps select some twenty lines, which fit so well as many thoughts, that they will recur to the scholar almost as readily as a natural image; though when translated into familiar language, they lose that insular emphasis, which fitted them for quotation. Such lines as the following no translation can render commonplace. Contrasting the man of true religion with those, that, with jealous privacy, would fain carry on a secret commerce with the gods, he says, — “Haud cuivis promptum est, murmurque humilesque Tollere susurros de templis; et aperto vivere voto.” To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence. Why should he betake himself to a subterranean crypt, as if it were the only holy ground in all the world he had left unprofaned? The obedient soul would only the more discover and familiarize things, and escape more and more into light and air, as having henceforth done with secrecy, so that the universe shall not seem open enough for it. At length, is it neglectful even of that silence which is consistent with true modesty, but by its independence of all confidence in its disclosures, makes HDT WHAT? INDEX

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that which it imparts so private to the hearer, that it becomes the care of the whole world that modesty be not infringed. To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light. In the third satire he asks, “Est aliquid quò tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum? An passim sequeris corvos, testâve, lutove, Securus quò per ferat, atque ex tempore vivis?” Language seems to have justice done it, but is obviously cramped and narrowed in its significance, when any meanness is described. The truest construction is not put upon it. What may readily be fashioned into a rule of wisdom, is here thrown in the teeth of the sluggard, and constitutes the front of his offence. Universally, the innocent man will come forth from the sharpest inquisition and lecturings, the combined din of reproof and commendation, with a faint sound of eulogy in his ears. Our vices lie ever in the direction of our virtues, and in their best estate are but plausible imitations of the latter. Falsehood never attains to the dignity of entire falseness, but is only an inferior sort of truth; if it were more thoroughly false, it would incur danger of becoming true. “Securus quò pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivit, is then the motto of a wise man. For first, as the subtle discernment of the language would have taught us, with all his negligence he is still secure; but the sluggard, notwithstanding his heedlessness, is insecure. The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity that includes all time. He is a child each moment and reflects wisdom. The far darting thought of the child's mind tarries not for the development of manhood; it lightens itself, and needs not draw down lightning from the clouds. When we bask in a single ray from the mind of Zoroaster, we see how all subsequent time has been an idler, and has no apology for itself. But the cunning mind travels farther back than Zoroaster each instant, and comes quite down to the present with its revelation. All the thrift and industry of thinking give no man any stock in life; his credit with the inner world is no better, his capital no larger. He must try his fortune again today as yesterday. All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself: The word that is written may be postponed, but not that on the life. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it. From a real sympathy, all the world is forward to prompt him who gets up to live without his creed in his pocket. In the fifth satire, which is the best, I find, “Stat contrà ratio, et recretam garrit in aurem. Ne liceat facere id, quod quis vitiabit agendo.” Only they who do not see how anything might be better done are forward to try their hand on it. Even the master workman must be encouraged by the reflection, that his awkwardness will be incompetent to do that harm, to which his skill may fail to do HDT WHAT? INDEX

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justice. Here is no apology for neglecting to do many things from a sense of our incapacity, — for what deed does not fall maimed and imperfect from our hands? — but only a warning to bungle less. The satires of Persius are the farthest possible from inspired; evidently a chosen, not imposed subject. Perhaps I have given him credit for more earnestness than is apparent; but certain it is, that that which alone we can call Persius, which is forever independent and consistent, was in earnest, and so sanctions the sober consideration of all. The artist and his work are not to be separated. The most wilfully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly, but the deed and the doer together make ever one sober fact. The buffoon may not bribe you to laugh always at his grimaces; they shall sculpture themselves in Egyptian granite, to stand heavy as the pyramids on the ground of his character. T. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 16, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

After seeing Anna Barker I rode with Margaret Fuller to the plains. She taxed me, as often before, so now more explicitly with inhospitality of soul. She & Caroline would gladly be my friends, yet our intercourse is not friendship, but literary gossip. I count & weigh but do not love. They make no progress with me, but however often we have met, we still meet as strangers. They feel wronged in such relation, & do not wish to be catechised & criticized. I thought of my experience with several persons which resembled this: and confessed that I would not converse with the divinest person more than one week. M. insisted that it was no friendship which was so soon thus exhausted, & that I ought to know how to be silent & companionable at the same moment. She would surprise me — she would have me say & do what surprised myself. I confess to all this charge with humility unfeigned. I can better converse with George Bradford than with any other. Elizabeth Hoar & I have a beautiful relation not however quite free from the same hardness & fences.

GEORGE PARTRIDGE BRADFORD HDT WHAT? INDEX

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So, who was this Anna Barker? She was a Quaker girl who had converted to Unitarianism, who eventually, as the wife of the wealthy New-York banker Samuel Gray Ward, would become a Roman Catholic. As described in [her] sonnet, the unique friendship Margaret Fuller and Anna Barker possessed seems to “transcend separation.” Despite Barker’s absence, the love Fuller feels for her friend emerges in the text through the imagery of “graceful trees and gentle slopes,” images that are commonly characteristic of sentimental love poems. Fuller’s description of holding Barker, “the bright being,” illuminates the extent of Fuller’s emotional attachment to her friend, a connection so strong that “lovers” seems to be a more appropriate description of their relationship than simply “friends.” The poem evokes an image of two young lovers standing on a sandy shoreline, sharing their “heart’s power” for the “present hour,” realizing that they will later remember with “tender thoughts” and “moonlight memories” the beauty and mutual love of that evening. To carry this notion a step further, seven years after this sonnet was written, Fuller wrote the following in her journal: “that night when she [Anna] leaned on me and her eyes were such a deep violet blue, so like night, as they never were before, and we both felt such a strange mystic thrill and knew what we had never known before”. This entry is oddly reminiscent of the sonnet discussed here (e.g. “of the bright being I had held so dear, / beneath the summer sky”); it would be logical to surmise that it refers to the night detailed in the poem. Whatever else they mean, these words imply the homoerotic feelings Fuller possessed for Barker, feelings that are present, though delicately rendered, in the poem discussed here. Despite the fact that it was considered inappropriate for persons of opposite sex to display affection publicly toward each other during the nineteenth century in the United States, it was quite acceptable for persons of the same sex, especially females, to do so. Such behavior was viewed as “girlishly pure, a sign of sensibility and emotional responsiveness [...] innocent, permissible, and unthreatening.” But, a nineteenth-century best seller entitled “A Young Lady’s Friend” by Eliza Farrar, Fuller’s friend and mentor, who introduced her to Barker, states: All kissing and caressing of your female friends should be kept for your hours of privacy, and never indulged in before gentlemen. There are some reasons for this, which will readily suggest themselves, and others, which can only be known to those well acquainted with the world. This historical insight into nineteenth-century cultural norms suggests that relationships between women, such as Fuller and Barker, were likely viewed as natural and healthy relationships that probably attracted very little attention and were entirely acceptable. The fact that Fuller wrote numerous poems to women, including the seven to Barker, was considered normal behavior, despite her use of phrases such as “divinist (sic) love” when referring to Barker. Romantic or familial, she still desired to love and to be loved by anyone who shared an emotional connection with her. Gender HDT WHAT? INDEX

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made no difference to Fuller, who once wrote, “It is so true that a woman may be in love with a woman, and a man with a man [...]. It is regulated by the same law as that of love between persons of different sexes, only it is purely intellectual and spiritual.” According to Fuller biographer Joan von Mehren, for a period of ten years, Barker “served as Margaret’s most cherished romantic love.” She goes on to say, Margaret’s poems and terms of endearment, especially in her later characterization of her love for Anna as “the same love we shall feel when we are angels,” suggest that Anna’s attraction, while based on the power of opposites (the beautiful Anna, the brilliant Margaret), was possibly sustained by Margaret’s need, as Bell Chevigny has suggested, “to resolve her sexual identity by transcending sex itself.” Fuller once wrote in her journal that love between persons of the same sex is “unprofaned by any mixture of lower instincts.” This observation can be interpreted in multiple ways, either that sexual relations between persons of the same sex is a completely spiritual experience, untainted by acts normally considered to be morally improper, or that sex is never an issue between persons of the same gender if their relationship is of a truly deep and spiritual nature. By understanding Fuller’s intellectual approach to same-sex relationships, one may surmise that Anna Barker was in all probability Fuller’s first love. It is unclear, however, whether or not Fuller and Barker ever experienced a sexually intimate relationship with one another, although several biographers believe that the possibility exists.25

25. From “‘In death thy life is found’: An Examination of the Forgotten Poetry of Margaret Fuller,” thesis by Staci E. Lewis, May 2002 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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During a summer visit to North Reading, Timothy Flint died in the residence of his brother at Salem, Massachusetts. The cause of his death at the age of 60 was set down as a liver problem, “biliousness.”

Harmony Grove Cemetery then and now

He left with friends in Salem a manuscript entitled “Second part of Recollections of the Mississippi Valley” (meanwhile, back home in Louisiana, the slaves of the Lunenburg plantation were so contented in their enslavement that they were busily building their slavemaster’s family one of those standard white-pillared Southern mansions with a big veranda where these benevolent white people could relax and sip their mint HDT WHAT? INDEX

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juleps while being fanned by some little black house servant. –Hoo-hah, tell us about how to be happy!)

August 16th, 1840: A strain of music reminds me of a passage of the Vedas.

September 8, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I went into the woods. I found myself not wholly present there. If I looked at a pine-tree or an aster, that did not seem to be Nature. Nature was still elsewhere: this, or this was but outskirt and far-off reflection and echo of the triumph that had passed by and was now at its glancing splendor and heyday, — perchance in the neighboring fields, or, if I stood in the field, then in the adjacent woods. Always the present object gave me this sense of the stillness that follows a pageant that has just gone by. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 10, Thursday: According to Anita Haya Patterson’s FROM EMERSON TO KING: DEMOCRACY, RACE, AND THE POLITICS OF PROTEST (NY: Oxford UP, 1997, pages 131-2), at this point Waldo Emerson’s journal demonstrates that Emerson embraced the unscientific theory of the similarity of certain races today to his own archaic and obsolete ancestors, which is to say, the popular image of the evolutionary “throwback” or “fossil”:26

Strange history this of abolition. The negro must be very old & belongs, one would say, to the fossil formations. What right has he to be intruding into the late & civil daylight of this dynasty of the Caucasians & Saxons? It is plain that so inferior a race must perish shortly like the poor Indians. Sarah Clarke said, “the Indians perish because there is no place for them”. That is the very fact of their inferiority. There is always place for the superior. Yet pity for them was needed, it seems, for the education of this generation in ethics. Our good world cannot learn the beauty of love in narrow circles & at home in the immense Heart, but it must be stimulated by somewhat foreign & monstrous, by the simular man of Ethiopia.

Henry Thoreau lived during an expansionist period in which invasive white civilized peoples could joke among themselves about a poor American named “Lo” the nature of whose intellect was displayed in that he allegedly wanted his faithful hound to go to the Happy Hunting Ground with him. “Lo, the poor Indian,” someone would quip, and everyone would chortle, although only those with pretensions were aware that the

26. Sarah Freeman Clarke was just then lying in her terminal illness, and would perish the next day (she does not seem to be any relation to the Reverend James Freeman Clarke or to the scholar from Norton, Manlius Stimson Clarke, with which Thoreau dialogued at Harvard exercises in 1835). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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source of this line was the following doggerel by Alexander Pope:

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul, proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk, or milky way; Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv’n, Behind the cloud-topp’d hill, an humbler heav’n; Some safer world in depth of woods embrac’d, Some happier island in the wat’ry waste, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. To be, contents his natural desire, He asks no angel’s wing, no seraph’s fire; But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company.

On the next page I will give you a piece of one of these amazing books. It is a picturebook created in our blue- eyed state of Minnesota, a picturebook intended to foster local pride. This local picturebook states “The redeeming features in all the Indian wars which have devastated the Western country at intervals since the commencement of this century have been individual instances of fidelity and friendship to the white settlers on the part of Indians who have been the recipients of favors from them.”” But what I want you to look at here is the title which the white author has placed over this righteous story of white treachery and murderousness.

Anita Haya Patterson goes on in her treatise FROM EMERSON TO KING: DEMOCRACY, RACE, AND THE POLITICS OF PROTEST to point up the fact that although Waldo Emerson, like so many of his contemporaries who were presuming their own race to be inherently and intrinsically superior, was wont to speculate bloodily that the inferior races would most likely be exterminated, this is far from all the information and guidance that we might extrapolate from these foul droppings of his pen — if we can bring ourselves to pay careful attention: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The sheer weight of evidence that proves the fact of Waldo Emerson’s racism is disturbing. However, we would miss the focus of this discussion –namely, the historical function of racism in Emerson’s writings– were we simply to dismiss him for exhibiting the racist perceptions of his time.... Emerson’s racism is central to his vision of American nationality — a compelling, myopic vision that must be viewed in the context of a violent policy of westward expansion that prevailed in nineteenth-century America. In NATURE, Emerson’s unmistakable reference to the raciality of the American self allows him to situate that self at the brink of egocentric absolutism: at the same time he expresses a near disavowal of human society represented by ties to the liberal-democratic state in NATURE, Emerson’s racist imagination of the white, male body of Columbus is a framework for social cohesion. For Emerson, race functions to express both a threat to and an affirmation of social order. Generally speaking, Emerson’s racist vision of the representative self is essential for his articulation of a call to revolution — what Henry Thoreau (and, much later, [the Reverend] Martin Luther King, Jr.) would designate as “civil disobedience.”

“Waldo Emerson’s profound racism abated over time, but it never disappeared, always hovering in the background and clouding his democratic vision. Like all too many of his fellow intellectuals, throughout his life and works Emerson remained convinced that the characteristics that made the United States, for all its flaws, the great nation of the world were largely the product of its Saxon heritage and history. Here, alas, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s democratic imagination largely failed him.” — Peter Field HDT WHAT? INDEX

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YOU SEE, I’M A WHITE MAN HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS Lo, the Poor Indian. ————————

LITTLE SIX [Shakopee] AND MEDICINE BOTTLE.

HESE two chiefs of the Sioux Indians were prominent in the Minnesota Mas- sacre of 1862 and 1863, by reason of their personal acts of cruelty, and Tbecause both were men of considerable intelligence and influence. When the advancing columns of Generals [Henry Hastings] Sibley and Sully drove the Sioux over the border into Canada, these two were with the retiring forces, and with their bands found shelter about forty miles above Fort Garry. J. H. McKenzie, who had suffered many injuries from the Sioux, with the aid of a half breed, induced these chiefs to visit McKenzie’s place, near Fort Garry, a few days after Christmas, 1863. Here they plied them with drugged whisky, bound and gagged them, and at midnight strapped them on a dog sled, or toboggan, and at daylight next morning, after an all-night ride, delivered them as prisoners to Maj. E. A. C. Hatch, of Hatch’s Battalion, at Fort Pembina, on United States soil. They were tried by a military com- mission and condemned to be hung at once, but were not executed until November 10, 1865. 27 OLD BETS. The expressive, if not handsome, countenance of “Old Bets,” as she was familiarly called, was seen upon the streets of St. Paul for many years after the Indian Massa- cre. During the troublesome times of 1862 and 1863, Old Bets befriended many white people that fell into the hands of the Sioux, and as soon as the Indians were captured, or driven across the border, the residents and visitors at St. Paul returned a hundred-fold the charities which the old squaw had bestowed. Very few refused her request for “kosh poppy” –ten cents– and gifts of clothing and food were freely given her. She died in her wigwam, at Mendota, about 1878. Old settlers state that she was 120 years old at the time of her death. LITTLE CROW AND HIS SON. The leader of the Sioux nation in its war upon the whites was Little Crow. He had been educated at the agency, could read, write and speak English, and was an able orator as well as fearless warrior. When the outbreak occurred, he took command and was the recognized leader of the Indians until the capture of a large portion of his band after the battle of Wood Lake at Camp Release, on September 26, 1862. With a remnant of his followers he fled from the field, and his whereabouts were unknown until July 3, 1863. On that day Nathan Sampson and his son Chauncey had a fight with two Sioux. After his father had been severely wounded, Chauncey killed one of the Indians. When Wo-win-a-pee, Little Crow’s son, was captured in Dakota, he revealed the fact that his father was the Indian killed at Hutchinson, and that he was with him on that occasion. TAOYATEDUTA LITTLE CROW

27. Bear in mind that “Old Bet,” in New England, was the name not of a human woman but of a famous circus elephant, the first of her kind. This human woman’s name was Azayamankawan “Berry Picker.” She was in her seventies at the time of her death. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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[Edward A. Bromley. MINNEAPOLIS PORTRAIT OF THE PAST: A PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY OF THE EARLY DAYS IN MINNEAPOLIS: A COLLECTION OF VIEWS ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE CITY’S GROWTH FROM THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT DOWN TO 1880, WITH ACCOMPANYING DESCRIPTIVE MATTER AND PORTRAITS OF PIONEER CITIZENS, FORMING A COMPLETE HISTORICAL PICTURE. Minneapolis MN: Frank L. Thresher Publisher, 1890.]

The key to this 19th-Century ethnic joke, which was approximately as common around the dinner tables of white people as the jest “The only good Injun is a dead Injun,” is, of course, that this “Lo,” since he is a savage, a primitive mentality something like a non-male person or a non-adult person or a non-intelligent person or a non- sane person or a non-white person, has no grasp of the absoluteness of the categorical difference that exists between himself and his dog. A human being, even a savage, possesses an intellect and an immortal soul and will go on to some sort of an afterlife whether or not he knows about it or however he conceives it during his lifetime, whereas the hunting dog is a mere tool, an animal creature without a soul, without any intellect, a mechanical contrivance of meat that is perhaps even without (if one followed such civilized philosophers as Descartes and others) the capability of experiencing pain. Nonspeciesism, no less than nonracism, nonsexism, and nonchauvinism, requires an elaborate initiation which is chancy and which we ourselves have only recently achieved.28 As late as 1872 it was possible to publish a book in Boston in which it is proclaimed that “The Strange history this of abolition. The negro must be very old & belongs, one would say, to the fossil formations. What right has he to be intruding into the late & civil daylight of this dynasty of the Caucasians & Saxons? It is plain that so inferior a race must perish shortly like the poor Indians. Sarah Clarke said, “the Indians perish because there is no place for them”. That is the very fact of their inferiority. There is always place for the superior. Yet pity for them was needed, it seems, for the education of this generation in ethics. Our good world cannot learn the beauty of love in narrow circles & at home in the immense Heart, but it must be stimulated by somewhat foreign & monstrous, by the simular man of Ethiopia.

Quakers will have to work a great reformation in the Indian before he is really fit to be exterminated” (King, Clarence. MOUNTAINEERING IN THE SIERRA NEVADA. Boston 1872, page 40). And even today you can run into people at cocktail parties who will angrily respond to the latest news about chimp research by proclaiming “Apes talk? You might as well claim that they think! I have looked into this and discovered that they are merely imitating their handlers.”

Apes don’t talk, because to acknowledge that they talk would be the same as acknowledging that something not done by a white man might be of some importance. And we all know what W.E.B. Dubois so freely admitted: I freely admit that, according to white writers, white teachers, white historians and white molders of public opinion, nothing ever happened in the world of any importance that could not or should not be labeled “white.”

28. For instance, we were recently guilty of electing, and then re-electing, a President who felt that there was such an absolute distinction to be made between human males and human females, males representing stability but females instability:

“I don’t think a woman should be in any government job whatever, mainly because they are erratic. And emotional.” — President Richard Milhous Nixon HDT WHAT? INDEX

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— W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, “The Superior Race”

(In my experience, these white people who are ready to maintain that apes only imitate always profess to be up on the latest research but don’t quite recall their source.)

October 17, Saturday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

GEORGE RIPLEY Yesterday George & Sophia Ripley, Margaret Fuller & Alcott SOPHIA RIPLEY discussed here the new social plans. I wished to be convinced, to be thawed, to be made nobly mad by the kindlings before my MARGARET FULLER eye of a new dawn of human piety. But this scheme was arithmetic BRONSON ALCOTT & comfort; this was a hint borrowed from the Tremont House & U.S. Hotel; a rage in our poverty & politics to live rich & gentlemanlike, an anchor to leeward against a change of weather; a prudent forecast on the probable issue of the great questions of pauperism & property.

BROOK FARM

October 25, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I dreamed that I floated at will in the great Ether, and I saw this world floating also not far off, but diminished to the size of an apple. Then an angel took it in his hand & brought it to me and said “This thou must eat.” And I ate the world. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December: Henry Thoreau sent Miss Ellen Devereux Sewall’s father, the Reverend Edmund Quincy Sewall, Sr., the newly published volume of Jones Very’s poems. (Ellen, tactful little sweetheart that she was, would respond politely that the poems had been enjoyed by the entire family.)

In his journal, Thoreau made a reference to Dante’s LA DIVINA COMMEDIA. LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, I LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, II LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, III

Waldo Emerson commented about Amos Bronson Alcott to his journal:

A. is a tedious archangel.

(We trust that he would share this observation with B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z, but never with A.)

Nature ever flows; stands never still. Motion or change is her mode of existence. The poetic eye sees in Man the Brother of the River, and in Woman the Sister of the River. Their life is always transition. Hard blockheads only drive nails all the time; forever remember; which is fixing. Heroes do not fix, but flow, bend forward ever and invent a resource for every moment. A man is a compendium of nature, an indomitable savage; as long as he has a temperament of his own, and a hair growing on his skin, a pulse beating in his veins, he has a physique which disdains all intrusion, all despotism; it lives, wakes, alters, by omnipotent modes, and is directly related there, amid essences and billets doux; to Himmaleh mountain chains, wild cedar swamps, and the interior fire, the molten core of the globe. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1841

April 6, Tuesday: Vice President took the oath of office subsequent to the death of President William Henry Harrison. He has gone down in history as our first President to marry on his birthday, and not only that, also as our first president to have a granddaughter born in the White House. Waldo Emerson commented on the succession in his journal:

General [President William Henry] Harrison was neither Whig nor Tory, but the Indignation President; and, what was not at all surprising in this puny generation, he could not stand the excitement of seventeen millions of people but died of the Presidency in one month. A man should have a heart & a trunk vascular and on the Scale of the Aqueducts or the Cloaca Maxima of Rome to bear the friction of such a Missisippi [sic] stream.

April 7. Wednesday. My life will wait for nobody, but is being matured still irresistibly while I go about the streets and chaffer with this man and that to secure it a living. It will cut its own channel, like the mountain stream, which by the longest ridges and by level prairies is not kept from the sea finally. So flows a man’s life, and will reach the sea water, if not by an earthy channel, yet in dew and rain, overleaping all barriers, with rainbows to announce its victory. It can wind as cunningly and unerringly as water that seeks its level; and shall I complain if the gods make it meander? This staying to buy me a farm is as if the Mississippi should stop to chaffer with a clamshell. What have I to do with plows? I cut another furrow than you see. Where the off ox treads, there is it not, it is farther off; where the nigh ox walks, it will not be, it is nigher still. If corn fails, my crop fails not. What of drought? What of rain? Is not my sand well clayed, my peat well sanded? Is it not underdrained and watered? My ground is high, But ‘t is not dry, What you call dew Comes filtering through; Though in the sky, It still is nigh; Its soil is blue And virgin too. ------If from your price ye will not swerve, Why, then I’ll think the gods reserve A greater bargain there above, Out of their sup’rabundant love Have meantime better for me cared, And so will get my stock prepared, Plows of new pattern, hoes the same, Designed a different soil to tame, And sow my seed broadcast in air, Certain to reap my harvest there. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September: Henry Thoreau had already come to feel that he was “living with Mr. Emerson in a very dangerous prosperity.” For one thing, the meals were exceedingly substantial and varied, not plain or steady at all. But Thoreau was immersing himself in early English poetry and had borrowed $15.00 from Waldo Emerson to fund some research that he was conducting in Cambridge, presumably in Gore Hall, the current Harvard library structure.

Still following the “Main Street,” it is not long before the turrets of Gore Hall —the library building of the university— come in sight, and a side glimpse of the other college buildings is obtained through the trees. GORE HALL is of recent construction. The outer walls of the building are of rough Quincy granite laid in regular courses, with hammered stone buttresses, towers, pinnacles, drip stones, &c. The inner walls, columns, and the main floor are of brick, covered with hard pine; the partitions are strengthened by iron columns concealed within them, and the roof and galleries rest on iron rafters. It is in the form of a Latin cross, the extreme length of which externally is one hundred and forty feet, and through the transept eighty-one and a half feet. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The interior contains a hall one hundred and twelve feet long and thirty-five feet high, with a vaulted ceiling supported by twenty ribbed columns. The spaces between the columns and side walls are divided by partitions into stalls or alcoves for books, above and below the gallery. The library is divided into four departments, viz.: Public, Law, Theological, and Medical. It contains ninety thousand volumes. Among its curiosities are seven Greek manuscripts, (one a fragment of an evangelistary, probably of the ninth century,) and several Oriental manuscripts, in Arabic, Persian, Hindostanee, Japanese, &c. Of Roman coins the library has six hundred and seventy- one in copper, forty-three in silver, and one in gold; of ancient coins other than Roman, eight. There are over five hundred modern coins of all sorts, and a large number of medals. In term time the library is open on the first four secular days of the week, from nine A. M. till one P. M., and from two till four P. M., and on Fridays from nine A. M. till one P. M.; excepting the first Friday of each term, Christmas Day, the days of public Fast and Thanksgiving, and the Fridays following them, the Fourth of July, and the days of public exhibitions and the Dudleian Lecture, during the exercises. In the vacations the library is open every Monday from nine A. M. till one P. M. All persons who wish to have access to the library, or to bring their friends to see it, are expected to make their visits on the days and within the hours above named.

It was perhaps in this month that Emerson entered the following in his journal:

I told H.T. that his freedom is in the form, but he does not disclose new matter. I am very familiar with all his thoughts — they are my own quite originally drest. But if the question be, what new ideas has he thrown into circulation, he has not yet told what that is which he was created to say. I said to him what I often feel, I only know three persons who seem to me fully to see this law of reciprocity or compensation — himself, Alcott, & myself: and ’tis odd that we should all be neighbors, for in the wide land or the wide earth I do not know another who seems to have it as deeply & originally as these three Gothamites. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 21, Tuesday: As the Reverend Ezra Ripley had grown older, to help him cope the town of Concord had called in the services of assistant ministers. In 1830 they had secured the services of the Reverend Hersey Bradford Goodwin, and then after the death of the Reverend Goodwin, in 1838, they had secured the services of the young Reverend Barzillai Frost. The Reverend Ripley was, nevertheless, composing a sermon when he died on this morning. Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

Dr Ripley died this morning.... His horror at the doctrine of non-resistance was amusing, for he actually believed that once abrogate the laws, promiscuous union of the sexes would instantly take place!

Emerson would also write “The fall of this oak makes some sensation in the forest, old and doomed as it was,” and “Well the new is only the seed of the old. What is this abolition and Nonresistance and Temperance but the continuation of Puritan-ism, though it operate inevitably the destruction of the Church in which it grew.”

This funeral would occasion “A Sermon Delivered at the Funeral of the Rev. Ezra Ripley,” by the Reverend Barzillai Frost, and “Death of the Aged,” by the Reverend Convers Francis. (Since the First Parish Church structure was at this time undergoing restoration, his funeral would need to be transacted in the Trinitarian Congregational Church which stood across the brook.)

NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE SEPTEMBER 21ST, 1841 AT ALL ONE MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY, TOMORROW, IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY AT BEST).

Emerson’s Journals “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 13, Wednesday: Fanny Elssler, the most egregious Austrian prior to Adolf Hitler, or perhaps even Arnold Schwartzeneger,29 had come to town! Fanny Elssler was the world’s first truly international star. In Europe she reigned alongside two other matchless talents of the mid-century — Rachel, the daughter of a Jewish peddler who became the greatest actress of her time, and the incomparable Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind. Fanny was the first of the three to allow her talents to be imported to the US. The pristine, classical, almost spiritual perfection of traditional European ballet had given way to a romantic era to which Fanny Elssler’s talents were perfectly suited. She was earthy and voluptuous, and her graceful, exotic movements across a stage were filled with intoxicating, primitive passion. But how many Americans had ever heard of Fanny Elssler? And what red-blooded Yankee would pay good hard-earned money to watch a foreigner prance and tiptoe about a stage? The answer would be forged by the innovative skills of Elssler’s manager, a strange, dandified American known as Chevalier Henry Wikoff. Phineas Taylor Barnum would learn more from this controversial young man about promotion than he ever dared admit.... As many an admirer had done before him, Wikoff also became Fanny’s lover.... Pretty soon Fanny had first New York, then the whole country at her feet. The Chevalier had literally masterminded a new kind of American insanity — “Elsslermania.” Waldo Emerson watched as, agile and sensuous in downtown Boston, she danced Nathalie.

I saw in Boston Fanny Elssler in the ballet of Nathalie.

For this performance, or, at least, for her performance of La Sylphide, theatergoers were proving currently to be willing to pay even $288.00 a ticket,30 considerably more than the annual income of a seamstress. –And that was after the authorities had forced her to lengthen her skirts to the point at which the audience was warmly complaining that the dancer “could hardly move.” Clearly, Elssler’s fanny and other erroneous zones were proving far more efficacious than raw oysters, in reminding Bostonians of bounteous Nature and of necessary real Progress. And, while downtown, probably on this date, he also had happened to glimpse a famous Bostonian on the street — and this great man, Secretary of State of the United States of America, was refusing

29. , who knew a good thing when he saw it, publicly attacked her life of “wantonness and shame.” Over the course of 208 US performances, the dancer would clear $140,000 for herself and her manager Chevalier Henry Wikoff, or approximately $673 an evening (her guarantee against the box-office draw was the first $500), a nightly princely sum which would have represented two years income to a skilled white male American artisan. 30. Emerson was attending this ballet, most likely, in the company of Margaret Fuller. Presumably their tickets cost at least $50 each, so the question is, how did Emerson and Fuller come up with this sort of disposable income? Did they perchance have access to freebie tickets? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to meet his eye!

I saw Daniel Webster in the street — but he was changed since I saw him last — black as a thunder cloud, & care worn: the anxiety that withers this generation among the young & thinking class had crept up also into the great lawyer’s chair, & too plainly, too plainly he was one of us. I did not wonder that he depressed his eyes when he saw me, and would not meet my face. The canker worms have crawled to the topmost bough of the wild elm & swing down from that. No wonder the elm is a little uneasy.

Also on this notably productive excursion Emerson had his Daguerreotype made:

The Artist stands aside & lets you paint yourself.

Meanwhile in beautiful downtown Boston, Frederick Douglass was addressing the annual meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 22, Monday: A real pipe organ was purchased for $1,050 for Concord’s parish church.

Returning to Concord from a business trip to Boston, Waldo Emerson found Lidian Emerson with Edith Emerson, born at 5PM. He wrote to William and Susan Haven Emerson:

Be it known unto you that a little maiden child is born unto this house this day at 5 o clock this afternoon; it is a meek little girl which I have just seen, & in this short dark winter afternoon I cannot tell what color her eyes are, and the less, because she keeps them pretty closely shut: But there is nothing in her aspect to contradict the hope we feel that she has come for a blessing to our little company. Lidian is very well and finds herself suddenly recovered from a host of ails which she suffered from this morning. Waldo is quite deeply happy with this fair unexpected apparition & cannot peep & see it enough. Ellen has retired to bed unconscious of the fact & of all her rich gain in this companion. Shall I be discontented who had dreamed of a young poet that should come? I am quite too much affected with wonder & peace at what I have and behold & understand nothing of, to quarrel with it that it is not different.

(Not only little Edith, but also Henry Thoreau joined the Emerson household on this day.)

At some point along in here some events would occur, that later, approaching a lamentable 20th anniversary on January 17, 1862, Waldo Emerson would muse about in his journal: JOHN THOREAU, JR. WALLIE EMERSON

Long ago I wrote of “Gifts,” & neglected a capital example. John Thoreau Jr. one day put up a bluebird’s box on my barn fifteen years ago, it must be — and there it is still with every summer a melodious family in it, adorning the place, & singing his praises. There’s a gift for you which cost the giver no money, but nothing he could have bought would be so good. I think of another quite inestimable. John Thoreau, Junior, knew how much I should value a head of little Waldo, then five years old. He came to me, & offered to carry him to a daguerreotypist who was then in town, & he, Thoreau, would see it well done. He did it, & brought me the daguerre which I thankfully paid for. In a few months after, my boy died, and I have ever since had deeply to thank John Thoreau for that wise & gentle piece of friendship.

[Bluebird, Eastern Sialia sialis] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At 9PM, John York and Jehiel Kinney set out from Port Day for Hudson’s Tavern, two miles above Chippawa on the Niagara River above the falls, with a load of six barrels of whiskey. They would be caught in the rapids and go over the always-deadly American Falls.

In the night, Mahomed Akber Khan, second son of the late Ameer Dost Mahomed Khan, arrived in Cabul, Afghanistan from Bameean. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1842

January 27, Thursday: Wallie Emerson, Waldo Jr., died at 8:15PM of scarlet fever.

When one of the girls of the Alcott family came to the door to ask how little Wallie was doing, his father faced her there.

Child, he is dead. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The next day Waldo Emerson entered in his journal:

Yesterday night at 15 minutes after eight my little Waldo ended his life.

On Sunday I carried him to see the new church & organ. & on Sunday we shall lay his sweet body in the ground. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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And thus from the pages of Louisa May Alcott’s LITTLE WOMEN:

… It was late when she came back, and no one saw her creep upstairs and shut herself into her mother’s room. Half an hour after, Jo went to ‘Mother’s closet’ for something, and there found little Beth sitting on the medicine chest, looking very grave, with red eyes and a camphor bottle in her hand. “Christopher Columbus! What’s the matter?” cried Jo, as Beth put out her hand as if to warn her off, and asked quickly,— “You’ve had scarlet fever, haven’t you?” “Years ago, when Meg did. Why?”

WALLIE “Then I’ll tell you — oh, Jo, the baby’s dead!”

It had been just prior to this difficult month of January 1842 that Emerson had read his lecture “THE TRANSCENDENTALIST” at the Masonic Hall in Boston: “The Transcendentalist”

Mind is the only reality, of which men and all other natures are better or worse reflectors.

THE LIST OF LECTURES Approaching a lamentable 20th anniversary that would fall due on January 17, 1862, Waldo Emerson would reminisce about a bluebird box that had been put up on his barn by John Thoreau, Jr. [Eastern Bluebird Sialia sialis], and a Daguerreotype that had been made of his son who would so soon be deceased:

Long ago I wrote of “Gifts,” & neglected a capital example. John Thoreau Jr. one day put up a bluebird’s box on my barn fifteen years ago, it must be — and there it is still with every summer a melodious family in it, adorning the place, & singing his praises. There’s a gift for you which cost the giver no money, but nothing he could have bought would be so good. I think of another quite inestimable. John Thoreau, Junior, knew how much I should value a head of little Waldo, then five years old. He came to me, & offered to carry him to a daguerreotypist who was then in town, & he, Thoreau, would see it well done. He did it, & brought me the daguerre which I thankfully paid for. In a few months after, my boy died, and I have ever since had deeply to thank John Thoreau for that wise & gentle piece of friendship. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 26, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Nellie waked & fretted at night & put all sleep of her seniors to rout. Seniors grew very cross, but Nell conquered soon by the pathos & eloquence of childhood & its words of fate. Thus after wishing it would be morning, she broke out into sublimity; “Mother, it must be morning.” Presently, after, in her sleep, she rolled out of bed; I heard the little feet running around on the floor, and then, “O dear! Where’s my bed?” She slept again, and then woke; “Mother, I am afraid; I wish I could sleep in the bed be side of you. I am afraid I shall tumble into the waters—It is all water.” What else could papa do? He jumped out of bed & laid himself down by the little mischief, & soothed her the best he might.

EDITH EMERSON

September:Waldo Emerson to his journal:

The poor Irish Mary Corbet whose five weeks’ infant died here 3 months ago, sends word to Lidian that “she cannot send back her bandbox (in which the child’s body was carried to Boston): she must plase give it to her; & she cannot send back the little handkerchief (with which its head was bound up): she must plase give it to her.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 27, Tuesday: For a 2d day, Frederick Douglass and Abby Kelley spoke in Port Byron, New York.

Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne took a 2-day walking trip to Harvard village and, across the Nashua HDT WHAT? INDEX

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River, the Shaker community:

Sept. 27 was a fine day, and Hawthorn [sic] & I set forth on a walk. We went first to the Factory where Mr Demond makes Domett cloths, but his mills were standing still, his houses empty. Nothing so small but comes to honour & has its shining moment somewhere; & so was it here with our little Assabet or North Branch; it was falling over the rocks into silver, & above was expanded into this tranquil lake. After looking about us a few moments we took the road to Stow.... We scarcely encountered man or boy in our road nor saw any in the fields. This depopulation lasted all day. But the outlines of the landscape were so gentle that it seemed as if we were in a very cultivated country, and elegant persons must be living just over yonder hills. Three or four times, or oftener, we saw the entrance to their lordly park. But nothing in the farms or in the houses made this good. And it is to be considered that when any large brain is born in these towns it is sent, at sixteen or twenty years, to Boston or New York, and the country is tilled only by the inferior class of the people, by the second crop or rowan of the men. Hence all these shiftless poverty-struck pig-farms.... After noon we reach Stow, and dined, then continued our journey towards Harvard, making our day’s walk, according to our best computation, about 20 miles. The last mile, however, we rode in a wagon, having been challenged by a friendly fatherly gentleman, who knew my name, & my father’s name & history, & who insisted on doing the honours of his town to us, & of us to his townsmen; for he fairly installed us at the tavern, introduced us to the Doctor, & to General ————, & bespoke the landlord’s best attention to our wants. We get the view of the Nashua River valley from the top of Oak-Hill, as we enter Harvard village.

Many years later, after Hawthorne’s burial in fact, Waldo would reminisce in his journal that:

I have forgotten in what year, but it was whilst he lived in the Manse, soon after his marriage, that I said to him, “I shall never see you in this hazardous way; we must take a long walk together. Will you go to Harvard and visit the Shakers?” He agreed and we took a June day, and walked the twelve miles, got our dinner from the Brethren, slept at the Harvard Inn, and returned home by another road, the next day. It was a satisfactory tramp, and we had a good talk on the way, of which I set down some record in my journal. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 28, Wednesday: A federal court decided John Brown’s bankruptcy case, as the culmination of years of dicey business decisions. His creditors were awarded all but the essentials which the Brown family needed to sustain life — but this proceeding did free him. A failed surveyor, farmer, speculator, schoolteacher, tanner, and cattleman, he showed up as a wool dealer in an 1848 credit report: “his condition is questionable.” Winter 1849: “may or may not be good.” Summer 1850: “his means are equally obscure.” Still in his forties, he looked sixty to credit reporters. The agency lost him when he switched lines of work yet again, only to fail yet again. Like many another misfit who pushed a doomed venture too far, he quit when he had no other choice. Having grown whiskers for the first time, his craggy face looked still more ancient. Everyone had an opinion of this broken man. “Served him right.” Overhearing such comments, Thoreau said he felt proud even to know him and questioned why people “talk as if a man’s death were a failure, and his continued life, be it of whatever character, were a success.” The bankrupt court had restored this loser’s freedom in 1842. Now it was 1859, and no earthly court could save John Brown after his failure at Harpers Ferry. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Waldo Emerson continued in his journal:

1 Next morning, we begun our walk at 6 /2 o’clock for the Shaker 1 Village distant 3 /2 miles. Whilst the good Sisters were getting ready our breakfast, we had a conversation with Seth Blanchard & Cloutman of the Brethren, who gave an honest account by yea & by nay of their faith & practice. They were not stupid like some whom I have seen of their society, & not worldly like others.... From the Shaker Village we came to Littleton, & thence to Acton, still in the same redundance of splendour. It was like a day of July, and from Acton we sauntered leisurely homeward to finish the nineteen miles of our second day before four in the afternoon.

After the two walkers returned to Concord, Margaret Fuller came visiting the Emerson home for two weeks.

Lidian Emerson was on opium and began to fantasize connections between Margaret and Waldo, and Margaret had to defend by pointing out that on two of the evenings Lidian supposed she spent talking to Waldo, actually she had been with Ellery Channing or Henry Thoreau while Waldo had been alone, writing in his study.

There was embarrassment at the dining table when Lidian burst into tears at an imagined slight. After the meal the two women went walking and evidently bonded somewhat, for Lidian confided to Margaret that “she has a lurking hope that Waldo’s character will alter, and that he will be capable of an intimate union.” Margaret mused on this in her journal:

I suppose the whole amount of the feeling is that women cant bear to be left out of the question. ...when Waldo’s wife, and the mother of that child that is gone [Waldo Jr.] thinks me the most privileged of women, & that EH [Elizabeth Hoar] was happy because her love [Charles (?) Emerson] was snatched away for a life long separation, & thus she can know none but ideal love: it does seem a little too insulting at first blush. – And yet they are not altogether wrong. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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An entanglement arose when Ellery Channing wanted to visit his former love Caroline Sturgis on Naushon Island one last time, at her suggestion, before his new wife Ellen Fuller Channing would arrive in Concord from Boston. Margaret Fuller had no objection and Ellery went to Naushon but then Ellen arrived early in Concord and discovered his absence and Margaret was unwilling to admit where he was — and everyone became rather upset. Margaret recorded:

If I were Waldo’s wife, or Ellery’s wife, I should acquiesce in all these relations, since they needed them. I should expect the same feeling from my husband, & I should think it little in him not to have it. I felt I should never repent of advising Ellery to go whatsoever happened. Well, he came back next day, and All’s Well that Ends Well.... Mama [Emerson’s mother Ruth Haskins Emerson] & Lidian sympathized with me almost with tears. Waldo looked radiant, & HT [Henry Thoreau] as if his tribe had won a victory. Well it was a pretty play, since it turned out no tragedy at last. Ellery told Ellen at once how it was, and she took it just as she ought.

Bronson Alcott, Henry Wright, Charles Lane, and Lane’s son William (who was about 9 years of age), embarked at Gravesend on the Leland for Boston. They brought a large library of books on mysticism to be used “in the commencement of an Institution for the nurture of men in universal freedom of action, thought, and being.” More important, Lane brought his life savings of approximately $2,000.00. Wright’s bride and infant waited in England for developments. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 26, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson to his JOURNAL:

Boston is not quite a mean place since in walking yesterday in the street I met George Bancroft, Horatio Greenough, Samson Reed, Theodore Parker Sam Ward, George Bradford, & had a little talk with each of them.

SAMUEL GRAY WARD GEORGE PARTRIDGE BRADFORD

The Spirit of the Times (page 2, column 1) reported that Francis Joseph Grund had been appointed “weigh master” at the Philadelphia Custom House. Yet another political plum, courtesy of the Whig party!31

Oct 26th, 1842: The maples stripped of their leaves so early, stand like a wreathe of smoke along the edge of the meadow. Kindness which has so good a reputation elsewhere, can least of all consist with friendship– No such affront can be offered as a conscious good will — a friendliness which is not a necessity of the friends’ character. Its foundations must be surer than those of the globe itself — secure from whim or passion, and the laws of truth and magnanimity have their root and abiding place in our friend. He seeking a friend walks on and on through the crowds of men as if in a straight line without stopping.

31. Since Edgar Allan Poe and Grund knew one another, it seems plausible that when Poe sought an appointment in the Philadelphia Custom House, he would of course have solicited a recommendation by Grund. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November: Waldo Emerson noted in his JOURNAL that:

Last night Henry Thoreau read me verses which pleased if not by beauty of particular lines, yet by the honest truth, and by the length of flight & strength of wing; for, most of our poets are only writers of lines or of epigrams. These of H.T. at least have rude strength, & we do not come to the bottom of the mine. Their fault is, that the gold does not yet flow pure, but is drossy & crude. The thyme & marjoram are not yet made into honey; the assimilation is imperfect.... But it is a great pleasure, to have poetry of the second degree also, & mass here as in other instances is some compensation for superior quality for I find myself stimulated & rejoiced like one who should see a cargo of sea-shells discharged on the wharf, whole boxes & crates of conchs, cypraeas, cones, neritas, cardiums, murexes, though there should be no pearl oyster nor one shell of great rarity & value among them. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 30, Friday: The Liberator.

Sophia Peabody Hawthorne wrote to Mrs. Caleb Foote about the skating on the Concord River: One afternoon, Mr. Emerson and Mr. Thoreau went with him [Hawthorne] down the river. Henry Thoreau is an experienced skater, and was figuring dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps on the ice — very remarkable, but very ugly, methought. Next him followed Mr. Hawthorne who, wrapped in his cloak, moved like a self-impelled Greek statue, stately and grave. Mr. Emerson closed the line, evidently too weary to hold himself erect, pitching headforemost, half lying on the air. HENRY THOREAU NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE It had probably been at some point during this month that Waldo Emerson had written in his journal:

I hear the whistle of the locomotive in the woods, Wherever that music comes it has a sequel. It is the voice of the civility of the Nineteenth Century saying “Here I am.” It is interrogative: it is prophetic: and this Cassandra is believed: “Whew! Whew! Whew! How is real estate here in the swamp & wilderness? Swamp & Wilderness, ho for Boston! Whew! Whew! Down with that forest on the side of the hill. I want ten thousand chestnut sleepers. I want cedar posts and hundreds of thousands of feet of boards. Up my masters, of oak & pine! You have waited long enough — a good part of a century in the wind & stupid sky. Ho for axes & saws, and away with me to Boston! Whew! Whew! I will plant a dozen houses on this pasture next moon and a village anon; and I will sprinkle yonder square mile with white houses like the broken snow-banks that strow it in March.”

Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: “Message from the President ... in relation to the strength and expense of the squadron to be employed on the coast of Africa.” –SENATE DOCUMENT, 27 Cong. 3 sess. II. No. 20. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: A somewhat more sincere and determined effort to enforce the slave-trade laws now followed; and yet it is a significant fact that not until Lincoln’s administration did a slave-trader suffer death for violating the laws of the United States. The participation of Americans in the trade continued, declining somewhat between 1825 and 1830, and then reviving, until it reached its highest activity between 1840 and 1860. The development of a vast internal slave-trade, and the consequent rise in the South of vested interests strongly opposed to slave smuggling, led to a falling off in the illicit introduction of Negroes after 1825, until the fifties; nevertheless, smuggling never entirely ceased, and large numbers were thus added to the plantations of the Gulf States. Monroe had various constitutional scruples as to the execution HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of the Act of 1819;32 but, as Congress took no action, he at last put a fair interpretation on his powers, and appointed Samuel Bacon as an agent in Africa to form a settlement for recaptured Africans. Gradually the agency thus formed became merged with that of the Colonization Society on Cape Mesurado; and from this union Liberia was finally evolved.33 Meantime, during the years 1818 to 1820, the activity of the slave-traders was prodigious. General James Tallmadge declared in the House, February 15, 1819: “Our laws are already highly penal against their introduction, and yet, it is a well known fact, that about fourteen thousand slaves have been brought into our country this last year.”34 In the same year Middleton of South Carolina and Wright of Virginia estimated illicit introduction at 13,000 and 15,000 respectively.35 Judge Story, in charging a jury, took occasion to say: “We have but too many proofs from unquestionable sources, that it [the slave-trade] is still carried on with all the implacable rapacity of former times. Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasions, and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather than suppressed by its guilty vigils. American citizens are steeped to their very mouths (I can hardly use too bold a figure) in this stream of iniquity.”36 The following year, 1820, brought some significant statements from various members of Congress. Said Smith of South Carolina: “Pharaoh was, for his temerity, drowned in the Red Sea, in pursuing them [the Israelites] contrary to God’s express will; but our Northern friends have not been afraid even of that, in their zeal to furnish the Southern States with Africans. They are better seamen than Pharaoh, and calculate by that means to elude the vigilance of Heaven; which they seem to disregard, if they can but elude the violated laws of their country.”37 As late as May he saw little hope of suppressing the traffic.38 Sergeant of Pennsylvania declared: “It is notorious that, in spite of the utmost vigilance that can be employed, African negroes are clandestinely brought in and sold as slaves.”39 Plumer of New Hampshire stated that “of the unhappy beings, thus in violation of all laws transported to our shores, and thrown by force into the mass of our black population, scarcely one in a hundred is ever detected by the officers of the General Government, in a part of the country, where, if we are to believe the statement of Governor Rabun, ‘an officer who would perform his duty, by attempting to enforce the law [against the slave trade] is, by many, considered as an officious meddler, and treated with derision and contempt;’ ... I have been told by a gentleman, who has attended particularly to this subject, that ten thousand slaves were in one year smuggled into the United States; and 32. Attorney-General Wirt advised him, October, 1819, that no part of the appropriation could be used to purchase land in Africa or tools for the Negroes, or as salary for the agent: OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, I. 314-7. Monroe laid the case before Congress in a special message Dec. 20, 1819 (HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, page 57); but no action was taken there. 33. Cf. Kendall’s Report, August, 1830: SENATE DOCUMENT, 21st Congress 2d session, I. No. 1, pages 211-8; also see below, Chapter X. 34. Speech in the House of Representatives, Feb. 15, 1819, page 18; published in Boston, 1849. 35. Jay, INQUIRY INTO AMERICAN COLONIZATION (1838), page 59, note. 36. Quoted in Friends’ FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE SLAVE TRADE (ed. 1841), pages 7-8. 37. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 270-1. 38. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 698. 39. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1207. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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that, even for the last year, we must count the number not by hundreds, but by thousands.”40 In 1821 a committee of Congress characterized prevailing methods as those “of the grossest fraud that could be practised to deceive the officers of government.”41 Another committee, in 1822, after a careful examination of the subject, declare that they “find it impossible to measure with precision the effect produced upon the American branch of the slave trade by the laws above mentioned, and the seizures under them. They are unable to state, whether those American merchants, the American capital and seamen which heretofore aided in this traffic, have abandoned it altogether, or have sought shelter under the flags of other nations.” They then state the suspicious circumstance that, with the disappearance of the American flag from the traffic, “the trade, notwithstanding, increases annually, under the flags of other nations.” They complain of the spasmodic efforts of the executive. They say that the first United States cruiser arrived on the African coast in March, 1820, and remained a “few weeks;” that since then four others had in two years made five visits in all; but “since the middle of last November, the commencement of the healthy season on that coast, no vessel has been, nor, as your committee is informed, is, under orders for that service.”42 The United States African agent, Ayres, reported in 1823: “I was informed by an American officer who had been on the coast in 1820, that he had boarded 20 American vessels in one morning, lying in the port of Gallinas, and fitted for the reception of slaves. It is a lamentable fact, that most of the harbours, between the Senegal and the line, were visited by an equal number of American vessels, and for the sole purpose of carrying away slaves. Although for some years the coast had been occasionally visited by our cruizers, their short stay and seldom appearance had made but slight impression on those traders, rendered hardy by repetition of crime, and avaricious by excessive gain. They were enabled by a regular system to gain intelligence of any cruizer being on the coast.”43 Even such spasmodic efforts bore abundant fruit, and indicated what vigorous measures might have accomplished. Between May, 1818, and November, 1821, nearly six hundred Africans were recaptured and eleven American slavers taken.44 Such measures gradually changed the character of the trade, and opened the international phase of the question. American slavers cleared for foreign ports, there took a foreign flag and papers, and then sailed boldly past American cruisers, although their real character was often well known. More stringent clearance laws and consular instructions might have greatly reduced this practice; but nothing was ever done, and gradually the laws 40. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1433. 41. Referring particularly to the case of the slaver “Plattsburg.” Cf. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 10. 42. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 2. The President had in his message spoken in exhilarating tones of the success of the government in suppressing the trade. The House Committee appointed in pursuance of this passage made the above report. Their conclusions are confirmed by British reports: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1822, Vol. XXII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, III. page 44. So, too, in 1823, Ashmun, the African agent, reports that thousands of slaves are being abducted. 43. Ayres to the Secretary of the Navy, Feb. 24, 1823; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 31. 44. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 5-6. The slavers were the “Ramirez,” “Endymion,” “Esperanza,” “Plattsburg,” “Science,” “Alexander,” “Eugene,” “Mathilde,” “Daphne,” “Eliza,” and “La Pensée.” In these 573 Africans were taken. The naval officers were greatly handicapped by the size of the ships, etc. (cf. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), pages 33-41). They nevertheless acted with great zeal. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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became in large measure powerless to deal with the bulk of the illicit trade. In 1820, September 16, a British officer, in his official report, declares that, in spite of United States laws, “American vessels, American subjects, and American capital, are unquestionably engaged in the trade, though under other colours and in disguise.”45 The United States ship “Cyane” at one time reported ten captures within a few days, adding: “Although they are evidently owned by Americans, they are so completely covered by Spanish papers that it is impossible to condemn them.”46 The governor of reported the rivers Nunez and Pongas full of renegade European and American slave-traders;47 the trade was said to be carried on “to an extent that almost staggers belief.”48 Down to 1824 or 1825, reports from all quarters prove this activity in slave-trading. The execution of the laws within the country exhibits grave defects and even criminal negligence. Attorney-General Wirt finds it necessary to assure collectors, in 1819, that “it is against public policy to dispense with prosecutions for violation of the law to prohibit the Slave trade.”49 One district attorney writes: “It appears to be almost impossible to enforce the laws of the United States against offenders after the negroes have been landed in the state.”50 Again, it is asserted that “when vessels engaged in the slave trade have been detained by the American cruizers, and sent into the slave-holding states, there appears at once a difficulty in securing the freedom to these captives which the laws of the United States have decreed for them.”51 In some cases, one man would smuggle in the Africans and hide them in the woods; then his partner would “rob” him, and so all trace be lost.52 Perhaps 350 Africans were officially reported as brought in contrary to law from 1818 to 1820: the absurdity of this figure is apparent.53 A circular letter to the marshals, in 1821, brought reports of only a few well-known cases, like that of the “General Ramirez;” the marshal of Louisiana had “no information.”54 There appears to be little positive evidence of a large illicit importation into the country for a decade after 1825. It is hardly possible, however, considering the activity in the trade, that slaves were not largely imported. Indeed, when we note how the laws were continually broken in other respects, absence of evidence of petty smuggling becomes presumptive evidence that collusive or tacit understanding of officers and citizens allowed the trade to some extent.55 Finally, it must be noted that during all this time scarcely a man suffered for

45. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, page 76. The names and description of a dozen or more American slavers are given: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 18-21. 46. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 15-20. 47. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 18th Congress 1st session, VI. No. 119, page 13. 48. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1823, Vol. XVIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 10-11. 49. OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, V. 717. 50. R.W. Habersham to the Secretary of the Navy, August, 1821; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 47. 51. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 52. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 43. 53. Cf. above, pages 126-7. 54. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 55. A few accounts of captures here and there would make the matter less suspicious; these, however, do not occur. How large this suspected illicit traffic was, it is of course impossible to say; there is no reason why it may not have reached many hundreds per year. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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participating in the trade, beyond the loss of the Africans and, more rarely, of his ship. Red-handed slavers, caught in the act and convicted, were too often, like La Coste of South Carolina, the subjects of executive clemency.56 In certain cases there were those who even had the effrontery to ask Congress to cancel their own laws. For instance, in 1819 a Venezuelan privateer, secretly fitted out and manned by Americans in Baltimore, succeeded in capturing several American, Portuguese, and Spanish slavers, and appropriating the slaves; being finally wrecked herself, she transferred her crew and slaves to one of her prizes, the “Antelope,” which was eventually captured by a United States cruiser and the 280 Africans sent to Georgia. After much litigation, the United States Supreme Court ordered those captured from Spaniards to be surrendered, and the others to be returned to Africa. By some mysterious process, only 139 Africans now remained, 100 of whom were sent to Africa. The Spanish claimants of the remaining thirty-nine sold them to a certain Mr. Wilde, who gave bond to transport them out of the country. Finally, in December, 1827, there came an innocent petition to Congress to cancel this bond.57 A bill to that effect passed and was approved, May 2, 1828,58 and in consequence these Africans remained as slaves in Georgia. On the whole, it is plain that, although in the period from 1807 to 1820 Congress laid down broad lines of legislation sufficient, save in some details, to suppress the African slave trade to America, yet the execution of these laws was criminally lax. Moreover, by the facility with which slavers could disguise their identity, it was possible for them to escape even a vigorous enforcement of our laws. This situation could properly be met only by energetic and sincere international co- 56. Cf. editorial in Niles’s Register, XXII. 114. Cf. also the following instances of pardons: — PRESIDENT JEFFERSON: March 1, 1808, Phillip M. Topham, convicted for “carrying on an illegal slave-trade” (pardoned twice). PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 146, 148-9. PRESIDENT MADISON: July 29, 1809, 15 vessels arrived at New Orleans from Cuba, with 666 white persons and 683 negroes. Every penalty incurred under the Act of 1807 was remitted. (Note: “Several other pardons of this nature were granted.”) PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 179. Nov. 8, 1809, John Hopkins and Lewis Le Roy, convicted for importing a slave. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 184-5. Feb. 12, 1810, William Sewall, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 194, 235, 240. May 5, 1812, William Babbit, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 248. PRESIDENT MONROE: June 11, 1822, Thomas Shields, convicted for bringing slaves into New Orleans. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 15. Aug. 24, 1822, J.F. Smith, sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and $3000 fine; served twenty-five months and was then pardoned. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 22. July 23, 1823, certain parties liable to penalties for introducing slaves into Alabama. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 63. Aug. 15, 1823, owners of schooner “Mary,” convicted of importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 66. PRESIDENT J.Q. ADAMS: March 4, 1826, Robert Perry; his ship was forfeited for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 140. Jan. 17, 1827, Jesse Perry; forfeited ship, and was convicted for introducing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 158. Feb. 13, 1827, Zenas Winston; incurred penalties for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 161. The four following cases are similar to that of Winston: — Feb. 24, 1827, John Tucker and William Morbon. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 162. March 25, 1828, Joseph Badger. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 192. Feb. 19, 1829, L.R. Wallace. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 215. PRESIDENT JACKSON: Five cases. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 225, 270, 301, 393, 440. The above cases were taken from manuscript copies of the Washington records, made by Mr. W.C. Endicott, Jr., and kindly loaned me. 57. See SENATE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 60, 66, 340, 341, 343, 348, 352, 355; HOUSE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 59, 76, 123, 134, 156, 169, 173, 279, 634, 641, 646, 647, 688, 692. 58. STATUTES AT LARGE, VI. 376. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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operation....59

59. Among interesting minor proceedings in this period were two Senate bills to register slaves so as to prevent illegal importation. They were both dropped in the House; a House proposition to the same effect also came to nothing: SENATE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, pages 147, 152, 157, 165, 170, 188, 201, 203, 232, 237; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 63, 74, 77, 202, 207, 285, 291, 297; HOUSE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, page 332; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 303, 305, 316; 16th Congress 1st session, page 150. Another proposition was contained in the Meigs resolution presented to the House, Feb. 5, 1820, which proposed to devote the public lands to the suppression of the slave-trade. This was ruled out of order. It was presented again and laid on the table in 1821: HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 196, 200, 227; 16th Congress 2d session, page 238. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1843

March: Waldo Emerson to his journal, in a heavily canceled entry immediately after an entry that cites “Queenie’s epitaph” as DO NOT WAKE ME

presumably quoting a severely depressed Lidian Emerson:

Dear husband, I wish I had never been born. I do not see how God can compensate me for the sorrow of existence. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Spring: Dr. John Emerson and his wife settled in a hotel in the town of Davenport in the Iowa Territory, near his land claim, and the Doctor set himself up for medical practice, pending construction of a suitable brick home. Since slaveholding was forbidden there, presumably they had left their slaves Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott behind in St. Louis, Missouri hired out as labor.

Waldo Emerson to his journal, after a conversation with Elizabeth Sherman Hoar:

E.H. says, “I love Henry, but do not like him.” Young men like Henry Thoreau owe us a new world & they have not acquitted the debt: for the most part, such die young, & so dodge the fulfilment. One of our girls ... said, Henry never went through the kitchen without colouring.

(After Thoreau’s death, Emerson would insert into an article in The Atlantic Monthly as: “I love Henry, said one of his friends, but I cannot like him; and as for taking his arm, I should as soon think of taking the arm of an elm-tree.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June/July: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

CHINESE The Chinese are as wonderful for their etiquette as the Hebrews for their piety. Those men who are noised all their life time PHOTOGRAPHY as on the edge of some great discovery, never discover anything. But nobody ever heard of M. Daguerre until the Daguerrotype appeared. And now I do not know who invented the railroad. HISTORY OF RR We used to read in our textbooks of natural philosophy an illustration of the porosity of bodies, from a barrel of cannon balls, whose interstices were filled with grapeshot, whose interstices again were filled with small shot, and theirs again with powder. It is an emblem of nature whose problem seems to have been to see how she could crowd in the most life into the world & for every class of eaters which she inserted, she adds another class of eaters to prey on them, & tucked in musquitoes among the last like an accommodating stage-coachman, who, when twelve insides are jammed down solid, puts in a child at the window, & guesses there will be room for that. Fools & clowns & sots make the fringes of every one’s tapestry of life, & give a certain reality to the picture. What could we do in Concord without Bigelow’s & Wesson’s barrooms & their dependencies. What without such fixtures as Uncle Sol and old Moore who sleeps in Dr Hurd’s barn? And the red charity house over the brook? Tragedy & comedy always go hand in hand.

August-September: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

H.D.T. sends me a paper with the old fault of unlimited contradiction. The trick of his rhetoric is soon learned. It consists in substituting for the obvious word & thought its diametrical antagonist. He praises wild mountains & winter woods for their domestic air; snow & ice for their warmth; villagers & wood choppers for their urbanity; and the wilderness for resembling Rome & Paris. With the constant inclination to disparage cities & civilization, he yet can find no way to honour woods & woodmen except by paralleling them with towns & townsmen. W.E.C. declares the piece is excellent: but it makes me nervous & wretched to read it, with all its merits. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 25, Friday-September 3, Sunday: Sometime between these two dates Waldo Emerson made the following comment in his journal, about Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Brook Farm experiment:

Hawthorne boasts that he lived at Brook Farm during its heroic age: then all were intimate and each knew well the other’s work: priest and cook conversed at night of the day’s work. Now they complain that they are separated and such intimacy cannot be; there are a hundred souls.

During this period Hawthorne was doing a certain amount of chumming around and kibitzing with Emerson at their Concord homes and in the surrounding woodlands:

THE SCARLET LETTER: Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself connected. I took it in good part, at the hands of Providence, that I was thrown into a position so little akin to my past habits; and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever profit was to be had. After my fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes with the dreamy brethren of Brook Farm; BROOK FARM after living for three years within the subtle influence of an intellect like Emerson’s; after those wild, free days on the WALDO EMERSON Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, beside our fire of fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; after talking with Thoreau ELLERY CHANNING about pine-trees and Indian relics in his hermitage at Walden; after growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement of Hillard’s culture; after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment at Longfellow’s hearthstone – it was time, at length, that LONGFELLOW I should exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself with food for which I had hitherto had little appetite. BRONSON ALCOTT Even the old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had known Alcott. I looked upon it as an evidence, in some measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking no essential part of a thorough organization, that, with such associates to remember, I could mingle at once with men of altogether different qualities, and never murmur at the change.

Emerson placed an article in the September issue of the Democratic Review on “Mr. Channing’s Poems.” Henry Thoreau would comment on this article in his journal.

The Liberator.

August 25, Friday: He who is not touched by the poetry of Channing — Very — Emerson and the best pieces of Bryant may be sure he has not drunk deep of the Pierian spring. Channing’s might very properly as has been suggested be called poetry for the poets — it is so fine a vein that it floats in the common air and is not perceived. It is a richer and deeper tone than Tennyson’s with its own melody — but the melody of the language will be sought in vain without the melody of the thought for a guide. We read marlowe as so much poetical pablum — it is food for poets it is water from the Castalian spring. some of the atmosphere of Parnassus raw and crude indeed and at times breezy but pure, / and bracing. Quarles has a sturdy fibre — a true poet though not polished — an austere and savage Eremite. He did stand cheek by jowl with nature and reality — and sturdily lived a man’s life — fighting the devil and his angels. Spenser was not an actual poet. He is not sublime — or morally grand and inspired — but led a life of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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imagination above the vulgar. His are not words for a dying man to hear, but to be sung in a summer bower — sweet, and graceful, and full of hope. one should not read the whole of Marvell who wishes to enjoy a part He will be disappointed to find him so frivolous and mean — at times.

September 25, Monday: Having resigned from his vicarage of St. Mary’s, Oxford after finding that he had begun to question the true catholicity of the Church of England, the Reverend John Henry Newman preached his last Anglican sermon at Littlemore.

Henry Thoreau was written to by Margaret Fuller. Dear Henry, You are not, I know, deeply interested in the chapter of little etiquettes, yet I think out of kindness you will be willing to read a text therein & act conform- ably in my behalf— As I read the text on the subject of [v]isits or [v]isitations, our hosts martyr themselves every way for us, their guests, while we are with them, in time, temper, & purse, but we are expected to get to them and get away from them as we can. Then I ought to have paid for the carriage which came to take me away[,] though I went in another. But I did not see the man when I got down to the landing[, — I] do not know what is the due, but [E.] Hoar told me the enclosed was enough[,] will you pay it for me wherever it belongs & pardon the care- lessness that gives you this trouble? Immediately after my return I passed two days at Concord, a visit all too short, yet pleasant. The cottages of the Irish laborers look pretty just now but their railroad looks foreign to Concord. Mr Emerson has written a fine poem, you will see it in the Dial. Ellery will not go to the West, at least not this year[.] He regrets your absence, you, he says, are the man to be with in the Woods. I remember my visit to Staten Island

Page 2 with great pleasure[,] & find your hist[o]ries and the grand pictures you showed me are very full in my mind[.] I have not yet [dreamt] of the fort, but I intend to some leisure night. With best regards to Mr & Mrs Emerson, whose hospitality I hold in grateful remembrance, yours S.M. Fuller. 25th[.] Septr/43

Address: Mr Henry Thoreau Care W. Emerson Esq 61 Wall St N. York. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 26, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

This morning Charles Lane left us after a two days’ visit. He was dressed in linen altogether, with the exception of his shoes, which were lined with linen, & he wore no stockings. He was full of methods of an improved life: valued himself chiefly just now on getting rid of the animals; thinks there is no economy in using them on a farm. He said, that they could carry on their Family at Fruitlands in many respects better, no doubt, if they wished to play it well. He said that the clergy for the most part opposed the Temperance Reform, and conspicuously this simplicity in diet, because they were alarmed, as soon as such nonconformity appeared, by the conviction that the next question people would ask, would be, “Of what use are the clergy?”

Regarding the Reverend Joseph Emerson of Malden, Massachusetts, one of Waldo’s great-grandfathers, the son of Edward Emerson, Esq. of Newburyport and the father of William Emerson, Waldo would mention during the next few months in his journal that:

I used often to hear that when William, son of Joseph, was yet a boy walking before his father to church, on a Sunday, his father checked him, “William, you walk as if the earth was not good enough for you.” “I did not know it, sir,” he replied with the utmost humility. This is one of the household anecdotes in which I have found a relationship. ’Tis curious but the same remark was made to me, by Mrs Lucy Brown, when I walked one day under her windows here in Concord. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 28, Monday: Frederick Douglass lectured in Richmond, Indiana.

In a ceremony in Nauvoo, Illinois, Joseph Smith, Jr. and his wife of many years Emma Hale Smith were the recipients of a 2d anointing, in which each was “anointed & ordained to the highest & holiest order of the priesthood.”

During the harvest time, before September 29th, although Bronson Alcott had recovered from his dysentery and fainting, he was still exhibiting mental symptoms of excitedness and restlessness. He and Charles Lane had left in the middle of the harvest work on yet another trip of visiting and lecturing and attempting to garner the new recruitments and the renewed funding that was essential if this “pyramid scheme” of a community was not to collapse. They had lectured in Providence, Rhode Island, and in New-York, and in New Haven and Waterbury in Connecticut, stopping off in Alcott’s old home town, Spindle Hill. When they came stopped off at Fruitlands, it was only to leave immediately for New Hampshire, and then for Concord, Massachusetts. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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During this period Waldo Emerson recorded a visit in his journal:

Alcott came, the magnificent dreamer, brooding as ever on the renewal or reedification of the social fabric after ideal law, heedless that he had been uniformly rejected by every class to whom he has addressed himself and just as sanguine & vast as ever; the most cogent example of the drop too much which nature adds of each man’s peculiarity. To himself he seems the only realist, & whilst I & other men wish to deck the dulness of the months with here & there a fine action or hope, he would weave the whole a new texture of truth & beauty. Now he spoke of marriage & the fury that would assail him who should lay his hand on that institution, for reform: and spoke of the secret doctrines of Fourier. I replied, as usual — that, I thought no man could be trusted with it; the formation of new alliances is so delicious to the imagination, that St Paul & St John would be riotous; and that we cannot spare the coarsest muniment of virtue. Very pathetic it is to see this wandering emperor from year to year making his round of visits from house to house of such as do not exclude him, seeking a companion, tired of pupils.

At about this period Anne Page, Abba Alcott’s servant, was caught eating fish at a neighbor’s table, and then a chunk of cheese was discovered inside her trunk. For thus exploiting the lives of animals, she was terminated by the Consociate Family of Fruitlands. THE ALCOTT FAMILY

In his journal, Henry Thoreau mentioned “Thomas the Rhymer” out of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, by Conner & Cooke in New-York in 1833.

Thursday, September 28. We have never conceived how many natural phenomena would be revealed to a simpler and more natural life. Rain, wind, sunshine, day and night, would be very different to experience if we were always true. We cannot deceive the ground under our feet. We never try. But we do not treat each other with the same sincerity. How much more wretched would the life of man be if there was the same formality and reserve between him and his intercourse with Nature that there is in human society! It is a strange world we live in, with this incessant dream of friendship and love; where is any? Genius cannot do without these; it pines and withers. I believe that the office of music is to remind us continually of the reality and necessity of the fine elements of love and friendship. One mood always forgets another, and till we have loved we have not imagined the heights of love. Love is an incessant inspiration. By the dews of love the arid desert of life is made as fragrant and blooming as a paradise. The world waits yet to see man act greatly and divinely upon man. What are social influences as yet? The poor human flower would hold up its drooping head at once, if this sun should shine on it. That is the dyspepsia with which all men ail. In purer, more intellectual moods we translate our gross experiences into fine moralities. Sometimes we would fain see events as merely material, — wooden, rigid, dead; but again we are reminded that we actually inform them with better life, by which they live; that they are the slaves and creatures of our conduct. When dull and sensual, I believe they are corn-stalks good for cattle, — neither more nor less. The laws of Nature are science; but, in an enlightened moment, they are morality and modes of divine life. In a medium intellectual state they are aesthetics. What makes us think that time has lapsed is that we have relapsed. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Strictly speaking, there can be no criticism of poetry other than a separating of that which is poetry from that which is not, — a detecting of falsehood. From the remotest antiquity we detect in the Literature of all nations, here and there, words of a loftier tone and purport than are required to transact the daily business of life. As Scott says, they float down the sea of time like the fragments of a parted wreck, — sounds which echo up among the stars rather than through the valleys of earth; and yet are heard plainly enough, to remind men of other spheres of life and activity. Perhaps I may say that I have never had a deeper and more memorable experience of life in its great serenity, than when listening to the trill of a tree sparrow among the huckleberry bushes after a shower. It is a communication to which a man must attend in solitude and silence, and may never be able to tell to his brother. The least sensual life is that experienced through pure senses. We sometimes hear, and the dignity of that sense is asserted.

November 5, Sunday: Becoming ill at dinner, Joseph Smith, Jr. accused his pregnant wife of many years Emma Hale Smith of slipping poison into his coffee (in the prayer circle, Brigham Young interpreted Emma’s silence as proof of her guilt; however, Joseph would so quickly recover that this had more probably been an attack of ulcers).

There was an insurrection on the island of Haiti. Blacks and mulattos killed 6 white men, women, and children in an effort to drive whites off the island.

When was it that Henry Thoreau commented that Mrs. Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley had “spent one whole season studying the lichens on a stick of wood they were about to put on the fire”? [JOURNAL 5:38] We should compare and contrast this with Waldo Emerson’s mean-spirited remark in a letter to Elizabeth Sherman Hoar in Liverpool on August 3,1859 while she was on the European grand tour, that “Henry T. occupies himself with the history of the river, measures it, weighs it, and strains it through a colander to all eternity.” It would have to be before November 5, 1843, because on that date Mrs. Ripley mentioned this stick in a letter to the Reverend George F. Simmons:

You recollect that stick with the Graphia Hebraica so beautifully sketched upon it, that I laboured with my hand and you with my penknife to procure, alas, some vandal has given it to the flames. I have not met with another specimen before or since.

The primary intent of Emerson’s remark to Miss Hoar touring in Europe, I would suggest, was to remind her that for a personage of the stature of Emerson to “occupy himself” with such activities and concerns would be infra dig, and that therefore there was a class difference which needed to be pointed to, with he and the touring Miss Hoar on the near side of this class divide, as gentle folk, and with our good “Henry T.,” despite an HDT WHAT? INDEX

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education having been attempted upon him, decidedly beyond the pale as a mere crafts person without any really good money-earning craft. I find such a remark not humorous, nor in good humour, but quite offensively condescending and demeaning. Is this just me? I wonder what Elizabeth, knowing Henry as well as she knew Waldo, thought of this letter when she opened it in Europe. Presumably “Boys need to go after each other.” So the question I am raising here is, might Thoreau’s remark about Mrs. Ripley’s preoccupation with the Graphia Hebraica on the stick of firewood be likewise interpretable as not humorous, nor in good humour, but quite offensively condescending and demeaning? (Do I have a blind spot of affection for Thoreau which I quite lack for Emerson? –Well, probably I do.)

After having thought about this for some time, I am unable to construe Thoreau’s remark about spending one whole season studying the stick of firewood as condescending or demeaning. The one invidious thing that Thoreau might have been suggestion would have been “Look, it’s just a woman, what can you expect from a botanist that’s just a woman?” And I haven’t been able to grok sexism in the relationship between Thoreau and Mrs. Ripley.

There had been early snows, and all the recruits had deserted Fruitlands and its thin linen clothing and its vegetarian diet, leaving the Alcott family and the Charles Lanes to endure the harsh winter alone. It was shaping up to be the coldest winter of the decade. Between this day and Thursday the 8th, Waldo Emerson rather unsympathetically wrote in his journal:

The Reformers wrote very ill. They made it a rule not to bolt their flour & unfortunately neglected also to sift their thoughts.... Alcott & Lane want feet; they are always feeling of their shoulders to find if their wings are sprouting; but next best to wings are cowhide boots, which society is always advising them to put on. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 25, Monday: Benjamin Wiley, Jr. got married with Hannah P. Tufts.

This was the Christmas season on which Charles Dickens’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL IN PROSE became available for purchase, at least in England.

http://www.stormfax.com/dickens.htm

According to the author, this was the boil-down of typical Christmas holiday festivities of the period: “Such dinings, such dancings, such conjurings, such blindman’s-buffings, such theatre-goings, such kissings-out of old years and kissing-in of new ones never too places in these parts before.... I broke out like a madman.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Bronson Alcott /Abba Alcott family was among the 1st of New England families to celebrate the Christmas holiday in the “secular” manner, that is, by an exchange of presents — but we should not take that to mean that the father was present in the home at Fruitlands:

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. “It’s so dreadful to be poor!” sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress. “I don’t think it’s fair for some girls to have lots of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all,” added little Amy, with an injured sniff. “We’ve got father and mother and each other, anyhow,” said Beth contentedly, from her corner.

Jo Marsh = Louisa May Alcott, portrayed by Katherine Hepburn in the magnificent 1933 movie of George Cukor titled LITTLE WOMEN.

Meg March = Anna Bronson Alcott, portrayed by Frances Dee, who married John Brook (=John Bridge Pratt), portrayed by John Davis Lodge.

Amy March = Abby May Alcott (Mrs. Ernest Niericker), portrayed by Joan Bennett.

Mr. March = Bronson Alcott, portrayed by Samuel S. Hinds.

Marmee March = “Abba” Abigail May Alcott, portrayed by Spring Byington.

Beth March = “Lizzie” Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, the eldest daughter, portrayed by Jean Parker. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE ALCOTT FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Waldo Emerson to his journal, same date:

At the performing of Handel’s Messiah I heard some delicious strains & understood a very little of all that was told me. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1844

At the end of the journal entries for this year, Waldo Emerson would list his readings in Oriental materials during the period: “Plotinus; Proclus; Thomas Taylor’s translations; Zoroaster (?), Chaldæan Oracles.” At some point during this year Emerson would jot in his journal (Volume VIII, page 516): “Connais les cérémonies. Si tu en pénètres le sens, tu gouverneras un royaume avec le même facilité que tu regards dans ta main. — Confucius.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Early January-March: The Year of Our Lord 1843 had come and gone and the Millerites had not been drawn up to Heaven. Such a quandary! William “The Reluctant Prophet” Miller looked over his calculations and discovered that the year 1843 in question referred not to the calendar year but to what he described as “the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Jewish year,” which had begun on March 21, 1843 and would not be concluded until March 21, 1844.

S EEDS : Who could believe in prophecies of Daniel or of Miller that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds?

WILLIAM MILLER MILLENNIALISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Meanwhile, down here in the real world, the rules committee chaired by Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts was reporting a revision of the rules of the US House of Representatives, to quite omit the infamous gag rule which for decades had punished any representative who had attempted to discuss the institution of human enslavement. Two months of argumentation would follow. There would be an attempt to reintroduce that old gag rule into the committee recommendation, but this attempt would be defeated by a vote of 106 over 86. This would be followed by an attempt to force a reconsideration, which would likewise be defeated. (The eventual outcome would be that in March the committee report would be repudiated in its entirety by the House, by a “We’re All White Men Here” vote of 88 over 87 — and the House’s gag rule would therefore remain in force.)

Early in this year, the Massachusetts Antislavery Society held a meeting at Lowell. During a speech by Wendell Phillips, Jesse Hutchinson, Jr., began scribbling in his lap verses for a new song that made use of a railroad metaphor. When Phillips finished speaking, Jesse and an impromptu band of Hutchinsons (not including even one single member of the family’s famous quartet, but instead most probably made up of Jesse, Caleb, Joshua, and John’s wife Fanny) headed for the stage to present the very first performance of their great antislavery song, “Get Off the Track!” Here is their new production, which they sang to the tune of “Old Dan Tucker,” the favorite new minstrel song of the previous year: Ho! the car Emancipation Rides majestic through our nation Bearing on its train, the story Liberty! a nation’s glory.... Roll it along, roll it along Roll it along through the nation Freedom’s car, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Emancipation.

During this year the song “Buffalo Gals,” sometimes appearing as “Pittsburgh Gals,” “Bowery Gals,” “Louisiana Gals,” and “Lubly Fan, Will You Cum Out Tonight,” would be becoming famous (both the words and the music were by Cool White).

During this period Waldo Emerson was writing in his journal:

Precisely what the painter or the sculptor or the epic rhapsodist feels, I feel in the presence of this house, which stands to me for the human race, the desire, namely, to express myself fully, symmetrically, gigantically to them, not dwarfishly & fragmentarily. H.D.T., with whom I talked of this last night, does not or will not perceive how natural this is, and only hears the word Art in a sinister sense. But I speak of instincts. I did not make the desires or know anything about them: I went to the public assembly, put myself in the conditions, & instantly feel this new craving — I hear the voice, I see the beckoning of this Ghost. To me it is vegetation, the pullulation & universal budding of the plant man. Art is the path of the creator to his work. The path or methods are ideal and eternal, though few men ever see them: not the artist himself for years, or for a lifetime, unless he comes into the conditions. Then he is apprised with wonder what herds of daemons hem him in. He can no more rest: he says, “By god, it is in me & must go forth of me.” I go to this place and am galvanized, and the torpid eyes of my sensibility are opened. I hear myself speak as a stranger — Most of the things I say are conventional; but I say something which is original & beautiful. That charms me. I would say nothing else but such things. In our way of talking, we say, that is mine, that is yours; but this poet knows well that it is not his, that it is as strange & beautiful to him as to you; he would fain hear the like eloquence at length. Once having tasted this immortal ichor, we cannot have enough of it. Our appetite is immense. And, as “an admirable power flourishes in intelligibles,” according to Plotinus, “which perpetually fabricates,” it is of the last importance that these things get spoken. What a little of all we know, is said! What drops of all the sea of our science are baled up! And by what accident it is that these are spoken, whilst so many thoughts sleep in nature! Hence the oestrum of speech: hence these throbs & heart beatings at the door of the assembly to the end, namely, that the thought may be ejaculated as Logos or Word. The text of our life is accompanied all along by this commentary or gloss of dreams. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The question of the annexation of Texas is one of those which look very differently to the centuries and to the years. It is very certain that the strong British race which have now overrun so much of this continent, must also overrun that tract, & Mexico & Oregon also, and it will in the course of ages be of small import by what particular occasions & methods it was done. It is a secular question. It is quite necessary & true to our New England character that we should consider the question in its local & temporary bearings, and resist the annexation with tooth & nail. It is a measure which goes not by right nor by wisdom but by feeling. It would be a pity to dissolve the union & so diminish immensely every man’s personal importance. We are just beginning to feel our oats.

H.D.T. said he knew but one secret, which was to do one thing at a time, and though he has his evenings for study, if he was in the day inventing machines for sawing his plumbago, he invents wheels all the evening & night also; and if this week he has some good reading & thoughts before him, his brain runs on that all day, whilst pencils pass through his hands. I find in me an opposite faculty or perversity, that I never seem well to do a particular work, until another is due. I cannot write the poem though you give me a week, but if I promise to read a lecture day after tomorrow, at once the poem comes into my head & now the rhymes will flow. And let the proofs of the Dial be crowding on me from the printer, and I am full of faculty how to make the Lecture. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 30, Tuesday: On or before this date, Horace Mann, Sr. lectured at the Concord Lyceum, sleeping on a cot his pregnant sister-in-law, Sophia Hawthorne, set up in Hawthorne’s study in the Old Manse in Concord. Neither Nathaniel nor Sophia, however, attended his lecture, Sophia with the excuse that she was pregnant and should not be out in public and Nathaniel with the excuse that she was pregnant and his place was with her. (But these were the sorts of reasons they each of them ignored — whenever there was something they really wanted to do.)

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I wrote to M.F. [Margaret Fuller] that I had no experiences nor progress to reconcile me to the calamity whose anniversary returned the second time last Saturday. The senses have a right to their method as well as the mind; there should be harmony in facts as well as in truths. Yet these ugly breaks happen here, which the continuity of theory does not compensate. The amends are of a different kind from the mischief.

February 6, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson paid the Concord PO8 Ellery Channing $5.00 for chopping 10 cords of wood. Needed wood, it must have been, in that cold weather.

Sometime between January and March, maybe in February, Emerson wrote in his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Precisely what the painter or the sculptor or the epic rhapsodist feels, I feel in the presence of this house, which stands to me for the human race, the desire, namely, to express myself fully, symmetrically, gigantically to them, not dwarfishly & fragmentarily. H.D.T., with whom I talked of this last night, does not or will not perceive how natural this is, and only hears the word Art in a sinister sense. But I speak of instincts. I did not make the desires or know anything about them: I went to the public assembly, put myself in the conditions, & instantly feel this new craving — I hear the voice, I see the beckoning of this Ghost. To me it is vegetation, the pullulation & universal budding of the plant man. Art is the path of the creator to his work. The path or methods are ideal and eternal, though few men ever see them: not the artist himself for years, or for a lifetime, unless he comes into the conditions. Then he is apprised with wonder what herds of daemons hem him in. He can no more rest: he says, “By god, it is in me & must go forth of me.” I go to this place and am galvanized, and the torpid eyes of my sensibility are opened. I hear myself speak as a stranger — Most of the things I say are conventional; but I say something which is original & beautiful. That charms me. I would say nothing else but such things. In our way of talking, we say, that is mine, that is yours; but this poet knows well that it is not his, that it is as strange & beautiful to him as to you; he would fain hear the like eloquence at length. Once having tasted this immortal ichor, we cannot have enough of it. Our appetite is immense. And, as “an admirable power flourishes in intelligibles,” according to Plotinus, “which perpetually fabricates,” it is of the last importance that these things get spoken. What a little of all we know, is said! What drops of all the sea of our science are baled up! And by what accident it is that these are spoken, whilst so many thoughts sleep in nature! Hence the oestrum of speech: hence these throbs & heart beatings at the door of the assembly to the end, namely, that the thought may be ejaculated as Logos or Word. The text of our life is accompanied all along by this commentary or gloss of dreams. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 3, Sunday: Mrs. Sophia Peabody Hawthorne gave birth to a girl infant, named Una Hawthorne after Spenser’s heroine. Nathaniel Hawthorne commented that he thought he preferred “a daughter to a son, there is something so especially piquant in having helped to create a future woman.” The godfather of the infant was John L. O’Sullivan of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review.

That morning and continuing that evening, at a non-resistance meeting which was part of a series of lectures on reform and reformers at Boston’s Amory Hall by various reformers such as Charles Lane, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison –and Henry Thoreau– Waldo Emerson delivered his lengthy sermon “New England Reformers.”

The proof text for this sermon was MARK 8:36: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lost his own soul?”

Waldo felt that his effort had had a good reception, and jotted down into his journal that:

Somebody said of me after the lecture at Amory Hall ... “The secret of his popularity is, that he has a damn for everybody.”

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

Emerson’s Journals “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 10, Sunday: Henry Thoreau, as part of the series of lectures at Boston’s Amory Hall, delivered his lengthy “The Conservative and the Reformer” (“REFORM AND THE REFORMERS”), part in the morning beginning at 10:30AM, and part in the evening beginning at 7:30PM. The proof text for this sermon was MARK 8:35: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it.”

The Reverend Waldo Emerson was also in Boston that evening, and evidently on a similar errand at the Second Church, as he would record in his journal on the 12th that:

On Sunday evening, 10th inst. at the close of the fifteenth year since my ordination as minister in the Second Church, I made an address to the people on the occasion of closing the old house, now a hundred and twenty three years old, and the oldest church in Boston. Yesterday they begun to pull it down.

On one of the Sundays of this month (and I have arbitrarily assigned the event to this Sunday), George Merrick Brooks wrote home to his mother Mary Merrick Brooks in Concord: Dear Mother I sit down this evening to answer your letter of last week, & I hardly know what to say. I had hoped that by this time your mind would have been relieved partially, if not wholly of the load put upon it-by my actions in the vacation, but the thought of my deviation from the path of rectitude, seems to be so indelibly impressed upon it, that all my promises of future good behavior have no effect upon you. You said that you prayed to God that I might die now, rather than live a life of sin. You cannot pray for that more earnestly than I do myself, & although I do not feel myself prepared for that event, yet I dread it not so much now, as I should have a few years ago, for my prospects of success in life are not so brilliant but that I could easily give them up. I have lately been thinking, what should be my course in this life, that is, what I should do for a living, & when I look around me & see how many there are who are superior to me in talents, & those who are my equals, possessing other attributes that I lack by which they can get along respectably in life, I cannot help feeling discouraged at my future prospects, & this in addition to your grief on account of my derelictions, & sundry other vexations, have at times made me rather melancholy of late, but then I know tis useless to murmur at anything. appointed by fate, so I let such thoughts trouble me as little as possible, but they will sometimes rise in my mind. you said that probably I placed as little faith in the efficacy in prayer as I did in dreams. I know not what should have given you that opinion of me, for on the contrary I place great faith in prayer & know many instances when prayers have been answered. But then I beleive [sic] as the minister said to day (who delivered a very affecting discourse upon the death of Greenwood of the Junior class from this text) “It is appointed unto all men once to die,” & he went on to say, that God in his omniscience had determined the length of the life of every one HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of his children, & that no human could accelerate or retard that event, by any earthly means. The lady of the most tried veracity who told you of the conversation between Henry & Frank Bigelow, was probably Miss Kimball judging from what I have seen of the said personages [sic] she maybe a person of tried veracity, I have no doubt of that, but she is one of those whom we meet with often in this world, who are not content with telling truth when asked, but are not easy till they tell all the truth that they pick up in their daily perigrinations [sic] especially it gives them comfort so to do, when they can injure any of their fellow beings by this means, she is one of the Birchard tribe, luckily the world does not contain a vast quantity of such individuals. I should have thought if she had any delicacy she might have keep [sic] the conversation to herself, which she probably obtained by eavesdropping. You may think that I have been unnecessarily severe upon this person, it is not my custom to speak evil against anyone, but I cannot help feeling indignant against the person who would thus afflict my Mother, by recounting-to her all the slang & scandal that she might have picked up at the tavern & in the street, such an one cannot have much ladylike feeling in her composition. If I have hit upon the wrong person I am sorry, but she whose name I mentioned above, was the only one, who I though [sic] likely would talk to you about this matter.

Spring: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

H.D.T. said that the other world was all his art; that his pencils would draw no other, that his jackknife would cut nothing else. He does not use it as a means. Henry is a good substantial childe, not encumbered with himself. He has no troublesome memory, no wake, but lives extempore, & brings today a new proposition as radical & revolutionary as that of yesterday, but different. The only man of leisure in the town. He is a good Abbot Samson: & carries counsel in his breast. If I cannot show his performance much more manifest than that of the other grand promisers, at least I can see that with his practical faculty, he has declined all the kingdoms of this world. Satan has no bribe for him.

(At some point during the spring or summer, he would add the material on the following screen to his journal.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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When at last in a race a new principle appears, an idea, that conserves it. Ideas only save races. If the black man is feeble & not important to the existing races, not on a par with the best race, the black man must serve & be sold & exterminated. But if the black man carries in his bosom an indispensible element of a new & coming civilization, for the sake of that element no wrong nor strength nor circumstance can hurt him, he will survive & play his part. So now it seems to me that the arrival of such men as Toussaint if he is pure blood, or of Douglas if he is pure blood, outweighs all the English & American humanity. The Antislavery of the whole world is but dust in the balance, a poor squeamishness & nervousness; the might & the right is here. Here is the Anti-Slave. Here is Man; & if you have man, black or white is an insignificance. Why at night all men are black. The intellect, that is miraculous, who has it has the talisman, his skin & bones are transparent, he is a statue of the living God, him I must love & serve & perpetually seek & desire & dream on: and who has it not is superfluous. But a compassion for that which is not & cannot be useful & lovely, is degrading & maudlin, this towing along as by ropes that which cannot go itself. Let us not be our own dupes; all the songs & newspapers & subscriptions of money & vituperation of those who do not agree with us will avail nothing against eternal fact. I say to you, you must save yourself, black or white, man or woman. Other help is none. I esteem the occasion of this jubilee to be that proud discovery that the black race can begin to contend with the white; that in the great anthem of the world which we call history, a piece of many parts & vast compass, after playing a long time a very low & subdued accompaniment they perceive the time arrived when they can strike in with force & effect & take a master’s part in the music. The civilization of the world has arrived at that pitch that their moral quality is becoming indispensable, & the genius of this race is to be honoured for itself. For this they have been preserved in sandy desarts [sic], in rice swamps, in kitchens & shoeshops so long. Now let them emerge clothed & in their own form. I esteem this jubilee & the fifty years’ movement which has preceded it to be the announcement of that fact & our anti-slavery societies, boastful as we are, only the shadow & witness to that fact. The negro has saved himself, and the white man very patronisingly says, I have saved you. If the negro is a fool all the white men in the world cannot save him thought they should die.... He who does his own work frees a slave. He who does not his own work, is a slave-holder. Whilst we sit here talking & smiling, some person is out there in field & shop & kitchen doing what we need, without talk or smiles.... The planter does not want slaves: give him money: give him a machine that will provide him with as much money as the slaves yield, & he will thankfully let them go: he does not love whips, or usurping overseers, or sulky swarthy giants creeping round his house & barns by night with lucifer matches in their hands & knives in their pockets. No; only he wants his luxury, & he will pay even this price for it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Spring: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

In America we are such rowdies in church & state, and the very boys are so soon ripe, that I think no philosophical skepticism will make much sensation. Spinosa [sic] pronounced that there was but one substance — yea, verily; but that boy yonder told me yesterday he thought the pinelog was God, & that God was in the jakes. What can Spinoza tell the boy?

(This was a 20th-Century jakes. Fortunately, we live in the 21st Century.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May(?): Waldo Emerson to his journal:

H.T.’s conversation consisted of a continual coining of the present moment into a sentence & offering it to me. I compared it to a boy who from the universal snow lying on the earth gathers up a little in his hand, rolls it into a ball, & flings it at me.

Here we see Henry Thoreau again attempting to speak to Emerson’s condition, and Emerson being in no condition to receive this. Because it is not Thoreau’s place! He is to be understood, and dismissed, as an importuning boy. These things he throws in my face are indiscriminate, not carefully selected, and therefore he is doing this merely to get my attention, get the adult’s attention. He is not to be taken as seriously as moi, the Sage of Concord should be taken!60

60. As a modern who has entirely bought into this Emersonian attitude about Thoreau, consider the case of Robert D. Richardson, Jr. In Brian Lamb’s BOOKNOTES: AMERICA’S FINEST AUTHORS ON READING, WRITING, AND THE POWER OF IDEAS (NY: Random House, 1997), a book in which Richardson and others are celebrated as America’s finest authors evidently because they have consented to appear on Lamb’s talk show, Richardson opinions on pages 118-9 that:

[I]t began to matter to me that Emerson was so condescended to and so dismissed as a kind of minor figure to Henry Thoreau, who was the great hero of the moment.

What Richardson means by the above can be parsed and decyphered in its context as an almost incoherent attempt at a derogation of Thoreau and a praise of Emerson (rather than vice versa), by virtue of the fact that he continues farther down the page by asserting outrageously that:

[W]ithout Emerson, I don’t think there would have been a Thoreau. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 15, Saturday: At the Temperance Hall in Jersey, Friend Joseph John Gurney made a presentation opposing the ingestion of alcoholic beverages the gist of which would soon be printed up as an 8-page tract, WATER IS BEST.

THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

Thomas Campbell died at Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. The body would be interred in Westminster Abbey. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Waldo Emerson and Isaac Hecker went to Harvard, Massachusetts for a weekend with the Alcott family in their three rooms in the Lovejoy home (Fruitlands was no more) and with Charles Lane, and to tour the Shaker community. Emerson commented in his journal:

A second visit to the Shakers with Mr Hecker. Their family worship was a painful spectacle. I could remember nothing but the Spedale dei Pazzi at Palermo; this shaking of their hands like the paws of dogs before them as they shuffled in this dunce- dance seemed the last deliration. If there was anything of heart & life in this it did not appear to me: and as Swedenborg said that the angels never look at the back of the head so I felt that I saw nothing else. My fellow men could hardly appear to less advantage before me than in this senseless jumping. The music seemed to me dragged down nearly to the same bottom. And when you come to talk with them on their topic, which they are very ready to do, you find such exaggeration of the virtue of celibacy, that you might think you had come into a hospital-ward of invalids afflicted with priapism. Yet the women were well dressed and appeared with dignity as honoured persons. And I judge the whole society to be cleanly & industrious but stupid people. And these poor countrymen with their nasty religion fancy themselves the Church of the world and are as arrogant as the poor negroes on the Gambia river. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 1, Thursday: At the Festival de l’Industrie in Paris, Hector Berlioz led 1,000 performers in the premiere of his Hymne à la France for chorus and orchestra to words of Barbier. By intermission, the conductor had developed cold sweats. He was induced to change clothes, and drink some punch. He was then attended by a former teacher, Dr. Amussat, who diagnosed typhoid fever, bled the composer, and prescribed a vacation.

Frederick Douglass, whose location and activities have been a mystery to us during the last half of June and all of the month of July, resurfaced in order to return to Concord and speak during the annual fair of the Anti-

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Slavery Society of Middlesex County celebrating the 1st of August liberation of the slaves of the British West Indies, with Waldo Emerson, William A. White,61 the Reverend Samuel Joseph May, Moses Grandy, and Headmaster Cyrus Pierce of the normal school in Lexington.62

Emerson had agreed to deliver an address on the “Emancipation in the ... Indies....” Henry Thoreau would soon persuade James Munroe & Company of Boston to issue Emerson’s address in the form of a pamphlet, and see it through the press of Thurston, Torry, and Company at 31 Devonshire Street in Boston. THE LIST OF LECTURES

61. This White was the white abolitionist who had in the previous year been traveling with Frederick Douglass as he lectured in Indiana. Would he be related to the Massachusetts abolitionist who is credited with being one of the 4 known presently known and recognized local conductors in the Underground Railroad, William S. White? UNDERGROUND RAILROAD 62. The John W. Blassingame volume I of THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS PAPERS does not mention the presence of Thoreau — but then I notice even Sojourner Truth is not significant enough to have received a mention anywhere in the index to this volume). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This abolitionist group had been refused permission to hold their meeting in any of the local churches, but Nathaniel Hawthorne had invited them to use the grounds of the Old Manse. However, it was rainy, so at the last minute Thoreau got permission to use the auditorium of in Concord’s courthouse. The audience at the lecture was small, and consisted mostly of visitors from outside Concord, and evidently those attending found the topic a difficult one for the Concord resident Frederic May Holland, in the first full-length biography of 63 this American figure Frederick Douglass, has stated that when these attendees had assembled afterward for a collation,64

they said to each other, “Can you eat? I cannot.” Douglass was among the listeners that morning, and also among the speakers in the afternoon.

We may note that the mulatto speaker was present on this occasion only because he had been scheduled to take part in a mass rally in Hingham MA, with the Reverends John Pierpont and James Freeman Clarke, and that rally had been postponed for one day on account of the rain. After Thoreau’s death Emerson would make a minute in his journal which would deal with the events of this day:

I have never recorded a fact which perhaps ought to have gone into my sketch of “Thoreau,” that, on the 1 August, 1844, when I read my Discourse on Emancipation, in the Town Hall, in Concord, and the selectmen would not direct the sexton to ring the meeting-house bell, Henry went himself, & rung the bell at the appointed hour.

It was the bell in the Unitarian church of Concord which Thoreau had rung. Evidently he was intercepted by the church authorities, for Holland stated that Thoreau had gotten off only “two or three unauthorized strokes” of the bell. In reading up on the subject of the emancipation, which had happened on this date ten years before, in 1834, Emerson had made “the most painful comparisons” with the present situation for the free blacks of New England. He had noted, for instance, that if any free black man of New England should take service aboard a ship, and should enter the harbor of Charleston, or Savannah, Georgia, or New Orleans, he would be imprisoned ashore for “so long as the vessel remained in port, with the stringent addition, that if the shipmaster fails to pay the costs of this official arrest and the board in jail, these citizens are to be sold for slaves, to pay that expense.”

63. Frederic May Holland. FREDERICK DOUGLASS: THE COLORED ORATOR, original edition 1891, revised edition prepared by the author in 1895 and reprinted by Haskell House Publishers of New York in 1969. In typical Concordian style, to the point that the author appears unwilling to use Thoreau’s full name, the politics of this treatment is to minimize Thoreauvian attitudes. We are dealing here with a town that even today spreads invidious stories among its high school students, which have been passed on by several of them directly to me, that Thoreau was a local sneak thief, taking pies off of windowsills. If hypocrisy were gold, Fort Knox would be on Concord common. 64. The mulatto speaker Frederick Douglass would of course not have been able to be present while these white people of his audience were thus eating and drinking. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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On this day (or perhaps at the meeting at the Unitarian church on June 12th , or perhaps on both occasions) Emerson found that he was so impressed by the mulatto visitor whom he identified as “Douglas” with one “s,” that he wondered whether perhaps he should attribute this person’s obvious excellence to purity of his bloodlines (pure although purely Negroid, which would lead his analysis of his admiration in the direction of the Jungian trope “the genius of this race, to be honored for itself”) or whether perhaps he should consider this person’s obvious excellence to be the result of an admixture of improving European blood (which would apparently have led his analysis of his admiration in the direction of a quite different set of tropes, presumably that white bloodlines are superior to black bloodlines and that this speaker was superior to other blacks evidently due to having a greater share of this superior white ancestry). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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When at last in a race a new principle appears, an idea, that conserves it. Ideas only save races. If the black man is feeble & not important to the existing races, not on a par with the best race, the black man must serve & be sold & exterminated. But if the black man carries in his bosom an indispensible element of a new & coming civilization, for the sake of that element no wrong nor strength nor circumstance can hurt him, he will survive & play his part. So now it seems to me that the arrival of such men as Toussaint Louverture if he is pure blood, or of Douglas [Frederick Douglass] if he is pure blood, outweighs all the English & American humanity. The Antislavery of the whole world is but dust in the balance, a poor squeamishness & nervousness; the might & the right is here. Here is the Anti-Slave. Here is Man; & if you have man, black or white is an insignificance. Why at night all men are black. The intellect, that is miraculous, who has it has the talisman, his skin & bones are transparent, he is a statue of the living God, him I must love & serve & perpetually seek & desire & dream on: and who has it not is superfluous. But a compassion for that which is not & cannot be useful & lovely, is degrading & maudlin, this towing along as by ropes that which cannot go itself. Let us not be our own dupes; all the songs & newspapers & subscriptions of money & vituperation of those who do not agree with us will avail nothing against eternal fact. I say to you, you must save yourself, black or white, man or woman. Other help is none. I esteem the occasion of this jubilee to be that proud discovery that the black race can begin to contend with the white; that in the great anthem of the world which we call history, a piece of many parts & vast compass, after playing a long time a very low & subdued accompaniment they perceive the time arrived when they can strike in with force & effect & take a master’s part in the music. The civilization of the world has arrived at that pitch that their moral quality is becoming indispensable, & the genius of this race is to be honoured for itself. For this they have been preserved in sandy desarts [sic], in rice swamps, in kitchens & shoeshops so long. Now let them emerge clothed & in their own form. I esteem this jubilee & the fifty years’ movement which has preceded it to be the announcement of that fact & our anti-slavery societies, boastful as we are, only the shadow & witness to that fact. The negro has saved himself, and the white man very patronisingly says, I have saved you. If the negro is a fool all the white men in the world cannot save him thought they should die.... He who does his own work frees a slave. He who does not his own work, is a slave- holder. Whilst we sit here talking & smiling, some person is out there in field & shop & kitchen doing what we need, without talk or smiles.... The planter does not want slaves: give him money: give him a machine that will provide him with as much money as the slaves yield, & he will thankfully let them go: he does not love whips, or usurping overseers, or sulky swarthy giants creeping round his house & barns by night with lucifer matches in their hands & knives in their pockets. No; only he wants his luxury, & he will pay even this price for it.

TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE Thoreau also heard Frederick Douglass, but it is not known that this encounter with the impressive mulatto orator sent any equivalent racist concerns going in Thoreau’s gourd at that time — probably not, as Thoreau was never so concerned with issues of relative ascendancy as was the higher-caste Emerson. We can be utterly confident, for instance, that no literary researcher will ever be able to uncover, in any pile of unprocessed HDT WHAT? INDEX

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remarks in Thoreau’s handwriting, any remark even remotely similar to the following blazing amazing one which is in Emerson’s handwriting:Quite to the contrary!65 Because Thoreau’s spirit was so utterly different

I think it cannot be maintained by any candid person that the African race have ever occupied or do promise ever to occupy any very high place in the human family. Their present condition is the strongest proof that they cannot. The Irish cannot; the American Indian cannot; the Chinese cannot. Before the energy of the Caucasian race all the other races have quailed and done obeisance.

ALFRED ROSENBERG WALDO EMERSON from the blind prejudice displayed above, what we might confidently expect to uncover in any new pile of unprocessed remarks in Thoreau’s handwriting would be more remarks similar to this lovely one anent the

65. I do drip with sarcasm, don’t I? Well, when I come across stuff like this, I can’t help myself, a demon takes over my keyboard and the screen echo comes across this way even if what I am typing is the alpha string “Hail Mary full of grace.” The point is that if Thoreau had ever been guilty of writing something like this phrase from Emerson’s miscellaneous notebooks, we would long ago have burned every existing copy of WALDEN and none of us in this generation would ever have heard of the guy. And that would be only right. Emerson, however, is invulnerable, is Teflon, nothing ever sticks to him. Or, perhaps, it is the Emerson scholars who are invulnerable, or heedless or something. That quote I attributed to Emerson, repeated below, needn’t be characterized as a piece of Emersoniana at all! It could be characterized, instead, as Emerson in the 19th Century merely –somehow– “channeling” the geist of Alfred Rosenberg (the philosopher of the Nazis in our 20th Century).

I think it cannot be maintained by any candid person that the African race have ever occupied or do promise ever to occupy any very high place in the human family. Their present condition is the strongest proof that they cannot. The Irish cannot; the American Indian cannot; the Chinese cannot. Before the energy of the Caucasian race all the other races have quailed and done obeisance. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Irish interlopers in Walden Wood:

Methinks I could look with equanimity upon a long street of Irish cabins and pigs and children revelling in the genial Concord dirt, and I should still find my Walden wood and Fair Haven in their tanned and happy faces.

Note that historical revisionism has rendered Frederick Douglass’s arrival in Concord that summer utterly transparent,66 with all the stir and ferment of that annual fair of the Anti-Slavery Society of Middlesex County being nicely explained away as nicely white Concordians interacting with other nicely white Concordians, and Emerson’s journal entry above has been attributed to mere musings made earlier –spontaneously, à propos de nothing– during the spring or earlier summer of this year, rather than to the unthinkable: an actual relevant encounter with a mulatto relevant interloper in nice polite white Concord. It has been revisionist scholarship subsequent to that point which has almost totally erased Douglass from the Concord scene, with all the stir and ferment of that Anti-Slavery Fair coming to be nicely explained away in more recent history books as merely a few of the nice white Concordians having an argument of some sort with a few other of the nice white Concordians. This almost total erasure has made it possible for Emerson scholars to attribute his lengthy “if he is pure blood” journal musing (exhibited nearby as a full separate page) about Douglass to irrelevant jottings done within the half-year timeframe rather than to the unthinkable: a specifically locatable and quite actual encounter with a black relevant interloper in nice polite white Concord. But here is the event as fantasized by a historian of this tradition67 — who, inheriting a tradition which has so conveniently forgotten the black speaker, proceeds to fantasize Emerson as having been being deeply impressed by the abstract idea of the abilities of Douglass the black man when that man, actually, was sitting before him staring him full in the face as he orated:

66. “That transparent black man over there can’t be seen and therefore hasn’t come to be heard by us, and therefore we’re not not polite in not not listening to him.” 67. Robert D. Richardson, Jr. EMERSON: THE MIND ON FIRE. Berkeley CA: U of California P, 1994 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Emerson had been asked to speak on the tenth anniversary of the British emancipation of all slaves in the British West Indies; the sponsor was the Women’s Anti-Slavery Association, to which both Lidian and Cynthia Thoreau belonged. Because abolition was a controversial subject on which the people of Concord were divided, none of the local churches would open their doors to them. The event was scheduled for the courthouse. Henry Thoreau went from door to door urging Concord residents to attend. When the sexton of the First Parish Church refused to ring the bell to announce the meeting, Henry rushed to the church and rang the bell himself. The speech itself was a departure from Emerson’s usual style in three ways. It is mainly a long chronological narrative, it is full of the oratorical devices the young Emerson had learned from Everett, and it is intended as agitprop, like Antony’s speech over the body of Caesar. Emerson intended to arouse, to inflame, to move his audience to action: “If any cannot speak, or cannot hear the words of freedom, let him go hence, — I had almost said, creep into your grave, the Universe has no need of you.” He recounted the horrors of slavery, “pregnant women set in the treadmill for refusing to work,” “men’s necks flayed with cowhide, and hot rum poured on, superinduced with brine or pickle, rubbed in with a cornhusk, in the scorching heat of the sun.” He told of “a planter throwing his negro into a copper of boiling cane-juice.” He adds heavy irony to the horrors: “The sugar they raised was excellent. Nobody tasted blood in it.” Emerson continued for page after page, giving the and the history of efforts to stop it, culminating in the act of Parliament of August 1, 1834, by which “slavery shall be and is hereby utterly and forever abolished and declared unlawful throughout the British colonies, plantations and possession abroad.” The reason for celebrating this British act was, of course, to shame the Americans who had no such act on their books. Emerson was very much alive to the economic argument against slavery by which British manufacturers were encouraged to regard the West Indian blacks as so many potential customers. But he was also aware of the insidious psychology of slavery, and he commented on “the love of power, the voluptuousness of holding a human being in his absolute control.” For those who feared emancipation might unleash a terrible retribution and bring massive civil disorder, Emerson stressed the mild and orderly transition to freedom that occurred in the West Indies. Then, at last, he turned from the British to the Americans, who were now seen to be lagging woefully behind the times. At this point Emerson turns from his warm historical survey to the present moment and to a tone of plain anger. He was personally shocked and outraged by reports of northern blacks arrested on the docks of Massachusetts ships lying in southern ports. I have learned that a citizen of Nantucket Island, walking in New Orleans, found a freeborn citizen of Nantucket, a man, too, of great personal worth, and, as it happened, very dear to him, as having saved his own life, working chained in the streets of that city, kidnapped by such a process as this. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Waldo Emerson was outraged that Massachusetts seemed to be able to do nothing to help its citizens, and he said so in blunt, provocative language: “If such a damnable outrage can be committed on the person of a citizen with impunity, let the Governor break the broad seal of the state; he bears the sword in vain.” The congressional delegation from Massachusetts felt that unilateral action by Massachusetts or by the North would endanger the Union. Emerson’s reply was, “The Union is already at an end when the first citizen of Massachusetts is thus outraged.” The solution was not to be sought in further compromise and political juggling. America must follow England’s lead and free the slaves. And if Emerson had been able in his private life until now to accept some of the condescending and muddy racism that undercut the urgency of abolition by declaring the blacks an inferior race, he now explicitly broke with that rationale. He declared to his audience that “the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization.” He also saw that abolition was not simply something conceded by white people, which was the view of Thomas Clarkson’s book [which one of the three??]. “I add,” said Emerson, “that in part it is the earning of the blacks.” He was deeply impressed by the abilities of HAITI Toussaint Louverture and of Frederick Douglass. His private journal comments are just as strong as his public language. Referring specifically to his own conviction of the sufficiency of the individual, he said, “Here is the Anti-Slave. Here is Man; and if you have man, black or white is an insignificance. Why, at night all men are black.” It was also in his journal that he said, “The negro has saved himself, and the white man very patronizingly says I have saved you.” To his Concord audience Emerson said, “The black man carries in his bosom an indispensable element of a new and coming civilization.” And he ended the speech not with a graceful appeal to history or good will but with a stiff and polarizing insistence that “there have been moments, I said, when men might be forgiven who doubted. Those moments are past.” The speech delighted the friends of abolition in the North. Thoreau helped with arrangements to publish the address. Soon the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier was writing to solicit Emerson’s further help at an antislavery convention. A letter from William Lloyd Garrison a few years later suggests what Emerson’s conversion meant to the cause: “You exercise a strong influence over many minds in this country which are not yet sufficiently committed to the side of the slave.... You are not afraid publicly and pointedly to testify against the enslavement of three million of our countrymen.” Emerson was solidly committed to abolition both personally and publicly from now on. His speeches on the subject would, if gathered together, fill a good-sized volume. He appeared on many platforms, but he was not now or ever comfortable as an activist, an advocate. As in the matter of the Cherokee removal, he would speak because he must, because no one else would, because he had convictions, because he believed in action. But it was just not congenial work. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The above act of historical revisionism by Robert D. Richardson, Jr. reminds us of nothing so much as of the alteration of Chinese photographs subsequent to the 1971 fall from grace of Lin Biao, the government official who had suggested the idea of “Mao’s Little Red Book,” from favor in Beijing. For many years the Chinese Communist Party would go to great expense to remove the presence of that inconvenient yellow man from every historic official photograph it could get its hands on (below is a copy from the 1960s that they simply couldn’t get their hands on, one that still shows Lin Biao standing beside Mao Tse-tsung, holding up his little red book).

Robert Richardson has altered the history of this significant 1844 Concord meeting in much the same manner, by entirely erasing that inconvenient black man. This doesn’t just happen in totalitarian countries! We’re so good here at self-censorship, that we don’t have any need for official censorship — we can get the job done all by ourselves.

Why did this history need to be so altered? Because if you listen to the Emerson oration, not with white ears HDT WHAT? INDEX

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but with black ears, it sounds very different. To white ears Emerson has seemed to have been benignly embracing the cause of anti-slavery. To black ears it is obvious that Emerson is acting as an agent provocateur, and attempting to goad Douglass, in his audience, to initiate the sort of servile insurrection that will get him killed — and the white backlash from which will solve America’s race problem once and for all, by removing all the black pawns from the American game.

How are we to understand Emerson? Although the man had advocated total emancipation of the American slaves after fair compensation to their owners, when someone brought him a petition to add his name to, calling for a national convention to get the ball rolling in support of total emancipation of slaves with fair compensation to the owners –precisely what he had advocated– he refused to take the pen in his hand. “There is only one way to accept America and that is in hate; one must be close to one’s land, passionately close in some way or other, and the only way to be close to America is to hate it; it is the only way to love America.” — Lionel Trilling HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Early in his life George William Curtis had spent two years at the Brook Farm community and school. then, in order to continue their association with Emerson, George and his older brother James Burrill Curtis had gone to live on a farm a mile north of Concord. The brothers worked for Captain Nathan Barrett and had a cottage adjoining his farmhouse, atop Punkatasset Hill. After spending part of a day with Hawthorne, George noted in his diary that the writer’s actual life was harmonious with the picture-perfect antique repose of his house, redeemed into the present by his and Mrs. Hawthorne’s infant and the wife’s tenderness and respect for her husband. His note in his diary in regard to Mr. Emerson’s address before the Antislavery Friends on this day August 1st, commemorating the 10th anniversary of emancipation in the British West Indies, was merely to HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the effect that the address had been very commanding despite being nearly two hours long.

So Waldo began by pointing out that, actually, the institution of human slavery was in the best interest of no- one, for wage-labor is more efficient and far safer:

WE are met to exchange congratulations on the anniversary of an event singular in the history of civilization; a day of reason; of the clear light; of that which makes us better than a flock of birds and beasts: a day, which gave the immense fortification of a fact, — of gross history, — to ethical abstractions. It was the settlement, as far as a HDT WHAT? INDEX

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great Empire was concerned, of a question on which almost every leading citizen in it had taken care to record his vote; one which for many years absorbed the attention of the best and most eminent of mankind.... If there be any man who thinks the ruin of a race of men a small matter, compared with the last decoration and completions of his own comfort, — who would not so much as part with his ice-cream, to save them from rapine and manacles, I think, I must not hesitate to satisfy that man, that also his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper, by placing the negro nation on a fair footing, than by robbing them. If the Virginian piques himself on the picturesque luxury of his vassalage, on the heavy Ethiopian manners of his house- servants, their silent obedience, their hue of bronze, their turbaned heads, and would not exchange them for the more intelligent but precarious hired-service of whites, I shall not refuse to show him, that when their free-papers are made out, it will still be their interest to remain on his estate, and that the oldest planters of Jamaica are convinced, that it is cheaper to pay wages, than to own the slave. Simultaneous with Emerson and Douglass delivering these noteworthy speeches in Concord, in Pennsylvania Emerson’s friend, the Reverend William Henry Furness, was also taking the dangerous step of announcing himself as being in opposition to human slavery.

By way of radical contrast with Robert D. Richardson, Jr.’s putrid 1994 nobody-here-but-us-white-men account (reprinted above), here is how a more recent, much more reliable, and racially inclusive source, Gregory P. Lampe68 has analyzed this Concord meeting (the material appears on pages 236-9, and has been lightly edited to make it slightly less convoluted, and for conformity with the punctuation and spelling conventions of this Kouroo database): Frederick Douglass’s activities from mid-June to the end of July are difficult to determine. Neither The Liberator nor the National Anti-Slavery Standard advertised any of his lectures or documented his participation in any antislavery meetings during this period. According to Blassingame, ed. DOUGLASS PAPERS, SERIES ONE, 1:xciii, on June 28th Douglass attended the Essex County Anti-Slavery Society meeting in Methuen, Massachusetts. However, Douglass’s name does not appear in the minutes of the meeting, published in the Liberator of July 12th, and it is probable that he was not in attendance. Douglass was invited to attend an antislavery meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire from July 26th to 29th, but there is no indication of his presence in the accounts of the proceedings published in the Liberator of September 27th. Douglass had also been invited to be the chief speaker at the August 1st celebration in Providence, Rhode Island, but he did not attend, an outcome that greatly disappointed the organizers and left many of Providence’s blacks “much grieved” (Liberator of August 16th). On August 17th, Douglass wrote to the Liberator that he “deeply regretted” missing the meeting at Providence and explained his absence (Liberator of August 31st). On Thursday, August 1st, Douglass returned to Concord to participate in the commemoration of the

68. Gregory P. Lampe. FREDERICK DOUGLASS: FREEDOM’S VOICE, 1818-1845. East Lansing MI: Michigan State UP, 1998 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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anniversary of the emancipation of 800,000 slaves in the British West Indies. Despite a rain storm and troubles with securing a meeting place, reported a correspondent to the Liberator, the occasion was one “of deep and thrilling interest.” The meeting, initially scheduled for out-of-doors, convened at eleven o’clock in the Court House. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the featured speaker of the celebration, addressed the “large and spirited meeting” for more than two and a half hours, during which time “the whole audience gave the most undivided attention.” In the afternoon, Douglass was one of five speakers to appear before the meeting (Liberator of July 12th; National Anti-Slavery Standard of July 18th; Liberator of August 9th; National Anti-Slavery Standard of August 15th). The others speakers were William A. White, Samuel Joseph May, Moses Grandy, and Cyrus Pierce (National Anti-Slavery Standard of August 15th). Although there is no full text of Douglass’ speech, we do have a sketch of it by Laura Hosmer, a member of the committee of arrangements for the celebration. Because this is the sole account of Douglass’s address, it is worth printing in full. From it, we gain a sense both of Douglass’s message and the power of his delivery. According to Hosmer’s report in the National Anti-Slavery Standard, Frederick Douglass had spoken with the deep feeling which a man of his strong mind, who had felt all the dread horrors of Slavery, must have on such an occasion; he rejoiced with a joy that was truly unspeakable, over the resurrection of so many thousands from that living grave in which they had lain buried for so many long, dreary years; he told of the unutterable joy which must have been felt by those poor bondsmen, when they received the boon of liberty —a joy which, he said, could only be conceived of by those who had, like himself, suffered as they had suffered —a joy which might be felt, but never could be told; and, said he, I rejoice with them, I rejoice with them, I REJOICE with them.” As he uttered these words, his every look and gesture showed how utterly inadequate language was to express the intensity of his feeling; his whole frame quivered with emotion, as he stood silent for a moment. “But,” said he, “while I rejoice with them, my thoughts will revert to my own country, and to the millions who are here suffering miseries from which they are now delivered.” He then depicted the state of things in our country, in language which I cannot remember to repeat, and with a power which I cannot imitate. When he had done speaking, the house was silent as if there were not a living being in it. As Hosmer’s account testifies, Douglass’s address made a powerful impression on the audience. The correspondent to the Liberator may have had Douglass’s speech in mind when he wrote, “We have been strengthened, we have been refreshed, and all I doubt not who participated with us on that day, will look back upon it as one of the bright spots on their anti-slavery course.” Certainly, Douglass’s masterful address had been one of the day’s “bright spots” (Liberator of August 9th and of August HDT WHAT? INDEX

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23rd). In the oration Emerson referenced an unprovenanced tale, that “the Great Spirit, in the beginning, offered the black man, whom he loved better than the buckra or white, his choice of two boxes, a big and a little one. The black man was greedy, and chose the largest. ‘The buckra box was full up with pen, paper, and whip, and the negro box with hoe and bill; and hoe and bill for negro to this day.’” For information, since fortunately we aren’t as close to this material as once we were — here are images of a hoe plate, used primarily for chopping weeds from cultivated fields, and of a billhook, used primarily for chopping brush from uncultivated fields:

If Frederick Douglass was unacquainted with this unprovenanced tale of Emerson’s, he would surely have been acquainted with the use of the tools it mentioned. Imagine how he must have chuckled at this point in the Sage of Concord’s oration!

Imagine how the black man reacted, when Emerson characterized nice polite negroes and how they would nicely, politely hold themselves back in order to let the white man “go ahead,” and would modestly remind one another not to be pushy, never to dare to irritate The Man — “social position is not to be gained by pushing.”

Imagine how the black man reacted, when the white man pointed up the fact that the genius of the Saxon race, his own race, was friendly to liberty; that the enterprise, the very muscular vigor of his nation, was inconsistent with slavery — that the salient difference between the white race and the black race, which had resulted in the white race enslaving the black race rather than vice versa, was that the white race would never permit itself to be enslaved.

Imagine how the black man reacted, when the white man predicted that if the black man continued to be feeble, and not important to the existing races, not on a parity with the best race, then the black man was fated to continue to serve — and was fated to “be exterminated.”

Imagine how the black man reacted, when the white man suggested that only if the black man carried in his bosom an indispensable element of a new and coming civilization, would he be able to “survive and play his part.”

Imagine how the black man reacted, when the white man described the occasion of this annual celebration of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the emancipation of the negroes of the British West Indies as reminding us all, that after playing for such a long time such a very low and subdued accompaniment, in the future “the black race can contend with the white [and] can strike in with effect, and take a master’s part in the music.”

Imagine how the black man reacted, when the white man spoke of “the arrival in the world of such men as Toussaint, and the Haytian heroes, or of the leaders of their race in Barbadoes and Jamaica,” and how important this was for the future success of the black race!

What a mixed message the black man received on that day! Here’s the message, in loud black letters:

IF YOU DON’T GET PUSHY YOU’LL GET EXTERMINATED

— BUT GET PUSHY AND YOU’LL BE EXTERMINATED.

This was the shadow side of the coin which the white American worshiped: “It is difficult to describe the rapacity with which the American rushes forward to receive the immense booty which fortune proffers to him. He is goaded onward by a passion more intense than love of life. Before him lies a boundless continent, and he urges onward as if time pressed, and he was afraid of finding no room for his exertions.” — Alexis de Tocqueville HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 21, Saturday: In Philadelphia, Frederick Douglass lectured in Gardiner’s Church, and at the Friends’ Meetinghouse.

Costumes of Philadelphia Quakers According to the New Orleans newspaper Daily Picayune, Frances Roupell Pie Williams, the wife of Edward Pinkney Williams, died.

Waldo Emerson was out for a walk on this day, and “met two or three men who told [him] they had come thither to sell and buy a field, on which they wished [him] to bid as a purchaser.” Emerson would record this in his journal:

As it was on the shore of the pond, and now for years I had a sort of daily occupancy of it, I bid on it and bought it, eleven acres, for $8.10 per acre. The next day I carried some of my well-beloved gossips to the place, and they decided that the field was not worth anything if Heartwell Bigelow should cut down his pine grove, I bought, for $125 more, his pretty wood- lot of three or four acres, and am now landlord and water-lord of fourteen acres, more or less, on the shore of Walden, and can raise my own blackberries.

THE BEANFIELD HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Late September: Late in the month Waldo Emerson paid $8.10 per acre for Thomas Wyman’s farmed-out pasture of “eleven acres more or less” behind the poorfarm on the road to Walden Pond. The pasture, which had been logged over but had not been farmed for sixteen years, was overgrown but was more or less level.69 There wasn’t, of course, a whole lot of shade — the area was relatively open. According to a letter written by Waldo to his brother William on October 4th, he had paid $8.10 an acre for this 11-acre plot near Walden Pond when he had met some men walking in the woods (I suppose the similarity between the name “Waldo” and the name “Walden” cannot have been overlooked by Waldo, however little he knew about the history of religious dissent on the European subcontinent). The next day he had gone back, he told his brother, with some “well beloved gossips” and they persuaded him to pay $125.00 for about 3 more acres of pine grove from Heartwell Bigelow to protect his investment by preventing these nearby trees from being logged. This became, of course, the land on which Henry Thoreau built his shanty when he made his agreement to clear the pasture of brambles and turn it into a beanfield, but at the time its owner had other plans for it:70

... so am landlord and waterlord of 14 acres, more or less, on the shore of Walden, & can raise my own blackberries.... I may build me a cabin or a turret there high as the treetops and spend my nights as well as my days in the midst of a beauty which never fades for me.

THE BEANFIELD TIMELINE OF WALDEN Brad Dean indicated that “Sometime later that month Thoreau apparently negotiated with Emerson for the right to squat on the Wyman lot and there conduct his ‘experiment of living.’ Emerson’s permission was apparently attended with two provisos: that the small house Thoreau planned to build would become Emerson’s after Thoreau’s tenancy, and that Thoreau would clear and plant the cultivatable portion of the lot.”

69. This land is now near the intersection of Route 2 and Route 126. 70. Later, when Emerson wrote a will, he had willed this woodlot to Thoreau, but since Thoreau was already twenty years dead by the time Emerson died, the property was retained in the family. Eventually, in 1922, the family would sign the lot on the pond over to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 1, Sunday: William M. Painter was born to Friend Edith Dean Painter and Friend John Hunt Painter in Salem or New Garden, Ohio.

The mayor of Charleston, the aldermen of the city, and the sheriff came to the hotel of Samuel Hoar and Elizabeth Sherman Hoar to advise them that the governor considered their presence on such a mission as an insult to South Carolina, and to inform them that the state legislature had ordered their immediate expulsion. The hotel manager begged them to be gone before a mob set fire to the hotel. They traveled back north via Washington DC, where they spoke about this with Massachusetts congressmen of both houses, and via Boston, where they spoke with the state governor. When they got back home to Concord and Waldo Emerson learned of their magnificent summer venture into the “confrontation politics” genre, he wrote in his journal:

The position of Massachusetts seems to me to be better for Mr Hoar’s visit to S. Carolina, in this point, that one illusion is dispelled. Massachusetts was dishonoured before; but she was credulous in the protection of the Constitution & either did not believe or affected not to believe that she was dishonored. Now all doubt on that subject is removed, & 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. I do not like very well to hear a man say he has been in Carolina. I know too well what men she suffers in her towns. He is no freeman.

SLAVERY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Later he would orate in the Concord Town Hall as follows:

“EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES”: I see very poor, very ill- clothed, very ignorant men, not surrounded by happy friends, — to be plain, — poor black men of obscure employment as mariners, cooks, or stewards, in ships, yet citizens of this our Commonwealth of Massachusetts, — freeborn as we, — whom the slave-laws of the States of South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana, have arrested in the vessels in which they visited those ports, and shut up in jails so long as the vessel remained in port, with the stringent addition, that if the shipmaster fails to pay the costs of this official arrest, and the board in jail, these citizens are to be sold for slaves, to pay that expense. This man, these men, I see, and no law to save them. Fellow citizens, this crime will not be hushed up any longer. I have learned that a citizen of Nantucket, walking in New Orleans, found a freeborn citizen of Nantucket, a man, too, of great personal worth, and, as it happened, very dear to him, as having saved his own life, working chained in the streets of that city, kidnapped by such a process as this. In the sleep of the laws, the private interference of two excellent citizens of Boston has, I have ascertained, rescued several natives of this State from these southern prisons. Gentlemen, I thought the deck of a Massachusetts ship was as much the territory of Massachusetts, as the floor on which we stand. It should be as sacred as the temple of God. The poorest fishing-smack, that floats under the shadow of an iceberg in the northern seas, or hunts the whale in the southern ocean, should be encompassed by her laws with comfort and protection, as much as within the arms of Cape Ann and Cape Cod. And this kidnapping is suffered within our own land and federation, whilst the fourth article of the Constitution of the United States ordains in terms, that, “The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” If such a damnable outrage can be committed on the person of a citizen with impunity, let the Governor break the broad seal of the State; he bears the sword in vain. The Governor of Massachusetts is a trifler: the State- house in Boston is a play-house: the General Court is a dishonored body: if they make laws which they cannot execute. The great-hearted Puritans have left no posterity. The rich men may walk in State-street, but they walk without honor; and the farmers may brag their democracy in the country, but they are disgraced men. If the State has no power to defend its own people in its own shipping, because it has delegated that power to the Federal Government, has it no representation in the Federal Government? Are those men dumb ? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES”: I am no lawyer, and cannot indicate the forms applicable to the case, but here is something which transcends all forms, Let the senators and representatives of the State, containing a population of a million freemen, go in a body before the Congress, and say, that they have a demand to make on them so imperative, that all functions of government must stop, until it is satisfied. If ordinary legislation cannot reach it, then extraordinary must be applied. The Congress should instruct the President to send to those ports of Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans, such orders and such force, as should release, forthwith, all such citizens of Massachusetts as were holden in prison without the allegation of any crime, and should set on foot the strictest inquisition to discover where such persons, brought into slavery by these local laws, at any time heretofore, may now be. That first; — and then, let order be taken to indemnify all such as have been incarcerated. As for dangers to the Union, from such demands! — the Union is already at an end, when the first citizen of Massachusetts is thus outraged. Is it an union and covenant in which the State of Massachusetts agrees to be imprisoned, and the State of Carolina to imprison ? Gentlemen, I am loath to say harsh things, and perhaps I know too little of politics for the smallest weight to attach to any censure of mine, — but I am at a loss how to characterize the tameness and silence of the two senators and the ten representatives of the State at Washington. To what purpose, have we clothed each of those representatives with the power of seventy thousand persons, and each senator with near half a million, if they are to sit dumb at their desks, and see their constituents captured and sold; — perhaps to gentlemen sitting by them in the hall? There is a scandalous rumor that has been swelling louder of late years, — perhaps it is wholly false, — that members are bullied into silence by southern gentlemen. It is so cosy to omit to speak, or even to be absent when delicate things are to be handled. I may as well say what all then feel, that whilst our very amiable and very innocent representatives and senators at Washington, are accomplished lawyers and merchants, and very eloquent at dinners and at caucuses, there is a disastrous want of men from New England. I would gladly make exceptions, and you will not suffer me to forget one eloquent old man, in whose veins the blood of Massachusetts rolls, and who singly has defended the freedom of speech, and the rights of the free, against the usurpation of the slave-holder. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES”: But the reader of Congressional debates, in New England, is perplexed to see with what admirable sweetness and patience the majority of the free States, are schooled and ridden by the minority of slave-holders. What if we should send thither representatives who were a particle less amiable and less innocent? I entreat you, sirs, let not this stain attach, let not this misery accumulate any longer. If the managers of our political parties are too prudent and too cold; — if, most unhappily, the ambitious class of young men and political men have found out, that these neglected victims are poor and without weight; that they have no graceful hospitalities to offer; no valuable business to throw into any man’s hands, no strong vote to cast at the elections; and therefore may with impunity be left in their chains or to the chance of chains, then let the citizens in their primary capacity take up their cause on this very ground, and say to the government of the State, and of the Union, that government exists to defend the weak and the poor and the injured party; the rich and the strong can better take care of themselves. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1845

Waldo Emerson described study of the BHAGAVAD-GITA:

I owed –my friend and I owed– a magnificent day to the Bhagavat Geeta. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.

January-March: Waldo Emerson expressed, for the benefit of his journal, the very typical disdain that the Northern white man was harboring during this period for the Southern white man (of course, the Southern white man would inevitably despise the Northern white man for despising him in such a manner — and be warned, this minuet of reciprocal despite would become the root psychic cause leading us into disunion and a bloody civil war):

The position of Massachusetts seems to me to be better for Mr Hoar’s visit to S. Carolina, in this point, that one illusion is dispelled. Massachusetts was dishonoured before; but she was credulous in the protection of the Constitution & either did not believe or affected not to believe that she was dishonored. Now all doubt on that subject is removed, & 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. I do not like very well to hear a man say he has been in Carolina. I know too well what men she suffers in her towns. He is no freeman.

HISTORY’S NOT MADE OF WOULD. WHEN SOMEONE REVEALS, FOR INSTANCE, THAT THE SOUTHERN WHITE MAN WOOD INEVITABLY DESPISE THE NORTHERN WHITE MAN FOR DESPISING HIM IN SUCH A MANNER, S/HE DISCLOSES THAT WHAT IS BEING CRAFTED IS NOT REALITY BUT PREDESTINARIANISM. THE HISTORIAN IS SETTING HDT WHAT? INDEX

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CHRONOLOGY TO “SHUFFLE,” WHICH IS NOT A PERMISSIBLE OPTION BECAUSE IN THE REAL WORLD SUCH SHUFFLE IS IMPOSSIBLE. THE RULE OF REALITY IS THAT THE FUTURE HASN’T EVER HAPPENED, YET. THERE IS NO SUCH “BIRD’S EYE VIEW” AS THIS IN THE REAL WORLD, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD NO REAL BIRD HAS EVER GLIMPSED AN ACTUAL HISTORICAL SEQUENCE. FEW OF THESE WHITE PEOPLE IMAGINED, WHILE THEY WERE DESPISING ONE ANOTHER IN SUCH MANNER, THE HORRID FORM THE OUTCOME OF ALL THIS DESPITE WAS DESTINED INEVITABLY TO ASSUME.

Emerson’s Journals “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Spring, Summer, and Fall: During this entire lecture season, Spring-Summer-Fall, was traveling around lecturing against slavery in Michigan. The antislavery society pledged itself to helping him redeem his wife and child from their southern enslavement.

At some point between March and June, Waldo Emerson entered the following material in his journal:

What argument, what eloquence can avail against the power of that one word niggers? The man of the world annihilates the whole combined force of all the antislavery societies of the world by pronouncing it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1846

April: During this month or the next one, Waldo Emerson would jot down something about the activities of Henry Thoreau in his JOURNAL: ASTRONOMY

Queenie came it over Henry last night when he taxes the new astronomers with the poverty of their discoveries & showings — not strange enough. Queenie wished to see with eyes some of those strange things which the telescope reveals, the satellites of Saturn, &c. H. said that stranger things might be seen with the naked eye. “Yes,” said Queenie “but I wish to see some of those things that are not quite so strange.”

HARVARD OBSERVATORY Here is the beginning of this April, and the Purple Martin Progne subis, in the WALDEN manuscript:

WALDEN: For a week I heard the circling groping clangor of some solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeing its companion, and still peopling the woods with the sound of a larger life than they could sustain. In April the pigeons were seen again flying express in small flocks, and in due time I heard the martins twittering over my clearing, though it had not seemed that the township contained so many that it could afford me any, and I fancied that they were peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white men came. In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of Nature.

ASTRONOMY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May: When the new group of the Tropical Emigration Society sailed from England, their intended destination, rather than Venezuela, was New Orleans.

Henry Thoreau would ascribe, in WALDEN, that early in this month in this year of 1846:

WALDEN: Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods around the pond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to the landscape, especially in cloudy days, as if the sun were breaking through mists and shining faintly on the hill-sides here and there. On the third or fourth of May I saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month I heard the whippoorwill, the brown-thrasher, the veery, the wood-pewee, the chewink, and other birds. I had heard the wood-thrush long before. The phoebe had already come once more and looked in at my door and window, to see if my house was cavern- like enough for her, sustaining herself on humming wings with clinched talons, as if she held by the air, while she surveyed the premises.

WHIPPOORWILL WOOD THRUSH CHEWINK Waldo Emerson was having his Daguerreotype made, in order to send it off to his white supremacist buddy Thomas Carlyle in England.

The Indians and the old monks chose their dwellingplace for beauty of scenery. The Indians have a right to exist in this world: they are (like Monadnoc & the Ocean) a part of it, & fit the other parts, as Monadnoc & the sea, which they understand and live with so well, as a rider his horse. The teamster, the farmer, are jocund and hearty, & stand on their legs: but the women are demure and subdued, as Shaker Women, &, if you see them out of doors, look, as H.T. said, “as if they were going for the Doctor.” Has our Christianity saddled & bridled us?

July 23, Thursday or 24, Friday: Su fratelli, letizia si Canti for chorus and orchestra by Gioachino Rossini to words of Canonico Golfieri was performed for the initial time, at Piazza Maggiore, Bologna, to celebrate the installation of Pope Pius IX. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Henry Thoreau provoked Sheriff Sam Staples, who was under contract as the Concord tax farmer, into taking

him illegally to the Middlesex County Prison71and spent the night there, for having for several years (up to perhaps 9), following the example of Bronson Alcott, refused to pay certain taxes as useful for the perpetuation of domestic slavery and foreign wars.72

“RESISTANCE TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT”: It was formerly the custom in our village, when a poor debtor came out of jail, for his acquaintances to salute him, looking through their fingers, which were crossed to represent the grating of a jail window, “How do ye do?” My neighbors did not thus salute me, but first looked at me, and then at one another, as if I had returned from a long journey. I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker’s to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour —for the horse was soon tackled— was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen. This is the whole history of “My Prisons.” I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject; and as for supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow-countrymen now. It is for no particular item in the tax- bill that I refuse to pay it.

71. The usual penalty for failure to pay the Massachusetts poll tax was property seizure and auction upon failure to display a stamped tax receipt, and was most certainly never imprisonment, but young Thoreau possessed few auctionable items and probably did not use a bank account. 72. During the one year 1845, in Massachusetts, the “poll tax” had been being reckoned as if it were a state tax, although in all other years it had been and would be reckoned as a municipality or county tax. As a town tax, and as a county tax, of course, it could hardly be considered to be in support of slavecatching or of foreign wars, since neither the Massachusetts towns nor the Massachusetts counties engaged in either slavecatching or the raising of armies. Also, even in the one year 1845, while this tax was being considered as a state tax, under the law no part of this revenue was to be used for the catching of fugitive slaves, and no foreign war was going on at the moment (the march upon Mexico had not yet fairly begun). Thoreau, therefore, in declining to pay voluntarily this tax bill, actually was not refusing to acknowledge slavery, as alleged, or a war effort, as alleged, but was refusing to recognize any political organization whatever. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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(I find it fascinating that Thoreau did not ever, in reminiscing about his famous night in the lockup, make any easy reference to the snippet of poetry that was quite as familiar to him as it is to all of us, from Richard Lovelace’s “To Althea from Prison.” –Thoreau wasn’t going for a hole-in-one!)

Walter Harding has tracked down what may well be the origin of the often-told but utterly spurious story, that Waldo Emerson came to visit Thoreau in his prison cell and expressed concern: he found a “Bringing Up Father” cartoon strip in the newspaper, in which Paddy was in jail for drunkenness, and when Jiggs asks him how come he was in jail Paddy retorts “How come you’re not?” Alcott has reported that Emerson’s reaction to the news of this was to find Thoreau’s stand to have been “mean and skulking, and in bad taste.” Therefore, is this not the point at which we can profitably ask, was Thoreau merely running away from his social responsibilities, as has been so often alleged, when he went out to live at Walden Pond? Let’s attach the humorous title “DECAMPING TO WALDEN POND: A GENDER 73 ANALYSIS BY MARTHA SAXTON” to the following quotation:

It seems, from exaggerated nineteenth-century sex definitions, that Victorians were afraid men and women might not be able to distinguish gender. So women were trussed, corseted, and bustled into immobility while men posed in musclebound attitudes of emotionless strength. this suppression of tenderness, warmth, and most expressions of feelings produced the male equivalent of the vapors. Louisa [May Alcott]’s teacher and secret love, Henry David Thoreau, decamped to Walden Pond rather than confront social demands that he be conventionally “male.”

Another member of the Thoreau family, we don’t know who, paid the tax for him, as the tax had previously been paid by Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar when Alcott had almost been jailed on January 17, 1843. Although Emerson was irritated no end by such unseemly conduct, on the part of an associate, as failure to pay one’s share of the general tax burden, to his credit he did continue to press for publication of Thoreau’s A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS manuscript. However, at that time Thoreau was still preparing additions to the second draft.74 73. On page 226 of her LOUISA MAY: A MODERN BIOGRAPHY OF LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, Saxton accused Thoreau of “unrelenting misogyny” as her way of elaborating on Bronson Alcott’s remark of November 5, 1858 that Thoreau was “better poised and more nearly self-sufficient than other men.” This caused me to look back to her title page and inspect the date of publication and say to myself, “Yeah, this thing was published back in 1977, the bad old days when we thought we had to combat male sexism by nurturing prejudice against anyone with a penis.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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74. Lawrence, Jerome (1915-2004) and Robert Edwin Lee (1918-1994), THE NIGHT THOREAU SPENT IN JAIL: A PLAY. NY: Hill and Wang, 1971, Spotlight Dramabook #1223, c1970, c1972 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I should make reference here to a snide remark that Albert J. von Frank has included at page 202 of his 1 AN EMERSON CHRONOLOGY. The sentence is as follows, in its entirety: “Henry Thoreau expressed his own anti-politics a month later by spending a night in jail for tax evasion, an act that drew Emerson’s quick disapproval, thought the principles behind the act, as Thoreau explained in ‘Civil Disobedience,’ had more in common with Emerson’s own position than he then suspected.” Now here are the things that I suppose to be quite wrongheaded about von Frank’s assertion, which would seem on its face simply to be praising Thoreau against Emerson: •“anti-politics” Thoreau’s act was not an act of anti-politics but an act of politics. To privilege assent over dissent in such a manner constitutes an unconscionable expression of mere partisanship. •“tax evasion” Thoreau’s act was not the act of a tax evader. A tax evader is a cheater, who is trying through secrecy or deception to get away with something. Thoreau’s act was the deliberate public act of a man who would rather be imprisoned than assist in ongoing killing, and thus is in an entirely separate category from such cheating. To conflate two such separate categories, one of self-service and the other of self-abnegation, into a single category, in such manner, is, again, an unconscionable expression of prejudicial politics. •“had more in common” The implication here is that Emerson’s attitudes constitute the baseline for evaluation of Thoreau’s attitudes, so that Thoreau may be condescendingly praised for imitating Emerson whenever the two thinkers can be made to seem in agreement, while preserving the option of condemning him as a resistor or worse whenever these contemporaries seem at loggerheads. –But this is unconscionable.

Albert J. von Frank. AN EMERSON CHRONOLOGY. NY: G.K. Hall & Co. and Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1994 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Emerson to his journal:

These rabble at Washington are really better than the snivelling opposition. They have a sort of genius of a bold & manly cast, though Satanic. They see, against the unanimous expression of the people, how much a little well directed effrontery can achieve, how much crime the people will bear, & they proceed from step to step & it seems they have calculated but too justly upon your Excellency, O Governor Briggs. Mr Webster told them how much the war cost, that was his protest, but voted the war, & sends his son to it. They calculated rightly on Mr Webster. My friend Mr Thoreau has gone to jail rather than pay his tax. On him they could not calculate. The abolitionists denounce the war & give much time to it, but they pay the tax. The State is a poor good beast who means the best: it means friendly. A poor cow who does well by you — do not grudge it its hay. It cannot eat bread as you can, let it have without grudge a little grass for its four stomachs. It will not stint to yield you milk from its teat. You who are a man walking cleanly on two feet will not pick a quarrel with a poor cow. Take this handful of clover & welcome. But if you go to hook me when I walk in the fields, then, poor cow, I will cut your throat.

DANIEL WEBSTER We now understand that Sheriff Sam was considerably twisting the law under which he confined Thoreau for nonpayment of that $5 or $6 arrears of poll tax, and for his own convenience. For what the law of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts required him to do in regard to such a tax resistor, prior to debt imprisonment, was to attempt to seize and sell some of Thoreau’s assets, such as the books he had in storage in his parents’ boardinghouse in Concord. Sheriff Staples hadn’t been inclined to do this and at this point didn’t have time because he was leaving office — and the sad fact of the matter is that, since he was merely under contract as a “tax farmer,” had he vacated his position without collecting this money from the Thoreau family, Massachusetts would simply have deducted the sum from his final paycheck (bottom line, The Man always takes his cut). For here is that law, and it simply offers no support whatever for what Sheriff Staples did to put pressure on Thoreau: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Section 7. If any person shall refuse or neglect to pay his [poll] tax, the collector shall levy the same by distress and sale of his goods, excepting the good following, namely: • The tools or implements necessary for his trade or occupation; • beasts of the plow necessary for the cultivation of his improved lands; • military arms, utensils for house keeping necessary for upholding life, and bedding and apparel necessary for himself and family. Section 8. The collector shall keep the goods distrained, at the expense of the owner, for the space of four days, at the least, and shall, within seven days after the seizure, sell the same by public auction, for the payment of the tax and the charges of keeping and of the sale, having given notice of such sale, by posting up a notification thereof, in some public place in the town, forty eight hours at least before the sale. Section 11. If the collector cannot find sufficient goods, upon which it may be levied, he may take the body of such person and commit him to prison, there to remain, until he shall pay the tax and charges of commitment and imprisonment, or shall be discharged by order of law.

TIMELINE OF WALDEN

After July 24: In my short experience of human life I have found that the outward obstacles which stood in my way were not living men – but dead institutions It has been unspeakably grateful & refreshing to make my way through the crowd of this latest generation honest & dishonest virtuous & vicious as through the dewy grass –men are as innocent as the morning to the early riser –and unsuspicious pilgrim and many an early traveller which he met on his way

The early pilgrim blithe he hailed That o’er the hills did stray: And many an early husbandman, That he met on his way

& for all he knew they were all highwaymen – but the institutions as church –state –the school property &c are grim and ghostly phantoms like Moloch & Juggernaut because of the blind reverence paid to them. When I have indulged a poets dream of a terrestrial paradise I have not foreseen that any cossack or Chipeway –would disturb it –but some monster institution would swallow it– The only highway man I ever met was the state itself– When I have refused to pay the tax which it demanded for that protection I did not want itself has robbed me– When I have asserted the freedom it declared it has imprisoned me. I love mankind I hate the institutions of their forefathers– What are the sermons of the church but the Dudleian lectures –against long extinct perhaps always imaginary evils, which he dead generations have willed and so the bell still tolls to call us to the funeral service which a generation can rightly demand but once. It is singular that not the Devil himself –has been in my way but these cobwebs –which tradition says were originally spun to obstruct the fiend. If I will not fight –if I will not pray –if I will not be taxed –if I will not bury the unsettled prairie –my neighbor will still tolerate me and sometimes even sustains me –but not the state. And should our piety derive its origin still from that exploit of pius Aenaeus who bore his father Anchises on his shoulders from the ruins of Troy Not thieves & highwaymen but Constables & judges –not sinners but priests –not the ignorant but pedants & pedagogues –not foreign foes but standing armies –not pirates but men of war. Not free malevolence –but HDT WHAT? INDEX

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organized benevolence. For instance the jailer or constable as a mere man and neighbor –with life in him intended for this particular 3 score years & ten –may be a right worthy man with a thought in the brain of him –but as the officer & tool of the state he has no more understanding or heart than his prison key or his staff– This is what is saddest that men should voluntarily assume the character & office of brute nature.– Certainly there are modes enough by which a man may put bread into his mouth which will not prejudice him as a companion & neighbor. There are stones enough in the path of the traveller with out a man’s adding his own body to the number. There probably never were worse crimes committed since time began than in the present Mexican war –to take a single instance– And yet I have not yet learned the name or residence and probably never should of the reckless vilain who should father them– all concerned –from the political contriver to the latest recruit possess an average share of virtue & of vice the vilainy is in the readiness with which men, doing outrage to their proper natures –lend themselves to perform the office of inferior & brutal ones. The stern command is –move or ye shall be moved –be the master of your own action –or you shall unawares become the tool of the meanest slave. Any can command him who doth not command himself. Let men be men & stones be stones and we shall see if majorities do rule. Countless reforms are called for because society is not animated or instinct enough with life, but like snakes I have seen in early spring –with alternate portions torpid & flexible –so that they could wriggle neither way. All men more or less are buried partially in the grave of custom, and of some we see only a few hairs upon the crown above ground. Better are the physically dead for they more lively rot. Those who have stolen estate to be defended slaves to be kept in service –who would pause with the last inspiration & perpetuate it –require the aid of institutions –the stereotyped and petrified will of the past But they who are something to defend –who are not to be enslaved themselves – –who are up with their time – ask no such hinderance THOMAS CARLYLE Carlyle’s is not the most lasting words nor the loftiest wisdom –but for his genius it was reserved at last to furnish expression for the thoughts that were throbbing in a million breasts– It has plucked the ripest fruit in the public garden– But this fruit now least concerned the tree that bore it –which was rather perfecting the bud at the foot of the leaf stalk. Carlyle is wonderfully true to the impressions on his own mind, but not to the simple facts themselves. He portrays the former so freshly and vividly –that his words reawaken and appeal to our whole Experience But when reinforced by this terrible critic we return to his page his words are found not to be coincident with the thing and inadequate and there is no host worthy to entertain the guest he has invited. On this remote shore we adventurously landed unknown to any of the human inhabitants to this day – But we still remember well the gnarled and hospitable oaks, which were not strangers to us, the lone horse in his pasture and the patient ruminating herd whose path to the river so judiciously chosen to overcome the difficulty of the ascent we followed and disturbed their repose in the shade. And the cool free aspect of the wild apple trees, generously proffering their fruit to the wayfarers though still green and crude. The hard round glossy fruit which if not ripe –still is not poison but New English –brought hither its ancestor by our ancestors once. And up the rocky channel of a brook we scrambled which had long served nature for the sluice in these parts leaping from rock –through tangled woods at the bottom of a ravine, darker and darker it grew and more hoarse, the murmur of the stream –until we reached the ruins of a mill where now the ivy grew and the trout glanced through the raceway and the flume. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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And the dreams and speculations of some early settler was our theme

But now “no war nor battle’s sound” Invades this peaceful battle ground but waves of Concord murmuring by With sweetly fluent harmony. But since we sailed, some things have failed And many a dream gone down the stream Here then a venerable shepherd dwellt ...... The Reverend Ezra Ripley Who to his flock his substance dealt And ruled them with a vigorous crook By precept of the sacred Book. But he the pierless bridge passed o’er And now the solitary shore Knoweth his trembling steps no more. Anon a youthful pastor came ...... Nathaniel Hawthorne Whose crook was not unknown to fame His lambs he viewed with gentle glance Dispersed o’er a wide expanse, And fed with “mosses from the Manse” We view the rocky shore where late With soothed and patient ear we sat Under our Hawthorne in the dale And listened to his Twice told Tale. It comes on murmuring to itself by the base of stately and retired mountains –through dark primitive woods – whose juices it receives and where the bear still drinks it– Where the cabins of settlers are still fresh and far between, and there are few that cross its stream. Enjoying still its cascades unknown to fame perhaps unseen as yet by man –alone by itself –by the long ranges of the mountains of Sandwich and of Squam with sometimes MT. KEARSARGE the peak of Moose hillock the Haystack & Kearsarge reflected in its waters. Where the maple and the raspberry that lover of the mountains flourish amid temperate dews. Flowing as long and mysterious and untranslateable as its name Pemigewasset. By many a pastured Pielion and Ossa where unnamed muses haunt, and receiving the tribute of many an untasted Helicon Not all these hills does it lave but I have experienced that to see the sun set behind them avails as much as to have travelled to them. From where the old Man of the Mountain overlooks one of its head waters –in the Franconia Notch, taking the basin and the Flume in its way –washing the sites of future villages –not impatient. For every mountain stream is more than Helicon, tended by oreads dryads Naiads, and such a pure and fresh inspirit draught gift of the gods as it will take a newer than this New England to know the flavor of.

Such water do the gods distill And pour down hill For their new England men. A draught of this wild water bring And I will never taste the spring Of Helicon again. But yesterday in dew it fell This morn its streams began to swell And with the sun it downward flowed So fresh it hardly knew its road. Falling all the way, not discouraged by the lowest fall –for it intends to rise again. There are earth air fire & water –very well, this is water. down it comes that is the way with it. It was already water of Squam and Newfound lake and Winnipiseogee, and White mountain snow dissolved on which we were floating –and Smith’s and Bakers and Mad rivers and Nashua and Souhegan and Piscataquoag –and Suncook & Soucook & Contoocook –mingled in incalculable proportions –still fluid yellowish restless all with an inclination seaward but boyant. Here then we will leave them to saw and grind and spin for a season, and I fear there will be no vacation at low water for they are said to have Squam and Newfound lake and Winipiseogee for their mill ponds. By the law of its birth never to become stagnant for it has come out of the clouds, and down the sides of precipices worn in the flood through beaver dams broke loose not splitting but splicing and mending itself until it found a breatheing plaace in this lowland– No danger now that the sun will steal it back to heaven again before it reach the sea for it has a warrant even to recover its own dews into its bosom again with every eve We wandered on by the side and over the brows of hoar hills and mountains –& through notches which the stream had made –looking down one sunday morning over Bethlehem amid the bleating of sheep, and hearing as we HDT WHAT? INDEX

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walked the loud spoken prayers of the inhabitants –like crusaders strolled out from the camp in Palestine–75 And looking in to learning’s little tenement by the way –where some literate swain earns his ten dollars by the month –after the harvest –with rows of slates and well cut benches round –as well cut as farther south –not noticing the herd of swine which had poured in at the open door, and made a congregation– So we went on over hill and dale through the stumpy rocky –woody –bepastured country –until we crossed a rude wooden bridge over the Amonnoosuck and breathed the free air of the Unappropriated Land. Now we were in a country where inns begin– And we too now began to have our ins and outs– Some sweet retired house whose sign only availed to creak but bore no Phoenix nor golden eagle but such as the sun and rain had painted there – –a demi public demi private house –where each apartment seems too private for your use –too public for your hosts. One I remember where Landlord and lady hung painted as if retired from active life –upon the wall –remarkable one might almost say –if he knew not the allowed degrees of consanguinity for a family likeness –a singular deflexion of the nose turned each to each –so that the total variation could not have been better represented than in the picture. –But here at any rate the cream rose thick upon the milk –and there was refreshment One “Tilton’s Inn” tooo sheltered us which it were well worth remembering, in Thornton it was where towns begin to serve as gores only to hold the world together –reached late in the evening and left before the sun rose. But the remembrance of an entertainment still remains and among publicans Tiltons name still stands conspicuous in our diary. But where we took our ease was not Canterbury street, no Four corners nor Five points –no trivial place where 3 roads meet but hardly one road held together– A dank forest path –more like an otter’s or a marten’s trail or where a beaver had dragged his trap than where the wheels of travel ever raised a dust. The pigeon sat secure above our heads high on the dead limbs of the pine reduced to robins size– The very yard of our hostelries was inclined upon the skirts of mountains and as we passed we looked up at angle at the stems of maples waving in the clouds –and late at evening we heard the drear bleating of innumerable flocks upon the mountains sides seeming to hold unequal parley with the bears Shuddered through the Franconia where the thermometer is spliced for winter use, saw the blue earth heaved into mountain waves from Agiocochook, and where the Umbagog Ossipee and Squam gleamed like dewy cobwebs in the sun– And like bright ribbons the streamlets of Connecticut Saco & adroscoggin “take up their mountain march– Went on our way silent & humble through the Notch –heard the lambs bleat in Bartlett on the mountains late at night –looked back on Conway peak –threaded the woods of Norway pine –and saw the Great Spirit smile in Winnipiseogee76 Varro advises to plant in Quincunx order in order not to “obstruct the beneficial effects of the sun and moon and air,” and adds “nuts, when they are whole, which you might comprize in one modius, because nature confines the kernels in their proper places, when they are broken, can hardly be held in a measure of a modius and a half.” Vines thus planted produce more fruit “more must and oil, and of greater value”. I read in Varro that “Caesar Vopiscus AEdilicius, when he pleaded before the Censors, said that the grounds of Rosea were the gardens [(sedes)] of Italy, in which a pole being left would not be visible the day after, on account of the growth of the herbage.” This soil was not remarkably fertile yet I was so well contented with myself it may be & with my entertainment –that I was really remind of this anecdote. In speaking of “the dignity of the herd” Varro suggests that the object of the Argonautic expedition was a ram’s fleece the gold apples of the Hesperides were by the ambiguity of language [] goats and sheep which Hercules imported –the stars and signs bear their names the AEgean sea has its name from the goat and mountains and straits have hence their names –sic. The Bosphorus Piso makes Italy to be from Vitulis– The Romans were shepherds “Does not the fine [mulcta, a mulgendo] that was by ancient custom paid in kind refer to this?” The oldest coins bore the figures of cattle and the Roman names Porcius –Ovinus Caprilius & the surnames Equitius, Taurus, Capra Vitulus. Vide Cato “Of purchasing an Estate –” “How an estate is to be planted –” &c in Lat & Eng.

75. We wandered on (by the side and over the brows of hoar hills and mountains — & through notches which the stream had with awe made — looking down ^one sunday morn- ing over Bethlehem amid the bleating of sheep, and hearing as we walked the loud spoken prayers of the inhabi- where every house seemd to us a holy sepulchre tants — like crusaders strolled out from Richards as if we were the camp in Palestine — (T 74) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I will insert here some commentary on this early draft of material that would wind up in the “Monday” chapter of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS:

A WEEK: If, for instance, a man asserts the value of individual liberty over the merely political commonweal, his neighbor still tolerates him, that is he who is living near him, sometimes even sustains him, but never the State. Its officer, as a living man, may have human virtues and a thought in his brain, but as the tool of an institution, a jailer or constable it may be, he is not a whit superior to his prison key or his staff. Herein is the tragedy; that men doing outrage to their proper natures, even those called wise and good, lend themselves to perform the office of inferior and brutal ones. Hence come war and slavery in; and what else may not come in by this opening? But certainly there are modes by which a man may put bread into his mouth which will not prejudice him as a companion and neighbor.

The following is, if I recall correctly and can trust my notes, from William Bronk’s THE BROTHER IN ELYSIUM: IDEAS OF FRIENDSHIP AND SOCIETY IN THE UNITED STATES (1980), pages 104-106: The crux of the matter is that Thoreau believed that all evil did come in through the opening formed when any man might so betray his own nature as to lend himself to perform an inhuman office. While it might be contended that good and evil are something to be done at will and according to will, without reference to our own constitutions, — that we are of indifferent or irrelevant moral quality ourselves, and are able to choose between a good act and an evil one and so determine by the excess of one kind of action over the other our own moral quality and the moral quality of the world, yet it was Thoreau’s contention that the process by which good and evil came into being was more exacting and natural, less arbitrary than this. He believed that it was always necessary to make the choice between good and evil whenever such a choice was presented, but he also believed that in most cases, the choice was not presented, and that evil 76. our way Shuddered ^through that Fran- conia where the thermometer is spliced for winter use, saw the blue earth heaved into mountain waves from Agioco- chook, and where the Umbagog Ossipee and Squam gleamed like dewy cobwebs in the sun — And like bright ribbons the streamlets of Connecticut Saco & adros- coggin “take up their mountain march — Went on our way ^silent & humble through the Notch ^— heard the lambs bleat in Bartlett on the mountains holding unequal parley with the wolves & bears late at night — ^looked back on Conway peak — threaded the woods of Norway pine — and saw the Great Spirit smile ^in Winnipiseogee (T 76-77) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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resulted in some mysterious way without anyone’s willing it, or being aware of it, and even to everyone’s surprise and chagrin. Thoreau accounted for this phenomenon by saying that being is more important and more effective than doing. Anything therefore might happen to us which was consistent with the nature we took for ourselves, even though the process by which the happening came about was so subtle or so complicated that we missed the apprehension of it, even after its end. If. as Thoreau said, we do outrage to our proper nature, — if we take our identity from the state, then we become liable to the evils of the state, and have no defense against war and slavery, since it has none. It is only by refusing to do the office of inferior and brutal natures that we can hope to escape, on our own part, treatment which in its brutality is suited to inferior natures. We must be treated according to the nature which we determine shall be ours. We can win or lose, or act in any other way, only in accordance with terms we set for ourselves. The identity which Thoreau wished us to find, which left no opening for the evil we claimed to deplore, was most certainly not to be found in the state; and neither was it to be found in any other external form, for its essence was personal. It was to be found only through that steady communion with one’s deepest desires and insights, which was called silence. He found no evil and little that was ambiguous in silence. It is easier to see now, of course, why Thoreau rejected philanthropy and reform, since to find one’s identity, to become personal, was truly to ennoble one’s being; it was to enjoy those moments of serene and self-confident life which were better than whole campaigns of daring; it was to combat evil directly by leaving no opening by which it could enter. Philanthropy’s method was less direct. It offered the goodness of actions as an excuse and substitute for being. Reform was an attempt to avoid a change in true form by changing the surface only.

IT IS NO COINCIDENCE THAT IT IS MORTALS WHO CONSUME OUR HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS, FOR WHAT WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO DO IS EVADE THE RESTRICTIONS OF THE HUMAN LIFESPAN. (IMMORTALS, WITH NOTHING TO LIVE FOR, TAKE NO HEED OF OUR STORIES.)

July: There was an epidemic of the small pox in Boston and Concord.77

Emerson’s Journals “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Other 1846 Events

77. There was also an epidemic during this year, of the measles, on the Faroe Islands of the Atlantic Ocean, after an infected ship’s carpenter had reached them on a vessel from Denmark. The experience on the Faroes offers an interesting example of how antibodies function. Humans who live in small, isolated groups tend to lose their antibody resistance to infection quite readily. On the Faroes there had been no measles until the microorganism first reached them in 1781. Then there had been an epidemic, many had died, and the people who survived their illness possessed a temporary acquired immunity. Thus the disease microbe, not possessing any natural repository other than the human organism, quite vanished from the locale. By the time the microorganism was introduced again in this year by way of this ship’s carpenter, everyone had altogether lost that acquired immunity. So, there had to be in this year a sadly precise repeat of the 1781 experience. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1847

The 5 volumes of Doctor James Cowles Prichard’s project of RESEARCHES AS TO THE PHYSICAL HISTORY OF MAN finally were complete.

During this year Waldo Emerson contributed the following deeply profound thought about our human trajectory to his journal:

It is not determined of man whether he came up or down: Cherubim or Chimpanzee.

At the end of the journal entries for this year, Waldo listed his recent readings in Oriental materials: “Plotinus; Synesius; Proclus; Institutes of Menu; Bhagavat Geeta; Vishnu Purana; Confucius; Zoroaster; Saadi; Hafiz; Firdusi; Ferradeddin.”

The culture of the Imagination, how imperiously demanded, how doggedly denied. There are books which move the sea and the land, and which are the realities of which you have heard in the fables of Cornelius Agrippa and Michael Scott. Sweetness of reading: Montaigne, Froissart; Chaucer. Ancient: the three Banquets [Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch]. Oriental reading: [HE FORGOT TO FILL THIS OUT] Grand reading: Plato; Synesius; Dante; Vita Nuova; Timæus (weather, river of sleep); Cudworth; Stanley. All-reading: Account of Madame de Staël’s rule; Rabelais; Diderot, Marguerite Aretin. English reading: Clarendon; Bacon; Milton; Johnson; Northcote. Manuals: Bacon’s Essays; Ben Jonson; Ford; Beaumont and Fletcher. Favorites: Sully; Walpole; Evelyn; Walton; Burton; White’s Selborne; Aubrey; Bartram’s Travels; French Gai Science, Fabliaux. Tonic books: Life of Michael Angelo; Gibbon; Goethe; Coleridge. Novels: Manzoni. Of Translation: Mitchell. Importers: Cousin; De Staël; Southey.

Emerson also incidentally mentioned in his journal for this year someone he had been reading, Charles Kraitsir, mentioning all the languages in his head. A few pages later he included something that Kraitsir had HDT WHAT? INDEX

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written, that “All the languages should be studied abreast.”

January: Waldo Emerson made a remark in his journal about the possibility of Henry Thoreau going to the Oregon territory:

H.D.T. wants to go to Oregon, not to London. Yes surely; but what seeks he but the most energetic nature? & seeking that, he will find Oregon indifferently in all places; for it snows & blows & melts & adheres & repels all the world over.

Thomas Mayne Reid, Jr. sailed from the port of New-York as a 2d Lieutenant with the 1st New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Colonel Ward B. Burnett commanding, destination the Mexican port of Vera Cruz. WAR ON MEXICO

NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE

Emerson’s Journals “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 19, Friday: An undated letter from Margaret Fuller on the sights she was seeing in Europe and the public people78 she was meeting was printed as a column by the New-York Tribune: ARTHUR FULLER’S BOOK

According to The Concord Freeman, “Ice King” Frederic Tudor’s work crew was harvesting between 800 and 1,000 tons of ice per day from the surface of Walden Pond.

On one or another morning Waldo Emerson mused about the prospect of profiting from Walden Pond (not very realistically, since no part of the surface of said pond was within the plotlines of his abutting woodlot):

I woke up this morning & find the ice in my pond promised to be a revenue. It was as if somebody had proposed to buy the air that blew over my field.

March-April: Waldo Emerson, in his journal, determined that successful life amounted to the predation of other human beings — and expressed contempt for any of us who fail to be adequate as predators:

I feel ... that those who succeed in life, in civilized society, are beasts of prey.... I hate vulnerable people.... Novels, Poetry, Mythology must be well allowed for an imaginative being. You do us great wrong, Henry T., in railing at the novel reading. The novel is that allowance & frolic their imagination gets. Everything else pins it down. And I see traces of Byron & D’Israeli & Walter Scott & George Sand in the deportment of these stately young clerks in the streets & hotels. Their education is neglected but the ballroom & the circulating library, the fishing excursion & Trenton Falls make such amends as they can.

WALTER SCOTT BENJAMIN DISRAELI (As someone once said, this is a very German attitude.)

78. The term “celebrities” would not be first used, by Emerson, until the following year. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May: In Scientific American there appeared an interesting summary of what was being discovered about the planets:

It is ascertained that the planets, like our own, roll in regular periods around the sun, have nights and days, are provided with atmosphere, supporting clouds, and agitated by winds. Notwithstanding the dense atmosphere and thick clouds by which Venus and Mercury are constantly enveloped, the telescope has exhibited to us great irregularities on their surfaces, and thus proved the existence of mountains and valleys. On Mars, the geographical outlines of land and water have been made apparent, and in its long polar winters snows accumulate in the desolation of the higher latitudes.

ASTRONOMY

“Mars is essentially in the same orbit ... somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.” — J. Danforth Quayle

The magazine also carried a notice about a recent development in transportation, the tube, which was not, as yet, protected by being an inner tube inside a hollow tire:

A number of cabs with newly invented wheels have just been put on the road in London. Their novelty consists in the entire absence of springs. A hollow tube of India rubber about a foot in diameter, inflated with air, encircles each wheel in the manner of a tire, and with this simple but novel appendage the vehicle glides noiselessly along, affording the greatest possible amount of cab comfort to the passenger. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July: At the age of 23 Thomas Wentworth Higginson graduated from the Divinity School of Harvard College and was ordained. The young men being ordained on Visitation Day spoke in alphabetical order, and he was 7th in line to deliver his sermon on “The Clergy and Reform.” The sermon, well received by some in attendance such as the Reverend Theodore Parker and Edward Everett Hale, would become a “rock of offense” for some of the listeners because its message was the repulsive one that in order to achieve a love like that of Christ we would need to develop fully our capacity for moral indignation at the wrongs of society. After two trial Sunday visits, the young firebrand reverend would be called by the Unitarian Church of Newburyport MA to serve as their pastor — a decision the Whigs of this congregation would promptly regret.

The newly anointed minister married with Mary Channing.

Waldo Emerson wrote about Henry Thoreau in his journal:

T. sometimes appears only as a gen d’arme, good to knock down a cockney with, but without that power to cheer & establish, which makes the value of a friend. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October (on some Monday late in the month): Waldo Emerson arrived at 5 Great Cheyne Row in Chelsea, London, the home of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh Carlyle.

Carlyle. I found at Liverpool, after a couple of days, a letter which had been seeking me, from Carlyle, addressed to “R.W.E. — on the instant when he lands in England,” conveying the heartiest welcome & urgent invitation to house & hearth. And finding that I should not be wanted for a week in the Lecture- rooms I came down to London, on Monday, &, at 10 at night, the door was opened to me by Jane Carlyle, and the man himself was behind her with a lamp in the hall. They were very little changed from their old selves of fourteen years ago (in August) when I left them at Craigenputtock. “Well,” said Carlyle, “here we are shovelled together again!” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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During this month, upon hearing of the death of Governor Silas Wright of New York on August 27, 1847 in Canton, New York at the age of 53, Friend John Greenleaf Whittier wrote:

THE LOST STATESMAN. AS they who, tossing midst the storm at night, While turning shoreward, where a beacon shone, Meet the walled blackness of the heaven alone, So, on the turbulent waves of party tossed, In gloom and tempest, men have seen thy light Quenched in the darkness. At thy hour of noon, While life was pleasant to thy undimmed sight, And, day by day, within thy spirit grew A holier hope than young Ambition knew, As through thy rural quiet, not in vain, Pierced the sharp thrill of Freedom’s cry of pain, Man of the millions, thou art lost too soon! Portents at which the bravest stand aghast, — The birth-throes of a Future, strange and vast, Alarm the land; yet thou, so wise and strong, Suddenly summoned to the burial bed, Lapped in its slumbers deep and ever long, Hear’st not the tumult surging overhead. Who now shall rally Freedom’s scattering host? Who wear the mantle of the leader lost? Who stay the march of slavery? He whose voice Hath called thee from thy task-field shall not lack Yet bolder champions, to beat bravely back The wrong which, through his poor ones, reaches Him: Yet firmer hands shall Freedom’s torchlights trim, And wave them high across the abysmal black, Till bound, dumb millions there shall see them and rejoice. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1848

Lewis Cass resigned from the Senate in order to run as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States. His running mate would be the Kentucky slavemaster William Orlando Butler (a “balanced” ticket, in those years, for the Democratic Party, was constituted of one southern slavemaster and one northern slavery- sympathizer). As a self-described “northern man with southern principles,” he would become a leading proponent of a Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty which left it up to the voters of a territory to determine whether or not human enslavement would be there permitted. He would support the annexation of Texas. This Democratic ticket would cause the desertion of many antislavery Democrats, and the election would be lost to the popular slaveholding general .

Disgusted by the Whig nomination of a slaveholding Mexican-War general for President of the United States, Squire Samuel Hoar and his oldest son Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar bolted the party and joined the new movement termed the “Free Soil” party. Rockwood coined the phrase “Conscience Whig.” This , which had come to be composed of radical Whigs, Liberty Party men, and Van Buren Democrats, decided to support Martin Van Buren of New York for President. The outcome of the election would be that Van Buren would come in second to the Whig candidate, with the Democrat candidate a distant third. This was the year, according to Arnold Toynbee, in which “history failed to turn.” Obviously this megahistorian (macromegalomaniac?) wasn’t looking in the right place for, in Concord, Henry Thoreau took his initial HDT WHAT? INDEX

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surveying job, to help his family recover from a financial crisis caused by an industrial fire.

Brevetted Lieutenant-Colonel James Duncan Graham of the US Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers was assigned to renew some maps of the Boundary Survey that had been destroyed by fire (this would occupy him into 1850, and then between 1852 and 1853).

Waldo Emerson wrote, in his Journal,

Henry Thoreau is like the woodgod who solicits the wandering poet & draws him into antres vast & desarts idle, & bereaves him of his memory, & leaves him naked, plaiting vines & with twigs in his hand. Very seductive are the first steps from the town to the woods, but the End is want & madness.

A New Hampshire man, John Parker Hale, got elected to the US Senate because he was an abolitionist — definitely a first in American politics.

A southern actor named John Wilkes Booth would later take a fancy to his daughter Bessie Lambert Hale, probably while studying out ways to get close enough to the family to kidnap or execute this New Hampshire

abolitionist senator and Free Soil Party presidential candidate. When Booth would be trapped in a burning tobacco barn outside Washington DC and killed after having assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater, he would be found to have been still carrying in his pocket this daughter’s picture. –But we are getting ahead of our story, for at this point, in 1848, this “Wilkes,” as he liked to be called, was still but a lad of ten years of age. In this year he is reported to have been musing as follows: Of the Seven Wonders of the World, can you imagine how famous a man might be who could pull down the Colossus of Rhodes?79 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Waldo Emerson commented in this year in his journal, in regard to the railroad:

[T]he Railroad is that work of art which agitates & drives mad the whole people; as music, sculpture, & picture have done on their great days respectively.

79. In real life, the Colossus statue erected in 275 BCE at the entrance to the harbor of Rhodes had been toppled by a mundane earthquake in 224 BCE. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Boston’s citizens again petitioned Boston’s authorities to end the racial segregation of its public schools. At Boston’s , enrollment had dropped from a peak of about 100, by this point in the boycott, to 66. The Boston school board responded to this concern by voting 59 to 16 to continue its practice of racial segregation.

From Waldo Emerson’s journal during this year of protest, a remark that we today might consider –on account of our recently raised sensitivities?– to veer dangerously toward a reliance upon Wubya’s waterboarding:

It is better to hold the negro race an inch under water than an inch over.

Emerson was having his portrait painted as an oil on panel, in the outskirts of Edinburgh, by a Scottish engraver and artist, an admirer of his writings, whom he had met at a dinner party:

David Scott (1806-1849) was depicting, of course, one of Emerson’s usual gestures, the clenching of a hand HDT WHAT? INDEX

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into a fist. Emerson would describe Scott as “a sort of Bronson Alcott with easel and brushes, a sincere great man, grave, silent, contemplative, and plain.” Emerson’s son Edward regarded this likeness, like the panel upon which it was painted, as “wooden.” He would explain, however, that the symbolic rainbow in the background was appropriate: “my father stood for Hope.”

Completion of the serialization of William Makepeace Thackeray’s VANITY FAIR, a tale of two middle-class London families which had begun in the previous year, and this novel’s issuance as a book. “This I set as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without a positive hump, may marry whom she likes.” In the novel, the above is a truism only within the white race. The origins of Miss Swartz are an issue in regard to whether George Osborne will marry her. She is obviously of partly African ancestry and there a revelling in stereotypes: “I daresay she wore a nose ring when she went to court,” is George’s initial remark and, when he finally dismisses her from consideration, he goes “I’m not going to marry a Hottentot Venus.” Thackeray’s design for the character (an ugly design) depends on this, since he uses Miss Swartz to underscore the venality of old Mr. Osborne. Nothing more clearly brings home this venality, per Thackeray, than Osborne’s willingness to have his son marry a “mahogany charmer” in order to obtain her fortune. Apparently no imagined partner would be more preposterous or grotesque for Thackeray and his readers than this “dark object of the conspiracy” (as the narrator phrases it). This reveals how deeply this reading audience was steeped in its racism and fully explains why so many Victorians of mixed ancestry attempted to “pass.”

In Virginia, Henry Brown’s wife Nancy and their children were sold and were to be transported to . Brown had been able to earn some spending money by exceeding his weekly production quota of chewing twists at the tobacco factory in Richmond, Virginia at which he was a slave, and so had been reimbursing Nancy’s master for the time she had been spending caring for their family. As Nancy began the coffle walk south shackled to other adult slaves, with their not fewer than three children loaded in a wagon, Brown walked hand-in-hand with her for the first few miles. Then he watched as his wife and children disappeared from his view — why, it was almost enough to make a man lose his faith in America. Perhaps he will feel better if he takes the Sage of Concord’s advice and goes and holds his head an inch under water. Perhaps, if he holds his head under water long enough, he will be able to glimpse Emerson’s rainbow of hope! The antislavery people were having trouble persuading the American BIBLE-believers. At least rhetorically, the proslavery people were likely to win each and every such argument based on scripture. For instance, in this year Jefferson Davis made a speech to Congress in which he declared that: If slavery be a sin, it is not yours. It does not rest on your action for its origin, on your consent for its existence. It is a common law right to property in the service of man; its origin was Divine decree. In amplification of this attitude, Davis would write: [Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God ... it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation ... it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.... Let the gentleman go to Revelation to learn the decree of God — let him go to the Bible.... I said that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, authorized, regulated, and recognized from Genesis to Revelation.... Slavery existed then in the earliest ages, and among the chosen people of God; and in Revelation we are told that it shall exist till the end of time shall come. You find it in the Old and New Testaments — in the prophecies, psalms, and the epistles of Paul; you find it recognized, sanctioned HDT WHAT? INDEX

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everywhere (Dunbar Rowland’s JEFFERSON DAVIS, Volume 1, pages 286 and 316-17). This was the year in which Illinois more or less (a little less) abolished slavery within its borders, the year in which, with about 74,000 slaves on Martinique alone, France abolished slavery in all its West Indies colonies, and Samuel Langhorn Clemens was merely a child on a Southern farm — so in this context I will arbitrarily incorporate one of his later reminisces: In my school-boy days I had no aversion to slavery. I was not aware that there was anything wrong about it. No one arraigned it in my hearing; the local papers said nothing against it; the local pulpit taught us that God approved it, that it was a holy thing, and the doubter need only look in the Bible if he wished to settle his mind — and then the texts were read aloud to us to make the matter sure; if the slaves themselves had an aversion to slavery, they were wise and said nothing. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 19, Saturday: Waldo Emerson dined by invitation with Thomas De Quincey at his home in Lasswade outside Edinburgh:

He lives with his three daughters Margaret, Florence, and ———. Thither I went, with Mrs. Crowe and Dr. Brown, in Mrs. C.’s carriage. The second daughter, Florence, has a pleasing style of beauty. His son, Francis, was also present, who is a medical student in the University. De Quincey told us how his acquaintance with Wilson began; for, though they were at Oxford together, they had never met, but De Quincey, traveling in Wales, had arrived at an inn, where he learned that a gentleman lay sick and sore with his wounds. For Wilson, in some of his mad pranks, had paid attention to a country girl at a theatre, and after the play was over, her lover and his friends had waylaid him and most ignominiously mauled him. And De Quincey, learning who it was who was in the house, sent up his card and made his acquaintance. Of Turnbull (whom I had seen with Dr. Brown) it was told that he had said “he would go to hell for Sir William Hamilton.” Mrs. Crowe insisted that De Quincey should go back to Edinburgh with us in the coach and should go to my lecture, a proposition to which he somewhat reluctantly assented, as, I think, he said he had never attended a public lecture, — or not for a good many years. But the victorious lady put him into the carriage. As we entered Edinburgh, he grew very nervous, and Dr. Brown saw the reason, and assured him that his old enemy (Mrs. MacBold) had removed to another quarter of the city. “Ah,” said De Quincey, “if one of the Furies should arrive in Edinburgh, it would make little difference at what hotel she put up.” Dr. Brown and Mrs. Crowe told me in detail the story of his rescue from the hands of this Mrs. MacBold, who was his evil genius, and had exercised a reign of terror over him for years, — a very powerful and artful, large-limbed, red-haired beldame, from whom flight to Glasgow and concealment there was the only help, whilst his friends, with Wilson, contrived the extrication of his valuable papers and literary manuscripts from her custody. The woman followed him to Glasgow, met Dr. Nichol’s daughter in the street (a child), and asked her pleasantly if she knew where Mr. De Quincey lived. The child said Yes, and, at her request, conducted her to his retreat! He fled again. At Edinburgh she sent a little girl to Professor Wilson (with a napkin of his own by way of token) “with Mr. De Quincey’s compliments,” asking him to send him back by the bearer the bundle of papers he had left with him, — and he sent them! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 25, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson dined with John Forster (editor of The Examiner) at Forster’s rooms in Lincoln’s Inn, and there encountered Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens, who joined them for a chat.

Dined with John Forster, Esq. Lincoln’s Inn Fields, & found Carlyle, & Dickens, & young Pringle. Forster, who has an obstreperous cordiality, received Carlyle with loud salutation, “My Prophet!” Forster called Carlyle’s passion, Musket-worship.

(We note that tall Mr. Emerson, meeting Dickens this time in person at the height of his fame rather than merely glimpsing him reading at the lectern in Boston, refrained from repeating his comment of 1842 about the author’s extreme shortness.) ATTITUDES ON DICKENS

May: The Habsburg dynasty asked Tsar Nicholas to please dispatch a Russian army across the Carpathian Mountains to invade Hungary.

Waldo Emerson invaded Paris:

In Paris, my furnished lodgings, a very comfortable suite of rooms (15 Rue des Petits Augustins) on the second floor cost me 90 francs a month or 3 francs a day. My breakfast, which is brought to me at my chamber, & consists of bread, butter, one boiled egg, milk & coffee, costs one franc a day; my dinner at the Cafe “Cinq Arcades” in the Palais Royale costs 2 francs 2 sous and a cup of coffee in the evening 10 or 12 sous more. Say the expenses of living for a day, at my rate, are 6 francs 15 sous, or seven francs.... The Boulevarts [sic] have lost their fine trees, which were all cut down for barricades in February. At the end of a year we shall take account, & see if the Revolution was worth the trees. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 6, Saturday: On this day and the following one Waldo Emerson was crossing the English Channel from Folkstone to Boulogne and registered at the Hôtel Montmorency on the Boulevarde des Italiens in Paris (he soon, however, found longer-term lodgings on the Rive Gauche).

In Paris, my furnished lodgings, a very comfortable suite of rooms (15 Rue des Petits Augustins) on the second floor cost me 90 francs a month or 3 francs a day. My breakfast, which is brought to me at my chamber, & consists of bread, butter, one boiled egg, milk & coffee, costs one franc a day; my dinner at the Cafe “Cinq Arcades” in the Palais Royale costs 2 francs 2 sous and a cup of coffee in the evening 10 or 12 sous more. Say the expenses of living for a day, at my rate, are 6 francs 15 sous, or seven francs.... The Boulevarts [sic] have lost their fine trees, which were all cut down for barricades in February. At the end of a year we shall take account, & see if the revolution was worth the trees.

While in France he met Alexis de Tocqueville, who had observed America in 1831, a generation earlier. Those observations of America by a touring Frenchman had been updated by Elisée Reclus of this 1848 generation, to whom America seemed a vast auction house where everything had been put up for sale,

slaves and master above market price, votes and honor, the BIBLE, and consciences. Everything belongs to the highest bidder.... I often ask myself, stupefied in face of this America so respected abroad, so little respectable inside, where is the necessary progress that every people must accomplish in its evolution? It is truly said that everything here reduces to a development in space, carried out by this unceasing migration from the Atlantic to the Pacific, to a progress in time, since the American enters active life at the moment of birth, and to a progress in which is the vegetative life of the human being, since all have a piece of bread in the tooth. But the larger progress is almost totally independent of their will, this progress is forced as a result of new relations between man and earth and races to races, because these new relations have posed humanity with new questions that are necessary to resolve one way or the other.

May/June: Waldo Emerson to his journal, about Paris:

And now the whole nation is bearded & in military uniform. I have no doubt also that extremes of vice are found here & that there is a liberty & means of animal indulgence hardly known by name or even by rumour in other towns. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 17, Saturday: Waldo Emerson delivered the last of his 6-lecture series “The Mind and Manners in the Nineteenth Century” at the Marylebone Literary and Scientific Institution at Portman Square in London, with his friend Thomas Carlyle still stuck in the audience.

This one was on “Natural Aristocracy” and the American thinker tried to wind up his series with a zinger at the British upper crust. Finding at the close of the series that he had cleared only 80 pounds, he contracted to deliver also “The Superlative in Manners and Literature.” He also contracted to deliver three of the lectures for a middle-class audience at Exeter Hall for a flat fee of 30 guineas.

In England, every man is a castle. When I get into our first class cars on the Fitchburg Road, & see sweltering men in their shirt sleeves take their seats with some well drest men & women, & see really the very little difference of level that is between them all, and then imagine the astonishment that would strike the polished inmates of English first class carriages, if such masters should enter & sit beside them, I see that it is not fit to tell Englishmen that America is like England. No, this is the Paradise of the third class; here every thing is cheap; here every thing is for the poor. England is the Paradise of the first class; it is essentially aristocratic, and the humbler classes have made up their minds to this, & do contentedly enter into the system. In England, every man you meet is some man’s son; in America, he may be some man’s father. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July/August: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I spoke of friendship, but my friends & I are fishes in their habit. As for taking T.’s arm, I should as soon take the arm of an elm tree. Henry Thoreau is like the woodgod who solicits the wandering poet & draws him into antres vast & desarts idle, & bereaves him of his memory, & leaves him naked, plaiting vines & with twigs in his hand. Very seductive are the first steps from the town to the woods, but the End is want & madness. In England I found wine enough; as Dr Johnson said, “for once in his life he had as much wall fruit as he pleased.” In France I had the privilege of leaving my papers all lying wide in my room; for nobody could read English. H.D.T. working with A.B.A. on the summerhouse, said, he was nowhere, doing nothing.

Thinking to identify a fault in his friend, Emerson accepted here an image of him as a stiff person, like an elm tree. Emerson should as soon take the arm of an elm tree as the arm of his friend Henry Thoreau. His friend was nonresponsive, therefore Emerson was correct in being nondemonstrative. Thoreau, had he known of this attribution, might well have fancied it, he being a lover of trees.

July 23, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal, aboard the Europa at sea:

One long disgust is the sea. No personal bribe would lure one who loves the present moment. Who am I to be treated in this ignominious manner, tipped up, shoved against the side of the house, rolled over, suffocated with bilge, mephitis, & stewing oil.

July 27, Thursday: Early in the morning the Europa docked in Boston. Later that day Waldo Emerson went for a re- introductory walkthrough of his Concord possessions and recorded in his journal the fact in his woodlot rank pokeweed and mullein weeds had overwhelmed “the ruins of the shanties of the Irish who built the railroad.”80

80. Late in his life Professor Walter Harding insisted in his annotated WALDEN that Thoreau lied –that these Irish had still been living in these shanties while Thoreau was in residence at the pond –that Thoreau could not confess them to have been his neighbors evidently because he did not consider the Irish ecological refugees of the Great Famine to be fully human. Not a shred of evidence has ever been turned up to corroborate this strange fantasy by this elder Thoreau scholar. If you ever turn up any fragment of information which might suggest that he had been correct in this evaluation, you should bring it immediately to everyone’s attention as this of course would very substantially alter all our evaluations of Thoreau’s personality! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 31, Thursday: The 2PM train accidentally set fire to Waldo Emerson’s woodlot on Walden Pond81 (Emerson would seek out their claims adjuster and the railroad would pay $50.00 as the market value of standing firewood consumed by the blaze, aesthetics not taken into consideration).

At some point during this year Emerson would comment in his journal:

Nature uniformly does one thing at a time: if she will have a perfect hand, she makes head & feet pay for it. So now, as she is making railroad & telegraph ages, she starves the spirituel, to stuff the materiel & industriel.

81. The purpose of the large funnels you see on the wood-stoked trains of the period was to cut down on these sparks that were constantly starting fires along railroad routes. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September: Publication of “KTAADN” in the Union Magazine:

TIMELINE OF THE MAINE WOODS Waldo Emerson and Ellery Channing were walking together twice a week. Emerson confided the following to his journal (and here you can see again that the man simply could not grasp what Henry Thoreau had tried to HDT WHAT? INDEX

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tell him, or even that Thoreau had tried to tell him something):

I go twice a week over Concord with Ellery, &, as we sit on the steep park at Conantum, we still have the same regret as oft before. Is all this beauty to perish? Shall none remake this sun & wind, the skyblue river, the riverblue sky, the yellow meadows spotted with sacks & sheets of cranberry pickers, the red bushes, the irongray house with just the colour of the granite rock, the paths of the thicket, in which the only engineers are the cattle grazing on yonder hill; the wide straggling wild orchard in which nature has deposited every possible flavour in the apples of different trees. Whole zones & climates she has concentrated into apples. We think of the old benefactors who have conquered these fields; of the old man Moore who is just dying in these days, who has absorbed such volumes of sunshine like a huge melon or pumpkin in the sun — who has owned in every part of Concord a woodlot, until he could not find the boundaries of these, and never saw their interiors. But we say, where is he who is to save the present moment, & cause that this beauty be not lost?

An Austrian-inspired Croat army invaded Hungary and Lajos Kossuth became head of a Magyar committee of national defense. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October: Publication of “KTAADN” in the Union Magazine:

TIMELINE OF THE MAINE WOODS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Waldo Emerson confided to his journal:

H.T. sports the doctrines of activity: but I say, What do we? We want a sally into the regions of wisdom & do we go out & lay stone wall or dig a well or turnips? No, we leave the children, sit down by a fire, compose our bodies to corpses, shut our hands, shut our eyes, that we may be entranced & see truly. There is in California a gold ore in great abundance in which the gold is in combination with such elements that no chemistry has yet been able to separate it without great loss. Alcott is a man of unquestionable genius, yet no doctrine or sentence or word or action of his which is excellent can be detached & quoted. He is like Channing, who possesses a painter’s eye, an appreciation of form & especially of colour, that is admirable, but who, when he bought pigments & brushes & painted a landscape on a barrel head could not draw a tree so that his wife could know it was a tree. So Alcott the philosopher has not an opinion or an apothegm to produce. I shall write on his tomb, Here lies Plato’s reader. Read he can with joy & naiveté inimitable, and the more the style rises, the more natural & current it seems to him. And yet his appetite is so various that the last book always seems to him the best. Here lies the amateur. . . . The Beatitude of Conversation. I am afraid books do stand in our way; for the best heads are writers, and when they meet & fall into profound conversation, they never quite lose all respects of their own economy & pour out the divinest wine, but each is a little wary, a little checked, by thought of the rare helps this hour might afford him to some page which he has written. Each is apt to become abstracted & lose the remark of the other through too much attention to his own. Yet I have no book & no pleasure in life comparable to this. here I come down to the shore of the Sea & dip my hands in its miraculous waves. Here I am assured of the eternity, & can spare all omens, all prophecies, all religions, for I see & know that which they obscurely announce. I seem rich with earth & air & heaven, but the next morning I have lost my keys. To escape this economy of writers, women would be better friends; but they have the drawback of the perplexities of sex.

October 29, Sunday: Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal (on the following screen). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Yesterday, 28 October, another walk with Ellery well worth commemoration if that were possible; but no pen could write what we saw: it needs the pencils of all the painters who ever lived, to aid the description. We went to White Pond, a pretty little Indian basin, lovely now as Walden once was; we could almost see the sachem in his canoe in a shadowy cove. But making the circuit of the lake on the shore, we came at last to see some marvellous reflections of the coloured woods in the water, of such singular beauty & novelty that they held us fast to the spot, almost to the going down of the sun. The water was very slightly rippled, which took the proper character from the pines, birches, & few oaks, which composed the grove; & the submarine wood seemed all made of Lombardy poplar, with such delicious green, stained by gleams of mahogany from the oaks, & streaks of white from the birches, every moment growing more excellent, it was the world seen through a prism, & set Ellery on wonderful Lucretian theories of “law” & “design”. Ellery, as usual, found the place with excellent judgment “where your house should be set,” leaving the woodpaths as they were, which no art could make over; and, after leaving the pond, & a certain dismal dell, whither a man might go to shoot owls, or to do selfmurder in, we struck across an orchard to a steep hill of the right New Hampshire slope, newly cleared of wood, & came presently into rudest woodland landscapes, unknown, undescribed, & hitherto unwalked by us Saturday afternoon professors. the sun was setting behind terraces of pines disposed in groups unimaginable by Downings, or Loudons, or Capability Browns; but we kept our way & fell into the Duganne trail, as we had already seen the glimpse of his cabin in the edge of the barbarous district we had traversed. Through a clump of apple-trees, over a long ridge ... with fair outsight of the river, & across the Nutmeadow brook, we came out upon the banks of the river just below James Brown’s. Ellery proposed that we should send the Horticultural Society our notes, “Took an apple near the White Pond fork of the Duganne trail — an apple of the Beware of this variety, a true Touch me if you dare! — Seek no further of this.” We had much talk of books & lands & arts & farmers. We saw the original tumulus or first barrow, which the fallen pine tree makes with its upturned , & which, after a few years, precisely resembles a man’s grave. We talked of the great advantage which he has who can turn a verse, over all the human race. I read in Wood’s A. Oxoniensis a score of pages of learned nobodies, of whose once odoriferous reputations not a trace remains in the air, & then I came to the name of some Carew, Herrick, Suckling, Chapman, whose name is a fresh & modern as those of our friends in Boston & London, and all because they could turn a verse. Only write a dozen lines, & rest on your oars forever, you are dear & necessary to the human race & worth all the old trumpery Plutarchs & Platos & Bacons of the world. I quoted Suckling’s line, “a bee had stung it newly” to praise it, & E. said, “Yes, every body’s poetry is good but your own.” He declared that the modern books, Tennyson, Carlyle, Landor, gave him no standard, no measure of thought & life and he fancies that the only writing open for us is the Essay.... In walking with Ellery you shall always see what was never before shown to the eye of man. And yet for how many ages of lonely days has that pretty wilderness of White Pond received the sun & clouds into its transparency, & woven each day new webs of birch & pine, shooting into wider angles & more fantastic crossing of these coarse threads, which, in the water, have such momentary elegance. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November: Waldo Emerson to his journal about the imminent departure from Concord of the Alcotts:

My friends begin to value each other, now that Alcott is to go; & Ellery declares, “that he never saw that man without being cheered,” & Henry says, “He is the best natured man he ever met. The rats & mice make their nests in him.”

November 9, Thursday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Here has passed an Election, I think, the most dismal ever known in this country. Three great parties voting for three candidates whom they disliked.

Robert Blum, a member of the German National Assembly who had gone to Austria to aid the liberals, was judged a traitor and executed in Vienna.

The Blackstone Canal ceased operations. Connecticut’s Farmington Canal was completed.

November 19, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

’Tis the coldest November I have ever known. This morning the mercury is at 26. Yesterday afternoon cold fine ride with Ellery to Sudbury Inn, & mounted the side of Nobscot. Finest picture though wintry air of the russet Massachusetts. The landscape is democratic, not gathered into one city or baronial castle, but equally scattered into these white steeples, round which a town clusters in every place where six roads meet, or where a river branches or falls, or where the pan of soil is a little deeper. The horizon line marked by hills tossing like waves in a storm: firm indigo line. ’Tis a pretty revolution which is effected in the landscape by simply turning your head upside down, or, looking through your legs: an infinite softness & loveliness is added to the picture. It changes the landscape at once from November to June. Or as Ellery declared makes Campagna of it at once; so he said, Massachusetts is Italy upside down. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1849

Waldo Emerson recorded in his journal a conversation with Friend Emmanuel Vitalis Scherb of Basel, Switzerland, a German Quaker visiting Concord: “Mr Scherb attempted last night to unfold Hegel for me and I caught somewhat that seemed cheerful & large, & that might, & probably did, come by Hindu suggestion.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel’s BERLIN AU PRINTEMPS DE L’ANNÉE 1848 and DU MOUVEMENT LITTÉRAIRE DANS LA SUISSE ROMANE ET DE SON AVENIR. Sponsored by the democratic radicals, at the age of 28 the author won a public competition and was appointed professor of esthetics and French literature at the academy of Genève, Switzerland. This would turn out to be as much of a curse as a blessing, because it alienated him from the aristocratic party that had once, and would again, rule in Genève.

March: Sometime prior to April, Waldo Emerson put the following into his JOURNAL:

Now that the man was ready, the horse was brought. the TELEGRAPHY timeliness of this invention of the locomotive must be conceded. To us Americans, it seems to have fallen as a political aid. We could not else have held the vast North America together, which now we engage to do. It was strange, too, that when it was time to build a road across to the Pacific —a railroad, a shiproad, a telegraph, & in short a perfect communication in every manner for all nations— ’twas strange to see how it is secured. The good World-Soul understands us well. How simple the means. Suddenly California soil is spangled with a little gold dust here & there, in a mill race, in a mountain cleft, an Indian picks up a little, a farmer, & a hunter, & a soldier, each a little; the news flies here and there, to New York, to Maine, to London, and an army of a hundred thousand picked volunteers, the ablest & keenest & boldest that could be collected instantly organize & embark for this desart bringing tools, instruments, books, & framed houses, with them. Such a well appointed Colony as never was planted before arrive with the speed of sail & steam on these remote shores, bringing with them the necessity that their government shall instantly proceed to make the road which they themselves are all intimately engaged to assist.

This was the month the proof sheets of AWEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS arrived. TIMELINE OF A WEEK

The following has been discovered in a fragmentary notebook of Henry Thoreau that dates to this period, and clearly is a first draft of a composition rather than an ordinary journal entry:

I sometimes discovered a miniature water wheel –a saw or grist mill –where the whole volume of water in some tiny rill was conducted through a junk bottle, in at the open bottom & out at the nose –where some country boy whose house was not easy to be seen –some Arkwright or Rennie –was making his first essay in HDT WHAT? INDEX

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mechanics –some little trip hammer in operation mimicking the regular din of a factory — where the wild weeds & huckleberry bushes hang unmolested over the stream as the pines still do at Manchester and Lawrence. It was the work of a fabulous, farmer boy such as I never saw. To come upon such unquestionable traces of a boy when I doubted if any were lingering still in this vicinity, as when you discover the trail of an otter. One Sunday afternoon in March when the earth which had once been bare was again covered with a few inches of snow rapidly melting in the rain, as I was walking in a retired crossroad away from the town, at a distance from any farm house — I heard suddenly wafted over the meadow a faint tink-tink, tink-tink, as of a cow bell amidst the birches & huckleberry bushes, but I considered that it was quite too early in the season for cows to be turned out to pasture, the ground being covered with snow & it was not time to think of new-butter — and the cow bells were all safely put away in the cupboard or the till of a chest in the farm chamber. It made me think of the days when I went huckleberrying a long time ago & heard the distant tinkling of some cow’s bell who was not yet mired in the swamp — from association I know of no more sweet & wild sound than this piece of copper yields, though it may not be compounded with much art. Well, still the sound came over the meadow louder & louder as I walked on –tink tink tink –too regular for a cowbell –and I conjectured that it was a man drilling a hole in a rock –and this was the sound of his sledge on the drill. But it was Sunday & what Concord farmer could be drilling stone! I referred the mystery to the woods beyond the meadow where alone as I thought it could be concealed — and began to think it was produced by some owl or other bird under peculiar circumstances. So, getting over the fence, I directed my steps through the meadow toward the wood. But as I advanced, the sound seemed gradually to sink into the earth, while it grew louder & louder till finally it proceeded from the open meadow ground itself –and I thought of muskrats –minks & otters & expected to make a discovery in natural history. I stepped eagerly over the quaking ground — a peeping hyla & there in a little rill not more than a foot wide but as deep as wide, swollen by the melting snows, was a small water mill and at each revolution [of] the wheel its crank raised a small hammer which as often fell on a tongueless cowbell which was nailed down on a board. A loud tinkling gurgle as of water leaking out of the meadow. The little rill itself seemed delighted with the din & rushed over the miniature dam & fell on the water wheel eagerly as if delighted at & proud of this loud tinkling, fast by a pilgrim’s cup the bell all spattered with mist from the fall above, & when I had walked half a mile away a favorable wind wafted to me in a hollow among the hills — its faint tink-tink-tink-tink. Just a fortnight after –when a new snow had fallen, I walked near enough to this meadow to hear the steady fink tink from the water wheel away there in the outskirts of the town — & what is stranger than all, that very evening when I came home from a neighbor’s through the village far in the night – to my astonishment I heard from far over the meadows toward the woods more than a mile off in a direct line the distinct tink tink tink of [the] trip hammer. And I called the family to the window in the village to hear the sound of the boy’s trip hammer in Nut Meadow Brook –a distant & solitary place which most of them had never seen –& they all heard it distinctly, even some old ears which ordinarily could not hear the birds sing –and were greatly astonished –which I had told them of a fortnight before as of a thing far away. The sound was wafted over the water, for the meadows were flooded, a peculiar state or atmosphere. Before I had thought how unlike this to all the village sounds, how remote from them as the tinkling of the rill itself –as the golden age –the village boys know not of it. It lies [as] far back in the outskirting meadows as the first invention of the water mill in history –& now this evening it was the one sound which possessed all the village street –& no doubt many a villager heard it but knew not from what remoteness as of antiquity it proceeded –borne on the gale of time from a simpler age. When the sound of every artisan was hushed — no flail, no tinkling anvil was heard. There was the still spring night — the slumbering village & for all sound the boy’s water wheel. In a remote walk a mile and a half by the road –& a straight line one mile distant over the water –the meadows being overflown. Humboldt says that the roar of the cataracts of the Orinoco “was three times as great by night as by day,” and that the same phenomenon is observed in other waterfalls — & is owing “probably to ascending currents of warm air, which producing an unequal density of the elastic medium, obstruct the propagation of sound by displacing its waves; causes which cease after the nocturnal cooling of the earth’s surface.” It seemed that nature sympathised with his experiments. When it had got to be April I heard it last. It was simply the regulated & increased tinkling of a brook –as the history of simpler ages –as the memory of early days comes over a man — so this sound of a night. It sounded like a sentence of Herodotus. It was an incident worthy to be recorded by the father of History –away in Nut Meadow –by Jenny Dugan’s — beyond the Jimmy Miles place –as if it were an alto singer among the bitterns, some ardea. It was news, a wind from Scythia. It was the dream or reminiscence of a primitive age coming over the modern life –as night veils the day — as the dews of evening succeed the sultry sun. The next day I went out & listened by broad daylight — but no sound of the water wheel in Nut Meadow Brook could be heard more than the domestic sounds of the early ages. You could not hear it — you could not remember it. And yet the fit ear could hear it ever — the ear of the boy who made it. The busy & bustling village heard it not — yet the sound of the boy’s water wheel mingled with the din of its streets & at night was heard above the slumberous breathing when other sounds were hushed. Where the skunk cabbage grew — making HDT WHAT? INDEX

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music for the meadow mice. & I could not believe that it still agitated with its waves of sound the atmosphere of the village — that it was still echoing thro’ the streets.

August: Waldo Emerson confided to his journal, with characteristic misogyny, that our white women deserve no sympathy — they bring their problems upon themselves by not knowing how to live:

The Indian Squaw with a decisive hat has saved herself a world of vexation. The tragedy of our women begins with the bonnet. Only think of the whole Caucasian race damning the women to cover themselves with this frippery of rye straw & tags, that they may be at the mercy of every shower of rain. A meetinghouse full of women & a shower coming up — it is as if we had dressed them all in paper. Put on the squaw’s man’s hat, & you amputate so much misery.

August 18, Saturday: Waldo Emerson to his JOURNAL:

Yesterday a ride & walk with Henry Thoreau to Acton. We climbed to the top of Nagog hill, & afterwards of Nashobah, the old domain of Tahatawan & his praying Indians. The wide landscape is one vast forest skirted by villages in the horizon. The houses in Acton seemed to be filled with fat old people who looked like old tomatoes, their faces crumpled into red collops, fatting & rotting at their ease.

“HUCKLEBERRIES”: Early in August, in a favorable year, the hills are black with them. At Nagog Pond I have seen a hundred bushels in one field — the bushes drooping over the rocks with the weight of them — and a very handsome sight they are, though you should not pluck one of them. They are of various forms, colors and flavors — some round — some pear-shaped — some glossy black — some dull black, some blue with a tough and thick skin (though they are never of the peculiar light blue of blueberries with a bloom) — some sweeter, some more insipid — etc., etc., more varieties than botanists take notice of. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 29, Wednesday: On about this day Waldo Emerson recorded in his JOURNAL:

Love is the bright foreigner, the foreign self. [The Reverend Theodore] Parker thinks, that, to know Plato, you must read Plato thoroughly, & his commentators, &, I think, Parker would require a good drill in Greek history too. I have no objection to hear this urged on any but a Platonist. But when erudition is insisted on to Herbert or Henry More, I hear it as if to know the tree you should make me eat all the apples. It is not granted to one man to express himself adequately more than a few times: and I believe fully, in spite of sneers, in interpreting the French Revolution by anecdotes, though not every diner out can do it. To know the flavor of tanzy, must I eat all the tanzy that grows by the Wall? When I asked Mr Thom in Liverpool — who is Gilfillan? & who is Mac-Candlish? he began at the settlement of the Scotch Kirk in 1300 ? & came down with the history to 1848, that I might understand what was Gilfillan, or what was Edin. Review &c &c. But if a man cannot answer me in ten words, he is not wise.”

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s birth, the final section of Robert Schumann’s “Scenes from Goethe’s Faust” was performed publicly for the initial time, simultaneously in Dresden, Weimar, and Leipzig. The composer himself conducted in Dresden.

At a meeting of the School Committee of Boston Charles Theodore Russell submitted the REPORT OF THE MINORITY OF THE COMMITTEE UPON THE PETITIONS OF JOHN T. HILTON AND OTHERS, COLORED CITIZENS OF BOSTON, PRAYING FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE SMITH SCHOOL, AND THAT COLORED CHILDREN MAY BE PERMITTED TO ATTEND THE OTHER SCHOOLS OF THE CITY (Printed by order of the School Committee; Boston: J.H. Eastburn...... City Printer). ABOLITION OF SMITH SCHOOL

THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD. IN A BOOK THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT HISTORY, ISSUED BY RANDOM HOUSE IN 2016, I FIND THE PHRASE “LOOKED UPON FROM THE BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF HISTORY, ....” ONLY A MERE STORYTELLER, NEVER A HISTORIAN, COULD HAVE PENNED SUCH A PHRASE —

Emerson’s Journals “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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BECAUSE NO BIRD HAS EVER FLOWN OVER HISTORY. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September/October: Waldo Emerson was still working at what would become REPRESENTATIVE MEN. He began the habit of smoking a cigar after dinner.

Exhibition of William Burr’s panorama, referred to grandiloquently as BURR’S SEVEN MILE MIRROR. Either during this month or the following one, Emerson would write in his JOURNAL:

Aunt Mary never liked to throw away any medicine; but, if she found a drop of laudanum here, & a pill or two there, a little quinine & a little antimony, mixed them up & swallowed them. So when she came to the tea-table —”O, no, she never took tea;” —”Can you get a little shells?” The cocoa came, & Aunty took cocoa, because it was soothing, & put a little tea in it to make her lively, & if there was a little coffee, that was good for getting rid of the taste. Macaulay is the Banvard of English history, good at drawing a Mississippi Panorama, but ’tis cheap work.

For a long time the Sage of Concord would plan an excursion up the Mississippi that would never come off, at least for him: he wanted to take a steamboat up to the falls of St. Anthony, the highest point reachable without portage, and there witness an Indian assembly. –But he would not venture that far west until 1867, and by then there would be little magic in the journey, with iron rails all the way from Concord to St. Anthony, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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which in the meanwhile had been renamed “Minnehapolis” or “Minneapolis.” Who actually would effect this

trip that Emerson had been scheming, up to the falls of St. Anthony on the Mississippi, and from there to the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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witnessing of an Indian assembly? —Thoreau.

October: Sometime between this month and November, Waldo Emerson jotted into his JOURNAL:

Bigendians Littleendians Plato Alcott Swedenborg Very Shakspere Newcomb Montaigne Channing Goethe RWE Napoleon Thoreau

MONTAIGNE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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BIG-ENDIAN, LITTLE-ENDIAN — WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

We’ve also heard people call this “big Indian and little Indian.” There are even “Big Indian” and “Little Indian” cartoon characters. —But no, this is not about Indians versus Indians, any more than it is about Cowboys versus Indians. In computer science, it is all about the direction of bytes in a word within a central processor unit’s architecture. The name, “big-endian and little-endian,” is of course borrowed from GULLIVER’S TRAVELS. If you’ve read this story, you should remember that the Lilliputians (the tiny people) were divided into two camps: those who ate their eggs by cracking open the big end (big- endians) and those who ate their eggs by cracking open the little end (little-endians). In terms of CPU architectures, this name refers to in which direction the bytes of a word are stored in memory. Each chip manufacturer seems to have chosen, more or less randomly, which arrangement they liked. Motorola has always done things the “big-endian” way while intel has always done things the “little-endian” way. It is also worth noting that some CPUs are switch-hitters; for example, the Hitachi SH3/SH4 RISC processors used in many Windows CE machines can be configured either way, and can upon a reset switch schemes. There are advantages and disadvantages to each method. A big- endian architecture stores the most significant byte at the lowest address offset while a little-endian architecture stores the least significant byte at the lowest address offset. For instance, the 32-bit hex value 0x12345678 would be stored in memory as follows:

Address 00 01 02 03 ------big-endian 12 34 56 78 little-endian 78 56 34 12

As you can see above, reading a hex dump is easier in a big- endian machine because we do normally read numbers from left to right (lower to higher address).

Big-Endian Pros

1) It’s easier to read the hex dumps. 2) Most bitmapped graphics (displays and memory arrangements) are mapped with a “MSB on the left” scheme which means that shifts and stores of graphical elements larger than a byte are handled naturally by the architecture. This is a major performance disadvantage for little-endian machines since you have to keep reversing the byte order when working with large graphical elements. 3) When decoding variable length bit codes (compressed data) such as Huffman and LZW, you can use the code word as an index into a lookup table if it’s encoded MSB to LSB (big-endian). The same goes for encoding since the shifted bits would then have to be mirrored to generate such codes on a little-endian HDT WHAT? INDEX

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machine.

Big-Endian Cons

1) Reading a value of the wrong word size will result in an incorrect value; when done on little-endian architecture, it can sometimes yield a correct result. 2) Most big-endian architectures (non-intel) do not allow words to be written on non-word address boundaries (odd addresses). Intel allows odd address reads and writes (they get broken into 2 separate operations) which makes it easier for programmers, but more difficult for hardware designers.

The pros and cons of little-endian are basically the opposites of those listed above. Starting with its 486 chip, intel added an instruction to help this situation, the BSWAP instruction. This reverses the byte order within a 32-bit data register.

The Internet committee chose big-endian order for use within network data packets, terming it “network byte order.” However, there aren’t any really good reasons for choosing one convention over the other.

November/December: When Waldo Emerson imagined, in his journal, the creation of an eraser attached to the top end of a pencil, the eraser was in the form of a sponge and the sponge was seen as emblematic of the self-defeating Bronson Alcott.82

[Bronson Alcott] is like a slate-pencil which has a sponge tied to the other end, and, as the point of the pencil draws lines, the sponge follows as fast, & erases them. He talks high & wide, & expresses himself very happily, and forgets all he has said. If a Skilful operator could introduce a lancet & sever the sponge, ABA would be the prince of writers.

82. In England at least, at this time, a piece of soft India gum was being used to erase pencil marks, and was being referred to in that inimitable British way as “a rubber” rather than as “an eraser.” On March 30, 1853 US Patent #19,783 would be granted to Hymen L. Lipman for a pencil with a rubber fixed to its top end, and in 1858 he would begin to manufacture and market such a device. JOHN EBERHARD In 1875 in Reckendorfer v. Faber, 92 U.S. 347, the US Supreme Court would invalidate Patent #19,783 on the perfectly reasonable, if sniffy, legal grounds that all this guy had actually accomplished was the attachment of an object to another object. READ ABOUT THIS CASE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 14, Friday: Boston Coroner Jabez Pratt declared that the remains found in the tea chest at Harvard Medical College, and in the assay oven, and in the basement, were indeed those of the megamillionaire Doctor George

Parkman rather than the remains of one or another of the poor stiffs who were being stolen from their graves and cut up in the course of the continuing educational work going on at the college (one way to tell was the absence of any of the preserving chemicals normally used on dissection cadavers).

Dr. Parkman’s dental prosthesis, in a cast of his jawbone

Professor Jeffries Wyman, an anatomist of Harvard Medical College, testified that he had found no duplicates among the bones in the furnace, indicating that these bones had come from a single human corpse. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Waldo Emerson to his JOURNAL:

Every day shows a new thing to veteran walkers. Yesterday reflections of trees in the ice; snowflakes, perfect rowels, on the ice; beautiful groups of icicles all along the eastern shore of Flint’s Pond, in which, especially where encrusting the bough of a tree, you have the union of the most flowing with the most solidly fixed. Ellery all the way squandering his jewels as if they were icicles, sometimes not comprehended by me, sometimes not heard. How many days can Methusalem go abroad & see somewhat new? When will he have counted the changes of the kaleidoscope?

ELLERY CHANNING HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1850

February/March: Waldo Emerson to his JOURNAL:

It is not the least characteristic sign of the Times, that Alcott should have been able to collect such a good company of the best heads for two Monday Evenings, for the expressed purpose of discussing the Times. What was never done by human beings in another age, was done now; there they met to discuss their own breath, to speculate on their own navels, with eyeglass & solar microscope, and no man wondered at them. But these very men came in the cars by steam-ferry & locomotive to the meeting, & sympathized with engineers & Californians. Mad contradictions flavor all our dishes.

March: Daniel Webster announced himself in favor of the Fugitive Slave Law and Waldo Emerson commented that “the badness of the times is making death attractive.”

Webster truly represents the American people just as they are, with their vast material interests, materialized intellect, & low morals. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March/April: Waldo Emerson confessed to having an eye for feminine beauty.

Did one ever see a beautiful woman, & not wish to look again? Could one ever see enough of a beautiful woman?

He commented on the accommodative spirit of the times:

Watson Haynes, the sailor, testified that when he attempted to enlist the Clergy in his crusade against flogging in the navy, they replied, that their business was to preach the gospel, & not to interfere with the regulations of the navy. And Webster thinks the gospel was to touch the heart, & not to abolish slavery. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April: Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was appointed as one of the colleagues who would accompany the body of John Caldwell Calhoun to South Carolina.

Waldo Emerson commented to his journal about Daniel Webster’s support for the Fugitive Slave Bill:

I think there was never an event half so painful occurred in Boston as the letter with 800 signatures to Webster.

April 2, Tuesday: Henri Herz gave his initial concert in San Francisco.

Waldo Emerson delivered “Instinct and Inspiration” in Hope Chapel in Philadelphia. President Van Buren was in the large audience. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 5, Friday: Frederick Douglass spoke at an Anti-Fugitive-Slave-Bill meeting in Rochester, New York.

Waldo Emerson, who was in Philadelphia this month delivering a series of 6 lectures, dined with Friend Lucretia Mott before his lecture on “Eloquence.” A newspaper reporter would decide that this lecturer could utter “some of the most original as well as some of the most unintelligible things of any man in the United States.”

Lucretia Mott is the flower of Quakerism. That woman has a unity of sense, virtue, & good-meaning perfectly impressed on her countenance which are a guarantee of victory in all the fights to which her Quaker faith & connection lead her. She told exceedingly well the story of her contest with the mob at Dover & Smyrna in Delaware, she and the wife of Mr _____ attending him down to the place where the mob were to tar & feather him, & it was perfectly easy to see that she might safely go & would surely defend herself & him. No mob could remain a mob where she went. She brings domesticity & common sense, & that propriety which every man loves, directly into this hurly-burly, & makes every bully ashamed. Her courage is no merit, one almost says, where triumph is so sure. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August: In Philadelphia, a runaway slave named told William Still he was looking for his parents named Levin and Sidney Steel! (Peter turned out to be a brother whom William had never met — because during her escape from slavery his mother had had to leave him behind.)

The following notice appeared in a local gazette: ———— Fire Island. — Mr. H. D. Thoreau returned from Fire Island on Sunday afternoon last. His search for the body and manuscripts of Madame Ossoli was entirely unsuccessful, but, before leaving, he posted up notices in all public places, offering a reward for either. Mr. Hugh Maxwell is still on the Island, we believe, investigating the plunder of the wreck. We hope he will succeed in bringing to justice the ring-leaders.

In his journal, as was his practice, Waldo Emerson began accumulating jottings and evaluations for the various literary tasks which the death would occasion, which he would of course be asked to perform, such as the preparation of volumes of papers, obituary references, recommendation of cenotaphs and other memorials:

[SEE A FOLLOWING SCREEN]

Emerson was invited to sponsor a woman’s rights convention to be held in Worcester, Massachusetts on October 23-24.

After July 29: Do a little more of that work which you have sometime confessed to be good–which you feel that society & your justest judge rightly demands of you– Do what you reprove yourself for not doing. Know that you are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with yourself without reason– Let me say to you & to myself in one breath– Cultivate the tree which you have found to bear fruit in your soil. Regard not your past failures nor successes–all the past is equally a failure & a success it is a success in as much as it offers you the present opportunity. Have you not a pretty good thinking faculty–worth more than the rarest gold-watch?– Can you not pass a judgment on something– Does not the stream still rise to its fountain head in you? Go to the Devil & come back again. Dispose of evil Get punished once for all– Die if you can– Depart– Exchange your salvation for a glass of water: If you know of any risk to run–run it. If you dont know of any enjoy confidence. Do not trouble yourself to be religious you will never get a thank you for it. If you can drive a nail & have any nails to drive drive them. If you have any experiments you would like to try–try them–now’s your chance. Do not entertain doubts if they are not agreeable to you. Send them to the tavern. Do not eat unless you are hungry– There’s no need of it. Do not read the newspapers. Improve every opportunity to be melancholy– – Be as melancholy as you can be and note the result– Rejoice with fate. As for health, consider yourself well–& mind your business– Who knows but you are dead already? Do not stop to be scared yet–there are more terrible things to come–and ever to come– Men die of fright & live of confidence.– Be not simply obedient like the vegetables–set up your own Ebeneezer– Of man’s “dis obaedience & the fruit–” &c Do not engage to find things as you think they are. Do what nobody can do for you–. Omit to do every thing else. According to Lieutenant Davis83 the forms extent & distribution of sand bars & banks are principally determined by tides–not by wind & waves. 83. Charles Henry Davis CHARLES HENRY DAVI S (1807-1877). “A Memoir upon the Geological Action of the Tidal and Other Currents of the Ocean,” MEMOIRS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES (Boston), 4th series, part I (1849-1850): 117-156. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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On Friday, 19 July, Margaret dies on rocks of Fire Island Beach within sight of & within 60 rods of the shore. To the last her country proves inhospitable to her; brave, eloquent, subtle, accomplished, devoted, constant soul! If nature availed in America to give birth to many such as she, freedom & honour & letters & art too were safe in this new world.... She has a wonderful power of inspiring confidence & drawing out of people their last secret. The timorous said, What shall we do? how shall she be received, now that she brings a husband & child home? But she had only to open her mouth, & a triumphant success awaited her. She would fast enough have disposed of the circumstances & the bystanders. For she had the impulse, & they wanted it. Here were already mothers waiting tediously for her coming, for the education of their daughters.... Her love of art, like that of many, was only a confession of sympathy with the artist in the mute condemnation which his work gave to the deformity of our daily life; her co-perception with him of the eloquence of Form; her aspiration with him to a life altogether beautiful. “Her heart, which few knew, was as great as her mind, which all knew” what Jung Stilling said of Goethe, E.H. [Elizabeth Hoar] says of Margaret; and, that she was the largest woman; & not a woman who wished to be a man. I have lost in her my audience. I hurry now to my work admonished that I have few days left. There should be a gathering of her friends & some Beethoven should play the dirge. She poured a stream of amber over the endless store of private anecdotes, of bosom histories which her wonderful persuasion drew out of all to her. When I heard that a trunk of her correspondence had been found & opened, I felt what a panic would strike all her friends, for it was as if a clever reporter had got underneath a confessional & agreed to report all that transpired there in Wall street.1 A larger dialectic, I said, conveys a sense of power & feeling of terror before unknown, & H.T. said, “that a thought would destroy like the jet of a blowpipe most persons,” & yet we apologise for the power, & bow to the persons. I want an electrical machine. Slumbering power we have, but not excited, collected, & discharged. If I should be honest, I should say, my exploring of life presents little or nothing of respectable event or action, or, in myself, of a personality. Too composite to offer a positive unity, but it is a recipiency, a percipiency. And I, & far weaker persons, if it were possible, than I, who pass for nothing but imbeciles, do yet affirm by their percipiency the presence & perfection of Law, as much as all the Martyrs.

1. At this place there is inserted a later note: “Her confidence in herself was boundless, & was frankly expressed. She told S.G.W. [SAMUEL GRAY WARD??] that she had seen all the people worth seeing in America, & was satisfied that there was no intellect comparable to her own.” And to this Emerson added, sometime in about 1851 as he was looking through her papers, this additional material: “The unlooked for trait in all these journals to me is the Woman, poor woman: they are all hysterical. She is bewailing her virginity and languishing for a husband. ‘I need help. No, I need a full, a godlike embrace from some sufficient love.’ &c. &c.... This I doubt not was all the more violent recoil from the exclusively literary & ‘educational’ connections in which she had lived. Mrs Spring told me that Margaret said to her, ‘I am tired of these literary friendships, I long to be wife & mother.’" HDT WHAT? INDEX

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On sand bars recently elevated above the level of the ocean fresh water is obtained by digging a foot or two. It is very common for wells near the shore to rise & fall with the tide– It is an interesting fact that the low sand bars in the midst of the ocean, even those which are laid bare only at low tide are reservoirs of fresh water at which the thirsty mariner can supply himself. Perchance like huge sponges they hold the rain & dew which falls on them and which by capillary attraction is prevented from mingling with the surrounding brine. It is not easy to make our lives respectable to ourselves by any course of activity– We have repeatedly to withdraw ourselves into our shels of thought like the tortoise–somewhat helplessly–& yet there is even more than philosophy in that. I do not love to entertain doubts & questions. I am sure that my acquaintances mistake me– I am not the man they take me for. On a little nearer view they would find me out. They ask my advice on high matters–but they do not even know how poorly on’t I am for hats & shoes– I have hardly a shift. Just as shabby as I am in my outward apparel aye & more lamentably shabby, for nakedness is not so bad a condition after all am I in my inward apparel. If I should turn myself inside out my rags & meanness would appear. I am something to him that made me, undoubtedly, but not much to any other that he has made. All I can say is that I live & breathe & have my thoughts. What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience but his opposition to his instincts–in one direction or another he strives to live a super natural life. Would it not be worth the while to discover nature in Milton? Be native to the universe. I too love Concord best– But I am glad when I discover in oceans & wildernesses far away the materials out of which a million Concords can be made. Indeed unless I discover them I am lost myself. That there too I am at home. Nature is as far from me as God.– And sometimes I have thought to go west after her. Though the city is no more attractive to me than ever–yet I see less difference between a city & and a some dismallest swamp than formerly– It is a swamp too dismal & dreary even for me– I would as lief find a few owls & frogs & mosquitoes less. I prefer even a more cultivated place–free from miasma & crocodiles. & I will take my choice. From time to time I overlook the promised land but I do not feel that I am travelling toward it. The moment I begin to look these men & institutions get out of the way that I may see. I see nothing permanent in the society around me–& am not quite committed to any of its ways. The heaven-born Numa or Lycurgus or Solon gravely makes laws to regulate the exportation of Tobacco. Will a divine legislator–legislate for slaves or to regulate the exportation of Tobacco– What shall a state say for itself at the last day in which this is a principal production? What have grave–not to say divine legislators–Numas–Lycurguses–Solons–to do with the exportation or the importation of Tobacco. There was a man appealed to me the other day–“Can you give me a chaw of tobacco?”– I legislated for him. Suppose you were to submit the question to any son of God in what state would you get it again? Do not waste any reverence on my attitude– I manage to sit up where I have dropped. Except as you reverence the evil one–or rather the evil myriad. As for missing friends–fortunate perhaps is he who has any to miss– whose place a thought will not supply– I have an ideal friend in whose place actual persons sometimes stand for a season The last I may often miss–but the first I recover when I am myself again– What if we do miss one another–have we not agreed upon a Rendezvous? While each travels his own way through the wood with serene & inexpressible joy–though it be on his hands and knees over the rocks & fallen trees–he cannot but be on the right way– There is no wrong way to him. I have found myself as well off when I have fallen into a quagmire– as in an arm chair in the most hospitable house.– The prospect was pretty much the same. Without anxiety let us wander on admiring whatever beauty the woods exhibit. Do you know on what bushes a little peace faith & contentment grow– Go aberrying early & late after them. Miss our friends! It is not easy to get rid of them. We shall miss our bodies directly. A man who missed his friends at a turn in the woods–went on bouyantly {Three-fourths page missing} with {MS torn}ge of Probate– As to conforming outwardly–and living your own life inwardly–I have not a very high opinion of that course– Do not let your right hand know what your left hand does in that line of business. I have no doubt it will prove a failure. Just as successfully can you walk against a sharp steel edge–which divides you cleanly {Three-fourths page missing} The wind through the blind–just now sounded like the baying of a distant hound–somewhat plaintive and melodious. The rail-road cuts make cliffs for swallows. Getting into Patchogue late one night in an oyster-boat, there was a drunken Dutchman aboard whose wit reminded me of Shakspeare. When we came to leave the Beach our boat was aground and we were detained 3 hours waiting for the tide– In the meanwhile two of the fishermen took an extra dram at the Beach house– Then they stretched themselves on the sea-weed in the sun to sleep off their debauch– One was an inconceivably broadfaced Dutchman–a rather young man–but oh of such a peculiar breadth & heavy look–I should not know whether to call it more ridiculous or sublime. You would say that he had humbled himself so much that he was beginning to be exalted. An indescribable Mynheerish stupidity– I was less disgusted by their HDT WHAT? INDEX

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filthiness & vulgarity because I was compelled to look on them as animals–as swine in their stye. For the whole voyage they lay flat on their backs on the bottom of the boat–in the bilge water–& wet with each bailing–half insensible & wallowing in their vomit– But ever and anon when aroused by the rude kicks or curses of the skipper–the Dutchman who never lost his wit nor equanimity–though snoring & rolling in the vomit produced by his debauch–blurted forth some happy repartee like an illuminated swine. It was the earthiest slimiest wit I ever heard. The countenance was one of a million. It was unmistakeable Dutch. In the midst of a million faces of other races it could not be mistaken It told of Amsterdams. I kept wracking my brains to conceive how he could have been born in America– How lonely he must feel–what he did for fellowship When we were groping up the narrow creek of Patchogue–at ten o clock at night keeping our boat off now from this bank now from that with a pole– The two inebriates roused themselves betimes. For in spite of their low estate they seemed to have all their wits as much about them as ever. aye and all the self-respect they ever had And the Dutchman gave wise directions to the steerer which were not heeded. Suddenly rouseing himself up where the sharpest eyed might be bewildered leaned over the side of the boat & pointed straight down into the creek–averring that that that identical hole was a first rate place for eels– And again he roused himself at the right time & declared what luck he had once had in another place which we were floating over in the dark. At last he suddenly stepped on to another boat which was moored to the shore–with a divine ease & sureness saying “Well–good night–take care of yourselves–I can’t be with you any longer.” He was one of the few remarkable men whom I have met. I have been impressed by one or two men in their cups. There was really a divinity stirred within them– So that in their case I have reverenced the drunken–as savages the insane man. So stupid that he could never be intoxicated– When I said “you have had a hard time of it today” he answered with–indescribable good humor– out of the very midst of his debauch with watery eyes–“Well it does’nt happen every day.” It was happening then. He had taken me aboard on his back the boat lying a rod from the shore–before I knew his condition. In the darkness our skipper steered with a pole on the bottom–for an oysterman knows the bottom of his bay as well as the shores. and can tell where he is by the soundings. There was a glorious lurid sunset tonight accompanied with many sombre clouds–and when I looked into the west with my head turned–the grass had the same fresh green–and the distant herbage & foliage in the horizon the same dark blue–& the clouds & sky the same bright colors beautifully mingled & dissolving into one another that I have seen in pictures of tropical landscapes & skies. Pale saffron skies with faint fishes of rosy clouds dissolving in them. A blood stained sky. I regretted that I had an impatient companion. What shall we make of the fact that–you have only to stand on your head a moment to be enchanted with the beauty of the landscape. I met with a man on the beach who told me that when he wanted to jump over a brook he held up one leg a certain height, and then if a line from his eye through his toe touched the opposite bank–he knew that he could jump it. I asked him how he knew when he held his leg at the right angle– oh he said he knew the hitch very well– An Irishman told me that he held up one leg and if he could bring his toe in a range with his eye & the opposite bank he knew that he could jump it– Why, I told him, I can blot out a star with my toe–but I would not engage to jump the distance It then appeared that he knew when he had got his leg at the right height by a certain hitch there was in it. I suggested that he should connect his two ancles with a string HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 1, Saturday: From occasional notes in the record that mention destruction of records as an option, we may infer that a certain amount of record burning was going on in the processing of Margaret Fuller materials. For instance, Waldo Emerson wrote in a letter of this date that “Ellery, yesterday, brought me all my letters to Margaret; and said, that he had sent Sam. G. Ward his; & will tomorrow send to you the package of letters & Journals which Margaret rolled up & marked with your name — in the inscription leaving you some option to save or burn. I hope you will let the burning be as figurative as, the commentators say, the sacrificing was by Jephthah of his daughter.” Similarly, in a letter of November 1850 he would write, “I had large & vague expectation of what amount of manuscript you would send, & perhaps had some disappointment in the actual reading. — I had hoped from what Ellery said, there were two or three Journals, & that you would not burn them.” Similarly, he would open an 1852 letter to Sturgis with “When have I breathed a word concerning old papers of mine? Burn them when you will. Or they may come as you propose to my fire. Certainly one would not in these autographic days be glad to find them in young gentlemen’s albums.” Clearly, in such a context, destruction of records was one of the options always under consideration, so we are never entitled to presume that we have an intact record rather than a record from which any elements considered unsavory have been most carefully expunged.

Emerson to his journal:

Yesterday took that secluded Marlboro road with W.E.C. [Ellery Channing] in a wagon. Every rock was painted “Marlboro.” & we proposed to take the longest day in the year, & ride to Marlboro, that flying Italy. We went to Willis’s Pond in Sudbury & paddled across it, & took a swim in its water, coloured like sugarbaker’s molasses. Nature, E. thought, is less interesting. Yesterday Thoreau told me it was more so, & persons less. I think it must always combine with man. Life is ecstatical, & we radiate joy & honour & gloom on the days & landscapes we converse with. But I must remember a real or imagined period in my youth, when they who spoke to me of nature, were religious, & made it so, & made it deep: now it is to the young sentimentalists frippery; & a milliner’s shop has as much reason & worth.

Sept. 1st can rarely find many– They have a more transparent look–large blue long stemmed dangling–fruit of the swamp concealed. I detect the pennyroyal which my feet have bruised. Butter & eggs still hold out to bloom I notice that cows never walk abreast but in single file commonly making a narrow cow path–or the herd walks in an irregular & loose wedge. They retain still the habits of all the deer tribe acquired when the earth was all covered with forest–of travelling from necessity in narrow paths in the woods At sundown a herd of cows returning homeward from pasture over a sandy tract pause to paw the sand and challenge the representatives of another field raising a cloud of dust between the beholder & the setting sun. & then the herd boys rush to mingle in the foray & separate the combatants two cows with horns interlocked the one pushing the other down the bank. My grandmother called her cow home at night from the pasture over the hill by thumping on a mortar out of which the cow was accustomed to eat salt. At Nagog I saw a hundred bushels of huckleberries in one field. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December/January: Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

Tennyson’s IN MEMORIAM is the commonplaces of condolence among good unitarians in the first week of mourning. The consummate skill of the versification is the sole merit. The book has the advantage that was Dr Channing’s fortune, that all the merit was appreciable. He is never a moment too high for his audience. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1851

February/March: At about this point Waldo Emerson was writing in his journal:

Nothing so marks a man as bold imaginative expressions. A complete statement in the imaginative form of an important truth arrests attention & is repeated & remembered. A phrase or two of that kind will make the reputation of a man. Pythagoras’s golden sayings were such; and Socrates’s, & Mirabeau’s & Bonaparte’s; and, I hope I shall not make a sudden descent, if I say that Henry Thoreau promised to make as good sentences in that kind as any body.

April/May: At about this point Waldo Emerson was writing in his journal:

It is now as disgraceful to be a Bostonian as it was hitherto a credit.... I met an episcopal clergyman, & allusion being made to Mr Webster’s treachery, he replied “Why, do you know I think that the great action of his life?” I opened a paper today in which he pounds on the old strings in a letter to the Washington Birth Day feasters at N.Y. “Liberty! liberty!” Pho! Let Mr Webster for decency’s sake shut his lips once & forever on this word. The word liberty in the mouth of Mr Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtezan.... What a moment was lost when Judge Lemuel Shaw declined to affirm the unconstitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Law!

May: Richard Wagner completed the verse draft for Der Junge Siegfried (YOUNG SIEGFRIED) — later to be called simply SIEGFRIED.

At about this point Waldo Emerson was writing in his journal:

HISTORY OF RR The old woman who was shown the telegraph & the railroad, said, “Well, God’s works are great, but man’s works are greater!” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 25, Sunday: This was Waldo Emerson’s 48th birthday.

On some date just a bit earlier than this Sunday (we are not able to be exact about this date), Emerson had spoken in Cambridge before an audience of Harvard College authorities and students that was hostile because it knew Emerson had declared himself opposed to slavery: “The hisses, shouts, and cat-calls made it impossible for Mr. Emerson to go on. Through all this there never was a finer spectacle of dignity and composure than he presented. He stood with perfect quietness until the hubbub was over, and then went on with the next word. It was as if nothing had happened: there was no repetition, no allusion to what had been going on, no sign that he was moved, and I cannot describe with what added weight the next words fell.”

Perhaps it would have helped Emerson’s reputation, had he explained to this crowd that the reason why he was against slavery was that he did not feel there should be any place at all in American society for the black race. That although he had decided to be against enslaving them, he had not removed them from the category “not- us.” That, in effect, his good white audience ought not to distrust him for he was still as racist as he had always been. Emerson entered the following explanation in his journal sometime during May or June:

The absence of moral feeling in the whiteman is the very calamity I deplore. The captivity of a thousand negroes is nothing to me.

(Perhaps the above will help to explain why a stone racist like Hinton Rowan Helper would so adore this essayist.)

During this same period, he also made an entry indicating that he was distancing himself from the American public, on account of his morals, which were higher than theirs, higher even than the morals of the American leaders whose counsel was being found more acceptable than was his own counsel:

Webster truly represents the American people just as they are, with their vast material interests, materialized intellect, & low morals. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Emerson-worshiper Hinton Rowan Helper arrived full of golden expectation in San Francisco after a four- month seasick trip aboard the Stag Hound around the Horn. However, he would soon discover that to obtain the gold of California required “a greater sacrifice of moral and physical wealth than a single exchange of it afterwards can possibly restore.”

HINTON ROWAN HELPER

May 25, Sunday: A fine freshening air a little hazy that bathes & washes everything –saving the day from extreme heat. Walked to the hills south of Wayland. by the road by Dea. Farrar’s. 1st vista just beyond Menans? looking west –down a valley with a verdant-columned elm at the extremity of the vale –& the blue hills & horizon beyond These are the resting places in a walk. We love to see any part of the earth tinged with blue –cerulean the color of the sky. The celestial color. I wonder that houses are not oftener located mainly that they may command particular rare prospects –every convenince yielding to this. The farmer would never suspect what it was you were buying, & such sites would be the cheapest of any. A site where you might avail yourself of the art of nature for these thousand years Which could never be materially changed –or taken from you a noble inheritance for your children. The true sites for human dwellings are unimproved– They command no price in the market. Men will pay something to look into a travelling showman’s box –but not to look upon the fairest prospects on the earth. A vista where you have the near green horizon contrasted with the distant blue one terrestrial with celestial earth. The prospect of a vast horizon must be accessible in our neighborhood. Where men of enlarged views may be educated.– An unchangeable kind of wealth a real estate– There we found the celandine in blossom & the Ranunculus bulbosus which we afterward saw double in Wayland –having nine petals. The pyrus arbutifolia –variety melanocarpa –Gray makes also the variety erythrocarpa Is this the late red choke berry of the swamps –& is the former the earlier black one of the swamps? By Farrars’ the Nepeta Glechoma a kind of mint Linnaeus calls it G. Hederacea looks some what like catnep HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The marsh marigold –caltha palustris improperly called cowslip.

The white oak Quercus alba. And the commonest scrub oak the bear or Black oak –Q. Illicifolia– The Chinquapin or Dwarf Chestnut oak the smallest of our oaks –Q. prinoides The crataegus coccinea? –or scarlet fruited Thorn? Another glorious vista with a wide horizon at the yellow Dutch House just over the Wayland line by the Black spruce Heavy & dark as night –which we could see 2 or 3 miles as a land mark –now at least before the deciduous trees have fully expanded their leaves it is remarkably black– It is more stoutly & irregularly branched than Holbrooks spruces has a much darker foliage –but the cone scales of both are slightly waved or notched are they then both black spruce? The cones are enough alike & the thickness of the leaves –their color enough unlike. Here is a view of the Jenkin’s House –the fish pole house & Wachuset beyond Noticed what I think must be a young poison sumack abundant by the roadside in woods –with last years berries –with small greenish yellow flowers but leaves not pinnatified 3 together From 1 to 2 ft high– What is it? Alnus serrulata the common alder with a greyish stem leaves smooth on both sides– Alnus incana the speckled alder downy on under side of leaves. The hard-berried plant seems to be Andromeda ligustrina? of Gray A. Paniculata of Bigelow –Lyonia Paniculata of Emerson Thyme leaved veronica little bluish white streak pettalled flower by roadsides –silene Pensylvanica What is the orange yellow aster-like flower of the meadows now in blossom with a sweet smelling stem when bruised? What the delicate pinkish & yellowish flower with hoary green stems & leaves of rocky hills. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Saw Bunker Hill monument & Charlestown from the wayland hills and across the vallies to Milton Hill–

Westward or W by S on island in a pond or in the river (!Which see!) A grand horizon. Probably saw the elm between Wayland & Weston which is seen so far in the horizon from the N W part of Sudbury. A good a rare place this must be to view the sudbury or Wayland meadows a little earlier. Came back across lots to the Black-spruce Now at 81/2 o clock PM –I hear the dreaming of the frogs– So it seems to me & so significantly passes my life away. It is like the dreaming of frogs in a summer evening. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 22, Tuesday: About this day of July 22d, Waldo Emerson recorded in his journal:

Eddy & Edie going with me to bathe in Walden, Eddy was very brave with a sharp bulrush, & presently broke into this rhyme— “With my sharp-pointed sword I will conquer Concórd.”

Herman Melville wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne: My dear Hawthorne: This is not a letter, or even a note — but only a passing word said to you over your garden gate. I thank you for your easy- flowing long letter (received yesterday) which flowed through me, and refreshed all my meadows, as the Housatonic — opposite me — does in reality. I am now busy with various things — not incessantly though; but enough to require my frequent tinkerings; and this is the height of the haying season, and my nag is dragging me home his winter’s dinners all the time. And so, one way and another, I am not yet a disengaged man; but shall be, very soon. Meantime, the earliest good chance I get, I shall roll down to you, my good fellow, seeing we — that is, you and I, — must hit upon some little bit of vagabondism, before Autumn comes. Graylock — we must go and vagabondize there. But ere we start, we must dig a deep hole, and bury all Blue Devils, there to abide till the Last Day. Goodbye, his X mark.

July 22, Tuesday: The season of morning fogs has arrived I think it is connected with dog days Perhaps it is owing to the greater contrast between the night & the day –the nights being nearly as cold while the days are warmer? Before I rise from my couch I see the ambrosial fog stretched over the river draping the trees– It is the summers vapor bath –what purity in the color– It is almost musical; it is positively fragrant. How faery like it has visited our fields. I am struck by its firm outlines as distinct as a pillow’s edge about the height of my house –a great crescent over the course of the river from SW to NE. 51/2 Am Already some parts of the river are bare– It goes off in a body down the river before this air –and does not rise into the heavens– It retreats & I do not see how it is dissipated. This slight thin vapor which is left to curl over the surface of the still dark water still as glass –seems not be the same things –of a different quality. I hear the cockrils crow through it –and the rich crow of young roosters –that sound indicative of the bravest rudest health –hoarse without cold –hoarse with a rude health That crow is all nature compelling –famine & pestilence flee before it– These are our fairest days which are born in a fog I saw the tall lettuce yesterday Lactucca elongata –whose top or main shoot had been broken off –& it had put up various stems –with entire & lanceolate –not runcinate leaves as usual –thus making what some botanists have called a variety –. linearis– So I have met with some Geniuses who having met with some such accident maiming them –have been developed in some such monstrous & partial though original way. They were original in being less than themselves. Yes your leaf is peculiar –and some would make of you a distinct variety –but to me you appear like the puny result of an accident & misfortune –for you have lost your main shoot –and the leaves which would have grown runcinate are small & lanceolate. The last sunday afternoon I smelled the clear pork frying for a farmer’s supper 30 rods off (what a sunday supper!) the windows being opens –& could imagine the clear tea without milk which usually accompanies it Now the catonine tails are seen in the impenetrable meadows & the tall green rush is perfecting its tufts. The spotted Polygonum P. Persicaria by the roadside I scare up a wood-cock[American Woodcock Scolopax minor] from some moist place at mid day– HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Pewee[Wood Pewee Contopus virens] & Kingbird [Eastern Kingbird Tyrannus tyrannus] are killing bees perched on a post or a dead twig. I bathe me in the river– I lie down where it is shallow –amid the weeds over its sandy bottom but it seems shrunken & parched– I find it difficult to get wet through– I would fain be the channel of a mt brook. I bathe & in a few hours I bathe again not remembering that I was wetted before. When I come to the river I take off my clothes & carry them over then bathe & wash off the mud & continue my walk. There was a singular charm for me in those French names more than in the things themselves The name of Italian & Grecian cities villages & natural features are not more poetic to me than the names of those humble Canadian villages –to be told by a habitant when I asked the name of a village in sight that is St Fereole or St Anne’s But I was quite taken off my feet when running back to inquire what river we were crossing –and thinking for a long time he said la Riviere d’Ocean it flashed upon me at last that it was la rivière du chien the la rivière so often repeated in the {One leaf missing} HDT WHAT? INDEX

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There was so much grace and sentiment & refinement in the names how could they be coarse who took them so often on their lips –St Anne’s St Joseph’s the holy Annes the holy Joseph’s. Next to the Indian the French missionary & voyageur & Catholic habitant have named the natural features of the land– The prairie –the voyageur– Or does every man think his neighbor is the richer & more fortunate man –his neighbor’s fields the richest. It needed only a little outlandishness in the names a little foreign accent a few more vowels in the words –to make me locate all my ideals at once– How prepared we are for another world than this– We are no sooner over the line of the states –than we expect to see men leading poetic lives –nothing so natural that is the presumption– the names of the mountains & the streams & the villages reel with the intoxication of poetry – Longoeil Chambly –Barthillon? Montilly? Where there were books only –to find realities of course we assign to the place the idea which the written history or poem suggested Quebec of course is never seen for what it simply is to practical eyes –but as the local habitation of those thoughts & visions which we have derived from reading of Wolfe & Montcalm Montgomery & Arnold – – It is hard to make me attend to the geology of Cape diamond –or the botany of the Plains of Abraham. How glad we are to find that there is another race of men –for they may be more successful & fortunate than we. Canada is not a place for rail-roads to terminate in or for criminals to run to.

Henry Thoreau wants a little ambition in his mixture. Fault of this, instead of being the head of American Engineers, he is captain of a huckleberry party. *** H.T. will not stick — he is not practically renovator. He is a boy, & will be an old boy. Pounding beans is good to the end of pounding Empires, but not, if at the end of years, it is only beans. I fancy it an inexcusable fault in him that he is insignificant here in the town. He speaks at Lyceum or other meting but somebody else speaks & his speech falls dead & is forgotten. He rails at the town doings & ought to correct & inspire them. [After a period of speaking of other topics, such as the genius of Shakspeare, which Emerson compares to the facility in calculating and memorizing of a super-smart schoolchild, he returned to the topic of Thoreau with:] One chamber more, one cell more is opened in this [Shakspeare’s] brain, than is opened in all the rest, & what majestic results. I admire Thoreau, too, with his powerful arithmetic, & his whole body co-working. He can pace sixteen rods more accurately than another man can measure it by tape. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Toward the end of July: The situation was fraught, it was a setup, a middle-aged man was about to make a fool of himself over a well-endowed young lady. Fortunately, a Boston society lady had options, could chose to escape from the heat of the city summer and the passion of the middle-aged fool by a holiday excursion to New Hampshire and to Brattleboro VT. There, while Ednah Dow Littlehale and Bronson Alcott were exchanging a series of very nice letters in which she was laying out an agenda to become his assistant in a prospective school (following in the footsteps of a number of previous ladies such as her own beloved instructor Margaret Fuller), she was also meeting and being romanced by one Seth Wells Cheney, an artist 41 years of age, a man who had made a considerable amount of money in the silk trade but whose young wife had died a year earlier of tuberculosis.

Mister Eligible, let me feel your pain! The couple climbed Mount Monadnock together for the sunset, and then descended that mountain — together — in the dark.

Fuller’s former pupil Ednah Littlehale was not the only person who was profiting from the memory of her during this July-October period. Waldo Emerson has recorded some of these activities in his journal:

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody ransacks her memory for anecdotes of Margaret’s youth, her selfdevotion, her disappointments which she tells with fervency, but I find myself always putting the previous question. These things have no value, unless they lead somewhere. If a Burns, if a De Stael, if an artist is the result, our attention is preengaged; but quantities of rectitude, mountains of merit, chaos of ruins, are of no account without result — ’tis all mere nightmare; false instincts; wasted lives. Now, unhappily, Margaret’s writing does not justify any such research. All that can be said, is, that she represents an interesting hour & group in American cultivation; then, that she was herself a fine, generous, inspiring, vinous, eloquent talker, who did not outlive her influence; and a kind of justice requires of us a monument, because crowds of vulgar people taunt her with want of position.

ELIZABETH PALMER PEABODY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 14, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Today is holden [sic] at Worcester the “Woman’s Convention.” I think that, as long as they have not equal rights of property & right of voting, they are not on a right footing. But this wrong grew out of the savage & military period, when, because a woman could not defend herself, it was necessary that she should be assigned to some man who was paid for guarding her. Now in more tranquil & decorous times it is plain she should have her property, &, when she marries, the parties should as regards property, go into a partnership full or limited, but explicit & recorded. For the rest, I do not think a woman’s convention, called in the spirit of this at Worcester, can much avail. It is an attempt to manufacture public opinion, & of course repels all persons who love the simple & direct method. I find the Evils real & great. If I go from Hanover street to Atkinson street — as I did yesterday— what hundreds of extremely ordinary, paltry, hopeless women I see, whose plight is piteous to think of. If it were possible to repair the rottenness of human nature, to provide a rejuvenescence, all were well, & no special reform, no legislation would be needed. For, as soon as you have a sound & beautiful woman, a figure in the style of the Antique Juno, Diana, Pallas, Venus, & the Graces, all falls into place, the men are magnetised, heaven opens, & no lawyer need be called in to prepare a clause, for woman moulds the lawgiver. I should therefore advise that the Woman’s Convention should be holden [sic] in the Sculpture Gallery, that this high remedy might be suggested. “Women,” Plato says, “are the same as men in faculty, only less.” I find them all victims of their temperament. “I never saw a woman who did not cry,” said E. [Ellery Channing?] Nature’s end of maternity —maternity for twenty years— was of so supreme importance, that it was to be secured at all events, even to the sacrifice of the highest beauty. Bernhard told Margaret that every woman (whatever she says, reads, or writes) is thinking of a husband. And this excess of temperament remains not less in Marriage. Few women are sane. They emit a coloured atmosphere, one would say, floods upon floods of coloured light, in which they walk evermore, & see all objects through this warm tinted mist which envelopes them. Men are not, to the same degree, temperamented; for there are multitudes of men who live to objects quite out of them, as to politics, to trade, to letters, or an art, unhindered by any influence of constitution.

This convention in Worcester being written about by Emerson above was the 2nd National Woman’s Rights Convention, the 1st such convention having taken place in the previous year. He had been invited, but had declined. A history says that “literary figures from Boston” graced the platform, and we wonder who that would have been since obviously it did not include this Where’s-Waldo, or Henry Thoreau, or Nathaniel Hawthorne or Ellery Channing. We know that Frederick Douglass addressed the convention, but suspect that the white people would not have characterized him as a “literary figure from Boston.” During this convention there was an outburst of male-bashing, and in the audience Abby Kelley Foster stood up to dramatically HDT WHAT? INDEX

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caution them about this, dragging in the male bloody foot, declaring that

...for fourteen years I have advocated this cause by my daily life. Bloody feet, sisters, have worn smooth the path by which you have come hither.

On this date a type of telegraph-line insulator was patented by John M. Batchelder:

October 14, Tuesday: Down the R R. before sun rise A freight train in the Deep Cut. the sun rising over the woods.– When the vapor from the engine rose above the woods the level rays of the rising sun fell on it it presented the same redness–morning red–inclining to saffron which the clouds in the eastern horizon do. TELEGRAPHY There was but little wind this morning yet I heard the telegraph harp–it does not require a strong wind to wake its strings–it depends more on its direction & the tension of the wire apparently–a gentle but steady breeze will AEOLIAN HARP often call forth its finest strains when a strong but unsteady gale–blowing at the wrong angle withal fails to elicit any melodious sound. In the psychological world there are phenomena analogous to what zoologists call alternate reproduction in which it requires several generations unlike each other to produce the perfect animal– Some men’s lives are but an aspiration–a yearning toward a higher state–and they are wholly misapprehended–until they are referred to or traced through all their metamorphoses. We cannot pronounce upon a man’s intellectual & moral state until we forsee what metamorphosis it is preparing him for. It is said that “the working bees – – are barren females. The attributes of their sex – – seem to consist only in their solicitude for the welfare of the new generation, of which they are the natural guardians, but not the parents.” Agassiz & Gould. This phenomenon is paralleled in man by maiden aunts & bachelor uncles who perform a similar function. “The muskrat,” according to Agassiz & Gould, “is found from the mouth of Mackenzie’s River to Florida” It is moreover of a type peculiar to temperate America. He is a native american surely. He neither dies of Consumption in New England nor of Fever & ague at the south & west–thoroughly acclimated & naturalized. “The hyenas, wild-boars, and rhinoceroses of the Cape of Good Hope, have no analogues on the American HDT WHAT? INDEX

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continent”– At the last menagerie I visited they told me that one of the hyenas came from S america! There is something significant and interesting in the fact that the fauna of Europe and that of the United States are very similar–pointing to the fitness of this country for the settlement of Europeans. They say “There are many species of animals whose numbers are daily diminishing, and whose extinction may be foreseen; as the Canada deer (Wapiti), the Ibex of the Alps, the Lämmergeyer, the bison, the beaver, the wild- turkey, &c.” With these of course is to be associated the Indian. They say that the house-fly has followed man in his migrations. One would say that the Yankee belonged properly to the northern temperate Fauna–the region of the pines. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 27, Monday: Father Isaac Hecker, CSSR wrote to Orestes Augustus Brownson, Esq.

Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal about how hard it was to believe that the present is as rich as other times, and his phraseology, the matter-of-fact manner in which he uses this superficial talk, about the richness or poverty of the present, is so utterly un-Thoreauvian as to almost pre-empt this terminology from use in the manner in which Henry Thoreau needs to deploy these terms. This is the sort of thing which leads me to believe that Emerson was never able to grasp what Thoreau was about, that Thoreau’s mysticism was utterly opaque to him:

It would be hard to recall the rambles of last night’s talk with H.T. But we stated over again, to sadness, almost, the Eternal loneliness.... how insular & pathetically solitary, are all the people we know! Nor dare we tell what we think of each other, when we bow in the street. ’Tis mighty fine for us to taunt men of the world with superficial & treacherous courtesies. I saw yesterday, Sunday, whilst at dinner my neighbor Hosmer creeping EDMUND HOSMER into my barn. At once it occurred, “Well, men are lonely, to be sure, & here is this able, social, intellectual farmer under this grim day, as grimly, sidling into my barn, in the hope of some talk with me, showing me how to husband my cornstalks. Forlorn enough!” It is hard to believe that all times are alike & that the present is also rich. When this annual project of a Journal returns, & I cast about to think who are to be contributors, I am struck with a feeling of great poverty; my bareness! my bareness! seems America to say.

October 27, Monday: This morning I wake and find it snowing & the ground covered with snow– quite unexpectedly–for last night it was rainy but not cold. The obstacles which the heart meets with are like granite blocks which one alone can not move. She who was VENUS as the morning light to me, is now neither the morning star nor the evening star. We meet but to find each other further asunder, and the oftener we meet the more rapid our divergence. So a star of the first magnitude pales in the heavens, not from any fault in the observers eye nor from any fault in it self perchance, but because its progress in its own system has put a greater distance between The night is oracular– What have been the intimations of the night? I ask. How have you passed the night? Good night! My friend will be bold to conjecture, he will guess bravely at the significance of my words. The cold numbs my fingers this morning. The strong northwest wind blows the damp snow along almost horizontally. The birds fly about as if seeking shelter Perhaps it was the young of the purple finch that I saw sliding down the grass stems some weeks ago–or was it the white-throated finch? Winter with its inwardness is upon us. A man is constrained to sit down, and to think. The ardea minor still with us– Saw a woodcock feeding probing the mud with its long bill under the RR bridge within 2 feet of me for a long time could not scare it far away– What a disproportionate length of bill.– It is a sort of badge they wear as a punishment for greedines in a former state. The highest arch of the stone bridge is 6 feet 8 inches above the present surface of the water which I should think was more than a foot higher than it has been this summer–and is 4 inches below the long stone in the east abutment. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1852

From Waldo Emerson’s journal for this year:

I have quite other slaves to free than those negroes, to wit, imprisoned spirits, imprisoned thoughts, far back in the brain of man.

Imprisoned Spirits,

Imprisoned Thoughts Indeed! By the completion of this year Emerson would be able to list an impressive number of of Oriental books. He had during the year freed from bondage the imprisoned spirits, the imprisoned thoughts, of the following:

Plotinus; Porphyry; Sidonius Apollinaris; Saadi. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Is this merely a necessary setting of priorities, or does it rise to the level of racism? (You decide.)“It is simply

crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May: The hero of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, Lajos Kossuth, visited Lexington and Concord, and Waldo Emerson gave a welcoming address and invited him into his home.

After a conversation with Henry Thoreau, Emerson wrote in his journal about the need for concentration on the moment, which is of course an utterly Thoreauvian insistence:

Observe, that the whole history of the intellect is expansions & concentrations. The expansions are the claims or inspirations from heaven to try a larger sweep, a higher pitch than we have yet tried, and to leave all our past, for this enlarged scope. Present power, performance of any kind, on the other hand, required concentration on the moment, & the thing doable. But all this old song I have trolled a hundred times already, in better ways, only, last night, Henry Thoreau insisted much on “expansions,” & it sounded new. But of the congelation I was to add one word, that, by experience, having learned that this old inertia or quality of oak & granite inheres in us, & punishes, as it were, any fit of geniality, we learn with surprise that our fellow man or one of our fellowmen or fellowwomen is a doctor or enchanter, who snaps the staunch iron hoops that bind us, thaws the fatal frost, & sets all the particles dancing each round each. He must be inestimable to us to whom we can say what we cannot say to ourselves.

However, as you see above, all that “concentration on the moment” meant for Emerson here subsequent to his conversation with Thoreau was concentration on what could be accomplished as opposed to what could not, a focusing on “the thing doable.” We can infer that, if Thoreau had said anything in that conversation to Emerson about his mysticism of the eternally presented instant, using terms such as “concentration on the moment” –if that is why these terms appear in Emerson’s journal report of the conversation– then there had been no comprehension on Emerson’s part of what Thoreau had been offering to him, but instead what had occurred was a leveling down of wisdom into what amounts to not only a conventional but also a mediocre platitude.

The Andover Academy student John Albee had been invited to pay a visit to Concord, Massachusetts and spent a significant evening with Emerson and his family, and with Thoreau (if this visit indeed occurred during May 1852, it must have been of greater significance to Albee than to either Emerson or Thoreau; one may search in vain in Thoreau’s journal for any indication as to on what particular evening this occurred, nor does the Borst day-to-day chronicle offer a single suggestion; it occurs to me therefore that this may have been a misremembering, and that the visit in question had actually happened while Albee was a Divinity School student, perhaps as late as 1858; it is a fact that Albee characterized Thoreau as the author of two books although in 1852 he had been the author of but one). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau was already there [at the Emerson house]. I think he had ended his experiment at Walden Pond some years before. Thoreau was dressed, I remember, in a plain, neat suit of dark clothes, not quite black. He had a healthy, out-of-door appearance, and looked like a respectable husbandman. He was rather silent; when he spoke, it was in either a critical or a witty vein. I did not know who or what he was; and I find in my old diary of the day that I spelled his rare name phonetically, and heard afterward that he was a man who had been a hermit. I observed that he was much at home with Emerson; and as he remained through the afternoon and evening, and I left him still at the fireside, he appeared to me to belong in some way to the household. I observed also that Emerson continually deferred to him and seemed to anticipate his view, preparing himself obviously for a quiet laugh at Thoreau’s negative and biting criticisms, especially in regard to education and educational institutions. He was clearly fond of Thoreau; but whether in a human way, or as an amusement, I could not then make out. Dear, indeed, as I have since learned, was Thoreau to that household, where his memory is kept green, where Emerson’s children still speak of him as their elder brother. In the evening Thoreau devoted himself wholly to the children and the parching of corn by the open fire. I think he made himself very entertaining to them. Emerson was talking to me, and I was only conscious of Thoreau’s presence as we are of those about us but not engaged with us. A very pretty picture remains in my memory of Thoreau leaning over the fire with a fair girl on either side, which somehow did not comport with the subsequent story I heard of his being a hermit.... As soon as I could I introduced the problem I came to propound — what course a young man must take to get the best kind of education. Emerson pleaded always for the college; said he himself entered at fourteen. This aroused the wrath of Thoreau, who would not allow any good to the college course. And here it seemed to me Emerson said things on purpose to draw Thoreau’s fire and to amuse himself. When the curriculum at Cambridge was alluded to, and Emerson casually remarked that most of the branches were taught there, Thoreau seized one of his opportunities and replied: “Yes, indeed, all the branches and none of the roots.” At this Emerson laughed heartily. So without conclusions, or more light than the assertions of two representative men can give, I heard agitated for an hour my momentous question.... HDT WHAT? INDEX

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He [Emerson] said we needed some great poets, orators. He was always looking out for them, and was sure the new generation of young men would contain some. Thoreau here remarked he had found one, in the woods, but it had feathers and had not been to Harvard College. Still it had a voice and an aerial inclination, which was pretty much all that was needed. “Let us cage it,” said Emerson. “That is just the way the world always spoils its poets,” responded Thoreau. Then Thoreau, as usual, had the last word; there was a laugh, in which for the first time he joined heartily, as the perquisite of the victor.

HENRY THOREAU WALDO EMERSON JOHN ALBEE

(By his own admission Albee would not sight Thoreau again until he would witness, from one of the 1,500 comfortable seats of the Boston Music Hall on Winter Street near the Tremont Temple, the delivery of the famous Sunday address in regard to Captain John Brown, which Thoreau was asked by telegram to deliver because of the unavailability of the scheduled speaker, Frederick Douglass.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 12, Saturday, 1852: Waldo Emerson to his journal after a walk in which Ellery Channing was displaying a superficial Thoreauvianism:

Yesterday a walk with Ellery C. to the Lincoln Mill-Brook, to Nine Acre Corner, & Conantum. It was the first right day of summer. Air, cloud, river, meadow, upland, mountain, all were in their best. We took a swim at the outlet of the little brook BAKER FARM at Baker-Farm. Ellery is grown an accomplished Professor of the Art of Walking, & leads like an Indian. He likes the comic surprise of his botanic information which is so suddenly enlarged. Since he knew Thoreau, he carries a little pocket- book, in which he affects to write down the name of each new plant or the first day on which he finds the flower. He admires viburnum & cornel, & despises dooryards with foreign shrubs.

JAMES BAKER

The period in Henry Thoreau’s life which he would describe in WALDEN in the following section clearly postdates the sojourn on Walden Pond, appearing for the 1st time as of Draft E in the late 1852-1853 timeframe and describing a period during which Channing was residing on Main Street opposite the Thoreaus. I am therefore taking the risk of including the material here, as probably pertaining to the activities of this particular summer season:

[following screen] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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WALDEN: SOMETIMES I had a companion in my fishing, who came through the village to my house from the other side of the town, and the catching of the dinner was as much a social exercise as the eating of it. Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing now. I have not heard so much as a locust over the sweet-fern these three hours. the pigeons are all asleep upon their roosts, –no flutter from them. Was that a farmer’s noon horn which sounded from beyond the woods just now? The hands are coming in to boiled salt beef and cider and Indian bread. Why will men worry themselves so? He that does not eat need not work. I wonder how much they have reaped. Who would live there where a body can never think for the barking of Bose? And O, the housekeeping! to keep bright the devil’s door-knobs, and scour his tubs this bright day! Better not keep a house. Say, some hollow tree; and then for morning calls and dinner-parties! Only a woodpecker tapping. O, they swarm; the sun is too warm there; they are born too far into life for me. I have water from the spring, and a loaf of brown bread on the shelf. –Hark! I hear a rustling of the leaves. Is it some ill-fed village hound yielding to the instinct of the chase? or the lost pig which is said to be in these woods, whose tracks I saw after the rain? It comes on apace; my sumachs and sweet-briars tremble. –Eh, Mr. Poet, is it you? How do you like the world to-day? Poet. See those clouds; how they hang! That’s the greatest thing I have seen to-day. There’s nothing like it in old paintings, nothing like it in foreign lands, –unless when we were off the coast of Spain. That’s a true Mediterranean sky. I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten to-day, that I might go a-fishing. That’s the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned. Come, let’s along. Hermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon be gone. I will go with you gladly soon, but I am just concluding a serious meditation. I think that I am near the end of it. Leave me alone, then, for a while. But that we may not be delayed, you shall be digging the bait meanwhile. Angle-worms are rarely to be met with in these parts, where the soil was never fattened with manure; the race is nearly extinct. The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one’s appetite is not too keen; and this you may have all to yourself today. I would advise you to set in the spade down yonder among the ground-nuts, where you see the johnswort waving. I think that I may warrant you one worm to every three sods you turn up, if you look well in among the roots of the grass, as if you were weeding. Or, if you choose to go farther, it will not be unwise, for I have found the increase of fair bait to be very nearly as the squares of the distances. Hermit alone. Let me see; where was I? Methinks I was nearly in this frame of mind; the world lay about at this angle. Shall I go to heaven or a-fishing? If I should soon bring this meditation to an end, would another so sweet occasion be likely to offer? I was as near being resolved into the essence of things as ever I was in my life. I fear my thoughts will not come back to me. If it would do any good, I would whistle for them. When they make us an offer, is it wise to say, We will think of it? My thoughts have left no track, and I cannot find the path again. What was it that I was thinking of? It was a very hazy day. I will just try these three sentences of Con-fut-see; they may fetch that state about again. I know not whether it was the dumps or a budding ecstasy. Mem.There never is but one opportunity of a kind. Poet. How now, Hermit, is it too soon? I have got just thirteen whole ones, beside several which are imperfect undersized; but they will do for the smaller fry; they do not cover up the hook so much. Those village worms are quite too large; a shiner may make a meal off one without finding the skewer. Hermit. Well, then, let’s be off. Shall we to the Concord? There’s good sport there if the water be not too high. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Boys are bathing at Hubbard’s Bend playing with a boat. (I at the willows) The color of their bodies in the sun at a distance is pleasing, the not often seen flesh color— I hear the sound of their sport borne over the water. As yet we have not man in nature. What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties.— A pale pink which the sun would soon tan. White men! There are no white men to contrast with the red & the black—they are of such colors as the weaver gives them. I wonder that the dog knows his master when he goes in to bathe & does DOG not stay by his clothes. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Henry T. rightly said, the other evening, talking of lightning- rods, that the only rod of safety was in the vertebrae of his own spine.

Also:

What Aeschylus will translate our heaventempting politics into a warning ode, strophe & antistrophe? A slave, son of a member of Congress, flees from the plantation-whip to Boston, is snatched by the marshal, is rescued by the citizens; an excited population; a strong chain is stretched around the Court House. Webster telegraphs from Washington urgent orders to prosecute rigorously. Whig orators & interests intervene. Whig wisdom of waiting to be last devoured. Slave is caught, tried, marched at midnight under guard of marshals & pike & sword-bearing police to Long Wharf & embarked for Baltimore. “Thank-God-Choate” thanks God five times in one speech; Boston thanks God. Presidential Election comes on. Webster triumphant, Boston sends a thousand rich men to Baltimore: Convention meets: Webster cannot get one vote, from Baltimore to the Gulf — not one. The competitor is chosen. The Washington wine sour, dinners disturbed. The mob at Washington turns out, at night, to exult in Scott’s election. Goes to Webster’s house & raises an outcry for Webster to come out & address them. He resists; the mob is violent — will not be refused. He is obliged to come in his night-shirt, & speak from his window to the riff-raff of Washington in honor of the election of Scott. Pleasant conversation of the Boston delegation on their return home! The cars unusually swift. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

Also:

A man avails much to us, like a point of departure to the seaman, or his stake & stones to the surveyor. I am my own man more than most men, yet the loss of a few persons would be most impoverishing — a few persons, who give flesh to what were, else, mere thoughts, and which, now, I am not at liberty to slight, or, in any manner, treat as fictions. It were too much to say that the Platonic world I might have learned to treat as PLATO cloud-land, had I not known Alcott, who is a native of that country, yet I will say that he makes it as solid as Massachusetts to me. And Thoreau gives me in flesh & blood & pertinacious Saxon belief, my own ethics. He is far more real, & daily practically obeying them, than I; and fortifies my memory at all times with an affirmative experience which refuses to be set aside.

Also:

I live a good while & acquire as much skill in literature as an old carpenter does in wood. It occurs, then, what pity, that now, when you know something, have at least learned so much good omission, your organs should fail you; your eyes, health, fire & zeal of work, should decay daily. Then I remember that it is the mind of the world which is the good carpenter, the good scholar, sailor, or blacksmith, thousand-handed, versatile, all-applicable…. In you, this rich soul has peeped, despite your horny muddy eyes, at books & poetry. Well, it took you up, & showed you something to the purpose; that there was something there. Look, look, old mole! there, straight up before you, is the magnificent Sun. If only for the instant, you see it. Well, in this way it educates the youth of the Universe; in this way, warms, suns, refines every particle; then it drops the little channel or canal, through which the Life rolled beatific —like a fossil to the ground— thus touched & educated by a moment of sunshine, to be the fairer material for future channels & canals, through which the old Glory shall dart again, in new directions, until the Universe shall have been shot through & through, tilled with light. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

Also:

Lovejoy the preacher came to Concord, & hoped Henry T. would go to hear him. “I have got a sermon on purpose for him.” — “No,” the aunts said, “we are afraid not.” Then he wished to be introduced to him at the house. So he was confronted. Then he put his hand behind Henry, tapping his back, & said, “Here’s the chap who camped in the woods.” Henry looked round, & said, “And here’s the chap who camps in a pulpit.” Lovejoy looked disconcerted, & said no more.

At some point during this year or the following one he would jot the following into his journal:

Henry Thoreau’s idea of the men he meets, is, that they are his old thoughts walking. It is all affectation to make much of them, as if he did not long since know them thoroughly.

July 18, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

H.T. makes himself characteristically the admirer of the common weeds which have been hoed at by a million farmers all spring & summer & yet have prevailed, and just now come out triumphant over all land, lanes, pastures, fields, & garden, such is their pluck & vigor. We have insulted them with low names too, pig- weed, smart-weed, red-root, lousewort, chickweed. He says that they have fine names, amaranth, ambrosia.

July 18, Sunday: 8 1/2 Am to the Sudbury Meadows in boat Peter Robbins says that the rain of yesterday has not reached the potatoes after all –exorbitant potatoes! It takes a good deal to reach them. The white lilies & the floating heart are both well open at this hour and more abundant than I have noticed them before. Like ducks the former sit on the water as far as I can see on both sides. As we push away from Monroe’s shore –the robins are singing & the swallows twittering. There is hardly a cloud in the sky. There are dewy cobwebs on the grass– So this is a fit morning for any adventure. It is one of those everlasting mornings with cobwebs on the grass which are provided for long enterprises. It is a sabbath within the water as well as in the air & on the land –and even the little pickerels not half so long as your finger appear to be keeping it holy amid PICKEREL the pads. There is a sort of dusty or mealy light on the breams tail & fins waving in clear water. The river is now in all its glory adorned with water lilies on both sides. Walkers & sailers ordinarily come hither in the afternoon BREAM –when the lilies are shut & so never see the river in its pride. They come after the exhibition is over for the day & do not suspect it. We are gliding swiftly up the river by Lee’s bend. The surface of the water is the place to see the Pontederia from for now the spikes of flowers are all brought into a dense line –a heavy line of blue a foot or more in width –on one or both sides of the river. The pontederias HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

are now in their prime –there being no withered heads, they are very freshly blue. In the sun when you are looking west they are of a violaceous blue. The lilies are in greater profusion than when we came to see them before. They appear to be too many for the insects –& we find enough untouched. Horse mint Mentha Canadensis is now out. We take a bath at Hubbard’s bend. The water seems fresher as the air in the morning. Again under weigh we scare up the great bittern amid the Pontederia –and rowing to where he alights –come within 3 feet of him & scare him up again. He flies sluggishly away ploughing the air with the coulter of his breast bone. and alighting ever higher up the stream –we scare him up many times in the course of an hour. The surface of the river is spotted with the radical leaves of the floating heart large & thin & torn –rarely whole – which something has loosened from the bottom. The larks & blackbirds & king-birds are heard in the meadows. But few button bushes are in blossom yet. Are they dark brown weed like fibrous roots of the plant itself that invest its stems below? Harmless bright downy clouds form in the atmosphere on every side & sail the heavens. After passing Hubbard’s Bridge –looking up the smooth river between the rows of button bushes willows & pads –we see the sun shining on Fair Haven Hill behind a sun born cloud –while we are in shadow –a misty golden light –yellow fern-like with shadows of clouds flitting across its slope –and horses in their pasture standing with outstretched necks to watch us & now they dash up the steep in single file as if to exhibit their limbs & mettle– The carcass of a cow which has recently died lies on the sandy shore under Fair Haven –close to the water– –Perhaps she was poisoned with the water parsnip which is now in flower & abounds along the side of the river– We have left the dog in the middle of Fair Haven bay swimming in our wake –while we are rowing past Lee’s & we see no more of him. How simple are the ornaments of a farm-house! To one rowing past in the middle of a warm summer day –a well at a distance from the house in the shadow of an oak –as here –is a charming sight. The house too with no yard but an open lawn sloping to the river. And young turkies seen wandering in the grass & ever & anon hopping up as if a snake had scared them. The pontederias are alive with butterflies. Here is a fisherman’s willow pole left to mark a lucky place –with green shoots at the top– The other day I noticed that neighbor Gorman’s willow bean poles had grown more than his beans. We now go through the narrow gut at the bend near the town bound. A comfortable day– Methinks we shall have no torrid blazing dry heats after this –but muggy dog-dayish weather tempered by mists & shadows of fogs, the evaporation of vegetation? The nights too can be decidedly cool. No one has ever put into words what the odor of water lilies expresses. A sweet & innocent purity. The perfect purity of the flower is not to be surpassed. They now begin to shut up. Looking toward the sun I cannot see them –cannot distinguish lilies from the sun –reflected from the pads. Thus we go on into the Sudbury meadows opening the hills. The near hills even have a misty blueness –a liquid one like a field of oats yet green– Both wish now to face up stream & see the hills open. The Peltandra Virginica (Calla) which I saw well budded opposite the pantry July 1st has flowered & curved downward into the water & mud –but I observe other flowers to come. The columbine lingers still. The red eye sings at noon –& the song sparrow The bobolink I do not hear of late –not since this fall-like –late-feeling weather. Now the fogs have begun in mid summer– And mid haying time. We go inland to the Jenkins house spring –through the handsome oak grove white & black (?) 8 or 9 of them on the further edge of the meadow where the haymakers path comes in. Strawberries are still occasionally found in meadows. The cerasus Virginiana or choke cherry is turning –nearly ripe. We sit on the edge of the hill at the Jenkins house looking Northward over a retired dell in the woods –an unfrequented Johnswort & blackberry field –surrounded by a deep forest –with several tall white pines against the horizon –a study of which you would never tire. The swallows twitter over head –the locust we know not where is z-ing & the huckleberry bird [Field Sparrow Spizella pusilla] is heard on the birches. The ground under the apple tree where we lie is strewn with small sun- baked apples –but we are not yet reminded of apples. When I think of the London times & the reviews here the review des deux mondes –& of the kind of life which it is possible to live here –I perceive that this the natural side has not got into literature– Think of an essay on human life through all which was heard the note of the huckleberry bird still ringing –as here it rings ceaselessly. As if it were the muse invoked.! The Reveu des deux Mondes does not embrace this view of things, nor imply it.Which Neottia have I found? In the front & lowest rank –the narrow leaved polygonum in the river I see a flower or two beginning. The farmers have cut some meadow hay here In the broader meadows the river winds the most– Where there are no iron bound rocky hills to constrain it– Through all these Sudbury meadows it is a perfect meander –where no wind will serve the sailer long. It is a luxury to sit sailing or rowing here & look off to the hills at the deep shadows of the trees in which the cattle stand. We land on the left half a mile above Sherman’s bridge –ramble to the “sand” & poplars –where I picked up two arrowheads– The spergula arvensis Corn spurrey which has long been in blossom –the raphanus raphanistrum wild radish– The Lycopus sinuatus horehound. Here is a horse who keeps the hill top for the breeze. We push still further up the river into the great meadow– Scaring the bitterns –the largest & the next in size. In many parts of the river the pickerel weed is several rods wide –its blueness akin to the misty blue air which paints the hills– You thin it by rising in the boat you thicken or deepen it by sitting low. (When we looked from the hills there was a general sheeny light from the broad level meadow –from the bent grass –watered –as HDT WHAT? INDEX

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it were with darker streaks where a darker grass the pipes &c bordered the for the most part concealed river.) The lilies are shut. First on the edge of the bright river in the sun in this great meadow are the pads –then the pontederia or polygonum –then the bull rushes standing in dense squadrons –or pipes or meadow grass then the broad heavens in which small downy clouds are constantly forming & dissolving– No fear of rain. The sky is a pretty clear blue –yet not such a skimmed milk blue methinks as in winter –some cream left in the milk– I cannot believe that any of these dissolving cloudlets will be rain bow tinged –or mother-o’ pearled– I observe that even in these meadows where no willows nor button-bushes line the shore –there is still a pretty constant difference between the shores. The border of pontederia is rarely of equal depth on both sides at once –but it keeps that side in the meander where the sediment is deposited– the shortest course which will follow the shore– as I have dotted it –crossing from this side to that as the river meanders –for on the longest side the river is active not passive –wearing into the bank –& runs there more swiftly– This is the longest line of blue that nature paints with flowers in our fields –though the lupines may have been more densely blue within a small compass– Thus by a natural law a river instead of flowing straight through its meadows –meanders –from side to side –& fertilizes this side or that & adorns its banks with flowers. The river has its active & its passive side –its right & left breast– Return– There is a grand view of the river from the Hill near Rices. The outlines of this hill as you ascend it & its various swells are very grateful –closely grazed with a few shade-trees on its sides. You look far S over the gulf meadow & N also. The meadow grass seen from this side has no sheen on it. Round Hill is a mathematical curve – The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge. The brasenia peltata or water shield which was budded July 1st is now in blossom –obscure reddish blossoms. To what plant does that elliptical pad belong whose lobes lap more than 1/2 inch –3 inches long & stem lenticular on a cross section? Does the Kalmiana so vary? What kind of lettuce (or Nabalus?) is that with triangular hastate leaves –reddish stem and apparently whitish flowers now budded? When near home –just before sun-down a little after (7-10) the sun still inconveniently warm –we were surprised to observe on the uppermost point of each pontederia leaf a clear drop of dew already formed –or flowing down the leaf— — where all seemed still warmth & dryness –also as often hanging from the lobes below– It appeared a wonderful chemistry by which this broad leaf had collected this pearly drop on its uppermost extremety. The sun –had no soon sunk behind the willows & the button-bushes than this process commenced. And now we see a slight stem like smoke rising from amidst the pontederias. In half an hour the river & the meadows are white with fog like a frosted cake. As you stand on the bank in the twilight –it suddenly moves up in sprayey clouds –moved by an unfelt wind and invests you where you stand –its battallions of mists reaching even to the road. But there is less in the morning. Every poet has trembled on the verge of science. Got green grapes to stew HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 3, Tuesday: Louisa Hawthorne’s corpse, which had been recovered by divers, was buried. Waldo Emerson’s comment was:

Who knows which is the shortest & most excellent way out of the calamities of the present world?

That’s quite a comment to make over the corpse of a person who had needed to choose between the impossible alternatives of leaping into deep, swift-flowing waters, or being scorched to death! –Was Waldo venturing an opinion that Louisa, in her panic, leaping from the into those dark waters, had in effect been selecting the shorter and more excellent way, drowning, and deselecting the longer and less excellent way, burning? – I do not understand this. What the holy hell are we supposed to make of such a comment?

August 18, Wednesday: On about this date, having apparently learned that the sculptor Horatio Greenough, who had had the temerity to attack him, had been institutionalized and was dying of some sort of brain problem in Somerville, Massachusetts (site of McLean’s Asylum), Waldo Emerson confided to his JOURNAL with evident satisfaction that:

Greenough called my contemplations, &c. “the masturbation of the brain.”

(Well, Waldo, he who laughs last, laughs best, right?) MASTURBATION

August 18: 3 Pm To Joe Clarks & Hibiscus bank. I cannot conceive how a man can accomplish any thing worthy of him – unless his very breath is sweet to him. He must be particularly alive. As if a man were himself & could work well only at a certain rare crisis. The river HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

is full of weeds The hypericum mutilum small flowered has in some places turned wholly red on the shore. There is indeed some thing royal about the month of august. It is a more ingrained & perhaps more tropical GOD IN CONCORD by Jane Langton © 1992 Penguin Books USA Inc. 50 There is indeed something royal about the month of August. Journal, August 18, 1852 Viking Penguin

Roger Bland’s campaign letter was ready, but Jo-Jo Field knew better than to send it out. Too many Concord people ISBN 0-670-84260-5 — PS3562.A515G58

heat than that of July. Though hot it is not so suffocating & unveiled a blaze – the vapors in the air temper it somewhat– But we have had some pretty cool weather with a week or two–& the evenings generally are cooler. As I go over the hill behind Hunt’s The N river has a glassy stillness & smoothness – seen through the smoky haze that fills the air – and has the effect of a film on the water– So that it looks stagnant. No mts can be seen. The locust is heard –the fruits are ripening –ripe apples here & there scent the air. Huckleberries probably have begun to spoil. I see those minute yellow coccoons on the grass. Hazel nuts methinks it is time to gather them if you would anticipate the squirrels. The clematis & mikania belong to this month – filling the crevices and rounding the outline of leafy banks & hedges. Perceived today & some weeks since Aug 3d the strong invigorating aroma of green walnuts – astringent & bracing to the spirits the fancy & imagination – suggesting a tree that has its roots well in amid the bowels of nature. Their shells are in fact & from associating exhilirating to smell – suggesting a strong nutty native vigor. A fruit which I am glad that our zone produces – looking like the nutmeg of the east. I acquire some of the hardness & elasticity of the hickory when I smell them. They are among our spices.– High scented aromatic as you bruise one against another in your hand almost like nutmegs – only more bracing – & northern – fragrant stones which the trees bear. The hibiscus flowers are seen 1/4 of a mile off over the water –l ike large roses – now that these high colors are rather rare. Some are exceedingly delicate & pale almost white, just rose tinted – others a brighter pink or rose color – and all slightly plaited (the 5 large petals–) & turned toward the sun now in the west trembling in the wind. so much color looks very rich in these localities The flowers are some 4 inches in diameter as large as water lilies – rising amid & above the button bushes & willows – with a large light-green tree-like leaf – and a stem 1/2 inch in diameter, ap. dying down to a perennial ? root each year. A superb –flower –where it occurs it is, certainly next to the white lily–, if not equally with it, the most splendid ornament of the river. Looking up the gleaming river reflecting the august sun– The round topped silvery white maples, the glossy leaved swamp white oaks, the etherial and buoyant salix purshiana – the first and last resting on the water & giving the river a full appearance–& the hibiscus flowers adorning the shores – contrasting with the green across the river – close to the water’s edge – the meadows being just shorne – all make a perfect august scene. Here is the place where the hayers cross the river with their loads. as I made excursions on the river when the white lilies were in bloom so now I should make a hibiscus excursion– Rudbeckia laciniata Sunflower like Tall Cone-flower behind Joe Clark’s Symphytum officinale common comfrey by Dakin pumpmaker’s. The cerastium viscosum which I saw months ago still. And the ovate heads of the tall anemone gone to seed. Linum usitatissimum common flax with a pretty large & pretty blue flower in the yard. Rumex obtusifolius – for weeks HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

ap. Elizabeth Hoar shows me the following plants which she brought from the Wht Mts the 16th ult. Chiogenes hispidula? creeping snow-berry also called Gaultheria & also vaccinium hispidula – in fruit. –with a partridge berry scent & taste. Taxus Canadensis Ground hemlock with red cup shaped berries very handsome & remarkably like wax or red marble. Platanthera orbiculata remarkable for its watery shining leaves flat on the ground while its spike of flowers rises perpendicular – suggesting as she said repose & steadiness amid the prostrate trunks–& you could not avoid seeing it any more than a child in blossom. Oxalis acetosella in blossom Arenaria Groenlandica also in bloom in tufts like houstonia. Lonicera ciliata probably with a double red fruit. She also brought Lichens & mosses & convallaria berries which she gathered at the flume in Franconia – the latter red ripe hanging from the axils of the leaves – affected me – reminding me of the progress of autumn in the north – & the other two were a very fit importation still dripping with the moisture the water of the flume. It carries you indeed into the primitive wood. To think how in those wild woods now hang these wild berries in grim solitude as of yore – already scenting their autumn– A thousand years ago this convallaria growing there – its berries turning red as now & its leaves acquiring an autumnal tint. Lichens & mosses enough to cover a waiter still dripping with the watter of the flume – is not that a true specimen of it? J Stacy says that 50 years ago his father used to blow his fire with onion stems– Thinks there have been great improvements. But then as I hear there was a bellows maker in the town. Is not that the aster umbellatus which I found by the lygodium? ELIZABETH SHERMAN HOAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

September: An unsigned reviewer in the Christian Examiner in effect called Nathaniel Hawthorne not a fictioner but a liar. For Hawthorne, in the preface to his THE SCARLET LETTER, had adverted that he had in his possession “historical papers which authenticate the story,” a story which involved “the gross and slanderous imputation that the colleague pastor of the First Church in Boston, who preached the Election Sermon in the year after the death of Governor Winthrop, was a mean and hypocritical adulterer,” which is an “outrageous fiction ... utterly without foundation” that could easily “deceive a reader who had no exact knowledge of our history.”

NOT A RELIABLE HISTORIAN

Meanwhile, Ticknor & Co. of Boston was publishing THE LIFE OF , a Democratic candidate campaign biography. They were actually printing more copies of Hawthorne’s tendentious campaign materials than of any book they had previously issued. Most of the copies were paperback (that is, lacking hard covers) 37 1 and were to retail at $0. /2 each.

Evidently in this timeframe (his cover note is undated), Henry Thoreau wrote to H.G.O. Blake, enclosing draft essays on “Love” and on “Chastity & Sensuality” in response to a letter which Blake had sent to him about his trepidations on his pending marriage. These were essays he had been working on since 1846. It would appear that part of what he sent was torn out of his manuscript notebooks during his writing process, rather than copied. Unfortunately, Thoreau also had evidently made the mistakes of asking advice in this regard from his married friend Waldo Emerson, and of allowing Waldo to see Blake’s letter, for we find the following caustic remark in Emerson’s journal:

H.D.T. read me a letter from Blake to himself, yesterday, by which it appears that Blake writes to ask his husband for leave to marry a wife.

Mr. Blake, Here come the sentences — which I promised y[o]u[ ]You may keep HDT WHAT? INDEX

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them if you will regard & use them as the disconnected fragments of what I may find to be a completer essay, on looking over my journal at last, and may claim again. I send you the thoughts on chastity and sensuality with diffidence and shame, not knowing how far I speak to the condition of men generally, or how far I betray my peculiar defects. Pray enlighten me on this point if you can. Henry D. Thoreau LOVE CHASTITY AND SENSUALITY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October: At about this point Waldo Emerson recorded in his journal a remark that Henry Thoreau had made:

Thoreau remarks that the cause of Freedom advances, for all the able debaters now are freesoilers.

He also recorded that:

Last Sunday I was at Plymouth on the beach, & looked across the hazy water —whose spray was blowing on to the hills & orchards— to Marshfield. I supposed, Webster must have passed, as indeed he had died at 3 in the morning. The sea, the rocks, the woods, gave no sign that America & the world had lost the completest man. Nature had not in our days, or, not since Napoleon, cut out such a masterpiece. He brought the strength of a savage into the height of culture. He was a a man in equilibrio. A man within & without, the strong & perfect body of the first ages, with the civility & thought of the last. “Os, oculosque Jovi par.” [“A mouth and eyes equal to Jove.”] And, what he brought, he kept. Cities have not hurt him, he held undiminished the power & terror of his strength, the majesty of his demeanour. He had a counsel in his breast. He was a statesman, & not the semblance of one. Most of our statesmen are in their places by luck & vulpine skill, not by any fitness. Webster was there for cause: the reality; the final person, who had to answer the questions of all the faineants, & who had an answer. But alas! he was the victim of his ambition; to please the South betrayed the North, and was thrown out by both. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November??: Waldo Emerson to his journal, about having observed Professor Louis Agassiz on the train:

The Democrats carry the country, because they have more virility: just as certain of my neighbors rule our little town, quite legitimately, by having more courage & animal force than those whom they overbear. It is a kind of victory like that of gravitation over all upraised bodies, sure, though it lie in wait for ages for them. I saw in the cars a broad featured unctuous man, fat & plenteous as some successful politician, & pretty soon divined it must be the foreign Professor, who has had so marked a success in all our scientific & social circles, having established unquestionable leadership in them all — and it was Agassiz.

Winter: In this timeframe, Waldo Emerson was musing to his journal:

’Tis said that the age ends with the poet or successful man, who knots up into himself the genius or idea of his nation; and, that, when the Jews have at last flowered perfectly into Jesus, there is the end of the nation. When Greece is complete in Plato, Phidias, Pericles, the race is spent & rapidly takes itself away. When Rome has arrived at Caesar & Cicero, it has no more that it can do & retreats. When Italy has got out dante, all the rest will be rubbish. So that we ought rather to be thankful that our hero or poet does not hasten to be born in America, but still allows us others to live a little, & warm ourselves at the fire of the sun, for, when he comes, we others must pack our petty trunks, & begone. But I say that Saxendom is tough & manyheaded, & does not so readily admit of absorption & being sucked & vampyrized by a Representative as fluider races. For have not the English stood Chaucer? stood Shakspeare? & Milton, & Newton? & survived unto this day with more diffusion of ability, with a larger number of able gentlemen in all departments of work than any nation ever had?

GEOFFREY CHAUCER WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE JOHN MILTON ISAAC NEWTON HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1853

At the end of the journal entries for this year, Waldo Emerson listed his recent readings in Oriental materials: “Thomas Taylor; Firdousi, Shah Nameh.” At some point during this year or the following one, Waldo Emerson would register his famous notation about “Motherwit”:

Motherwit. Dr Johnson, Milton, Chaucer, & Burns had it. Unless we had Boswell, we should hardly know how to account for Johnson’s fame, his wit is so muffled & choked in his scholastic style. Yet it animates that, and makes his opinions real. Aunt Mary M.E. has it, & can write scrap letters. Who has it, need never write anything but scraps. H.D. Thoreau has it.

January: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

At Alton, we took the train for Springfield, 72 miles. Senator Breese & Mr Young of U.S. Congress, Gov. Edwards, & other railroad men were in the train, & made an agreeable party in the baggage car, where they had a box of brandy, a box of buffalo tongues, & a box of soda biscuit. They showed me eight or ten deer flying across the prairie, with their white tails erect, disturbed by the train; then, presently, one who stood & looked at us; then a fire on the prairie. The corn was not yet gathered, & a farmer told us, that they had not yet been able to get upon the land to gather it — too much mud for horse & wagon. It does not usually get all gathered until March. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

January/March: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Dr Kirkland & Professor Brazer mutually resolved one day to break off smoking for six months. Soon after, they met at a dinner party at Col. P.’s, where all appointments were excellent. Segars were offered, & Brazer declined them. Dr Kirkland lighted one, & after smoking with much content for a time, he said to nobody in particular, as he puffed away the smoke — It is doubtful, whether we show more want of self control in breaking good resolutions, or self-conceit in keeping them.

CIGARS

Walk with Ellery to Lincoln. Benzoin lauris, rich beautiful shrub in this dried up country. Particolored warbler. E. laughed at Nuttall’s description of birds: “on the top of a high tree the bird pours all day the lays of affection,” &c. Affection! Why what is it? a few feathers, with a hole at one end, & a point at the other, & with a pair of wings: affection! Why just as much affection as there is in that lump of peat. Thoreau is at home; why he has got to maximize the minimum; that will take him some days. We went to Bear Hill & had a fine outlook. Descending E. got sight of some labourers in the field below. Look at them, he said, those four! for daemoniacs scratching in their cell of pain! Live for the hour. Just as much as any man has done, or laid up, in any way, unfits him for conversation. He has done something, makes him good for boys, but spoils him for the hour. That’s the good of Thoreau, that he puts his whole sublunary stock into the last quarter of an hour; carries his whole stock under his arm. At home, I found H.T. himself who complained of [A.H.] Clough [a poet] or somebody that he or they recited to every one at table the paragraph just read by him & then by them in the latest newspaper & studiously avoided every thing private. I should think he was complaining of one H.D.T. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February: In this month, or the previous month, or the subsequent one, Waldo Emerson made a remark in his journal by which we can see that the gentleman was indeed aware that what Henry Thoreau was trying to tell to him, and trying to demonstrate to him, had something to do with being unlike field hands, in that these laborers exchange their time and efforts for a reward not present in the work itself but what Thoreau was recommending was that we put our whole sublunary stock into the last quarter of an hour and carry that whole stock under our arm. You can also see from this extract that the whole thing was rather an irritation to Emerson, for he had to have a grudging respect for the sort of man it makes of Thoreau, and yet he needed to mock it not only through the use of distancing humor (the use of the word “sublunary,” the image of Thoreau carrying everything in his life “under his arm,” the portrayal of Thoreau as a mere negative complainer, the portrayal of Thoreau as an unconscious person whose complaints about others identify his own faults without his realizing how ridiculous this makes him appear) but also, by Emerson’s deployment of phrases such as “Live for the hour,” the worthy advice Thoreau needed to offer about our lives being a present thing was conflated with unworthy advice of the rank of “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die”:

Walk with Ellery to Lincoln. Benzoin lauris, rich beautiful shrub in this dried up country. Particolored warbler. E. laughed at Nuttall’s description of birds: “on the top of a high tree the bird pours all day the lays of affection,” &c. Affection! Why what is it? a few feathers, with a hole at one end, & a point at the other, & with a pair of wings: affection! Why just as much affection as there is in that lump of peat. Thoreau is at home; why he has got to maximize the minimum; that will take him some days. We went to Bear Hill & had a fine outlook. Descending E. got sight of some labourers in the field below. Look at them, he said, those four! for daemoniacs scratching in their cell of pain! Live for the hour. Just as much as any man has done, or laid up, in any way, unfits him for conversation. He has done something, makes him good for boys, but spoils him for the hour. That’s the good of Thoreau, that he puts his whole sublunary stock into the last quarter of an hour; carries his whole stock under his arm. At home, I found H.T. himself who complained of Arthur Hugh Clough [a poet] or somebody that he or they recited to every one at table the paragraph just read by him & then by them in the latest newspaper & studiously avoided every thing private. I should think he was complaining of one H.D.T. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 22, Tuesday: According to Anita Haya Patterson’s FROM EMERSON TO KING: DEMOCRACY, RACE, AND THE POLITICS OF PROTEST (NY: Oxford UP, 1997, page 132), at this point Emerson’s journal indicates the manner in which Waldo Emerson was receiving the only influence which he would ever be capable of receiving from the mind of Karl Marx, by way of an unfortunately ambiguous remark in an article on “Forced Emigration” for the New-York Daily Tribune:

Fate. “The classes & the races too weak to master the new conditions of life must give way.” Correspondent of the Tribune — Karl Marx.

Although this is the only point at which our smiling guy, Sage of Concord, would pay attention to Marx, it is, unfortunately, not the only point at which he would pay tribute to what we would now term Social Darwinism. Patterson merely goes on to point up the fact that although Emerson, like so many of his contemporaries who were presuming their own race to be inherently and intrinsically superior, was wont to speculate bloodily that the inferior races would most likely be exterminated, this is far from all the information and guidance that we might extrapolate from these foul droppings of his pen — if we can bring ourselves to pay careful attention: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The sheer weight of evidence that proves the fact of Waldo Emerson’s racism is disturbing. However, we would miss the focus of this discussion –namely, the historical function of racism in Emerson’s writings– were we simply to dismiss him for exhibiting the racist perceptions of his time.... Emerson’s racism is central to his vision of American nationality — a compelling, myopic vision that must be viewed in the context of a violent policy of westward expansion that prevailed in nineteenth-century America. In NATURE, Emerson’s unmistakable reference to the raciality of the American self allows him to situate that self at the brink of egocentric absolutism: at the same time he expresses a near disavowal of human society represented by ties to the liberal-democratic state in NATURE, Emerson’s racist imagination of the white, male body of Columbus is a framework for social cohesion. For Emerson, race functions to express both a threat to and an affirmation of social order. Generally speaking, Emerson’s racist vision of the representative self is essential for his articulation of a call to revolution — what Henry Thoreau (and, much later, [the Reverend] Martin Luther King, Jr.) would designate as “civil disobedience.”

“Waldo Emerson’s profound racism abated over time, but it never disappeared, always hovering in the background and clouding his democratic vision. Like all too many of his fellow intellectuals, throughout his life and works Emerson remained convinced that the characteristics that made the United States, for all its flaws, the great nation of the world were largely the product of its Saxon heritage and history. Here, alas, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s democratic imagination largely failed him.” — Peter S. Field HDT WHAT? INDEX

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YOU SEE, I’M A WHITE MAN HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Feuer, Lewis. “Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Reference to Karl Marx.” New England Quarterly 33 (Summer 1960): 378-9 “A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”

In a frighteningly short article, Lewis Feuer points out the only reference of Waldo Emerson to Karl Marx that can be found in his journals. Quoting from am article in the New-York Daily Tribune written by Marx in the spring of 1853, Emerson writes: Fate: “The classes and races too weak to master the new conditions of life must give way” — Karl Marx. Unfortunately, Feuer makes no attempt to speculate on the possible influence of Marx on Emerson or vice-versa and seems to write the article only to show that such a reference does exist. (Stephen R. Webb, 1986)

Nicoloff, Philip. EMERSON ON RACE AND HISTORY. NY: Columbia UP: 1961. 315 pages “A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”

Chapter V — ”The Scientific Sources”: In Nicoloff’s sections on “The Doctrine of Permanent Racial Differences” and “The Racial Dialect” he discusses Waldo Emerson’s racial theory. Emerson, along with most people in the mid-nineteenth century, accepted the theory that basic differences existed in the various races and that some races were inferior to others. Robert Chambers advanced the hypothesis that “leading characters… of the various races of mankind are simply representations of particular stages in the development of the highest or Caucasian type.” And Emerson believed that these differences “sanctioned the dominion and advance of the superior types.” Thus the European races (Germans, English, and French) were succeeding in America while the Irish and Blacks were being “carted over America, to ditch and to drudge, to make corn cheap and then to lie down prematurely to make a spot of green grass on the prairie.” In his “Address” on the West India emancipation he claims that if “the black man is feeble and not important to the existing races, not on a parity with the best race, the black man must serve, and be exterminated.” However on the next page he says that no race could be perfect so long as another race was degraded. Nicoloff concludes that Emerson was not a “radical racist”; he did not believe in race war. Instead he philosophically resigned himself to the belief that races could not be preserved beyond their term. In his journal he quotes Karl Marx: “The classes and the races too weak to master the new conditions of life must give way.” To become civilized, Emerson believed, a race needed “primitive energies” and “a strong savage element” which the Black and American Indian lacked. (Katherine A. O’Meara, May 1, 1989) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 22: 6 A.M. –To Cliffs. There is a white frost on the ground. One robin really sings on the elms. Even the cockerel crows with new lustiness. Already I hear from the railroad the plaintive strain of a lark or two. They sit now conspicuous on the bare russet ground. The tinkling bubbles of the song sparrow are wafted from distant fence-posts, –little rills of song that begin to flow and tinkle as soon as the frost is out of the ground. The blackbird tries to sing, as it were with a bone in his throat, or to whistle and sing at once. Whither so fast, the restless creature, –chuck chuck, at every rod, and now and then whistle-ter-ee? The chill-lill of the blue snow-birds is heard again. A partridge [Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus (Partridge)] goes off on Fair Haven Hillside with a sudden whir like the wad of a six-pounder, keeping just level with the tops of the sprouts. These birds and quails go off like a report.... The tapping of the woodpecker, rat-tat-tat, knocking at the door of some sluggish grub to tell him that the spring has arrived, and his fate, this is one of the season sounds, calling the roll of birds and insects, the reveille. The Cliff woods are comparatively silent. Not yet the woodland birds, except, perhaps, the woodpecker, so far as it migrates; only the orchard and river birds have arrived.

March 22: A description of animals, too, from a dead specimen only, as if, in a work on man, you were to describe a dead man only, omitting his manners and customs, his institutions and divine faculties, from want of opportunity to observe them, suggesting, perchance, that the colors of the eye are said to be much more brilliant in the living specimen, and that some cannibal, your neighbor, who has tried him on the table, has found him to be sweet and nutritious, good on the gridiron. Having had no opportunity to observe his habits, because you do not live in the country. Only dindons and dandies. Nothing is known of his habits. Food seeds of wheat, beef, pork, and potatoes. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Spring: The 150-foot steamboat West Newton out of Fort Snelling on the Mississippi River arrived in what was going to become Nicollet County, Minnesota, farther up the Minnesota River than any such boat had previously ventured.

It carried three companies of soldiers from Forts Snelling and Dodge with their families, carpenters, and supplies for the creation of a containment fort at the edge of the newer, smaller Dakota Indian Reservation. This fort they would name Fort Ridgely in memory of three men named Ridgely who had died during the war upon Mexico, although by the Woodland Dakotas that it contained on this reservation it would be known as “The Soldiers’ House.”

It was probably during this spring that Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal about Margaret Fuller and Bronson Alcott: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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It is a bitter satire on our social order, just at present, the number of bad cases. Margaret Fuller having attained the highest & broadest culture that any American woman has possessed, came home with an Italian gentleman whom she had married, & their infant son, & perished by shipwreck on the rocks of Fire Island, off New York; and her friends said, “Well, on the whole, it was not so lamentable, & perhaps it was the best thing that could happen to her. For, had she lived, what could she have done? How could she have supported herself, her husband, & child?” And, most persons, hearing this, acquiesced in this view that, after the education had gone far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the best use to put a fine woman to, is to drown her to save her board. Well, the like or the stronger plight is that of Mr Alcott, the most refined & the most advanced soul we have had in New England, who makes all other souls appear slow & cheap & mechanical; a man of such a courtesy & greatness, that (in conversation) all others, even the intellectual, seem sharp & fighting for victory, & angry — he has the unalterable sweetness of a muse — yet because he cannot earn money by his pen or his talk, or by schoolkeeping or bookkeeping or editing or any kind of meanness — nay, for this very cause, that he is ahead of his contemporaries — is higher than they, & keeps himself out of the shop-condescensions & smug arts which they stoop to, or, unhappily, need not stoop to, but find themselves, as it were, born to — therefore, it is the unanimous opinion of New England judges that this man must die; we shall all hear of his death with pleasure, & feel relieved that his board & clothes also are saved! We do not adjudge him to hemlock, or to garrotting — we are much too hypocritical & cowardly for that; but we not less surely doom him, by refusing to protest against this doom, or combine to save him, & to set him on employments fit for him & salutary to the state, or to the Senate of fine Souls, which is the heart of the state. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 10, Friday: On this day Henry Thoreau made a remark in his journal that indicates to us that he had been reading from the 3d chapter of Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... (Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord: John Stacy, 1835)

On about this day, Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

Yesterday a ride to Bedford with Ellery, along the “Bedford Levels” & walked all over the premises of the Old Mill — King Philip’s Mill — on the Shawsheen River; old mill, with sundry nondescript wooden antiquities —Boys with bare legs were fishing on the little islet in the stream; … as we rode, one thing was clear, as oft before, that it is favorable to sanity — the occasional change of landscape. If a girl is mad to marry, let her take a ride of ten miles, & see meadows & mountains she never saw before; two villages, & an old mansion house; & the odds are, it will change all her resolutions. World is full of fools who get a-going & never stop: set them off on another tack, & they are half-cured. From Shawsheen we went to Burlington; & E. reiterated his conviction, that the only art in the world is landscape-painting. The boys held up their fish to us from far; a broad new placard on the walls announced to us that the Shawsheen-mill was for sale; but we bought neither the fish nor the mill. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June/July: Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

H. [Thoreau] seemed stubborn & implacable; always manly & wise, but rarely sweet. One would say that as Webster could never speak without an antagonist, so H. does not feel himself except in opposition. He wants a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory, requires a little sense of victory, a roll of the drums, to call his powers into full exercise. Sylvan [Thoreau] could go wherever woods & waters were & no man was asked for leave. Once or twice the farmer withstood, but it was to no purpose — he could as easily prevent the sparrows or tortoises. It was their land before it was his, & their title was precedent. S. knew what was on their land, & they did not;& he sometimes brought them ostentatiously gifts of flowers or fruits or shrubs which they would gladly have paid great prices for, & did not tell them that he took them from their own woods. Moreover the very time at which he used their land & water (for his boat glided like a trout everywhere unseen) was in hours when they were sound asleep. Long before they were awake he went up & down to survey like a sovereign his possessions, & he passed onward, & left them before the farmer came out of doors. Indeed it was the common opinion of the boys that Mr T. made Concord.

Mid-August: There is an entry in Waldo Emerson’s journal that dates to approximately this period:

H.T. sturdily pushes his economy into houses & thinks it the false mark of the gentleman that he is to pay much for his food. He ought to pay little for his food. Ice — he must have ice! And it is true, that, for each artificial want that can be invented & added to the ponderous expense, there is new clapping of hands of newspaper editors, & the donkey public. To put one more rock to be lifted betwixt a man & his true ends. If Socrates were here, we could go & talk with him; but Longfellow, we cannot go & talk with; there is a palace, & servants, & a row of bottles of different coloured wines, & wine glasses, & fine coats. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 5, Monday: Waldo Emerson to his journal, on Cape Cod:

Went to Yarmouth Sunday 5; to Orleans Monday, 6th; to Nauset Light on the back side of Cape Cod. Collins, the keeper, told us he found obstinate resistance on Cape Cod to the project of building a light house on this coast, as it would injure the wrecking business. He had to go to Boston, & obtain the strong recommendation of the Port Society. From the high hill in the rear of Higgins’s, in Orleans, I had a good view of the whole cape & the sea on both sides. The Cape looks like one of the Newfoundland banks just emerged, a huge tract of sand half- covered with poverty grass, & beach grass & for trees abele & locust & plantations of pitchpine. Some good oak, & in Dennis & Brewster were lately good trees for shiptimber & still are well wooded on the east side. But the view I speak of looked like emaciated orkneys — Mull, Islay, & so forth, made of salt dust, gravel, & fishbones. They say the Wind makes the roads, &, as far as Nantucket, a large part of the real estate was freely moving back & forth in the air. I heard much of the coming railroad which is about to reach Yarmouth & Hyannis, &, they hope, will come to Provincetown. I fancied the people were only waiting for the railroad to reach them in order to evacuate the country. For the starknakedness of the country could not be exaggerated. But no, nothing was less true. They are all attached to what they call the soil. Mr Collins had been as far as Indiana; but, he said, hill on hill — he felt stifled, & longed for the Cape, “where he could see out.” And whilst I was fancying that they would gladly give away land to anybody that would come & live there, & be a neighbor: no, they said, all real estate had risen, all over the Cape, & you could not buy land at less than 50 dollars per acre. And, in Provincetown, a lot on the Front street of forty feet square would cost 5 or 600 dollars. Still I saw at the Cape, as at Nantucket, they are a little tender about your good opinion: for if a gentleman at breakfast, says, he don’t like Yarmouth, all real estate seems to them at once depreciated 2 or 3 per cent. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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It would appear that this was traced by Thoreau himself. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

The other day, Henry Thoreau was speaking to me about my lecture on the Anglo American, & regretting that whatever was written for a lecture, or whatever succeeded with the audience was bad, &c. I said, I am ambitious to write something which all can read, like Robinson Crusoe. And when I have written a paper or a book, I see with regret that it is not solid, with a right materialistic treatment, which delights everybody. Henry objected, of course, & vaunted the better lectures which only reach a few persons. Well, yesterday, he came here, &, at supper, Edith, understanding that he was to lecture at the Lyceum, sharply asked him, “Whether his lecture would be a nice interesting story, such as she wanted to hear, or whether it was one of those old philosophical things that she did not care about?” Henry instantly turned to her, & bethought himself, & I saw was trying to believe that he had matter that might fit Edith & Edward, who were to sit up & go to the lecture, if it was a good one for them.

And also:

When some one offered Agassiz a glass of water, he said that he did not know whether he had ever drank a glass of that liquid, before he came to this country. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 3, Saturday: Waldo Emerson wrote to the Reverend Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham about his mother Ruth Haskins Emerson:

My mother was born in Boston, 9 November 1768, & had therefore completed 85 years, a week before her death. Her father Captain John Haskins whose distillery on Harrison Avenue was pulled down not many years ago was an industrious thriving man with a family of thirteen living children. He was an Episcopalian & up to the time of the Revolution a tory. My mother was bred in the English church, & always retained an affection for the Book of Common Prayer. She married in 1796 and all her subsequent family connexions were in the Congregational Church[.] At the time of her marriage her husband was settled in Harvard, Masstts. In [1799] they removed to Boston on his installation at First Church. He died in 1812 and left her with six children & without property. She kept her family together & at once adopted the only means open to her by receiving boarders into her house & by the assistance of some excellent friends, she carried four of her five sons through Harvard College. The family was never broken up until 1826, when on the death of Dr Ripleys daughter (my fathers half-sister) she accepted the Doctor’s earnest invitation to make her home at his house. She remained there until my marriage in 1830, when she came to live with me. After my housekeeping was broken up in 1832, and on my return from Europe in 1833, she went with me to Concord, & we became boarders in Doctor Ripley’s family, until I bought a house & took her home with me in 1835. This was her permanent home until her death. I hardly know what to add to these few dates. I have been in the habit of esteeming her manners & character the fruit of a past age. She was born a subject of King George, had lived through the whole existence of the Republic, remembered & described with interesting details the appearance of Washington at the Assemblies in Boston after the war, when every lady wore his name on her scarf; & had derived from that period her punctilious courtesy extended to every person, and continued to the last hour of her life. Her children as they grew up had abundant reason to thank her prudence which secured to them an education which in the circumstances was the most judicious provision that could be made for them. I remember being struck with the comment of a lady who said in my family when some debate arose about my Mother’s thrift in her time, the lady said, “Ah, but she secured the essentials. She got the children educated.”

December 3. Up river by boat to Clamshell Hill. Saw two tree sparrows [American Tree Sparrow Spizella arborea] on Monroe’s larch by the waterside. Larger than chip-birds, with more bay above and a distinct white bar on wings, not to mention bright-chestnut crown and obscure spot on breast; all beneath pale-ash. They were busily and very adroitly picking the seeds out of the larch cones. It would take man’s clumsy fingers a good while to get at one, and then only by breaking off the scales, but they picked them out as rapidly as if they were insects on the outside of the cone, uttering from time to time a faint, tinkling chip.... HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1854

At some point during this year Emerson noticed that Thoreau considered the gold rush immoral:

Thoreau thinks ’tis immoral to dig gold in California; immoral to leave creating value, & go to augmenting the representative of value,& so altering & diminishing real value, &, that, of course, the fraud will appear. I conceive that work to be as innocent as any other speculating. Every man should do what he can; & he was created to augment some real value, & not for a speculator. When he leaves or postpones (as most men do) his proper work, & adopts some short or cunning method, as of watching markets, or farming in any manner the ignorance of people, as, in buying by the acre to sell by the foot, he is fraudulent, he is malefactor, so far; & is bringing society to bankruptcy. But nature watches over all this, too, & turns this malfaisance to some good. For, California gets peopled, subdued, civilised, in this fictitious way, & on this fiction a real prosperity is rooted & grown.

The recent California emigrant John Rollin Ridge (a Cherokee also named Yellow Bird) produced a fiction entitled THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF JOAQUIN MURIETA, THE CELEBRATED CALIFORNIA BANDIT. Of course there was no such person in California, actually, as this bandito desesperado Joaquin Murieta, but of course there were banditos desesperados aplenty in the territory to which Ridge had arrived in 1850, and this native author quite like his fictional character had been driven there by a white-man goldrush of sorts84 — except that in Ridge’s real case as a native American, the “goldrush” in question had been the State-of- Georgia-sponsored rush of white citizens into the hilly Cherokee homelands. In the fiction in question, events have a catastrophic impact upon “Joaquin Murieta” and the author expresses this in a distinctively Emersonian spatial metaphor: His soul swelled beyond its former boundaries, and the barriers of honor, rocked into atoms by the strong passion which shook his heart like an earthquake, crumbled around him. Then it was he declared ... [that] he would live henceforth for revenge and that his path should be marked with blood. So, now, here below, I will supply you with the extrapolation which has been made upon this theme recently by a scholar named John Lowe in “‘I am Joaquin!’ Space and Freedom in Yellow Bird’s THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF JOAQUIN MURIETA, THE CELEBRATED CALIFORNIA BANDIT,” which is to be found as pages 104-21 in Helen Jaskoski’s EARLY NATIVE AMERICAN WRITING: NEW CRITICAL ESSAYS (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996): Joaquin’s circle of self, thwarted in its effort to grow via the traditional American way (hard work, enterprise, and democratic leadership), has burst through into a new and larger circle through the passion of anger. His vow to cut a “bloody path” through the state as he avenges the wrongs done to him and his 84. A gold nugget weighing in at a full 162 pounds was discovered in the diggings in this year. This real event would have made a better story, of course, if for instance the guy who discovered it had weighed less than it did — but he didn’t. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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family presages ever-widening circles of spatial/criminal conquest. His path echoes several principles set down in the 1840s by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his seminal essay “CIRCLES”. In one of literary Transcendentalism’s prime expressions, Emerson gives space and confinement elemental circular forms, first in the human eye and then, significantly, in nature, for the “horizon” formed by the eyes is the second circle man knows, a “primary figure” that is repeated “without end” in nature. Here and in his other essays, Emerson maps out an imperial self that properly seeks expansion and power, a process generated from and paralleled by nature itself. The concept of the self expressed by ever-expanding concentric circles has a demonic side as well; at one point in “Circles,” Emerson relates his expanding circles of self to explosive anger, the kind Ridge’s readers see expressed by Joaquin Murieta: “But the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in its first and narrowest pulses it already tends outward with a vast force and to immense and innumerable expansions.” Theories of “self-reliance” and the “imperial self” fed into the ideology of manifest destiny. These ideas would find magnificent expression in other key works of the period, particularly in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s exploration of the “magic circles” of the self in THE SCARLET LETTER (1850 ) and in Herman Melville’s critique of unleashed darker elements of Emersonian and capitalist ideology, MOBY-DICK (1851 ), books published only a few years before JOAQUIN. Although it is beyond the scope of this essay, THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF JOAQUIN MURIETA, THE CELEBRATED CALIFORNIA BANDIT surely demands to be studied alongside these books and other masterworks of what we have called the “American Renaissance,” as well as with the works of newer members of the canon such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and . HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February: According to Anita Haya Patterson’s FROM EMERSON TO KING: DEMOCRACY, RACE, AND THE POLITICS OF PROTEST (NY: Oxford UP, 1997, page 132), at about this point Waldo Emerson’s journal indicates the manner in which Emerson was exulting in the eventual victory of the biologically superior race (his own, of course):

The Unitarians, you say, are a poor skeptical egotistic shopping sect. The Calvinists serious, still darkened over by their Hebraistic dream. The Saxon race has never flowered into its own religion, but has been fain to borrow this old Hebraism of the dark race. The Latin races are at last come to a stand, & are declining. Merry England & saucy America striding far ahead. The dark man, the black man declines. The black man is courageous, but the white men are the children of God, said Plato. It will happen by & by, that the black man will only be destined for museums like the Dodo. Alcott compassionately thought that if necessary to bring them sooner to an end, polygamy might be introduced & these made the eunuchs, polygamy, I suppose, to increase the white births.

I myself consider (something which Patterson does not consider) that in this context Emerson was hinting that he and Bronson Alcott had been scheming to accelerate the disappearance of the black race in America through forced miscegenation, by a wet-dream final solution for the American race problem in which white owners were to geld all black men so that they themselves as white superiors would be the only males who might fecundate the black women of America. Of course, in recollecting such a conversation, Emerson would need as above to make Alcott bear the brunt of the responsibility for such musings, and, of course, in recollecting HDT WHAT? INDEX

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such a conversation, Emerson would need as above to characterize the affect as compassion rather than as viciousness.85 Patterson merely goes on to point up the fact that although Emerson, like so many of his contemporaries who were presuming their own race to be inherently and intrinsically superior, was wont to speculate bloodily that the inferior races would most likely be exterminated, this is far from all the information and guidance that we might extrapolate from these foul droppings of his pen86 — if we can bring ourselves to pay careful attention:

85. While I was a pubescent, after WWII during the occupation of Japan, there was talk of this in regard to the Japanese population. Perhaps I heard this as idle “guy talk” in my uncle Frosty’s barbershop in Cory, Indiana. Kill all the men and fuck all the women. What I have to confess is that this sort of wet-dream final solution then became a fertile source of sexual fantasies for me. It is probably just as well I wasn’t Ruler of the Universe at that time, or President or something, and probably just as well that nobody was looking to me for good advice. So I suppose that here, since I sense a similar strain of though in these journal musings of Emerson, I should feel a special empathy for him and for Alcott, the Sage and the Saint. But I don’t. Somehow I don’t feel they were one bit better informed, or more highly spirited, than that pubescent Indiana boy with whom I can hardly any longer identify. 86. A suspicion has been raised, on the internet, in regard to our 2005 horror at Emerson’s and Alcott’s 1854 discussion of the desirability of a proposal to castrate all black American males, that our horror may be due to the error “presentism,” the historic error of retrojecting into the past an attitude that could only pertain to today and to 2005’s relative condition of enlightenment. Back in 1854, the concept of “genocide” having not yet been created, how do we dare to stand on our mount of enlightenment and fault Emerson and Alcott for thinking thoughts back then that today would be considered genocidal? I responded that Frederick Douglass was not a man of today, but was a man of yesterday. Nevertheless, had he been privy, in 1854, to this privileged conversation between the white man Emerson and the white man Alcott, a privileged conversation in which they were toying with the idea of castrating him so that he would be able to product no children, and castrating every other man who was like him, every other colored man, so that none of them would ever be able to have a home and family with children of their own — he would unquestionably have been offended, he would have been horrified, he would have been denunciatory, he would have been outraged, etc. Perhaps the only thing he might not have been, is, he might not have been surprised. –He would have had that sort of attitude and, guess what, it would have been an 1854 attitude. Since he could not have been guilty of a “presentism,” since he in 1854 would not have been guilty of the historic error of retrojection into his own era of an attitude that could only pertain to 2005’s relative condition of enlightenment, we in 2005 are not guilty of a presentism, in reconstructing and embracing what would have been his 1854 attitude. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The sheer weight of evidence that proves the fact of Waldo Emerson’s racism is disturbing. However, we would miss the focus of this discussion –namely, the historical function of racism in Emerson’s writings– were we simply to dismiss him for exhibiting the racist perceptions of his time.... Emerson’s racism is central to his vision of American nationality — a compelling, myopic vision that must be viewed in the context of a violent policy of westward expansion that prevailed in nineteenth-century America. In NATURE, Emerson’s unmistakable reference to the raciality of the American self allows him to situate that self at the brink of egocentric absolutism: at the same time he expresses a near disavowal of human society represented by ties to the liberal-democratic state in NATURE, Emerson’s racist imagination of the white, male body of Columbus is a framework for social cohesion. For Emerson, race functions to express both a threat to and an affirmation of social order. Generally speaking, Emerson’s racist vision of the representative self is essential for his articulation of a call to revolution — what Henry Thoreau (and, much later, [the Reverend] Martin Luther King, Jr.) would designate as “civil disobedience.”

“Waldo Emerson’s profound racism abated over time, but it never disappeared, always hovering in the background and clouding his democratic vision. Like all too many of his fellow intellectuals, throughout his life and works Emerson remained convinced that the characteristics that made the United States, for all its flaws, the great nation of the world were largely the product of its Saxon heritage and history. Here, alas, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s democratic imagination largely failed him.” — Peter S. Field HDT WHAT? INDEX

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YOU SEE, I’M A WHITE MAN HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March: It was perhaps in this month that Waldo Emerson made a comment about time in his journal in a way which, had the author been Henry Thoreau, would have most definitely been a double entendre:

Strychnine, prussic acid, tobacco, coffee, alcohol, are weak dilutions; the surest poison is time.

Had this been Thoreau, the passage would surely have meant not only that we do get old and wrinkled and gray, and finally deteriorate and die, but also that the surest way to poison one’s own life is to preoccupy it with anxiety about the loss and deterioration of it, an anxiety which we create and occasion through our improper reliance upon spatial metaphors for time. “NOW I see and hear the lark sitting with head erect.” Since this is Emerson, however, we can see that not only is there no double entendre here, but also, the possibility of there being a double entendre here has not so much as entered the man’s mind. Thoreau’s seed has, to use a Biblical metaphor, fallen upon the rock. What we find in Emerson’s journal of this date is merely a lament about physicality, and where we should expect to find a moral and spiritual dimension to his writing, he seems entirely unaware of its absence.

Also perhaps during this month, Emerson to his journal:

H.D.T. charged [H.G.O.] Blake, if he could not do the hard tasks, to take the soft ones, & when he liked anything, if it was only a picture or a time, to stay by it, find out what he liked, & draw that sense or meaning out of it, & do that: harden it, somehow, & make it his own. Blake thought & thought on this, & wrote afterwards to Henry, that he had got his first glimpse of heaven. Henry was a good physician.

H.G.O. BLAKE J. Wesley Jones had made some 1,500 daguerreotypes while on an 8.000-mile trek through the American westlands, and had developed a very attractive Pantoscope exhibit to show as accompaniment to his lectures. At this point he ran into financial difficulties and we lose track permanently of these daguerreotypes and of the paintings based upon them. —Will the materials ever again resurface?

May-August 1854: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 28, Monday: Secretary of War Jefferson Davis would be traveling with President Franklin Pierce until September 4/5, and would speak in Virginia.

The Revolution of the Left against Espartero was defeated.

Nachtfalter op.157, a waltz by Johann Strauss, was performed for the initial time, in Ungers Casino, Vienna.

The Ticknor & Fields firm’s junior partner, James Thomas Fields had, more than a month prior to official publication, distributed advance copies of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, to prospective reviewers such as the Reverend John Sullivan Dwight, the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and T. Starr King. About three weeks prior to publication, Ticknor & Fields began sending advance sheets to the editors of major New- York and Boston papers. By this point the work had been praised in over 30 newspapers and magazines from Maine to Ohio. A few days prior to publication, Ticknor & Fields had placed advertisements for WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS in several Boston and New-York dailies. Under the banner headline “LIFE IN THE WOODS,” the ads had begun appearing on August 4th and had run for three, four, or even five days. A second series of ads had appeared in selected papers in late August, usually every other day for three days. Waldo Emerson was able to note that “All American kind are delighted with ‘Walden’ as far as they have dared say.” TIMELINE OF WALDEN

In the afternoon Henry Thoreau walked through Great Meadows (Gleason D8) and Bedford meadows on the south side of the Concord River to Carlisle Bridge (Gleason A9), and there crossed the river and came back on its north side, the Carlisle and Concord side, across the lots to the schoolhouse.

Before August 29th a review of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS appeared in the Philadelphia Register:

This book was written because the author had something to say. “Walden” may be pronounced a live book—a sincere, hearty production.

[Quoted from advertisement in Boston Advertiser, August 29, 2:7.] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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On this day, or one of the two following days (August 28-30), Emerson wrote George Partridge Bradford in London:

I do not know if the book has come to you yet; — but it is cheerful, sparkling, readable, with all kinds of merits, & rising sometimes to very great heights. We account Henry the undoubted King of all American lions. He is walking up & down Concord, firm-looking, but in a tremble of great expectation.

On the basis of this letter would you say that it can be established that Emerson did read WALDEN? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1855

In this year Juliette Magill Kinzie alleged that Henry Clay had examined a lineup of men of the Chippewa tribe. After “looking carefully at the countenance and bearing” of each in turn, this white orator had announced – and this was without hearing them speak– which one of the natives was to be considered as “the principle orator of the nation.”87 On a related topic, Waldo Emerson made an entry in his journal in this year regard to “common fame”:

I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

Spring: Sometime during this spring or summer, Waldo Emerson in his journal superciliously analyzed his three friends Bronson Alcott, Ellery Channing, and Henry Thoreau as small types who vainly supposed they were “the three leading men in America” but who instead “never saw a grander arch than their own eyebrow” (did this perhaps mean to Waldo “have never been to Washington DC,” or did it perhaps mean “have never lived in a mansion”?) and who “never saw the sky of a principle which made them modest & contemners of themselves”:

Washington, Adams, Quincy, Franklin, I would willingly adorn my hall with, & I will have daguerres of Alcott, Channing, Thoreau.

[Would this have been the occasion (check this) on which Emerson averred that Thoreau had inquired, in regard to Alcott, that “fairly enough, when is it that the man is to begin to provide for himself?”]

(It was during this season that Thoreau’s strange loss of muscle tone, his weak knee period, his “two years’ illness,” was at its worst. We now know, by way of research by Dr. Jerome M. Siegel of the University of California – Los Angeles, that the neural axions involved control not only motor functions but also sleep patterns. Which is to say, cataplexy is degeneratively linked with narcolepsy. Thus, the genetic mechanism of the Jones family which produced Thoreau’s sleepiness during his Staten Island period of May 1843 may have been what was involved during this period as well.)

87. My concern here is not at all with whether this story is true –whether Henry Clay had actually pulled such a stunt– but is entirely with the cultural context within which such stories might be considered to be of some value. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Spring: Sometime during this spring or summer, Waldo Emerson confided to his journal –either in regard to N. Munroe the Concord landholder or James Munroe the Boston publisher, I don’t know which– a remark which he had made about the gospel of Jesus:

[???] Munroe seriously asked what I believed of Jesus & prophets. I said, as so often, that it seemed to me an impiety to be listening to one & another, when the pure Heaven was pouring itself into each of us, on the simple condition of obedience. To listen to any second hand gospel is perdition of the First Gospel. Jesus was Jesus because he refused to listen to another, & listened at home.

Spring: Sometime during this spring or summer, Waldo Emerson to his journal:

M.M.E. [Mary Moody Emerson], if you praised a lady warmly, would stop you short, “Is it a colored woman of whom you were speaking?” When Mrs B. [Lucy Jackson Brown??] ran into any enthusiasms on Italian patriots, &c, —”Mrs Brown how’s your cat?” WHen she had once bowed to Goodnow & his wife at the Lyceum, not quite knowing who they were (G. had offended her when she boarded with them), she afterwards went up to Goodnow, & said, “I did not know who you were, or should never have bowed to you.”

Spring Sometime during this spring or summer, Waldo Emerson revealed in his journal that he was a Malthusian not out of reasons of science — but instead out of all the familiar, ignoble Social-Darwinist reasons which these calculations of science can in this case be supposed to reinforce:

The Mormons & AntiMarriage men have not thought or observed far enough. They do not like the privation. No, but Malthus establishes his fact of geometrical increase of mouths, & then we have a reason in figures for this perdurable shame in man & woman for unauthorised cohabitation. No more children than you will give your equal & entire protection & aid unto. And this other; a man will work for his children no longer than he is sure they are his. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Spring/Summer: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

JONES VERY Jones Very, who thought it an honor to wash his own face, seems to me less insane than men who hold themselves cheap.

For the benefit of his journal, Emerson superciliously analyzed his three friends Bronson Alcott, Ellery Channing, and Henry Thoreau as small men who vainly supposed they were “the three leading men in America” but who instead “never saw a grander arch than their own eyebrow” (did this mean to Emerson “have never been to Washington DC” or did it mean “have never been inside a mansion”?) and who “never saw the sky of a principle which made them modest & contemners of themselves”:

Washington, Adams, Quincy, Franklin, I would willingly adorn my hall with, & I will have daguerres of Alcott, Channing, Thoreau.

Emerson revealed himself as a Malthusian, not out of reasons of science but for all the familiar, ignoble Social- Darwinist reasons which these calculations of science in this case can be held to reinforce:

The Mormons & AntiMarriage men have not thought or observed far enough. They do not like the privation. No, but Malthus establishes his fact of geometrical increase of mouths, & then we have a reason in figures for this perdurable shame in man & woman for unauthorised cohabitation. No more children than you will give your equal & entire protection & aid unto. And this other; a man will work for his children no longer than he is sure they are his. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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And there is also this, mentioning Mary Moody Emerson:

M.M.E., if you praised a lady warmly, would stop you short, “Is it a colored woman of whom you were speaking?” When Mrs B. [Lucy Jackson Brown??] ran into any enthusiasms on Italian patriots, &c, —”Mrs Brown how’s your cat?” WHen she had once bowed to Goodnow & his wife at the Lyceum, not quite knowing who they were (G. had offended her when she boarded with them), she afterwards went up to Goodnow, & said, “I did not know who you were, or should never have bowed to you.”

September 5, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson recorded in his journal that:

All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle.

From this what may we infer? –That Waldo has given up all hope for transcendence? If you are nothing but a turtle and therefore can think no thoughts other than turtle thoughts, then, presumably, if you are nothing but a negro you won’t be able to think any thoughts other than negro thoughts, and, presumably, if you’re nothing but a woman you won’t be able to think any thoughts other than woman thoughts, and, presumably, if you’re nothing but a child you won’t be able to think any thoughts other than child thoughts — and, presumably, if you’re nothing but a white man (such as, for one fine example, Waldo), you won’t be able to think any thoughts other than white man thoughts — thoughts such as this one?

On this day and the following one, at a political convention at the Big Springs in the Kansas Territory, a “Free State Party” was being brought into existence. THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Winter: Waldo Emerson offered his journal another of his weary captious self-justifying paradoxes, by alleging in effect that all Henry Thoreau wants to do in a conversation is to dominate the other person with biting argument while he, Emerson, is attempting in a loving spirit to turn the encounter toward the pursuit of Truth and Beauty and Joy.

If I knew only Thoreau, I should think cooperation of good men impossible. Must we always talk for victory, & never once for truth, for comfort, & joy? Centrality he has, & penetration, strong understanding, & the higher gifts — the insight of the real or from the real, & the moral rectitude that belongs to it; but all this & all his resources of wit & invention are lost to me in every experiment, year after year, that I make, to hold intercourse with his mind. Always some weary captious paradox to fight you with, & the time & temper wasted.

All his life Emerson would be capable of projecting his own faults onto other people in this blatant manner, in order to unselfconsciously and contemptuously condemn these faults in that external projection.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

A.B.A. saw the Midsummers Night’s dream played, & said, it was a phallus to which fathers could carry their daughters, & each had their own thoughts, without suspecting that the other had the same.

BRONSON ALCOTT A few eyes of a Concord grapevine were sent to George Husmann of Hermann, Missouri by Mr. Jas. G. Soulard of Galena, Illinois. Husmann would graft them upon old Catawba vines and one graft would grow. The next year he would distribute some of the scions to various vine-growers, who would also graft them. The Concord Grape would be on its way to becoming freely available. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 31, Monday: Waldo Emerson to his journal in Davenport, Iowa, in regard to the 2d bridge to be thrown over the Mississippi River:

I have crossed the Mississippi on foot three times.

Before the close of 1855, Father Isaac Hecker had fallen in with a group of Roman Catholics –among them Father Jeremiah W. Cummings, Father Ambrose Manahan, Dr. Levi Silliman Ives, and George Hecker88– that was engaging James McMaster of New York, the fellow he had sailed off toward Belgium with in August 1845 who had dropped out of priest training, to edit a Freeman’s Journal and Catholic Register as a venue for their evangelistic writings. Boston having gotten “too Irish” for a nativist’s tastes, Orestes Augustus Brownson would take this funding opportunity to relocate his family and his journal to Manhattan. During this period the influence of the European liberal Catholicism of the French writer, Count Charles Montalembert, and that of the Italian politician and philosopher, Vincenzo Gioberti, would begin to be readily apparent in Brownson’s writings. Representative of this development is his piece “The Mission of America,” in which he declares the providential destiny of America to be to bring Catholicism to contemporary Western civilization as a variety of social order that is specifically Christian.

88.George Hecker lavished money from the family business upon Catholic causes, including his brother’s ministry, and even made cash presents to financially challenged individuals such as Orestes Augustus Brownson, Henry Hewit, M.D., Father Augustine F. Hewit’s brother who also had converted, and James McMaster. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1856

January: Phineas Taylor Barnum got into serious financial trouble over some real estate deals in East Bridgeport, Connecticut near his home “Iranistan.” He was bankrupt. Waldo Emerson, rejoicing, termed this showman’s ruin “the gods visible again.” This showman would, however, be privately scoffing at the business colleagues to whom he had had an obligation: “I shall soon be relieved of all liabilities ... under the 2/3 Bankruptcy Act, leaving it to me to give them what I please.”

Emerson noted that:

In Rock Island I am advertised as “the celebrated Metaphysician”; in Davenport as “the Essayist & Poet.”

The Social Revolutionist reported that Eagleswood, the North American Phalanx, had voted to dissolve itself and was attempting to sell off its assets on the open market, and that its operations had ceased. During that severe winter season the commune would sell off assets such as its main building of brick in three stories, with a 150-foot front and one 150-foot wing, standing among shade trees near orchards with grapevines trained adjacent to its walls, and be able to realize 66 cents on the dollar of investment. On January 1, 1857 the association would officially cease to exist. There is now a roadside sign on Phalanx Road in Colt’s Neck, New Jersey to inform us:

NORTH AMERICAN PHALANX Site of the 1844 cooperative HDT WHAT? INDEX

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agricultural community; founded by Albert Brisbane and modeled after the philosophy of French Socialist Charles Fourier. This communal experiment was a success until it was destroyed by fire in 1854.

During the month of January Waldo Emerson was in the Midwest delivering a lecture almost every weekday night in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio. THE LIST OF LECTURES

The journals of Waldo Emerson for this year as assembled by his son Edward Waldo Emerson in 1904-1914 provide us with the following paragraphs, which evidently have to do with a conversation between Emerson and Albert Haller Tracy, a member of Congress from Buffalo (Tracy is the “Albert” whose conversation with “Lewis” (Cass) on their fruitless search for light is given without their names in the essay “Immortality” printed in LETTERS AND SOCIAL AIMS on pages 331-2:

Half-headed men, by vicious organization, see only the object directly before them, and that in vast proportions, so as to engage their whole heat and faculty in the encounter with it. It awakens in them eloquence, industry, and passion; whilst people around them, in their accosting of the same object, are liable to returns of frigidity and indifference, from being forced to see both sides, many sides, and therefore cannot get up any furious zeal, as if this were the only point to be carried. Of course, such monomaniacs (like Quincy Adams, or Calhoun, in politics) seem to be deities to those near them, interested in the same things, because these have great endowments all bent on one focus. The other point which interested Tracy was the ridiculous fame of the rhetoricians. In a senate or other business committee, all depends on a few men with working talent. They do everything, and value men only as they can forward the work. But some new man comes there who has no capacity for helping them at all, can’t do the first thing, is insignificant, and nobody, but has a talent for speaking; this fellow gets up and makes a speech which is printed and read all over the Union, and at once becomes famous, and takes the lead in public mind over all these executive men who, of course, are full of indignation to find one who has no tact or skill, and knows he has none, put over them, by means of this talking power which they despise.89 John Randolph said, there was one quality which was very rare, common sense. He had been, boy and man, twenty-four years in this body (House of Representatives), and he had known one man who had it, — he wouldn’t say, had known but one, but he had seen one man who had it in a remarkable degree, — his name was Roger Sherman. That man had made this remark: “When you are in the majority, vote; when you are in the minority, talk. Well, Mr. President, I am in the minority in this body, and I talk.” Tracy said, “Massachusetts was full of rhetoricians.” I forgot to tell him that every twelfth man in Massachusetts was a shoemaker, and that Erastus Bigelow, Uriah Boyden, Nathaniel Bowditch, and Mason, of Taunton, were not rhetoricians, and the railroad projectors all over the United States and the merchants who planned so many voyages of vessels which distribute their cargoes at New York, and make so much of the importance of that city, did not so much create speeches, as business.

89. The above paragraph is printed in “Eloquence,” but is kept here for the connection. (Society and Solitude). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April: It would appear that Miss Mary Moody Emerson was back in Concord again at this point, settled by Elizabeth Sherman Hoar in the “Deacon Brown” house — for we date this remark in Waldo Emerson’s journal to approximately this month:

Monochord. Mary Moody Emerson cannot sympathize with children. I know several persons whose world is only large enough for one person, and each of them, though he were to be the last man, would, like the executioner in Hood’s poem, guillotine the last but one. ’Tis A’s [Alcott’s] misfortune, & T’s [Thoreau’s].

HEADCHOPPING The biographer Phyllis Cole would explain the meeting between Waldo’s petite Aunt Mary and Henry Thoreau as follows: Back in Concord a year and a half later, Mary gave Thoreau the attention across generations that she had no way of giving Dickinson. Once more he recorded the event in his journal. “Talking with Miss Mary Emerson this evening, she said, ‘It was not the fashion to be so original when I was young.’ She is readier to take my view –look through my eyes for the time– than any young person that I know in this town.” Mary endorsed his high valuing of simplicity, even at the expense of his own mother. Holding court at the “Deacon Brown” house the same year, she shut her eyes while conversing with her old friend Cynthia Thoreau in protest against the long yellow ribbons on her cap. “I did not wish to look upon those ribbons of yours,” she explained, “so unsuitable at your time of life and to a person of your serious character.” Perhaps others in the room challenged her to defend the more “original” oddities of her own apparel. EMILY DICKINSON CYNTHIA DUNBAR THOREAU HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 5, Saturday: Booker Taliaferro Washington was born in Franklin County, Virginia. He would become in 1881 the first principal of the Tuskegee Institute, and would be the individual most responsible for its early development. Washington would in his day be considered the leading African-American spokesperson.

This image of a wagon train was published:

Major Jefferson Buford’s “Buford’s Expedition” of some 400 proslavery men, for the most part from Alabama, South Carolina, and Georgia, boarded a steamboat at Montgomery, Alabama heading for the Kansas Territory. THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION

Waldo Emerson to his journal, evidently in a cute comment about explosions of puffball mushrooms:

Walden fired a cannonade yesterday of a hundred guns, but not in honor of the birth of Napoleon.

April 5. The journals of Waldo Emerson for 1856 as assembled by his son Edward Waldo Emerson in 1904- HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1914 would excerpt the following contents: EMERSON’S JOURNAL, IX Walden fired a cannonade yesterday of a hundred guns, but not in honour of the birth of Napoleon.90 Aunt Mary said of Talleyrand, that he was not organized for the Future State. Aunt Mary is jealous of all the newer friends of her friends and cannot bear either X or Y, or the fame of Z. She reminds one in these days of an old aristocrat, say Queen Elizabeth shaking the Duchess of on her deathbed, or of Sarah of Marlborough, as she walks with her stick to the oyster-shop. Classic and Romantic. I think I can show that France cleaves to the form, and loses the substance ; as, in the famous unities of her drama; and in her poetry itself; in the whole “Classicality” of her turn of mind, which is only apery; “For France doth ape the lion’s shape.” Menander’s speech, “that he had finished the comedy, all but the verses,” and Burke, who studied the statistics of his speech, but left the illustration and ornament to the impulse of speaking. Thy voice is sweet, Musketaquid; repeats the music of the rain; but sweeter rivers silent flit through thee, as thou through Concord plain. Thou art shut in thy banks; but the stream I love, flows in thy water, and flows through rocks and through the air, and through darkness, and through men, and women. I hear and see the inundation and eternal spending of the stream, in winter and in summer, in men and animals, in passion and thought. Happy are they who can hear it. I see thy brimming, eddying stream, and thy enchantment. For thou changest every rock in thy bed into a gem: all is real opal and agate, and at will thou pavest with diamonds. Take them away from thy stream, and they are poor shards and flints: so is it with me to-day.91 The property proves too much for the man, and now all the men of science, art, intellect, are pretty sure to degenerate into selfish house-keepers dependent on wine, coffee, furnace, gas-light, and furniture. Then things swing the other way, and we suddenly find that civilization crowed too soon ; that what we bragged as triumphs were treacheries; that we have opened the wrong door, and let the enemy into the castle; that civilization was a mistake; that nothing is so vulgar as a great warehouse of rooms full of furniture and trumpery; that, in the circumstances, the best wisdom were an auction, or a fire; since the foxes and birds have the right of it, with a warm hole to fend the weather, and no more; that a penthouse, to fend the sun and wind and rain, is the house, which makes no tax on the owner’s time and thought, and which he can leave when the sun reaches noon.

What need have I of book or priest? And every star is Bethlehem star, — I have as many as there are Yellow flowers in the grass, So many saints and saviours, So many high behaviours, Are there to him Who is himself, as thou, alive And only sees what he doth give.92

Monochord. Aunt Mary cannot sympathize with children. I know several persons whose world is only large enough for one person, and each of them, though he were to be the last man, would, like the executioner in Hood’s poem, guillotine the last but one. Elizabeth Hoar said of Aunt Mary, — “She thinks much more of her bonnet and of other people’s bonnets than they do”; and she sends Elizabeth from Dan to Beersheba to find a bonnet that does not conform; while Mrs. Hoar, whom she severely taxes with conforming, is satisfied with anything she finds in the shops. She tramples on the common humanities all day, and they rise as ghosts and torment her at night. Kings and Nobles. Tycho Brahe refused (1574) for a long time to publish his observations upon the remarkable star in Cassiopeia, lest he should thus cast a stain upon his nobility. Fame. Copernicus’s discoveries “insinuated themselves into ecclesiastical minds by the very reluctance of their author to bring them into notice.” — BREWSTER, Life of Newton, vol. i, p. 259. Greatness. To a grand interest a success is of no account.93 ... States. A man, to get the advantage of the ideal man, turns himself into several men, by using his eyes to-day, when he is loving; and to-morrow, when he is spiteful; and the third day, when he is merry; and so on; as the 90. Not for a regiment’s parade, Nor evil laws or rulers made, Blue Walden rolls its cannonade. 91. The first rhapsody for “The Two Rivers,” as it came to mind, sitting by the river, one April day. (See the Poems.) 92. See the finished verses in Poems. 93. This passage is printed in “Aristocracy” (Lectures and Biographical Sketches, p. 59). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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astronomer uses the earth as a cart to carry him to the two ends of its orbit, to find the parallax of a star. What a barren-witted pate am I, says the scholar; I will go see whether I have lost my reason.94 The right conditions must be observed. Principally he must have leave to be himself. We go to dine with M and N and O and P, and, to be sure, they begin to be something else than they were.... Keep the ground, feel the roots, domesticate yourself. I think of Andrews Norton, who did not like toasts and sentiments because they interfered with the hilarity of the occasion.... What kind of a pump is that which cannot draw, but only deliver? I think the Germans have an integrity of mind which sets their science above all other. They have not this science in scraps, this science on stilts. They have posed certain philosophical facts on which all is built, the doctrine of immanence, as it is called, by which everything is the cause of itself, or stands there for its own, and repeats in its own all other; “the ground of everything is immanent in that thing.” Everything is organic, freedom also, not to add, but to grow and unfold. They purify, they sweeten, they warm and ennoble, by seeing the heart to be indispensable, not in scraps, not on stilts. In music, it was once the doctrine, The text is nothing, the score is all; and even, the worse the text, the better the score; but Wagner said the text must be fixed to the score and from the first; must be inspired with the score. So in chemistry, Mulder said, — For a good chemist, the first condition is, he shall know nothing of philosophy; but Oersted and Humboldt saw and said that chemistry must be the handmaid of moral science. Do you not see how Nature avenges herself of the pedantry? The wits excluded from the academies met in clubs and threw the academy into the shade. I know a song which, though it be sung never so loud, few can hear, — only six or seven or eight persons: yet they who hear it become young again. When it is sung, the stars twinkle gladly, and the moon bends nearer the earth.95 Wafthrudnir.96 The horse taught me something, the titmouse whispered a secret in my ear, and the Lespedeza looked at me, as I passed.’ Will the Academicians, in their “Annual Report,” please tell me what they said? I know a song which is more hurtful than strychnine or the kiss of the asp. It blasts those who hear it, changes their colour and shape, and dissipates their substance. It is called Time.

April 5.... P.M. — To North River at Tarbell’s. Fair weather again. Saw half a dozen blackbirds, uttering that sign-like note, on the top of Cheney’s elm, but noticed no red at this distance. Were they grackles? Hear after some red-wings [Red-winged Blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus] sing boby-lee. Do these ever make the sign-like note? Is not theirs a fine shrill whistle?...

94. Here follow several passages on unsatisfactory dinner-party conversation which are printed in “Clubs.” 95. In this passage and the one with a similar beginning, soon following, Mr. Emerson has cast his thought in the form of the rhapsodies of the Cymrian Bards, quoted in “Poetry and Imagination.” (See Letters and Social Aims, pp. 58, 59; also in the Poems, “Merlin’s Song.”) 96. A giant in the Norse mythology who asked questions, which the hearer must answer or forfeit his life. In Mr. Emerson’s poem, the “Dirge,” occur the lines I touch this flower of silken leaf Which once our childhood knew; Its soft leaves wound me with a grief Whose balsam never grew; and as we walked with him through “Peter’s Field,” an abandoned farm where he and his brothers played in their youth, he showed us the Lespedeza as that flower. Yet they who hear it shed their age And take their youth again. Whipple said of the author of “Leaves of Grass,” that he had every leaf but the fig leaf. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 26, Saturday: Henry Thoreau read in Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella’s DE RE RUSTICA. REI RUSTICAE AUCTORES...

Boston’s Saturday Evening Gazette completed Louisa May Alcott’s story “Bertha.”

In Zürich, for friends, Richard Wagner played and sang through the 1st act of Die Walküre. The businessman Otto Wesendonck was so taken by his performance that he decided to forward 250 francs a month to the composer so that he might be unhindered in the completion of the work.

Valentine d’Aubigny, an opéra comique by Fromental Halévy to words of Barbier and Carré, was performed for the initial time, at the Théâtre Favart, Paris.

Waldo Emerson made an entry in his journal in regard to Walt Whitman and his outrageously sexual or at least 97 sensuous LEAVES OF GRASS:

Whipple said of the author of “Leaves of Grass,” that he had every leaf but the fig leaf.

The audience that assembled to hear my lectures in these six weeks was called, “the effete of Boston.”

April 26. The journals of Waldo Emerson for 1856 as assembled by his son Edward Waldo Emerson in 1904- 1914 would excerpt the following contents: EMERSON’S JOURNAL, IX The audience that assembled to hear my lectures in these six weeks was called “the effete of Boston.” As Linnaeus delighted in finding that seven-stamened flower which alone gave him a seventh class, or filled a gap in his system, so I know a man who served as intermediate between two acquaintances of mine, not else to be approximated. “I can well wait,” said Elizabeth Hoar, “all winter, if sure to blossom, an apple tree, in spring; but not, if, perhaps, I am dead wood, and ought to burn now.” Subject for lecture is, the art of taking a walk. I would not HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ask Ellery Channing, like the little girl, “Mamma wishes, Sir, you would begin to be funny.” Indeed, quite the reverse: for his written fun is very bad; and as to his serious letter, the very best, that to Ward in Europe, is unreproducible. Would you bottle the efflux of a June noon, and sell it in your shop? But if he could be engaged again into kindly letters, he has that which none else could give. But ’t is rare and rich compound of gods and dwarfs, and best of humanity, that goes to walk. Can you bring home the summits of Wachusett and Monadnoc, and the Uncanoonuc, the savin fields of Lincoln, and the sedge and reeds of Flint Pond, the savage woods beyond Nut Brook towards White Pond? He can. Do you think I am in such great terror of being shot?98 ... It is curious that Thoreau goes to a house to say with little preface what he has just read or observed, delivers it in lump, is quite inattentive to any comment or thought which any of the company offer on the matter, nay, is merely interrupted by it, and when he has finished his report departs with precipitation. Materialists. Economical geology; economical astronomy, with a view (to annexation, if it could be) to navigation: and chemistry and natural history, for utility. Yes, rightly enough: but is there no right wishing to know what is, without reaping a rent or commission? Now, their natural history is profane. They do not know the bird, the fish, the tree they describe. The ambition that “hurries them after truth, takes away the power to attain it.” This charge that I make against English science, that it bereaves Nature of its charm, lies equally against all European science. “Mathematics,” said Copernicus to the Pope, “are written for mathematicians.” The comfort of Alcott’s mind is, the connexion in which he sees whatever he sees. He is never dazzled by a spot of colour, or a gleam of light, to value that thing by itself; but forever and ever is prepossessed by the undivided one behind it and all. I do not’ know where to find in men or books a mind so valuable to faith. His own invariable faith inspires faith, in others. I valued Miss Bacon’s studies of Shakspeare, simply for the belief they showed in cause and effect; that a first-rate genius was not a prodigy and stupefying anomaly, but built up step by step as a tree or a house is, with a sufficient cause (and one that, with diligence, might be found or assigned) for every difference and every superiority to the dunce or average man. For every opinion or sentence of Alcott, a reason may be sought and found, not in his will or fancy, but in the necessity of Nature itself, which has daguerred that fatal impression on his susceptible soul. He is as good as a lens or a mirror, a beautiful susceptibility, every impression on which is not to be reasoned against, or derided, but to be accounted for, and until accounted for, registered as an indisputable addition to our catalogue of natural facts. There are defects in the lens, and errors of refraction and position, etc., to be allowed for, and it needs one acquainted with the lens by frequent use, to make these allowances; but ’t is the best instrument I have ever met with. Every man looks a piece of luck, but he is a piece of the mosaic accurately measured and ground to fit into the gap he fills, such as Parker or Garrison, or Carlyle, or Hegel is, and with good optics, I suppose, we should find as nice fitting down to the bores and loafers. I admire that poetry which no man wrote, no poet less than the genius of humanity itself, and which is to be read in my theology, in the effect of pictures, or sculptures, or drama, or cities, or sciences, on me. 97. Thoreau’s favorite among Walt Whitman’s poems was the one that in the 1856 edition was being entitled “Sun-Down Poem” — the one that we now know under the title “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” THE FERRY AT BROOKLYN PIER, NEW-YORK

98. This and what follows, purporting to be quoted from “a humorist,” but mainly autobiographical, is printed in Society and Solitude (p. 51). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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My son is coming to get his Latin lesson without me. My son is coming to do without me. And I am coming to do without Plato, or Goethe, or Alcott. To carry temperance very high and very thoroughly into life and into intellect, and that with insight of its necessity and efficacy! Conversation. I ought to have said above, in respect to Conversation, that our habit is squalid and beggarly.99... In a parlor, the unexpectedness of the effects. When we go to Faneuil Hall, we look for important events: facts, thoughts, and persuasions, that bear on them. But in your parlor, to find your companion who sits by your side start up into a more potent than Demosthenes, and, in an instant, work a revolution that makes Athens and England and Washington politics old carrion and dust-barrels, because his suggestions require new ways of living, new books, new men, new arts and sciences, — yes, the lecture and the book seem vapid. Eloquence is forever a power that shoves usurpers from their thrones, and sits down on them by allowance and acclaim of all. These black coats never can speak until they meet a black coat: then their tongues are loosed, and chatter like blackbirds. The “practical” folks in the railcar meet daily, and to their discourse there is no end. Once more for Alcott it is to be said that he is sincerely and necessarily engaged to his task and not wilfully or ostentatiously or pecuniarily. Mr. Johnson at Manchester100 said of him, “He is universally competent. Whatever question is asked, he is prepared for.” I shall go far, and see many, before I find such an extraordinary insight as Alcott’s. In his fine talk, last evening, he ran up and down the scale of powers, with as much ease and precision as a squirrel the wires of his cage, and is never dazzled by his means, or by any particular, and a fine heroic action or a poetic passage would make no impression on him, because he expects heroism and poetry in all. Ideal Purity, the poet, the artist, the man, must have. I have never seen any person who so fortifies the believer, so confutes the skeptic. And the almost uniform rejection of this man by men of parts, Carlyle and Browning inclusive, and by women of piety, might make one despair of society. If he came with a cannonade of acclaim from all nations, as the first wit on the planet, these masters would sustain the reputation: or if they could find him in a book a thousand years old, with a legend of miracles appended, there would be churches of disciples: but now they wish to know if his coat is out at the elbow, or whether somebody did not hear from somebody, that he had got a new hat, etc., etc. He has faults, no doubt, but I may safely know no more about them than he does; and some that are most severely imputed to him are only the omissions of a preoccupied mind. Paris vaut bien un messe. Her great names are Carnot and Francis Arago. The last did not duck to the second Napoleon, nor did Carnot nor Lafayette to the first. Carnot’s Theorem was, “Avoid sudden alterations of speed; since the loss of living power is equal to the living power which all the parts of the machine or system would possess, if you should give to every one of them the speed which it lost in the moment when the sudden alteration occurred.” (See Atlantis, February, 1856, p. 118.) Maupertuis’s Theorem. “La quantite d’action necessaire pour produire un changement dans le mouvement des corps est toujours un minimum.” Il entendait par quantite d’action le produit d’une masse par sa vitesse et par l’espace qu’elle parcourt. (“Principes de l’equilibre, et du mouvement,” CARNOT. Education. Don’t let them eat their seed-corn; don’t let them anticipate, antedate, and be young men, before they have finished their boyhood. Let them have the fields and woods, and learn their secret and the base — and foot- ball, and wrestling, and brickbats, and suck all the strength and courage that lies for them in these games; let them ride bare-back, and catch their horse in his pasture, let them hook and spear their fish, and shin a post and a tall tree, and shoot their partridge and trap the woodchuck, before they begin to dress like collegians and sing in serenades, and make polite calls. ’T is curious that there is not only an apotheosis of every power or faculty of mind and body, but also of every element, material, and tool we use; as, of fire, water, air, earth, the hammer of Thor, the shoe of Mercury, the belt of Venus, the bracelet, balance, waterpot. One man is born to explain bones and animal architectures; and one, the expression of crooked and casual lines, spots on a turtle, or on the leaf of a plant; and one, machines, and the application of coil springs and steam and water-wheels to the weaving of cloth or paper; and one, morals; and one, a pot of brandy, and poisons; and the laws of disease are as beautiful as the laws of health. Let each mind his own, and declare his own. The Affirmative. To awake in man and to raise the feeling of his worth; to educate his feeling and his judgment, that he must scorn himself for a bad action. My friend Anna W, refuses to tell her children whether the act was right or wrong, but sends them away to find out what the little voice says, and at night they shall tell her. It must be admitted, that civilization is onerous and expensive; hideous expense to keep it up; — let it go, and be Indians again; but why Indians? — that is costly, too; the mud-turtle and trout life is easier and cheaper, and oyster, cheaper still. ... Pater ipse colendi Haud facilem esse viam voluit:..... curis acuens mortalia corda.101 Play out the game, act well your part, and if the gods have blundered, we will not. 99. The rest of the passage is found in “Considerations by the Way” 100. Probably Manchester, England. 101. The Father himself willed not the farmer’s lot an easy one, sharpening men’s minds by Care. Virgil, Georgics, I, 121-123. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I have but one military recollection in all my life. In 1813, or 1814, all Boston, young and old, turned out to build the fortifications on Noddle’s Island; and the schoolmaster at the Latin School announced to the boys, that, if we wished, we might all go on a certain day to work on the Island. I went with the rest in the ferryboat, and spent a summer day; but I cannot remember that I did any kind of work. I remember only the pains we took to get water in our tin pails, to relieve our intolerable thirst. I am afraid no valuable effect of my labor remains in the existing defences.

May: Henry Thoreau visited the Beech Spring “which is a copious one” which he cleaned out once, “a wet and muddy job,” feeling that thereby he had “done some service” as it had been “filled and covered with a great mass of beech leaves.” The spring exists today in much the same condition, on the Jacob Baker Farm in Lincoln. The grove now consists of seven mature old Fagus grandifolia or American Beech trees and, since these have been regenerating as is their wont from their roots rather than by seedlings, this may perhaps be the oldest station of such beech in the region of Concord.

WALDEN: In the deepest snows, the path which I used from the highway to my house, about half a mile long, might have been represented by a meandering dotted line, with wide intervals between the dots. For a week of even weather I took exactly the same number of steps, and of the same length, coming and going, stepping deliberately and with the precision of a pair of dividers in my own deep tracks, –to such routine the winter reduces us,– yet often they were filled with heaven’s own blue. But no weather interfered fatally with my walks, or rather my going abroad, for I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines; when the ice and snow causing their limbs to droop, and so sharpening their tops, had changed the pines into fir-trees; wading to the tops of the highest hills when the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level, and shaking down another snow storm on my head at every step; or sometimes creeping and floundering thither on my hands and knees, when the hunters had gone into winter quarters.

May: At approximately this point Waldo Emerson was confiding to his journal that:

It is curious that Thoreau goes to a house to say with little preface what he has just read or observed, delivers it in a lump, is quite inattentive to any comment or thought which any of the company offer on the matter, nay, is merely interrupted by it, &, when he has finished his report, departs with precipitation. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This month’s issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. At some point, during the second half of this year probably, Henry Thoreau would copy from an article “The Gnawers” into his Indian Notebook #10.

CONSULT THIS ISSUE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 21, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal, in regard to the Ovenbird Seiurus aurocapillus and/or Common Yellowthroat Geothlypis trichas:

Yesterday to the Sawmill Brook with Henry. He was in search of yellow violet (pubescens) and menyanthes which he waded into the water for. & which he concluded, on examination, had been out five days. Having found his flowers, he drew out of his breast pocket his diary & read the names of all the plants that should bloom on this day, 20 May; whereof he keeps account as a banker when his notes fall due.... he heard a note which he calls that of the nightwarbler, a bird he has never identified, has been in search of for twelve years; which, always, when he sees, is in the act of diving down into a tree or bush, & which ’tis vain to seek; the only bird that sings indifferently by night & by day. I told him, he must beware of finding & booking him, lest life should have nothing more to show him. He said, “What you seek in vain for half your life, one day you come full upon all the family at dinner. You seek him like a dream, and as soon as you find him, you become his prey.” He thinks he could tell by the flowers what day of the month it is, within two days.

When you find your dream, you become its prey.

The journals of Waldo Emerson for this year as assembled by his son Edward Waldo Emerson in 1904-1914 would excerpt the following contents: EMERSON’S JOURNAL, IX

May 21: Yesterday to the Sawmill Brook with Henry. He was in search of yellow violet (pubescens) and menyanthes102 which he waded into the water for; and which he concluded, on examination, had been out five days. Having found his flowers, he drew out of his breast pocket his diary and read the names of all the plants that should bloom this day, May 20; whereof he keeps account as a banker when his notes fall due; Rubus triflora,103 Quercus, Vaccinium, etc. The Cypripedium104 not due till to-morrow. Then we diverged to the brook, where was Viburnum dentatum, Arrowwood. But his attention was drawn to the redstart which flew about with its cheap, cheap chevet, and presently to two fine grosbeaks, rose-breasted, whose brilliant scarlet “bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,” and which he brought nearer with his spyglass, and whose fine, clear note he compares to that of a “tanager who has got rid of his hoarseness.” Then he heard a note which he calls that of the night-warbler, a bird he has never identified, has been in search of for twelve years, which, always, when he sees it, is in the act of diving down into a tree or bush, and which ’t is vain to seek; the only bird that sings indifferently by night and by day.’ I told him, he must beware of finding and booking him, lest life should have nothing more to show him. He said, “What you seek in vain for half your life, one day you come full upon — all the family at dinner. You seek him like a dream, and as soon as you find him, you become his prey.”105 He thinks he could tell by the flowers what day of the month it is, within two days. We found Saxifraga Pennsylvanica, and Chrysosplenium oppositifolium,106 by Everett’s spring, and Stellaria107 and Cerastium108 102. Buck-bean. 103. Dwarf raspberry. 104. Lady’s slipper. 105.I am told by Mr. Francis H. Allen that he and Mr. Bradford Torrey have thought that this bird must have been the “oven-bird” (golden-crowned thrush), whose flying note is more melodious than its cry of chi-chee! chi-chee! chi-chee! when perched on a tree. 106. Sweet-scented goldenrod. 107. Stitchwort. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and Arabis rhomboidea109 and Veronica anagallis,110 which he thinks handsomer than the cultivated Veronica, Forget-me-not. Solidago odora,111 he says, is common in Concord, and pennyroyal he gathers in quantity as herbs every season. Shad-blossom is no longer a pyrus, which is now confined to choke-berry. Shad-blossom is Amelanchier botryapium. Shad-blossom because it comes when the shad come. Water is the first gardener: he always plants grasses and flowers about his dwelling. There came Henry with music-book under his arm, to press flowers in; with telescope in his pocket, to see the birds, and microscope to count stamens; with a diary, jack-knife, and twine; in stout shoes, and strong grey trousers, ready to brave the shrub-oaks and smilax, and to climb the tree for a hawk’s nest. His strong legs, when he wades, were no insignificant part of his armour. Two alders we have, and one of them is here on the northern border of its habitat. Pantheism. In the woods, this afternoon, it seemed plain to me, that most men were Pantheists at heart, say what they might of their theism. No other path is, indeed, open for them to the One, intellectually at least. Man delights in freedom even to license, and claims infinite indulgence, from the Powers seen, and unseen, to whom he would give indulgence on those [terms?]. In a word, he would conquer and surrender in his own way; living no less open to the power of soul than of State, swayed by gods and demons, he is never, in his fresh morning- love, quite himself. His audacity is immense. His impieties are his pieties: he wins and loses, to win and lose. He reveres, dallies with, defies, and overcomes every god and demigod of the Pantheon, in quest of his freedom, and thus liberates Humanity from the demons by these twelve labours.

May 21: Saw two splendid rose-breasted grosbeaks [Rose-breasted Grosbeak Pheucticus ludovicianus] with females in the young wood in Emerson’s lot. What strong-colored fellows, black, white, and fiery rose-red breasts! Strong-natured, too, with their stout bills. A clear, sweet singer, like a tanager but hoarse somewhat, and not shy.

Augustus Goddard Peabody got married with Elizabeth S. Holway of Machias, Maine (the couple would produce a son and 3 daughters).

Henry Thoreau wrote to H.G.O. Blake, including the following closing, which Dr. Alfred I. Tauber considers relevant to Thoreau’s attitude toward time and eternity: “It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner & thinner till there is none at all. It is either the Tribune on the plain, a sermon on the mount, or a very private extacy [sic] still higher up. We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them. Use all the society that will abet you. But perhaps I do not enter into the spirit of your talk.” Concord May 21st ’56 Mr Blake, I have not for a long time been putting such thoughts together as I should like to read to the company you speak of. I have enough of that sort to say, or even read, but not time now to arrange it. Some- thing I have prepared might prove for their entertainment or re- freshment perchance, but I would not like to have a hat carried round for it. I have just been reading some papers to see if they would do for your company; but though I thought pretty well of them as long as I read them to myself, when I got an audit or to try them on, I felt that they would not answer. How could I let you drum up a company to hear them? — In fine, what I have is either too scattered

108. Mouse-ear chickweed. Golden saxifrage. 109. Rock cress. 110. Water-speedwell, or Brook pimpernel. 111. Sweet-scented goldenrod. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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or loosely arranged, or too light, or else is too scientific and matter of fact (I run a good deal into that of late) for so hungry a company. I am still a learner, not a teacher, feeding somewhat omnivorously browsing both stalk & leaves — but I shall perhaps be enabled to speak with the more precision & authority by & by — if philosophy & sentiment are not buried under a multitude of details. I do not refuse, but accept your invitation — only changing the time — — I consider myself invited to Worcester once for all — & many thanks to the inviter. As for the Harvard excursion, will you let me suggest another? Do you & Brown come to Concord on Saturday, if the weather promises well, and spend the Sunday here on the river or hills or both. So we shall save some of our money, (which is of next impor- tance to our souls) and lose — I do not know what. You say you talk- ed of coming here before, now do it. I do not propose this because I think that I am worth your spending time with — but because I hope that we may prove flint & steel to one another. It is at most only an hour’s ride further, & you can at any rate do what you please when you get here. Then we will see if we have any apology to offer for our existence. SO come to Concord! — come to Concord! — come to Concord! — or — — — — — — your suit shall be defaulted. As for the dispute about solitude & society any comparison is imper- tinent. It is an idling down on the plain at the base of a mountain in- stead of climbing steadily to its top. Of course you will be glad of all the society you can get to go up with. Will you go to glory with me? is the burden of the song. I love society so much that I swallowed it all at a gulp — i.e. all that came in my way. It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the compa- ny grows thinner & thinner till there is none at all. It is either the Tribune on the plain, a sermon on the mount, or a very private exta- cy still higher up. We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them. Use all the society that will abet you. But perhaps I do not enter into the spirit of your talk. — H.D.T. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At Lawrence in the Kansas Territory, Sheriff Samuel J. “Bogus” Jones and his proslavery posse known as the “Border Ruffians” destroyed the Free State Hotel and 2 presses. Sheriff Jones, who considered antislavery settlers to be “fanatics,” was heard to exclaim:

This is the happiest day of my life!

THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION One of these freedom “fanatics” had an interesting symbol for Kansas slavery, in a book he published in that same year of 1856. Quoth the raven, “Kaw”:

The name of this tribe is variously spelled Kanzas, Kansas, Cansas, Konzas, and Conzas; and to cap all absurdity, they scarcely know themselves by any other word than Kaw. Should the Territory be erected into a slave state, it might be advisable to adopt this latter as the title, being the ominous croak of the raven. — Max Greene, THE KANZAS REGION, as quoted on page 98 of William Least Heat-Moon’s PRAIRYERTH (A DEEP MAP) [Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1991]. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Here is a political map dating to this year, emphasizing the split between free and slave states, and what might happen to the comparative areas of the two entities should the Missouri Compromise be repealed: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Afterward August Bondi, a merchant of Lawrence, Kansas, would join the company of John Brown, Jr.

When this force would disband he would join the company of John Brown, Sr., and take part in the engagement at Black Jack, and would be with Brown in his different raids along the border until the final fight at Osawatomie in September 1856. During the border warfare his own property would be destroyed by Quantrell’s men, and some years later the federal government would allow him $1,000 in damages.

According to William G. Cutler’s HISTORY OF THE STATE OF KANSAS: On Wednesday, May 21, all was ready for the grand consummation to which all previous work had tended, and for which the Administration, the United States Senate, the Court, the Territorial Governor, the Southern States, and the Law and Order party of Western Missouri and Eastern Kansas had wrought unitedly, to wit, the silencing of the Free-state press, the destruction of the Free-state organization, and the vindictive chastening of Lawrence, as the citadel of insubordination against the laws they sought to force upon an unwilling people. The story has been oftener told than any other in the history of Kansas, and with less of contradiction as to the details. It would be but the repetition of a household tale to elaborate. Early in the morning, the hostile forces gathered closer about the doomed town. A large force was stationed on Mount Oread, and cannon planted so as to cover and command the place. Gov. Robinson’s house was taken as headquarters for the Marshal and the officers of his army. On every road leading to the town and on the opposite side of the river detachments of troops were posted to prevent the escape of fugitives from such justice as the Marshal and Sheriff Jones were now prepared to mete out. The forces mustered under two flags. The blood-red flag, on which was inscribed “Southern rights,” floated side by side that day with the “stars and stripes.” It was not so a few years later. There was no flag floating in Lawrence save an American flag, which fluttered lonesomely from its staff over the Free State Hotel. Streets were unusually quiet. Nearly half the able-bodied men were absent - some were prisoners, some were hiding from arrest, and many ardent citizens, who had opposed the non-resistance policy of the Committee of Safety, had left in bitter disgust, scorning to witness, unresistingly, the humiliation that their enemies had prepared for them. The arms were hidden away, and the remaining citizens were quietly in pursuit of their daily avocations. The Committee of Safety were in session in their room on the second floor of the Free State Hotel, which had for the first time since its completion been open to guests on that HDT WHAT? INDEX

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day. At 11 o’clock A. M., Deputy Marshal Fain, who had made two arrests in town the evening previous without resistance, again appeared with an unarmed guard of ten men. He drove directly to the hotel, where he summoned to act as his posse in serving his writs: Dr. Garvin, John A. Perry, C. W. Topliff, S. W. Eldridge and T. B. Eldridge. They readily, if not cheerfully, obeyed the summons. He arrested G. W. Deitzler, G. W. Smith and Gaius Jenkins, three of the Free-state men indicted by the grand jury for treason. No disturbance occurred and no resistance was made. Fain and his guard dined at the Free State Hotel, and shortly after departed with his prisoners without paying the bill. While in Lawrence, he was presented with a letter form the Committee of Safety, directed to his superior, which should have convinced him and all others who had doubt, that the Pro-slavery victory was complete. It read as follows: LAWRENCE, K.T., May 21, 1856. I.B. DONALDSON, UNITED STATES MARSHALL KANSAS TERRITORY: WE, the Committee of Public Safety for the citizens of Lawrence, make this Statement and declaration to you, as Marshal of Kansas Territory, That we represent the citizens of the United States and of Kansas, who acknowledge the constituted authorities of the Government, that we make no resistance to the execution of the law - National or Territorial - and claim it as law-abiding American citizens. For the private property already taken by your posse, we ask indemnification, and what remains to us and our citizens we throw upon you for protection, trusting that under he [sic] flag of the Union, and within the folds of the Constitution, we may obtain safety. SAMUEL C. POMEROY, C.W. BABCOCK,112 W.Y. ROBERTS, S.B. PRENTISS, LYMAN ALLEN, A.H. MALLORY, JOHN PERRY, JOEL GROVER. On the return of Marshal Fain, with his prisoners, to headquarters, at Mount Oread, he announced to the soldiers the peaceful and successful issue of his work, that he had made his arrests, and that, as a posse in his service, their duties were at an end; but, he added, “Sheriff Jones, has writs yet to be served, and you are at liberty to organize as his posse, if you desire to do so.” Sheriff Jones, quite recovered from his fright and his wound, now rode forward, greeted by cordial congratulations and loud cheers, which assured him without further formality that the posse had cheerfully transferred its allegiance to him, and were ready and impatient to do his bidding. Leaving the main body at Mount Oread, Jones, at the head of twenty armed men, entered Lawrence at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. At the hotel he halted, called for Gen. Pomeroy, who speedily presented himself and shook hands with him. Recognizing him as a leading citizen, and as one who could act for the people of Lawrence, he demanded that the arms be given up. Five minutes were given to decide 112. Messrs. Babcock, Prentiss, Mallory and Grover repudiate the letter, and are reported as denying their signatures thereto attached. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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upon the proposition, and thirty minutes to stack the arms in the street. Failing to comply with the demand, he threatened to at once bombard the town. After a hurried consultation with members of the committee, still in session, Pomeroy offered in their name to surrender the cannon, but declined to give up the rifles, as they were private property, in the hands of individual owners, and in no manner under the control of the committee. Jones thereupon, under the direction of Mr. Pomeroy and others of the committee, was led to the spot where the cannon had been secreted (buried under the foundation of a house). It was unearthed and surrendered, together with a few muskets not in possession of individual owners. With these Jones left the town. Meantime the soldiers had marched down toward the village to the foot of the hill, and being formed in a hollow square, were listening to a drunken, maudlin harangue from ex-Senator Atchison, which began: “Boys, to-day I am a Kickapoo Ranger, by ----.” Following this remarkable exordium, Atchison proceeded to inspire the boys with a just idea of the importance of the work they had in hand. As the ideas floated through his muddled brain he delivered them to his appreciative hearers, without order or coherence. He inculcated gallantry to the ladies, but, in case one should be found with arms in her hands, “trample her under foot as you would a snake.” As the people of Lawrence had shown no resistance, it would not do to attack them, but should there by the least show of resistance, “show them no quarter.” His speech was interrupted by the return of Jones, who, on the announcement that the cannon had been surrendered and the city was defenseless, was received with enthusiastic cheers. Atchison resumed: “And now, we will go in with our highly honorable Jones, and test the strength of that d--d Free-State Hotel. Be brave, be orderly, and if any man or woman stand in you way, blow them to ---- with a chunk of cold lead.” The motley force then formed in line, and marched, under the lead of Jones, into the city, and commenced abating the indicated nuisances, by virtue of, and in obedience to, an order of the United States Court, issued by Chief Justice Samuel D. Lecompte. The two printing offices were first gutted, the presses destroyed, and the types thrown in the river. The semi- legal work was finished by destroying the Free State Hotel. The first shot fired at it from a cannon plated on the opposite side of Massachusetts street, was aimed by the tipsy Atchison, but failed to hit the building. About fifty shots were afterwards fired, with but little effect, upon the solid walls. Next it was attempted to blow it up. Several kegs of gunpowder were exploded within, with no appreciable damage to the walls. Its destruction was finally effected by the torch of the incendiary, and in the early evening it stood a roofless and smoldering ruin. The legal work was done. It was followed by petty robberies all through the defenseless and half-deserted town. Late in the evening the curtain fell, the last act being the burning of Gov. Robinson’s private dwelling on Mount Oread, by the now irresponsible and lawless marauders, who had been released from all restraint when dismissed by the Sheriff. Jones revenge was complete. As the work of destruction went on, he was in ecstasy. “This,” said he, “is the happiest moment of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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my life. I determined to make the fanatics bow before me in the dust and kiss the Territorial laws.” As the walls of the burning hotel fell, he ejaculated, “I have done it, by ----, I have done it.” Turning to the soldiers, he said, “You are dismissed, the writs have been executed.” The loss to the citizens of Lawrence and the Emigrant Aid Company, who owned the Free State Hotel, was estimated at $150,000. The loss of the outside settlers in the vicinity of the invaders from the forced requisitions made upon them for subsistence of the army, and the robberies committed, was in some cases well-nigh ruinous. The aggregate loss to the citizens of Douglas County could not have fallen short of $200,000. The loss of life was summed up in the murder of two Free-state men, Brown and Stewart, and in the death of one Law and Order man, who was accidentally killed by a brick or stone which fell from the burning hotel. Two other members of the posse were wounded; one, by the accidental discharge of his own gun; the other, by being thrown from his horse while in pursuit of a Free- state man whom he had mistaken for Gov. Reeder. On the following day, the main body of troops began to disperse. Some companies marched to Leavenworth and Atchison; a part of the force returned to Westport and the Missouri towns from whence it had come. Many stragglers, who had been attached to no particular organization, hovered about the vicinity, stealing from the farmers horses, cattle, and whatever else was required to satisfy their not over frugal wants. A small force remained at Lecompton for the ostensible purpose of guarding the prisoners against any possible attempt at rescue on the part of their friends. That the non-resistant attitude of Lawrence during the trying seasons was voluntary, and not incited by abject fear or actual defenselessness, is evinced by the fact that there were ready to march to her assistance, from Topeka and many other towns, well-organized and well-armed companies of Free-state men, in sufficient numbers to be formidable to the invading force in the open field, and to have successfully defended Lawrence from within. All such proffered aid was refused, and, at the close of the siege, despite the loss of property and the humiliation, a moral victory had been won. Lawrence had offered no resistance to the laws, and had thus robbed the outrageous affair of all possible justification in the eyes of a civilized and liberty- loving people. She had not been conquered, for she had not resisted. Her people were not subdued, but oppressed and outraged for opinion’s sake. They bided patiently their time. Would that others with burdens less grievous might have shown like patient restraint. The anti-slavery press was silenced; the Free-state leaders imprisoned; and Lawrence humbled and unresistingly subservient to all behests of the Territorial authorities. Nevertheless, those conditions, so ardently desired by the Law and Order party, brought not even momentary peace to the distracted country; on the contrary, it proved the beginning of aggressive warfare on the part of the Free-state settlers, who, up to that time, while boldly denying the validity or binding force of the Territorial laws, had studiously avoided open conflict with the authorities by HDT WHAT? INDEX

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passively ignoring them. As a means of establishing peace, the determined efforts of those in authority to force the citizens of Lawrence into a position of abject allegiance, although a seeming success, proved a dismal failure. Besides those who remained at Lecompton, and straggling parties not identified by any known commander, Capt. H. Clay Pate, and Coleman, the murderer of Dow, with quite a numerous force of Westport rowdies, known as the Shannon Sharp-shooters, remained encamped on the Wakarusa, between Franklin and Fish’s store. Fish was a Free-state man, and it was believed he kept gunpowder to sell or give to his friends. Although the war was over, the company camped near by, prowled about the vicinity threatening to destroy the store, stopping and insulting Free-state men, supplying their wants by theft or forced contributions from the inhabitants. On the second day after their encampment, they were somewhat astonished and disgusted at a raid made into their camp by some parties, evidently not entirely friendly to them, who succeeded in capturing and making off with three valuable horses; on the next night a party from the camp going up the California road were fired into from a thicket and several wounded. They retreated precipitately to camp, leaving several horses and some arms as booty for their unseen assailants. On the same or the succeeding night a Pro-slavery man who kept a store in the log house on the California road, was robbed by a party of Free-state men of his goods and horses. It was evident that reprisals were being made on the Pro-slavery men, and that a regular guerrilla war had begun. A party attacked a house in Lecompton where some of the arms taken at Lawrence had been stored, together with some powder and other articles belonging to the Pro-slavery men. The occupants made no resistance, and the raiders made off with their booty. In three days after the great Law and Order victory at Lawrence, the whole surrounding country seemed infested with Free-state guerrillas who robbed and plundered the Pro-slavery settlers, and harassed the Law and Order troops without mercy. Between the two sets of marauders, the unarmed inhabitants, whether Pro-slavery or otherwise, stood equal chances of being plundered. Even Gov. Shannon did not escape. Two valuable horses were stolen from him, and pressed into the Free-state service, whereupon His Excellency waxed wroth, and ordered the United States Dragoons, then stationed at Lecompton and at Lawrence, to patrol duty in the surrounding country. They rode the country up and down, but made no captures. He took the field himself, and, in company with his friend, Col. Titus, and members of his force, made a reconnoissance [sic]. He visited the residences of both Free-state and Pro-slavery settlers on the line of his march, threatening the one and reassuring the other in his official capacity. His efforts only served to show to both his friends and enemies his utter demoralization and incompetency as Governor of the Territory at that time. Henceforth, until the time of his removal, he was entirely under control of the Pro- slavery element, making the prevailing confusion worse confounded by the imbecility of his administration. THE POTTAWATOMIE MURDERS. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE CROWNING HORROR. The news of the trouble at Lawrence, and her threatened destruction by the Southern soldiery, came to Osawatomie on the evening of June 21. Immediately, on receipt of the information, the Pottawatomie Rifles, a Free-state company under the command of John Brown, Jr., set out for the scene of disturbance. The Osawatomie company, Capt. Dayton, joined them, and together they reached “Ottawa Jones” on the morning of the 22d. There they first heard of the sack of the town, and the arrest of Deitzler, Brown and Jenkins. They, however, continued their march toward Lawrence, not knowing but their assistance might still be needed, and encamped at night “up the Ottawa Creek, near the residence of Capt. Shore.” They remained in the vicinity until afternoon of the 23d, at which time they decided to return home. About noon on the 23d, Old John Brown, whose indignation was at fever heat, selected a party to go with him on a private expedition. They separated from the main party, ground their sabers, and having completed their preparations, left the camp together. Capt. John Brown, Jr., objected to their leaving his company, but, seeing his father was obdurate, silently acquiesced, with the timely caution to him to “do nothing rash.” The company consisted of Old John Brown, four of his sons - Frederick, Owen, Watson, Oliver- Henry Thompson, his son-in-law, Thomas Winer and James Townsley, whom Old John had induced to carry the party in his wagon to their proposed field of operations. They left the camp at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon of the 23d. They were met toward sundown of that day between Pottawatomie Creek and Middle Creek, and but a few miles from the Doyle settlement, by Col. J. Blood, then on his way from Osawatomie to Lawrence.113 The party halted on meeting Col. Blood, and a conversation ensued between him and John Brown, none of the other members of the party speaking. Brown gave him an account of the sacking of Lawrence, and the arrest of the Free-state men, denounced the members of the non-resistant committee as cowards, and seemed in a frenzied state of excitement. As they parted, he requested Col. Blood not to mention the meeting, “as they were on a secret expedition, and did not want any one to know that they were in that neighborhood.” They encamped that night between two deep ravines on the edge of the timber, some distance to the right of the main traveled road, about one mile above “Dutch Henry’s crossing.” There they remained unobserved until the following evening (Saturday, June 24). Some time after dark, the party left their place of hiding and proceeded on their “secret expedition.” Late in the evening, they called at the house of James P. Doyle, and ordered him and his two sons, William and Drury, to go with them as prisoners. They followed their captors out into the darkness. They next called at the house of Allen Wilkinson and ordered him out. He also obeyed; thence, crossing the Pottawatomie, they came to the house of Henry Sherman (Dutch Henry). He was not at home. They, however, arrested and took along with them William, his brother. 113. The statements concerning this meeting are given on the authority of a letter from Col. Blood to G. W. Brown, dated November 29, 1879. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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They returned to the ravine where they had previously encamped, and there spent the quiet Sabbath morning, then broke camp and rejoined the Osawatomie company some time during Sunday night, it being at that time encamped near Ottawa Jones’ The secret expedition was ended. Was it successful? Where were the prisoners? Had they escaped? Old man Doyle and his sons were left in the road a short distance from their house. They were cut, mangled, stabbed - some say shot - it didn’t matter to the Doyles - they were dead. Sherman was left in the creek, near his brother’s house. He was hacked upon the breast and hand, his skull split open, and, from the wounds, the brains oozed out into the muddy water. It did not matter to Sherman - he was dead. Yes, the secret expedition had proved successful. The persons who had thus suddenly gone to their long account were all believed to be Pro-slavery men of the most violent and intolerant type, of whom the Free-State settlers stood in constant dread. The news of the horrid affair spread rapidly over the Territory, carrying with it a thrill of horror, such as the people, used as they had become to deeds of murder, had not felt before. Hitherto, in most cases ending in homicide or murder, the Free- State man had proved the victim. The crimes had been perpetrated in open day, and were often the outcome of an angry encounter or brawl between men of equal nerve and determination, both armed, or in the company of armed companions. Under these circumstances, these unavenged murders, numerous and atrocious as they were, lacked the ghastly horror of this silent, stealthy, midnight massacre of defenseless men. The news of the event had a deeper significance than appeared in the abstract atrocity of the act itself. It meant that, when Gov. Shannon, to the committee, pleading for the safety of Lawrence, replied, “War, by ----,” there were men outside of Lawrence, and beyond the control of the committee of public safety, who had taken him at his word. It meant that the policy of extermination or abject submission, so blatantly promulgated by the Pro-slavery press, and proclaimed by Pro- slavery speakers, had been adopted by their enemies, and was about to be enforced with appalling earnestness. It meant that there was a power opposed to the Pro-slavery aggressors, as cruel and unrelenting as themselves. It meant henceforth, swift retaliation - robbery for robbery - murder for murder - that “he who taketh the sword shall perish by the sword.” It meant that the merciless and implacable spirit of retributive vengeance, hitherto held in restraint, had broken its leash and begun its dreadful work. The aggressive warfare thus begun, was not in accordance with the plans or purposes of the leaders of the Free-State movement; on the contrary, it was in direct opposition to their counsel, and had been persistently decried and successfully restrained up to this time. For the disorders that ensued, the Free-State organization was in no manner responsible. The aggressive movement at that time begun, was an uncontrollable outburst of rage long pent up, under the stress of suffering, intimidation, insult, humiliation, and unredressed outrage, such as, by hot- HDT WHAT? INDEX

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tempered men of courage, could no longer be unresistingly endured. Upon those high in authority and wielding powerful influence, who, with deliberate purpose, counseled, planned, and executed the outrages, which at last culminated in all the horrors of anarchy, the responsibility rests for all time to come; to them, history accords the infamous distinction which their deeds merit. After the attack on Lawrence in the Kansas Territory, a proslavery grand jury indicted many free state men, including in their indictment the “Free State Hotel” in Lawrence. In accordance with the indictments of this grand jury, Pierce being a proslavery president, the US Cavalry, acting to implement the agendas of the proslavery party, arrested 2 of John Brown’s sons. John Brown, Jr. was required to trot, on foot, with his arms tied behind him, ahead of a cavalry company, the 9 miles to Osawatomie.

June: Richard Josiah Hinton set out with a group of Free-Staters for the Kansas Territory.

Major Jefferson Buford went back to the South and would then proceed to Washington DC to attempt to obtain more proslavery men to relocate as colonists to the Kansas Territory. THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION

Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar of Concord went to the Philadelphia convention of the new Republican Party and served on the platform committee. The party chose John Charles Frémont as its candidate for President and William L. Dayton as its candidate for Vice-President. Although the party would lose the national election, it would manage to place Banks in the governor’s seat in Massachusetts. Ebenezer was appointed by Governor Banks to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, along the way of eventually becoming President Grant’s Attorney General. With George Frisbie Hoar a representative and then a senator, people began to speak of the Hoars as Concord’s “royal family.” The Hoars Concord’s “Royal Family” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Henry Thoreau ran a line near the pail factory to show the boundary, on the west side of Derby, of a woodlot George Prescott bought from David Loring.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I go for those who have received a retaining fee to this party of freedom, before they came into this world. I would trust Garrison, I would trust Henry Thoreau, that they would make no compromises. I would trust Horace Greeley, I would trust my venerable friend Mr Hoar, that they would be staunch for freedom to the death; but both of these would have a benevolent credulity in the honesty of the other party, that I think unsafe.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON

July 23, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Returned from Pigeon Cove, where we have made acquaintance with the sea, for seven days ... the sea, the opaline, plentiful & strong, yet beautiful as the rose or the rainbow, full of food, nourisher of men, purger of the world, creating a sweet climate, and, in its unchangeable ebb & flow, and in its beauty at a few furlongs, giving a hint of that which changes not, & is perfect.

The journals of Waldo Emerson for this year as assembled by his son Edward Waldo Emerson in 1904-1914 would excerpt the following contents: EMERSON’S JOURNAL, IX

July 23: Returned from Pigeon Cove, where we have made acquaintance with the sea, for seven days. ’Tis a noble friendly power, and seemed to say to me, “Why so late and slow to come to me? Am I not here always thy proper summer home? Is not my voice thy needful music: my breath, thy healthful climate in the heats; my touch, thy cure? Was ever building like my terraces? was ever couch so magnificent as mine? Lie down on my warm ledges and learn that a very little hut is all you need. I have made thy architecture superfluous, and it is paltry beside mine. Here are twenty Romes and Ninevehs and Karnacs in ruins together, obelisk and pyramid and giant’s causeway, — here they all, are prostrate or half piled.” And behold the sea, the opaline, plentiful and strong, yet beautiful as the rose or the rainbow, full of food, nourisher of men, purger of the world, creating a sweet climate, and, in its unchangeable ebb and flow, and in its beauty at a few furlongs, giving a hint of that which changes not, and is perfect.114 “Until man is able to compress the ether like leather, there will be no end of misery, except through the 114. The day after our return from this visit to the rocks of Cape Ann, to which Rev. Cyrus Bartol had led the way, my father came up to my mother’s room looking much pleased, and said, “I came in yesterday from the rocks and wrote down what the ocean had said to me, and to-day when I open my book, I find it blank verse by omitting a word here and there. Listen”; and he read the above passage from the journal. Compare with the “Seashore,” in the Poems. E. W. E. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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knowledge of God.” — Upan “From whom the sun rises, and in whom it sets again, him all the gods entered; from him none is separated; this is that. “What is here, the same is there, and what is there, the same is here. He proceeds from death to death who beholds here difference. “He (Brahma, or the Soul) does not move; is swifter than the mind: not the gods (the senses) did obtain him, he was gone before. Standing, he outstrips all the other gods, how fast soever they run. “He moves, he does not move. He is far, and also near.” SONG OF THE SOUL (BRAHMA) If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods not less appear; And one to me are shame and fame. They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. The strong gods pine for my abode, And pine in vain the sacred Seven; But thou, meek lover of the good! Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

“Know that which does not see by the eye; and by which they see the eyes, as Brahma, and not what is worshipped as this. “Know that which does not think by the mind, and by which they say the mind is thought, as Brahma, and not what is worshipped as this. “The soul declared by an inferior man is not easy to be known, but when it is declared by a teacher who beholds no difference, there is no doubt concerning it, the soul being more subtle than what is subtle, is not to be obtained by arguing.” A grander legend than Western literature contains, is the story of Nachiketas.115 ... (From ZO) “The complete incarnation of spirit, which is the definition of Beauty, demands that there shall be no point from which it is absent, and none in which it abides.” — J. ELLIOT CABOT. Of extempore speaking. When nineteen years of age, Cotton Mather received advice from his uncle Nathaniel. “By any means, get to preach without any use or help by your notes. When I was in New England, no man that I remember used them except one, and he because of a special infirmity, the vertigo, as I take it, or some specie of it. Neither of your grandfathers used any, nor did your uncle (Samuel) here (in Dublin), nor do I, though we both of us write generally the materials of our sermons.” (Collections of Mass. Historical Society, vol. viii, 4th series.) (From SO) The swimmer standing on the land dreads the plunge, yet, having plunged, enjoys the water. The living fear death, yet, dying, enjoy the new life. How the landscape mocks the weakness of man! it is vast, beautiful, complete, and alive; and we can only dibble and step about, and dot it a little. The gulf between our seeing and doing is a symbol of that between faith and experience.

115. This in abbreviated form is told in “Immortality.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Winter: In the valley of the Connecticut River, this was one of the severest winters on record, with many roads remaining impassable for the entire long winter. There were a total of 32 snowstorms. On the American great plains, so many prairie elk would starve in the blizzards that the season would become known as “Massacre Winter.”

At Philadelphia, the Delaware River froze, leading to the following Currier & Ives engraving by J. Queen, entitled “Souvenir of the Coldest Winter on Record. Scene on the Delaware River at Philadelphia”:

So many prairie elk would starve in the blizzards this winter, on the American great plains, that the season would become known as “the Massacre Winter.” This winter of 56-7 was terribly severe lots of drifting snow storms, high winds and bitter cold days breaking up even the court for days at a time, freezing up the harbor so that we had a good track over Charles River on the ice, driving & walking across to Boston without paying tolls— I remember going down the harbor on the ice for miles alongside the canal cut for the Cunard steamer, and watching her progress to sea through a crowd of curious people lining the edges as the great ship slowly forged ahead. I forget whether I rode or skated on this occasion for I think it had happened once before and that then or this time I skated to the light ho. and I hardly think I should have HDT WHAT? INDEX

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done that as sheriff, more likely when at Cambridge! J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY Waldo Emerson offered his journal another of his weary captious self-justifying paradoxes, by alleging in effect that all Henry Thoreau wants to do in a conversation is to dominate the other person with biting argument while he, Emerson, is attempting in a loving spirit to turn the encounter toward the pursuit of Truth and Beauty and Joy. All his life Emerson was capable of projecting his own faults onto other people in this blatant manner, in order to unselfconsciously and contemptuously condemn them in that external projection:

If I knew only Thoreau, I should think cooperation of good men impossible. Must we always talk for victory, & never once for truth, for comfort, & joy? Centrality he has, & penetration, strong understanding, & the higher gifts — the insight of the real or from the real, & the moral rectitude that belongs to it; but all this & all his resources of wit & invention are lost to me in every experiment, year after year, that I make, to hold intercourse with his mind. Always some weary captious paradox to fight you with, & the time & temper wasted.

Also:

A.B.A. [Bronson Alcott] saw the Midsummers Night’s dream played, & said, it was a phallus to which fathers could carry their daughters, & each had their own thoughts, without suspecting that the other had the same. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1857

March: Franklin Benjamin Sanborn brought John Brown to speak at the Concord City Hall and introduced him to Henry Thoreau during the noon meal, which they had at the Thoreau boarding house. Thoreau spent the

afternoon discoursing with Brown (Brown told Thoreau about the battle in the Kansas Territory of June 1856) and, as Waldo Emerson had just returned from a lecture tour, introduced them to one another. It is likely, however, that Emerson and Brown had already met at an earlier, privileged meeting at the home of the millionaire railroader John Murray Forbes in Milton, Massachusetts, a meeting to which they would not been likely to refer in the presence of Thoreau. Brown spoke of the struggle in the Kansas Territory in June of the previous year. In visiting the Thoreau home, he met John Thoreau, Senior. We may notice in Emerson’s journal that he sided with John Brown the strong white defender of the victim negro, against the Sermon on the Mount. In the following snippet from his journal, the Reverend Emerson is proclaiming in effect that the injunction “resist not evil” is a dangerous piece of mushyheadedness, and that what we need to do to make our nation into a kinder gentler America is to go out and kill some of the people who are preventing our nation from being a HDT WHAT? INDEX

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kind gentle America:116

Captain John Brown of Kansas gave a good account of himself in the Town Hall, last night, to a meeting of Citizens. One of his good points was, the folly of the peace party in Kansas, who believed, that their strength lay in the greatness of their wrongs, & so discountenanced resistance. He wished to know if their wrong was greater than the negro’s, & what kind of strength that gave to the negro?

The elder John Thoreau helped purchase for Brown one of Christian Sharps’s “ten rounds per minute” 1853- model breech-loading cap-and-ball carbine, 37 3/4 inches overall with a 21 3/4-inch rifled barrel, that used a “pellet without cut-off” primer.117

After they would take Captain John Brown’s Sharps rifle away from him at Harpers Ferry, they would allow this little boy to pose with it. Grow up, son, and be a Christian like us: kill people, own slaves.

This weapon was being manufactured in Hartford, Connecticut, although the fishy Christian Sharps was then

116. We may remind ourselves, as we read the above, that back during February 1854 Waldo Emerson had been scheming with the saintly Bronson Alcott on a different-but-strangely-similar final solution to the American race problem, a solution in which white men would castrate all their black men so that only the white owners would be able to fecundate their black women. We might therefore want to turn the above jotting quite around, and inquire of Mr. Emerson and Mr. Alcott what kind of strength it gave to the black man to be castrated as they had been musing in February 1854, and what kind of strength it gave to the black woman to bear children which would be in successive generations lighter and purer, until finally their taint had been erased and we had arrived at an America of blond beastly angels. It is interesting to juxtapose the musing of 1854, in which we note that the Sermon on the Mount is quite disregarded, and the musing of 1857, in which we note that the Sermon on the Mount is quite disregarded. The musing of 1857 seem to be defending the black American but the musing of 1854 seemed to have been attacking the black American — so how did we get from the malevolence-against-the-black one to the succeeding malevolence-against-the-white one while continuing to quite disregard the Sermon on the Mount? (This is nothing if not perplexing. Perhaps someone can explain the transition.) 117. The version of this weapon sold to the Chinese government was inscribed “Old Reliable” in Chinese characters. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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in the process of selling out and moving to Phila-delphia, the city of brotherly love, where he would set up another weapons manufactory. Thoreau also “subscribed a trifle.”118 We should not evade anything here: it is clear that Waldo Emerson, donating $25.00, and the Thoreaus, did know at the time they made their donations that their money was to be applied not to provisions such as food or clothing but to the purchase of rifles and ammunition. Here are two company-solicited testimonials to this “hot thing” killing machine which Waldo Emerson, John Thoreau, Senior, and Henry David Thoreau helped to provide to John Brown. The first is dated “Magoffansville, Texas, June, 1853”:

The ten Sharps’ carbines purchased of you were all put to immediate use in arming my escort, and for range, accuracy, and rapidity of firing, they are far superior to any arm known. They have gone through what an ordinance officer would term a pretty severe field test, without the least injury. In all of our shooting of bear, deer, wolves, &c., I have never known the ball to be found in the animal. Having been a frontier man for fourteen years, I had occasion to look after a bosom companion to stand by me in case of life or death; and hence I have given some little attention to the subject of fire arms, and think I can tolerably well appreciate their excellence; and in my search after such a comforter, I have found no arm that in all its attributes begins to compare with the Sharps’ arm and for army, navy, caravan or sporting service, it is sure to take and hold the front rank. Capt. Henry Skillman, U.S. Mail Contractor.

118. This phrase “subscribed a trifle” comes from his Journal entry of October 22, 1860 in which he is evidently wrestling with his conscience, perhaps feeling that he was unduly influenced in going along with his father in this matter: “I subscribed a trifle when he was here three years ago, I had so much confidence in the man –that he would do right,– … I do not wish to kill or to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both of these things would be by me unavoidable. In extremities I could even be killed.” (XII, 437) We must bear in mind that it would have been especially painful for Thoreau to have had a falling-out with his father during this period, as Thoreau’s father was going into a period of sickness which would last some two years and would end in his taking to his room for a few weeks, and then peacefully dying. During this period he would be, as Thoreau later described, “going down-town in pleasant weather, doing a little business from time to time, hoeing a little in the garden, etc.” He was coughing and raising material from his lungs. Normally a taciturn man, he was becoming noticeably more silent even than usual. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The second of these company-solicited testimonials is datelined Washington, January, 1855:

In answer to your inquiries, I take great pleasure in bearing testimony to the great value and use of Sharps’ rifles. Upon two expeditions across the continent to California, I have had the ten rifles in active use the whole time in the field. With ten men armed with these rifles we felt equal to thirty. Its simplicity enabled the men to understand it at a glance, and they loaded and fired it with great accuracy and rapidity, killing game at four hundred and fifty yards. It inspired the men with great confidence in their strength and power to defend themselves against superior numbers. With ten men, a negro and a Mexican, I kept at bay one hundred and forty Apache warriors, all fully armed, just on the eve of an attack on Gov. Gardner’s ranch in Sonora. I look upon it as far the best rifle and the only proper one for mounted men that I have ever seen. Andrew B. Gray.

We must bear in mind that it would have been especially painful for Thoreau to have had a falling-out with his father during this period, as Thoreau’s father John Thoreau was going into a period of sickness which would last some two years and would end in his taking to his room for a few weeks, and then peacefully dying. During this period he would be, as Thoreau later described, “going down-town in pleasant weather, doing a little business from time to time, hoeing a little in the garden, etc.” He was coughing and raising material from his lungs. Normally a taciturn man, he was becoming noticeably even more silent than usual.

Would the John Murray Forbes that Emerson had been meeting, the railroad magnate, be the daddy of the Forbes who would marry Emerson’s daughter? Would he have been related to the Scottish adventurer Hugh Forbes who would soon become John Brown’s principal lieutenant?119 Captain Brown had read Forbes’s MANUAL FOR THE PATRIOTIC VOLUNTEER; ON ACTIVE SERVICE IN REGULAR AND IRREGULAR WAR; BEING THE ART AND SCIENCE OF OBTAINING AND MAINTAINING LIBERTY AND INDEPENDENCE (published in 1856), and Forbes’s pamphlet DUTIES OF A SOLDIER, while in the Kansas Territory and had discussed this with another English-emigrant-turned-writer, William A. Phillips. Forbes had written, “Right is that which is good true honorable just humane self-sacrificing — it is the opposite of wrong.” When Brown had come east on a fundraising mission, he had looked up Forbes in New-York and been impressed with his similar desire to do something about the lamentable “peculiar institution” of the American southlands, race slavery. Brown

119. Captain John Brown’s scheme, which he referred to as the “Subterranean Pass Way,” was that the escaped, armed slaves were to “swarm” into and set up a center of resistance in the Alleghenies from which they could liberate Virginia and then invade Tennessee and northern Alabama. Such a scoping of the situation never met with much respect from other of the other schemers. In particular, the Scottish adventurer Hugh Forbes, Brown’s onetime principal lieutenant, regarding blacks as inherently childlike, credulous, and cowardly, believed such a scheme to be doomed to failure from its inception. The scenario preferred by Forbes would have involved the herding of the slaves together by armed bands of white men and the driving of such herds of humans up the mountain chain toward Canada, neatly disposing of America’s entire race problem — by simple relocation of it to another country. Evidently the two planners parted company over issues such as this after Forbes had functioned in Tabor, Iowa as the leader of military training for the recruits, and then Forbes attempted blackmail. When not offered a payoff, he wrote long, detailed letters to congressmen and to others, and it is one of the unresolved issues, how anyone in high office in Washington DC could have avoided knowing in advance that Brown was plotting a strike of some sort against slavery. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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perceived the possibility of a political alliance with Forbes against the iniquity of race slavery, although Forbes believed that the black race was inherently inferior to the white, and immediately contracted with Forbes to train recruits to the cause in the Kansas Territory and at Mount Tabor, Iowa. Forbes was, however, a mercenary from the get-go, requiring his expenses plus a salary of $100 a month, the 1st 6 months of which was to be paid in advance: Brown did agree to this.

During this month, at a racetrack in Savannah, Georgia, there was being transacted the largest auction of human beings in the history in the United States of America. During the two days it took to dispose of 436 men, women, and children, it was as if the heavens were crying, the rain fell so unceasingly. This auction would come to be known, appropriately, as “the weeping time.” Some twenty years earlier the owners, the brothers Pierce and John Butler, had inherited their family’s plantations, but Pierce, Fanny Kemble Butler’s ex-husband, had squandered his $700,000 portion and, beyond that, gotten deeply into debt. Management of the estate was transferred to trustees who sold off Pierce’s once grand but now dilapidated Philadelphia mansion for $30,000. Other Butler properties were sold as well, but it was not enough to obtain for Pierce a continuation of his luxury, so he had the trustees turn to the Georgia plantations and their “movable” property. At the time, the overall holdings of the Butler family included 900 slaves. Half of them, 450, were assigned to the estate of the brother John, who had since died, and would remain on the plantations. Of the other 450 – Pierce’s half– about 20 would be allowed to continue to live in slavery on Butler property. The remainder were herded onto railway cars and steamboats and brought to the Broeck racetrack to be sold to the highest bidder. Philadelphia socialite Sidney George Fisher would note in his diary that “It is highly honorable to [Butler] that he did all he could to prevent the sale, offering to make any personal sacrifice to avoid it,” but we don’t know of any such sacrifice actually made. The two-day sale of 436 human beings netted $303,850 for Butler, amply more than he needed to satisfy all his creditors. Of the auction, Fisher wrote: It is a dreadful affair, however, selling these hereditary Negroes.... Families will not be separated, that is to say, husbands and wives, parents and young children. But brothers and sisters of mature age, parents and children of mature age, all other relations and the ties of home and long association will be violently severed. It will be a hard thing for Butler to witness and it is a monstrous thing to do. Yet it is done every day in the South. It is one among the many frightful consequences of slavery and contradicts our civilization, our Christianity, or Republicanism. Can such a system endure, is it consistent with humanity, with moral progress? These are difficult questions, and still more difficult is it to say, what can be done? The Negroes of the South must be slaves or the South will be Africanized. Slavery is better for them and for us than such a result. Mortimer “Doesticks” Thomson, a popular newsman, wrote a lengthy, uncomplimentary article about the auction for the New-York Tribune under the headline “What Became of the Slaves on a Georgia Plantation.” He reported how the slaves, eager to impress potential masters who they perceived as likely to be kind, would sometimes cheerfully respond to buyers “pulling their mouths open to see their teeth, pinching their limbs to find how muscular they were, walking them up and down to detect any signs of lameness, making them stoop and bend in different ways that they might be certain there was no concealed rupture or wound....” This white columnist commiserated with the unfortunate slaves after the sale, stating, “On the faces of all was an expression of heavy grief; some appeared to be resigned to the hard stroke of Fortune that had torn them from their homes, and were sadly trying to make the best of it; some sat brooding moodily over their sorrows, their chins resting on their hands, their eyes staring vacantly, and their bodies rocking to and fro, with a restless motion that was never stilled....” The highest price paid for one family –a mother with five grown children– had been $6,180. The highest price for one individual had been $1,750. The lowest price for one person was HDT WHAT? INDEX

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$250. Soon after the last slave was sold, the rain stopped and champagne bottles were popped in celebration. Pierce, once again wealthy, would be able to make a trip to southern Europe before returning to reside to Philadelphia.

The Reverend Samuel Joseph May wrote to his cousin the Reverend Samuel J. May, Jr. to declare his embarrassment at having supported a party which had in effect to obtain votes for its candidate John Charles Frémont been pandering to racists, and had then despite such an extreme sacrifice failed to succeed at the national polls. He declared himself to be glad the Republican Party did not succeed.

Thoreau wrote to someone named Adams.120

At the invitation of Governor Salmon Portland Chase, Moncure Daniel Conway lectured the Ohio legislature, promising worldly success to those like himself who were willing to risk all by taking their stand upon the firm bedrock of moral principle. (A pleasant fantasy, that! Civil War days would demonstrate that Conway was truly a master of the pleasant fantasy, could truly tell people what they longed to hear: Hark! Hark! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! I have a plan for ending the bloodshed! All you need to do is pay some attention to me!) THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION

120.There was a Frank Adams in the Concord area. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 2, Saturday: Charlotte L. Forten received some issues of the Edinburgh Review from “Mr. N.” (William Cooper Nell).

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Walk yesterday first day of May with Henry T.... Saw a stump of a canoe-birch-tree newly cut down, which had bled a barrel. From a white birch, H. cut a strip of bark to show how a naturalist would make the best box to carry a plant or other specimen requiring care. & thought the woodman would make a better hat of birch-bark than of felt, yes, & pantaloons too — hat, with cockade of lichens, thrown in.... We will make a book on walking, ’tis certain, & have easy lessons for beginners. “Walking in ten Lessons.” ... H. has found, he said, lately a fungus which was a perfect Phallus; & in the books one is noted Obscoenum.

May 2. Saturday. Building a fence between us and Mrs. Richardson. In digging the holes I find the roots of small apple trees, seven or eight feet distant and four or more inches in diameter, two feet under ground, and as big as my little finger. This is two or three feet beyond any branches. They reach at least twice as far as the branches. The branches get trimmed, the roots do not. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 25, Monday: Italian forces under Giuseppe Garibaldi defeated the Austrians at Varese, 50 kilometers northwest of Milan.

It was Waldo Emerson’s 54th birthday. In New Bedford, Friend Daniel Ricketson wrote in his journal:

Rode to the Tarkiln Hill station at noon in expectation somewhat of seeing Mr. R.W. Emerson, but he did not come. At the depot in town while awaiting the arrival of the P.M. train from Boston, had an adventure with a coachman who abused his horse. Rather successful on my JOSEPH RICKETSON part. Mr. Emerson arrived, took him to brother Joseph’s to tea, heard his lecture before the Lyceum. He came out with me and spent the night. His lecture without a name very good.

Friend Daniel also completed his journal entries about his recent stay in Concord:

Fine and warm summer weather. Walked through the village, over the river, north to the hills, and returned by the Battleground and the old Parsonage House. On the river with Thoreau in his boat this P.M. The excursion upon the Concord River this P.M. with Thoreau in his boat was very pleasant, although when we started I hardly felt able to walk to the boat, which was upon the shore, some distance up the river, near Fairhaven Bay. But after a bath and swim with T. I felt much refreshed and my dull headache passed gradually off. Walked alone after tea as far as the old red-painted house beyond the railroad crossing west. Halted on my return at the railroad depot, and was much interested in an ingenious young fellow who was earning his livelihood selling humming-tops, of whom I purchased one for Joseph’s little boy Frank. Thoreau accompanied me to my room, and after a long talk upon character, &c., I retired at 10. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Meanwhile, Emerson was making some comments to his journal about what Ricketson had told him:

At home, Daniel Ricketson expressed some sad views of life & religion. A thunderstorm is terror to him, and his theism was judaical. Henry thought a new pear-tree was more to purpose, &c. but said better, that an ecstasy was never interrupted. A theology of this kind is as good a meter or yardstick as any other. If I can be scared by a highwayman or a thunderclap, I should say, my performances were not very high, & should at once be mended.

May 25. P. M.—With Ricketson to my boat under Fair Haven Hill. In Hubbard’s Grove, hear the shrill chattering of downy woodpeckers, very like the red squirrel’s tche tche. Thermometer at 87° at 2.30 P. M. It is interesting to hear the bobolinks from the meadow sprinkle their lively strain along amid the tree-tops as they fly over the wood above our heads. It resounds in a novel manner through the aisles of the wood, and at the end that fine buzzing, wiry note. The black spruce of Holden’s, apparently yesterday, but not the 23d. What a glorious crimson fire as you look up to the sunlight through the thin edges of the scales of its cones! So intensely glowing in their cool green beds! while their purplish sterile blossoms shed pollen on you. Took up four young spruce and brought them home in the boat. After all, I seem to have distinguished only one spruce, and that the black, judging by the cones,—perhaps the dark and light varieties of it, for the last is said to be very like the white spruce. The white spruce cones are cylindrical and have an entire firm edge to the scales, and the needles are longer. Though the river is thus high, we bathe at Cardinal Shore and find the water unexpectedly warm and the air also delicious. Thus we are baptized into nature. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Summer: Brownson’s Quarterly Review, No. 7

I. E.H. Derby to his Son II. Prayer Books CATHOLICISM III. Spiritual Despotism IV. Ailey Moore V. The Slavery Question Once More VI. Literary Notices and Criticisms

MAGAZINES ORESTES AUGUSTUS BROWNSON Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

There is certainly a convenience in the money scale in the absence of finer metres. In the South a slave is bluntly but accurately valued at 500 to 1000 dollars, if a good working field hand; if a mechanic, as carpenter or smith, at 12, 15, or 20 hundred. A Mulatto girl, if beautiful, rises at once very naturally to a high estimation. If beautiful & sprightly-witted, one who is a joy when present, a perpetual entertainment to the eye, &, when absent, a happy remembrance, $2500 & upwards of our money.

July 8, Saturday: Henry Thoreau wrote to Calvin H. Greene. Concord July 8th ’57 Dear Sir, You are right in supposing that I have not been westward. I am very little of a traveller. I am gratified to hear of the interest you take in my books; it is additional encouragement to write more of them. Though my pen is not idle, I have not published anything f or a cou- ple of years at least. I like a private life, & cannot bear to have the public in my mind. You will excuse me for not responding more heartily to your notes, since I realize what an interval there always is between the actual & imagined author, & feel that it would not be just for me to appropri- ate the sympathy and goodwill of my unseen readers. Nevertheless, I should like to meet you, & if I ever come into your HDT WHAT? INDEX

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neighborhood shall endeavor to do so. Cant you tell the world of your life also? Then I shall know you, at least as well as you me– Yrs truly Henry D. Thoreau

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

This morning I had the remains of my mother & of my son Waldo removed from the tomb of Mrs Ripley to my lot in “Sleepy Hollow.” The sun shone brightly on the coffins, of which Waldo’s was well preserved — now fifteen years. I ventured to look into the coffin. I gave a few white-oak leaves to each coffin, after they were put in the new vault, & the vault was then covered with two slabs of granite. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 19, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal in regard to the consolations of politics:

A visit to Josiah Quincy, Jr., on his old place at Quincy, which has been in the family for seven generations since 1635.... There lives the old President, now 85 years old, in the house built by his father in 1770; & Josiah Jr. in a new house built by Billings, 7 years ago. They hold 500 acres, & the land runs down to the sea. From the piazza in the rear of the house of J.Q. Jr. you may see every ship that comes in or goes out of boston, and most of the islands in the harbor. ’Tis the best placed house I know. The old man I visited on Saturday evening, & on Sunday he came & spent the evening with us at his son’s house. He is the most fortunate of men. Old John Adams said that of him; & his good fortune has followed to this hour. His son said to me, “My father has thrown ten times, & every time got doublets.” Yet he was engaged to a lady whose existence he did not know of, 7 days before, & she proved the best of wives. I made a very pleasant acquaintance with young Josiah 3d, the poet of “Lyteria.” And I like him better than his poem. Charles Francis Adams also was there in the Sunday Evening. Old Quincy still reads & writes with vigor & steadiness 2 or 3 hours every night after tea till ten. He has just finished his “Life of J.Q. Adams.”

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS,SR. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

That afternoon the Reverend Convers Francis preached in Concord. His prooftext for the Concord faithful was 1st Peter 1:9 and his topic was “Mediatory and Ultimate Truths.”

July 27, Monday: Waldo Emerson reported in his journal that Ellery Channing was complaining of a “new pedantry in T” and characterizing this as “a dry rot.”

July 27, Monday, Morning: … Having rapidly loaded the canoe, which the Indian always carefully attended to, that it might be well trimmed, and each having taken a look, as usual, to see that nothing was left, we set out again, descending the Caucomgomoc, and turning northeasterly up the Umbazookskus … the next HDT WHAT? INDEX

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opening in the sky was over Umbazookskus Lake, which we suddenly entered about eleven o’clock in the forenoon. It stretches northwesterly four or five miles, with what the Indian called the Caucomgomoc Mountain seen far beyond it. It was an agreeable change. … We crossed the southeast end of the lake to the carry into Mud Pond. … After a long while my companion came back, and the Indian with him. We had taken the wrong road, EDWARD HOAR and the Indian had lost us. He had very wisely gone back to the Canadian’s camp, and asked him which way we had probably gone, since he could better understand the ways of white men, and he told him correctly that we had undoubtedly taken the supply road to Chamberlain Lake (slender supplies they would get over such a road at this season). The Indian was greatly surprised that we should have taken what he called a “tow” (i. e. tote or toting or supply) road, instead of a carry path, — that we had not followed his tracks, — said it was “strange,” and evidently thought little of our woodcraft. … We had come out on a point extending into Apmoojenegamook, or Chamberlain Lake, west of the outlet of Mud Pond, where there was a broad, gravelly, and rocky shore, encumbered with bleached logs and trees. We were rejoiced to see such dry things in that part of the world. But at first we did not attend to dryness so much as to mud and wetness. We all three walked into the lake up to our middle to wash our clothes.…

July 27, Monday, Evening: … After putting on such dry clothes as we had, and hanging the others to dry on the pole which the Indian arranged over the fire, we ate our supper, and lay down on the pebbly shore with our feet to the fire, without pitching our tent, making a thin bed of grass to cover the stones. … I was awakened at midnight by some heavy, low-flying bird, probably a loon, flapping by close over my head, along the shore. So, turning the other side of my half-clad body to the fire, I sought slumber again.

July 28, Tuesday: In Concord, Waldo Emerson recorded in his journal his experiences of the preceding day, with Ellery Channing on the river behind the home of Cyrus Hubbard, as musings in regard to consolations of nature far superior to those of art:

Yesterday the best day of the year we spent in the afternoon on the river. A sky of Calcutta, light, air, clouds, water, banks, birds, grass, pads, lilies, were in perfection, and it was delicious to live. Ellery & I went up the South Branch, & took a bath from the bank behind Cyrus Hubbard, where the river makes a bend. Blackbirds in hundreds; swallows in tens sitting on the telegraph lines; & one heron (ardea minor) assisted. In these perfect pictures, one thinks what weary nonsense is all this painful collection of rubbish —pictures of rubbish masters— in the total neglect of this & every lovely river valley, where the multitudinous life & beauty makes these pictures ridiculous cold chalk & ochre.

Sojourner Truth bought a house lot in Harmonia, a community of Hicksite integrationists, Quakers-becoming- Spiritualists, which was close to Bedford, about five miles from Battle Creek, Michigan. SPIRITUALISM The Battle Creek MI meeting had a very interesting history in the 19th Century. The meeting was begun in the 1830s by Quakers from central and western New York who were then migrating to Michigan. The Battle Creek meeting was Hicksite and part of Genesee Yearly Meeting. In the 1840s, Michigan Quarterly Meeting (Hicksite) wanted to “lay down” the meetings of ministers and elders on the belief that the authority of the ministers and elders over the spiritual life of the meeting was retarding HDT WHAT? INDEX

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spiritual growth of the members. That issue is tied up with the desire of many Friends to become more actively involved with abolitionist organizations. Other Friends considered these abolitionist organizations too worldly — participation would involve Quakers in non-Quakerly activities like working with hireling ministers, engaging in politics. Other Quakers, coming from the universal Quaker belief in the evil of slavery, embraced the abolitionist organizations and resented being “eldered” about such matters. Anyway, Michigan Quarter wanted to abolish the meetings of ministers and elders, but the action was not approved by the Yearly Meeting and in 1848, Michigan Quarter itself was laid down and the meetings and members attached to the presumably more conventional Pelham Quarterly Meeting — which at that time consisted of the Hicksite meetings in nearby Canada. The radicals resented the yearly meeting’s action, and formed a new organization called the Michigan Yearly Meeting of Congregational Friends. They were also known as Progressive Friends and later Friends of Human Progress. The Yearly Meeting –Genesee that is– dithered for a few years about what to do about those Friends who had “set up meetings contrary to discipline” first saying that they could come back without any acknowledgment of error and apparently never disowning anyone. Like the anti-slavery schism in Indiana Yearly Meeting (Orthodox) about this same time, it appears that the old yearly meeting regretted the split and therefore found it difficult to take any action against their erring members. Anyway, Battle Creek Monthly Meeting (Hicksite) continued as part of Pelham Quarter of Genesee Yearly Meeting for the remainder of the century. The Congregational or Progressive Friends initially intended to set up meetings on the Quaker model, but liberated of what they saw as too much hierarchy and sectarianism. In some places these meetings operated, but it isn’t clear for how long. In Michigan and New York such groups were nearly identical with the Garrisonian abolitionists and seems to have been absorbed into the general reform movement and quickly lost their specifically Quaker identity. To make matters more confused, Spiritualism which was arising at this time seemed to many both scientific and reformist, and some of the Progressive Friends seem to have allied with Spiritualists. The Harmonial Society near Battle Creek in the 1850s seems to have been the product of ex-Quaker Progressive Friends, Spiritualists, abolitionists, etc. Quite probably some Battle Creek Quakers considered themselves both Progressive Friends and members of Battle Creek MM (Hicksite). The categories were not mutually exclusive. Sojourner Truth was close to both groups. She attended Battle Creek Meeting (Hicksite) and lived for a time in the Harmonial Society. She was present at the dedication of the new Battle Creek Meeting house and at that time sang a hymn –something otherwise not done in Hicksite meetings at the time– and claimed that she would have become a Quaker if Quakers had allowed music. Another local Quaker –though I believe she was Orthodox– was Elizabeth Margaret Chandler — who wrote anti-slavery poems and a column for the GENIUS OF U NIVERSAL E MANCIPATION and is credited with HDT WHAT? INDEX

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being the first important female voice in the abolitionist movement.

July 28, Tuesday. As I remember, Hodge mistakes when he says [of Chamberlain Lake] that “it is erroneously represented on the charts, for it extends in a north-northeasterly, south-southwesterly direction about twelve miles.” He appears to be thinking of the easterly part.121 On the north side there is quite a clearing, and we had been advised to ascend the bare hill there for the sake of the prospect.... Great trunks of trees stood dead and bare far out in the lake, making the impression of ruined piers of a city that had been, while behind, the timber lay criss-a- cross for half a dozen rods or more over the water.... We were glad to find on this carry some raspberries, and a few of the Vaccinium Canadense berries, which had begun to be ripe here.

July 28, Tuesday, Morning: … When we awoke we found a heavy dew on our blankets. I lay awake very early, and listened to the clear, shrill ah-tette-tette-te, of the white-throated sparrow, repeated at short intervals, without the least variation, for half an hour, as if it could not enough express its happiness. Whether my companions heard it or not, I know not, but it was a kind of matins to me, and the event of that forenoon. EDWARD HOAR It was a pleasant sunrise, and we had a view of the mountains in the southeast. Ktaadn appeared about southeast by south. A double-topped mountain, about southeast by east, and another portion of the same, east-southeast. The last the Indian called Nerlumskeechticook, and said that it was at the head of the East Branch, and we should pass near it on our return that way. We did some more washing in the lake this morning, and with our clothes hung about on the dead trees and rocks, the shore looked like washing-day at home. The Indian, taking the hint, borrowed the soap, and walking into the lake, washed his only cotton shirt on his person, then put on his pants and let it dry on him. …

July 28, Tuesday, Mid-day: … We were now fairly on the Allegash River, which name our Indian said meant hemlock bark. These waters flow northward about 100 miles, at first very feebly, then southeasterly 250 more to the Bay of Fundy. After perhaps two miles of river, we entered Heron Lake, called on the map Pongokwahem, scaring up forty or fifty young shecorways, sheldrakes, at the entrance, which ran over the water with great rapidity, as usual in a long line.…

July 28, Tuesday, Late Afternoon: … We landed on the southeast side of the island, which was rather elevated, and densely wooded, with a rocky shore, in season for an early dinner. Somebody had camped there not long before, and left the frame on which they stretched a moose-hide, which our Indian criticised severely, thinking it showed but little woodcraft. Here were plenty of the shells of crayfish, or fresh-water lobsters, which had been washed ashore, such as have given a name to some ponds and streams. They are commonly four or five inches long. The Indian proceeded at once to cut a canoe-birch, slanted it up against another tree on the shore, tying it with a withe, and lay down to sleep in its shade.… We had for some time seen a thunder-shower coming up from the west over the woods of the island, and heard the muttering of the thunder, though we were in doubt whether it would reach us; but now the darkness rapidly increasing, and a fresh breeze rustling the forest, we hastily put up the plants which we had been drying, and with one consent made a rush for the tent material and set about pitching it. A place was selected and stakes and pins cut in the shortest possible time, and we were pinning it down lest it should be blown away, when the storm suddenly burst over us.…

July 28, Tuesday, Evening: … At length, just before sunset, we set out again. It was a wild evening when we coasted up the north side of this Apmoojenegamook Lake. One thunder-storm was just over, and the waves which it had raised still running with violence, and another storm was now seen coming up in the southwest, far over the lake; but it might be worse in the morning, and we wished to get as far as possible on our way up the lake while we might. … It was twilight, too, and that stormy cloud was advancing rapidly in our rear. It was a pleasant excitement, yet we were glad to reach, at length, in the dusk, the cleared shore of the 121. James Thacher Hodge’s SECOND ANNUAL REPORT ON THE GEOLOGY ... OF MAINE AND MASSACHUSETTS (Augusta, Maine: Severance, 1838). JAMES THACHER HODGE “Having determined to visit Moosehead Lake, before proceeding to the St. John waters, I continued up the west branch to the lower carry into that lake.... The upper carry is about eight miles above the lower, and between them are rapids and falls.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Chamberlain Farm. We landed on a low and thinly wooded point there, and while my companions were pitching the tent, I ran up to the house to get some sugar, our six pounds being gone; — it was no wonder they were, for Polis had a sweet tooth. He would first fill his dipper nearly a third full of sugar, and then add the coffee to it. Here was a clearing extending back from the lake to a hill-top, with some dark-colored log buildings and a storehouse in it, and half a dozen men standing in front of the principal hut, greedy for news. Among them was the man who tended the dam on the Allegash and tossed the bullet. He having charge of the dams, and learning that we were going to Webster Stream the next day, told me that some of their men, who were haying at Telos Lake, had shut the dam at the canal there in order to catch trout, and if we wanted more water to take us through the canal we might raise the gate, for he would like to have it raised. The Chamberlain Farm is no doubt a cheerful opening in the woods, but such was the lateness of the hour that it has left but a dusky impression on my mind. As I have said, the influx of light merely is civilizing, yet I fancied that they walked about on Sundays in their clearing somewhat as in a prison-yard. … When I returned to the shore it was quite dark, but we had a rousing fire to warm and dry us by, and a snug apartment behind it. … Invariably our best nights were those when it rained, for then we were not troubled with mosquitoes.… Some who have leaky roofs in the towns may have been kept awake, but we were soon lulled asleep by a steady, soaking rain, which lasted all night. To-night, the rain not coming at once with violence, the twigs were soon dried by the reflected heat.

Amy and Isaac Post’s long journey from Quakerism into spiritualism began decades earlier [than the 1850s]. They had left orthodox Quakerism along with Elias Hicks, who was Amy’s cousin. Hicks had separated from orthodox Quakers in 1827 in a spirit of holiness reminiscent of his contemporary, James Latourette, who at the same time was leaving Methodism. Hicksite Quakers sought a return to the primitive simplicity and freedom of conscience of the 17th-Century Quakerism of George Fox and William Penn. Between 1827 and the late 1840s, however, Hicksite Quakers, like orthodox Quakers, grew conservative and intolerant of the abolitionists in their midst. The Hicksite leadership tried to censor antislavery talk and quash any combination in reform with non-Quakers. In response, antislavery Quakers withdrew to form their own free meetings, open to all, Quaker and non-Quaker. They called their new Meetings “Progressive Friends,” or “Congregational Friends,” or “Friends of Human Progress,” and exchanged visits, speakers, and letters. Progressive Friends advocated freedom of conscience, speech, and action. They believed in non-violence (a Garrisonian as well as a Quaker tenet), and they supported the abolition of slavery and the equality of women. They also communicated with spirits, a practice they explained in the imagery of a force only recently discovered: electricity. Spiritualism in its various guises fascinated hundreds of thousands of reform-minded Americans in the 1850s, Harriet Beecher Stowe among them. Its most sensational aspects —séances and spirit visitations— appeared in 1848, with the spirit rappings of the Fox sisters in Hydesville NY, not far from Rochester. But spiritualism also had a more rational side, one inspired by the thought of the 18th- Century Swedish scholar, Emanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg taught that the spirit of God and the spirits of people could not be separated; he united nature and spirituality. His philosophy also blurred boundaries between the living and the dead, the physical and the supernatural. Doing away with original sin, Swedenborg put the responsibility for salvation in the hands of people, a responsibility that appealed to reformers. Perhaps what attracted adherents most was Swedenborgianism’s synthesis of liberal religion and science. Giles [B.] Stebbins, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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[Sojourner] Truth’s friend from Northampton and one who would remain close for the rest of her life, said that “[m]odern spiritualism makes the future life real and near, binding it to this by the strong ties of eternal law and undying human love, and gives us a natural religion and a spiritual philosophy, rational, inspiring, and enlarging.” Stebbins also revealed a side of spiritualism akin to Truth’s pentecostalism. Spiritualism, he said, duplicated primitive Christianity in manifestations that pentecostals called the gifts of the Holy Spirit: healing through the laying on of hands, prophecy, and speaking in tongues. In a certain sense, spiritualism was comfortable for Truth, for the Holy Spirit had figured prominently in her religion —as in the religion of Quakers— for thirty years. But what characterized spiritualism was less its pentecostal strains than its Quaker pacifism. An optimistic and tolerant faith of individualism and autonomy, spiritualism turned its followers more toward the spirits of the dead than toward Jesus the savior; this was perfectionism in a way new to Sojourner Truth. American spiritualism’s leading intellectual, Andrew Jackson Davis, had his own brand of millennialism, 180 degrees from the baleful warnings of Father Miller and his followers. Millerites cried, “Wo! Wo! Wo!” and warned Americans to repent before it was too late. Davis’s “Harmonial Philosophy” predicted the end of the era of ignorance, superstition, fanaticism, and intolerance, and the dawning of a new and golden age. All sorts of slavery were dying, Davis said, for “spiritual intercourse” proved that “all men shall ultimately be joined into one Brotherhood, their interests shall be pure and reciprocal; their customs shall be just and harmonious; they shall be as one Body, animated by Universal Love and governed by pure Wisdom. Man’s future is glowing with a beautiful radiance.” Many spiritualists were intent on hearing from the dead. According to spiritualist authors such as Isaac Post and Andrew Jackson Davis, the dead inspired their writings.

October 13, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson wrote to Caroline Sturgis Tappan, wife of his friend William Aspinwall Tappan, that

If I were writing to any other than you, I should render my wonted homage to the gods for my two gossips, Alcott & Henry T., whose existence I impute to America for righteousness, though they miss the fame of your praise.

An advertisement for a runaway slave appeared in the Baltimore Sun: $500 REWARD - RAND AWAYS AND HORSE THIEVES - Ran away from the subscriber, living in Baltimore county, Md., near the Granite Quarries, two NEGRO MEN, Brothers, ROSS and JOHN BEALL; the former left on the night of the 11th instant, taking with him one Chestnut Sorrell MARE, the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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property of his master. Ross has a dark complexion, nearly black, about 23 years of age, about five feet six or seven inches in height,122 and has a down look when spoken to. John left on the 10th instant, and also took a horse belonging to a neighbor. He is 18 years old, about five feet ten inches in height, black complexion, smiles when spoken to, showing very white teeth. I will give the above reward of $500 for the apprehension of both, or $250 for either one of them, to be secured in jail so that I might get them again. Communications addressed to LEMUEL OFFUTT Woodsock Postoffice Baltimore and Ohio Railroad In the same issue of the Baltimore Sun there was an advertisement inquiring into the whereabouts of a free black man (this could conceivably had been someone who was being kidnapped into slavery): ON THE FOURTH OF SEPTEMBER LAST, ALBERT DORSEY, aged 19 years, five feet six inches high, of well-knit frame, chestnut brown, long visage, lower lip hanging, speaks plainly, of quite and reserved manner, born free in Baltimore county, and of excellent conduct and character, was kidnapped and secretly sent from Baltimore city. All efforts by his distressed parents and friends to learn his destination or place of concealment have failed. Any information leading to a trace of him will relieve them and be most gratefully acknowledged. Address CHAS G. LYON, ESQ., Pikesville, Baltimore county., or WM. J. WARD, ESQ., Baltimore

After hearing Frederick Douglass speak Sallie Holley had become an abolitionist lecturer. On this day she wrote to Gerrit Smith informing him that she had had a buggy accident that prevented her from continuing to lecture for the Anti-Slavery Society. Smith had after the death of her father Myron Holley made her a present of $100, and in this letter she explained what she had done with his present and asked for a loan.

October 13, Tuesday: P.M. –To Poplar Hill. Maple fires are burnt out generally, and they have fairly begun to fall and look smoky in the swamps. When my eyes were resting on those smoke-like bare trees, it did not at first occur to me why the landscape was not as brilliant as a few days ago. The outside trees in the swamps lose their leaves first. The brilliancy of young oaks, especially scarlet oaks, in sprout-lands is dulled. These red maples and young scarlet oaks, etc., have been the most conspicuous and important colors, or patches of color, in the landscape. Those most brilliant days, then, so far as the autumnal tints are concerned, are over; i. e., when we may be surprised at any turn by the sight of some incredibly bright and dazzling tree or grove of trees. I noticed the first large white oaks wholly changed to a salmon-color, but not brilliant like those sproutland fires. Are very large oaks never brilliant in their tints? 123 The hickories on Poplar Hill have not lost any of their brilliancy, generally speaking. Some are quite green even. I look down into a mocker-nut, whose recesses and greater part are pure yellow, and from this you pass through a ruddy orange in the more exposed leaves to a rich crispy brown in the leaves of the extreme twigs about the clusters of round green nuts. The red of oaks, etc., is far more general now than three or four days ago, but it is also much duller, so that some maples that were a bright scarlet can now hardly be distinguished by their color from oaks, which have just turned red. The Great Fields from this hill are pale-brown, often hoary –there is not yellow enough for russet– pastures, 122. In descriptions of runaway slaves, 5 feet 5 or 6 inches is the average height. 123.Yes. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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with very large red or purple patches of blackberry vines. You can only appreciate the effect of these by a strong and peculiar intention of the eye. We ordinarily do not see what is before us, but what our prejudices presume to be there. The pitch and white pines on the north of Sleepy Hollow, i. e. north side the hill, are at the height of their change and are falling. Maybe they are later than on the south side of hills. They are at the height of their change, generally, though many needles fallen, carpeting the ground. Pinweeds are brown; how long? Some of the large ash trees, both a black and white, are quite bare of leaves already. With the red maples, then. Looking from this hill, green begins to look as rare and interesting as any color, –you may say begins to be a color by itself, –and I distinguish green streaks and patches of grass on most hillsides. See a pretty large flock of tree sparrows, very lively and tame, drifting along and pursuing each other along a bushy fence and ditch like driving snow. Two pursuing each other would curve upward like a breaker in the air and drop into the hedge again. Some white willows are very fresh and green yet. This has been the ninth of those wonderful days, and one of the warmest. I am obliged to sit with my window wide open all the evening as well as all day. It is the earlier Indian summer. Our cherry trees have now turned to mostly a red-orange color.

October 14, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson made a minute of the important event of this day in his journal — and it was not that Elwood Haynes, who would build one of the very 1st automobiles to be crafted in the New World, was born:

October 14th, the New York & Boston Banks suspended specie payment.

October 14, Wednesday: P.M. –To White Pond. Another, the tenth of these memorable days. We have had some fog the last two or three nights, and this forenoon it was slow to disperse, dog-day-like, but this afternoon it is warmer even than yesterday. I should like it better if it were not so warm. I am glad to reach the shade of Hubbard’s Grove; the coolness is refreshing. It is indeed a golden autumn. These ten days are enough to make the reputation of any climate. A tradition of these days might be handed down to posterity. They deserve a notice in history, in the history of Concord. All kinds of crudities have a chance to get ripe this year. Was there ever such an autumn? And yet there was never such a panic and hard times in the commercial world. The merchants and banks are suspending and failing all the country over, but not the sand-banks, solid and warm, and streaked with bloody blackberry vines. You may run upon them as much as you please,124 –even as the crickets do, and find their account in it. They are the stockholders in these banks, and I hear them creaking their content. You may see them on change any warmer hour. In these banks, too, and such as these, are my funds deposited, a fund of health and enjoyment. Their (the crickets) prosperity and happiness and, I trust, mine do not depend on whether the New York banks suspend or no. We do not rely on such slender security as the thin paper of the Suffolk Bank. To put your trust in such a bank is to be swallowed up and undergo suffocation. Invest, I say, in these country banks. Let your capital be simplicity and contentment. Withered goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis) is no failure, like a broken bank, and yet in its most golden season nobody counterfeits it. Nature needs no counterfeit-detector. I have no compassion 124. You cannot break them. If you should slump, ’t is to a finer sand. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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for, nor sympathy with, this miserable state of things. Banks built of granite, after some Grecian or Roman style, with their porticoes and their safes of iron, are not so permanent, and cannot give me so good security for capital invested in them, as the heads of withered hardhack in the meadow. I do not suspect the solvency of these. I know who is their president and cashier. I take all these walks to every point of the compass, and it is always harvest-time with me. I am always gathering my crop from these woods and fields and waters, and no man is in my way or interferes with me. My crop is not their crop. To-day I see them gathering in their beans and corn, and they are a spectacle to me, but are soon out of my sight. I am not gathering beans and corn. Do they think there are no fruits but such as these? I am a reaper; I am not a gleaner. I go reaping, cutting as broad a swath as I can, and bundling and stacking up and carrying it off from field to field, and no man knows nor cares. My crop is not sorghum nor Davis seedlings. There are other crops than these, whose seed is not distributed by the Patent Office. I go abroad over the land each day to get the best I can find, and that is never carted off even to the last day of November, and I do not go as a gleaner. The farmer has always come to the field after some material thing; that is not what a philosopher goes there for. I see, in Hubbard’s Grove, a large black birch at the very height of its change. Its leaves a clear, rich yellow; many strew the ground. Near by is a tupelo which is all a distinct yellow with a little green. Within a couple of rods a single hyla peeps interruptedly, birdlike. Large oaks appear to be now generally turned or turning. The white, most conspicuous in sunny places, say a reddish salmon; began to change at lower limbs. Black oaks a brownish yellow. These large trees are not brilliant. On the causeway I pass by maples here and there which are bare and smoke-like, having lost their brilliant clothing; but there it lies, nearly as bright as ever, on one side on the ground, making nearly as regular a figure as lately on the tree. I should rather say that I first observed the trees thus flat on the ground like a permanent colored and substantial shadow, and they alone suggested to look for the trees that had borne them. They preserve these bright colors on the ground but a short time, a day or so, especially if it rains.125 I see a large flock of grackles, probably young birds, quite near me on William Wheeler’s apple trees, pruning themselves and trying to sing. They never succeed; make a sort of musical spluttering. Most, I think, have brownish heads and necks, and some purple reflections from their black bodies. There is a very little gossamer, mostly blowing off in large loops from the south side the bridge, the loose end having caught. I also see it here and there stretched across lanes from side to side, as high as my face. Sat in the old pasture beyond the Corner Spring Woods to look at that pine wood now at the height of its change, pitch and white. Their change produces a very singular and pleasing effect. They are regularly parti-colored. The last year’s leaves, about a foot beneath the extremities of the twigs on all sides, now changed and ready to fall, have their period of brightness as well as broader leaves. They are a clear yellow, contrasting with the fresh and liquid green of the terminal plumes, or this year’s leaves. These two quite distinct colors are thus regularly and equally distributed over the whole tree. You have the warmth of the yellow and the coolness of the green. So it should be with our own maturity, not yellow to the very extremity of our shoots, but youthful and untried green ever putting forth afresh at the extremities, foretelling a maturity as yet unknown. The ripe leaves fall to the ground and become nutriment for the green ones, which still aspire to heaven. In the fall of the leaf, there is no fruit, there is no true maturity, neither in our science and wisdom. Some aspens are a very fair yellow now, and trembling as in summer. I think it is they I see a mile off on Bear Garden Hill, amid the oaks and pines. There is a very thick haze this afternoon and almost a furnace-like heat. I cannot see far toward the sun through it. Approaching White Pond by the path, I see on its perfectly smooth surface what I at first mistake for a large raft of dead and black logs and limbs, but it soon elevates itself in the form of a large flock of black ducks, which go off with a loud quacking. This, as other ponds now, when it is still, has a fine sparkle from skaters on it. I go along near the shore in the woods to the hill recently cleared on the east side. The clethra as an under-bush has an exceedingly pale yellow leaf. The nemopanthes on the hillside is like the amelanchier, yellowish with considerable ruddiness; the total effect is russet. Looking now toward the north side of the pond, I perceive that the reflection of the hillside seen from an opposite hill is not so broad as the hillside itself appears, owing to the different angle at which it is seen. The reflection exhibits such an aspect of the hill, apparently, as you would get if your eye were placed at that part of the surface of the pond where the reflection seems to be. In this instance, too, then, Nature avoids repeating herself. Not even reflections in still water are like their substances as seen by us. This, too, accounts for my seeing portions of the sky through the trees in reflections often when none appear in the substance. Is the reflection of a hillside, however, such an aspect of it as can he obtained by the eye directed to the hill itself from any single point of view? It plainly is not such a view as the eye would get looking upward from the immediate base of the hill or water’s edge, for there the first rank of bushes on the lower part of the hill would conceal the 125. Excursions, page265; Riv. 325. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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upper. The reflection of the top appears to be such a view of it as I should get with my eye at the water’s edge above the edge of the reflection; but would the lower part of the hill also appear from this point as it does in the reflection? Should I see as much of the under sides of the leaves there? If not, then the reflection is never a true copy or repetition of its substance, but a new composition, and this may be the source of its novelty and attractiveness, and of this nature, too, may be the charm of an echo. I doubt if you can ever get Nature to repeat herself exactly. The occasional dimples on this pure sheeny surface in which the sky is reflected make you suspect as soon some mote fallen from the sky as risen from beneath, to disturb it. Next to the scarlet, methinks the white shrub oaks make, or have made, the most brilliant show at a distance on hillsides. The latter is not very bright, unless seen between you and the sun, but there its abundant inward color is apparent. At the head of the path by the pond, I saw a red squirrel, only a rod off in a white pine, eating a toadstool. It was a slightly convex white disk, (then) two inches in diameter, I saw where he had bitten off its white stump within a few feet of the base of the tree. I should not have called it an edible one; but he knows. He held it vertically with a paw on each side and what had been the lower side toward him, and was nibbling off the inside edge very fast, turning it round from time to time and letting some fragments drop, pausing to look at me. As a boy might nibble a biscuit. Are nuts scarce? I think it was not the edible one; was too big. Veronica serpyllifolia in bloom.

Fall: Sometime during this fall or winter Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

Henry avoids commonplace, & talks birch bark to all comers, & reduces them all to the same insignificance. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Fall/Winter: In Liverpool, England, Ada Shepard was the governess and tutor for the Hawthorne children.

Dueling had of course been outlawed in America at this point for a good number of years. But it still occurred in our South, and when Southern men came to the North, their macho glares and studied “honor” was something challenging and intimidating for Northern men — not to mention the problem this occasioned for Northern women. Waldo Emerson therefore, in his journal, elaborated a plan to improve the situation. Were we at war with them, he supposed, we could just have the US Army kill them as they tried to come across the border, and thus save ourselves all this bother of attempting to treat them with Christian decency, as if they were brothers or neighbors or something, and of struggling to do unto them as we would have them do unto us. In Emerson’s version of the Golden Rule, clearly, we should do unto others what we suspect they might like to do unto us — only we should do it unto them first. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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We should treat them as we would treat spiders, for like spiders they are fanged animals:

The shooting complexion, like the cobra capello & scorpion, grows in the South. It has no wisdom, no capacity of improvement: it looks, in every landscape, only for partridges, in every society, for duels. And, as it threatens life, all wise men brave or peaceable run away from the spider-man, as they run away from a black spider: for life to them is real & rich, & not to be risked on any curiosity as to whether spider or spider- man can bite mortally, or only make a poisonous wound. With such a nation or a nation with a predominance of this complexion, war is the safest terms. That marks them, &, if they cross the lines, they can be dealt with as all fanged animals must be.

What a sacrifice it was that we lost this man from the pulpit. He could have been another Cotton Mather!

Seriously, I think we are getting closer here, to understanding what the was all about: • The only people whose attitudes mattered in America at that time, at a first order of approximation, were the white people. True, there were a few people around like Frederick Douglass whose attitudes mattered even though he was only half white, but the reason why such people stand out is because there were so very few of them. • The only people whose attitudes mattered in America at that time, at a first order of approximation, were the adult males. True, there were a few people around like Harriet Beecher Stowe whose attitudes mattered even though they lacked a penis, but the reason why such people stand out is because their significant audience was a white male audience and therefore to be of any significance their writings needed basically to be elaborations upon white male attitudes. • Given the two points above, there is only one option, which is, that if we are to understand the American Civil War we must understand it as an argument between two groups of white men. White men had become sensitized to one another and had separated themselves into groups according to different ways in which they had become thus irritable. There was a northern group of white men and a southern group. Ralph Waldo Emerson is a paradigm case and we can see above how he had become sensitized and irritable toward the southerners (he had no affection for black people, in fact he was such a victim of what was at that time called “Negrophobia” that he could not bear to have a black barber, or have his plate placed on the table by a black hand). Part of it, clearly, was the duel culture of the South, which the North experienced as a threat: the Southron was “fanged,” like a “spider.” From a northern point of view, here were all these trashy no-account Southern types, supporting themselves by means of their black slaves, and they were in your face, strutting around in their boiled and starched white shirts, armed to the teeth and supremely belligerent. From a southern point of view, here were all these pseudo pious, hypocritical Northern types, supporting themselves by means of their satanic mills full of recent immigrant labor while they put down the decent God-fearing gentlemen of the South — acting as if the decent God- fearing Southrons were mere pieces of filth. • That is enough to account for how the civil war started. Now we should understand how it continued and to understand how it continued, we need to understand that once a war has begun, a new imperative always seizes control of the situation. That new imperative is, that the only thing of prime importance is for your side to win. Each side needs to do anything and everything, that will cause their side to be the winning one. In order to win, of course, one must have a spirit- enabling righteous cause, something “worth dying for.” Winning cannot be merely about the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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imperative that your side must triumph, but must be about the imperative of holiness. The winner must demonstrate that God was on his side. –Thus the myth that would spring into life and flourish during the war, that what it was about was the elimination of human slavery. • Now we need to understand how it is that the North won. The nation’s capital was in the south, was in fact inside Virginia, and the war would end with a triumphant Southern capture of the capital city and a seizure of the apparatus of federal government, and therefore a shorter and less bloody war would likely have been won by the South (that was what Gettysburg was all about). • A longer and bloodier war of attrition favored the North, because the North had more immigrants that it could pour into its front lines to get blown away serially, regiment after regiment. The South was much more severely limited in terms of its available cannon fodder. Also, the industrial North had a far greater capacity for the manufacture of weaponry, and for the importation of ammo. Everything about a longer and bloodier war favored the North, and the North in fact did succeed in transforming this into an exceedingly long (five years) and exceedingly bloody (millions of dead and maimed) armageddon. The North won not in spite of the fact that the war was exceedingly long and exceedingly bloody, but because it was able to maneuver the war to be exceedingly long and exceedingly bloody. • The North did not triumph because God was on its side, and the war wasn’t about freeing the blacks. Virtually instantly, when the war was over, the blacks were no longer useful either as labor or as a sacred cause, and were therefore abandoned. –Abandoned not merely by the southern white men whose attitudes mattered, but abandoned as well by the northern white men whose attitudes mattered. –And we transited into Jim Crow America. The “Negrophobes,” such as Waldo Emerson, had imposed their will. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1858

Richard Richardson was a member of the African Mysteries, a secret defense group in Michigan.

According to Anita Haya Patterson’s FROM EMERSON TO KING: DEMOCRACY, RACE, AND THE POLITICS OF PROTEST (NY: Oxford UP, 1997, page 132), at this point Waldo Emerson’s journal indicates that he was still fully into his racial success fantasies and still congratulating himself on his good judgment in being born a superior whitey:

You cannot preserve races beyond their term. St Michael pears have died out, and see what geology says to old strata. Trilobium is no more except in the embryonic forms of crab and lobster.

Patterson merely goes on to point up the fact that although Emerson, like so many of his contemporaries who were presuming their own race to be inherently and intrinsically superior, was wont to speculate bloodily that the inferior races would most likely be exterminated, this is far from all the information and guidance that we might extrapolate from these foul droppings of his pen — if we can bring ourselves to pay careful attention: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The sheer weight of evidence that proves the fact of Waldo Emerson’s racism is disturbing. However, we would miss the focus of this discussion –namely, the historical function of racism in Emerson’s writings– were we simply to dismiss him for exhibiting the racist perceptions of his time.... Emerson’s racism is central to his vision of American nationality — a compelling, myopic vision that must be viewed in the context of a violent policy of westward expansion that prevailed in nineteenth-century America. In NATURE, Emerson’s unmistakable reference to the raciality of the American self allows him to situate that self at the brink of egocentric absolutism: at the same time he expresses a near disavowal of human society represented by ties to the liberal-democratic state in NATURE, Emerson’s racist imagination of the white, male body of Columbus is a framework for social cohesion. For Emerson, race functions to express both a threat to and an affirmation of social order. Generally speaking, Emerson’s racist vision of the representative self is essential for his articulation of a call to revolution — what Henry Thoreau (and, much later, [the Reverend] Martin Luther King, Jr.) would designate as “civil disobedience.”

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

“Waldo Emerson’s profound racism abated over time, but it never disappeared, always hovering in the background and clouding his democratic vision. Like all too many of his fellow intellectuals, throughout his life and works Emerson remained convinced that the characteristics that made the United States, for all its flaws, the great nation of the world were largely the product of its Saxon heritage and history. Here, alas, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s democratic imagination largely failed him.” — Peter S. Field HDT WHAT? INDEX

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YOU SEE, I’M A WHITE MAN

I really personally feel that it would have been quite a bit more appropriate for Patterson to have affiliated Emerson with Gerrit Smith in this, than with Thoreau. Other than Thoreau having lived in the same home town with Emerson, and other than Thoreau having been white like Emerson, I quite fail to see the race-superiority connection which she is attempting here to insinuate. By way of radical contrast with the forced connection which Patterson seeks, we can see that the match between the attitude of a Smith that the mass of the blacks are ignorant and shiftless, and the attitude of an Emerson that black humans represent obsolete genetic materials, is an absolute identity which cannot be evaded. The identity is that neither Emerson nor Smith are aware of the race hatred that lies behind what they suppose to know for fact: that black Americans are a problem, that that problem will continue to plague “us,” that the only relief will come when finally human progress, hopefully in as painless a manner as possible, has erased these sorry beings from the face of the earth. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The journals of Waldo Emerson for this year as assembled by his son Edward Emerson in 1904-1914 would instance the following contents: “Course of lectures in Boston. Get the interesting facts. Meeting Thoreau in the woods. What is practical? The turbine. Hafiz’s barbarous splendor. Cowardly politics of Massachusetts. French metaphysicians. Inferences from great minds. The part of a gentleman to-day. Our nation aged at eighty-two. Agassiz and Hunter on earning money. Rarey’s horse-training. Real human manhood against artificial. The rising generation. Morals; right or precedent? Wordsworth, Milton, Tennyson. Rainbow. Eloquence of silence. Talk with Thoreau; the Maine hermit; patience reveals bird or beast. Rowse on portraits. Occupations. Birds and flowers. Babcock the carpenter’s opinions. Aspects of man. Fate’s teaching. English politics. The Adirondac Club; camp on Follansbee’s Pond. The osprey’s nest; Lowell’s venture. Boat trip with Agassiz. Cattle-show address. Wealth considered. The pervasive aim. Fate. Mr. Emerson’s Philadelphia lecturing. Reading.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 25, Monday: Waldo Emerson recorded in his journal (shortly after an entry dated “Jan. 1858” and shortly before an entry dated “Jan. 28”) a chance conversation with Henry Thoreau in “my” woods (whose woods these are we think we know), in which Thoreau tried again to lay on him one of his pieces of mysticism about our real life, the totality of it, being entirely here and now. What Emerson saw fit to record of this advice was “He thought nothing to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould under your feet was not sweeter to you to eat, than any other in this world, or in any world,” but in his journal he then went immediately on from the wisdom to an illustration of it, with the illustration of it being treated not as an illustration of it but as a distraction, a way to get away from the wisdom of it, a mere piece of arcana of the forest. And at the end of the selection, Emerson has made his escape from his friend’s advice, and has succeeded in quite changing the subject, and is praising woods lore as being such a cheerful study: “here there is no taint of mortality.”

I found Henry T. yesterday in my woods. He thought nothing to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould under your feet was not sweeter to you to eat, than any other in this world, or in any world. We talked of the willows. He says, ‘tis impossible to tell when they push the bud (which so marks the arrival of spring) out of its dark scales. It is done & doing all winter. It is begun in the previous autumn. It seems one steady push from autumn to spring. I say, How divine these studies! Here there is no taint of mortality. How aristocratic, & of how defiant a beauty! This is the garden of Edelweisen.

After this Emerson wrote in pencil under a horizontal line, also in pencil, “I want animal spirits.” He would use this passage in his eulogy on Thoreau.

In his journal entry of January 18, 1858, Thoreau had written, “I hear that the Emerson children found ladies’- delights out yesterday,” and a week later, on January 25, 1858, Thoreau wrote:

What a rich book might be made about buds, including, perhaps, sprouts!—the impregnable, vivacious willow catkins, but half asleep under the armor of their black scales, sleeping along the twigs; the birch and oak sprouts, and the rank and lusty dogwood sprouts; the round red buds of the blueberries; the small pointed red buds, close to the twig, of the panicled andromeda; the large yellowish buds of the swamp-pink, etc. How healthy and vivacious must he be who would treat of these things! You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake. You must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand heap. You must have so good an appetite as this, else you will live in vain.

Thoreau completed his survey of March 1850 and December 14, 1857 in “Samuel Heywood’s pasture” south of Walden Pond in Lincoln to adjust the line between Emerson and the Charles Bartlett whose land abutted on the east side. And Bronson Alcott wrote to Ainsworth R. Spofford that “Last evening [January 24th] I saw Thoreau who is trenchant and masterly as ever. He had been reading some papers in Drawing rooms to a good company lately at Lynn.”

Thoreau was being written to by someone presumably in Athol, Massachusetts. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 11, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson recorded the conversation of the previous day, with Henry Thoreau at Walden Pond, in his journal:

Yesterday with Henry T. at the pond ... I hear the account of the man who lives in the wilderness of Maine with respect, but with despair.... Henry’s hermit, 45 miles from the nearest house, [is not] important, until we know what he is now, what he thinks of it on his return, & after a year. Perhaps he has found it foolish & wasteful to spend a tenth or a twentieth of his active life with a muskrat & fried fishes.

My dear Henry, A frog was made to live in a swamp, but a man was not made to live in a swamp. Yours ever, R.

HERMITS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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One of the children of Alexander William Doniphan had already died from accidentally ingesting a poison. The other of his children, 17-year-old Alexander William Doniphan, Jr., a student at Bethany College in West Virginia, at this point drowned in a flood-swollen river.

John Mitchel, who after his fight with the Catholic hierarchy in New-York had relocated to Knoxville, Tennessee where he had tried to become a farmer and had then begun a newspaper named the Southern Citizen, was admitted to the Montgomery Commercial Convention. He was admitted over the objection of Edmund Ruffin, apparently because Ruffin had encountered Mitchel only as a Northerner and had not yet been made sufficiently aware of this Irish gentleman’s one redeeming feature, his intense racism.)

According to Noel Ignatiev’s HOW THE IRISH BECAME WHITE, “To be acknowledged as white, it was not enough for the Irish to have a competitive advantage over Afro- Americans in the labor market; in order for them to avoid the taint of blackness it was necessary that no Negro be allowed to work in occupations where Irish were to be found.”

According to the jokes that were going the rounds in those days among non-Irish white racists (the bulk of the population, actually), the Irish were “Negroes turned inside out” while the American free blacks were “smoked Irish.”

It has been well said, that inside the charmed Caucasian chalk circle it is the sum of what you are not –not Indian, not Negro, not a Jew, not Irish, etc.– that make you what you are. And, that’s as true now as it was then. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May/June: Waldo Emerson to his JOURNAL:

We are all better in attack than in defense. It is very easy to make acute objections to any style of life, but the objector is quite as vulnerable. Greenough wittily called my speculations masturbation; but the artist life seems to me intolerably thin & superficial. I feel the reasonableness of what the lawyer or merchant or laborer has to allege against readers & thinkers, until I look at each of their wretched industries, and find them without end or aim.

MASTURBATION HORATIO GREENOUGH HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1859

At the end of the journal entries for this year, Waldo Emerson listed his recent readings in Oriental materials: “Viasa; Mahabharata, apud William Rounseville Alger’s Oriental Poetry. Plotinus; Apuleius.” POETRY OF THE ORIENT

The journals of Waldo Emerson for this year as assembled by his son Edward Emerson in 1904-1914 would instance the following contents: “The Burns Centenary. Powers of the mind. Ruy Diaz, the Cid. Nature’s vanity a mask, we are alike. Michel Angelo on Time. The novel ‘Counterparts.’ Minds differ in degree, pace, association. The government permits outrage if due form observed. Dead usage and laws. Despair is no muse. Greatness the mover. The revolution when thinkers meet. Analogy the key of the universe. Be yourself, and listen. Course of lectures in Boston. Love; spring. The wisdom of fools. Ripple Pond. Channing’s poetry, ‘Near Home.’ Jefferson on the federal judiciary. Emerson only a writer in absence of natural writers. Who wrote Shakspeare? English confusion of ideas; orderly Germans; poetry is part of Nature. The constant magnet. Gazetted words. Pace makes the difference in men. Secondary and primary men. Every man has all, if he knew how to get at it. Impatient Americans. Channing on golden-rod as an investment. Latent heat and intellect. Real people and drones. Whipple. Votaries of Shakspeare and Plato. Culture a pagan. We must be moral. Events arc as the person. No disciples: wish to bring men not to a master, but to themselves. Henry James. The spiritual defined; man and his spirit. Personality. Power, outward and inward, and sensibility. Trust utterly to your presentiments. Spiritism. The poem ‘Boston.’ Prescott, and Carlyle; Frederick the Great. The Age the great critic. The strong, original men, Novalis, Samuel Hopkins, George Fox, Herbert; their repeaters. Materialized sentiment. Poverty’s Praise subject for poem. Reality. Superiority of others. French and English. The rector’s voice. Catching rides. Born Cassandras. Whitewashing; criticism. Printing frightened the fairies. Ben Jonson on newspapers; inheritance. America’s want of character. Some fanaticism needed. The May warblers. Carlyle’s Frederick the Great again; surface in writing. Rafraele’s letter on his Galatea. The Understanding. Dante’s eyes. Inspiration is in the newness. Tennyson’s Idylls of the King justifies England. Rhyme in the theme. Simonides’s verse on his memory. Persons who utter oracles. Nature’s making of woman. Free and deathless Worship. The South demands disunion Magic in all things. Bettine Brentano; Goethe on Beethoven. Choate and Webster’s credit for classical learning. Fame. No word of poem must drag. England’s statute on range for the long-bow. Use of University; Harvard’s timidity. Spring. Will and Fate. New birth. Will a perception of the Eternal Necessity. The Parrot; Dr. Bigelow’s Mino bird. Trip to Wachusett; disabling sprain. Ponta Rei, the Flowing. Charm of medieval buildings. Beatitude of intellect; hints of power. The inconvertible. The lost Pleiad. Aboriginal Intellect. Doctors disagree; Nature catches the sprain. August’s fruit. Wonder of knowledge. Beware collectors. Haydon’s autobiography. Speech at the dinner to Dr. Holmes. The unskilled rider. Mr. Crump; avalanche of misfortunes. Dr. Johnson’s sayings. Phillips’s letter to Judge Shaw and President Walker; wine. Preaching to Theodore Parker’s society. Aunt Mary like Dr. Johnson. Restless travel. Imagination. The Chelmsford Memorial; reminiscences, the brave ancestors. Channing as a critic. G.W. Tyler. Common people. Self-healing. John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry. Freedom’s necessary champions. On a friend turned Catholic. Heroism for to-day. Respect won by John Brown’s sincerity and courage from his enemies; Thoreau’s speech in Concord. Ideas unite persons. Pierre d’Auvergne’s songs. Wendell Phillips. Intellect traces the Law, must flow into action. Tobacco’s illusion. The cold bath. Culture; Books. The day of John Brown’s execution observed in Concord. Mr. Sanborn’s generosity. Reading.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 1, Sunday: A revolution against Austrian rule began in Parma.

In the Ungers Casino of Vienna, Nachtigall-Polka op.222 by Johann Strauss was performed for the initial time.

New York State began directly letting its contracts on canal work, no longer allowing that function to be performed by the supervisor of the Contracting Board.

At this point the Unitarian congregation of the Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway, in Cincinnati, Ohio was at a low of a couple hundred, since the BIBLE believers of his congregation had recently separated themselves to constitute a “Church of the Redeemer,” and so he delivered his “East and West” sermon in which he described the Redeemer concept of Jesus Christ as “an idea out of the dark ages.” The Reverend Conway confessed he was no “believer in what the churches call Christianity” as it would be a “pious insult to the holiest relations of life” to suppose Jesus to have lacked a human biological father.126

Waldo Emerson lectured on ““WEALTH”,” a topic appropriate for downtown Boston, to the Parker Fraternity127 in the 1,500 comfortable seats of the Boston Music Hall, and wrote to Thomas Carlyle on the

126. Moncure Daniel Conway. EAST AND WEST: AN INAUGURAL DISCOURSE, DELIVERED IN THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, CINCINNATI, O., MAY 1, 1859, BY M.D. CONWAY, MINISTER OF THE CHURCH. Pamphlet. Cincinnati: Truman & Spofford, 1859. READ THE FULL TEXT

127. The megachurch “28th Congregational Society” established by the Reverend Theodore Parker, who had gone to live in Italy in an attempt to recover his health. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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American race problem:

I flatter myself I see some emerging of our people from the poison of their politics the insolvency of slavery begins to show, & we shall perhaps live to see that putrid Black Vomit extirpating by mere diking & planting. Another ground of contentment is the mending of the race here.

My curiosity about the origins and literary uses of this carefully observed, and carefully invented, Africanist presence has become an informal study of what I call American Africanism. It is an investigation into the ways in which a nonwhite, Africanlike (or Africanist) presence or persona was constructed in the United States, and the imaginative uses this fabricated presence served. I am using the term “Africanism” not to suggest the larger body of knowledge on Africa that the philosopher Valentine Mudimbe means by the term “Africanism,” nor to suggest the varieties and complexities of African people and their descendants who have inhabited this country. Rather I use it as a term for the denotative and connotative blackness that African peoples have come to signify, as well as the entire range of views, assumptions, readings, and misreadings that accompany Eurocentric learning about these people. As a trope, little restraint has been attached to its uses. As a disabling virus within literary discourse, Africanism has become, in the Eurocentric tradition that American education favors, both a way of talking about and a way of policing matters of class, sexual license, and repression, formations and exercises of power, and meditations on ethics and accountability. Through the simple expedient of demonizing and reifying the range of color on a palette, American Africanism makes it possible to say and not say, to inscribe and erase, to escape and engage, to act out and act on, to historicize and render timeless. It provides a way of contemplating chaos and civilization, desire and fear, and a mechanism for testing the problems and blessings of freedom.

This “putrid Black Vomit” of which the Sage of Concord here speaks is of course the yellow fever, an infection which needs to be extirpated. The disease was called Yellow Fever because it damages the liver in such manner as to cause jaundicing of skin and eyes, and was called black vomit because a classic manifestations of severe HDT WHAT? INDEX

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infection was hemorrhage into the mucous membranes, with frightful vomiting of dark blood.

However, putrid Black vomit also was, of course, in the opinion of the Sage of Concord, the words that were coming out of the mouths of Americans of color, whose infectious thoughts and presumptions were as delusion-provoking in the white man as the fevers of this plague. What we would regard as two separate topics, the prevention of the tropical disease and the prevention of the tropical human, were quite conflated for a 19th- Century white man of Emerson’s mentality. The dark man and the dark vomit were predicting the same thing: the blackness of death. Preventing the one was preventing the other.

(Is it any wonder that this Emerson had blacklisted Frederick Douglass a decade earlier for membership in the Town and Country Club? His dark words would have been a “disabling virus” within polite literary discourse. Society, meaning white society, was not ready for that.)

May 1: Hear the ruby-crowned wren. We accuse savages of worshipping only the bad spirit, or devil, though they may distinguish both a good and a bad; but they regard only that one which they fear and worship the devil only. We too are savages in this, doing precisely the same thing. This occurred to me yesterday as I sat in the woods admiring the beauty of the blue butterfly. We are not chiefly interested in birds and insects, for example, as they are ornamental to the earth and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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cheering to man, but we spare the lives of the former only on condition that they eat more grubs than they do cherries, and the only account of the insects which the State encourages is of the “Insects Injurious to Vegetation.” We too admit both a good and a bad spirit, but we worship chiefly the bad spirit, whom we fear. We do not think first of the good but of the harm things will do us. The catechism says that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, which of course is applicable mainly to God as seen in his works. Yet the only account of its beautiful insects–butterflies, etc.– which God has made and set before us which the State ever thinks of spending any money on is the account of those which are injurious to vegetation! This is the way we glorify God and enjoy him forever. Come out here and behold a thousand painted butterflies and other beautiful insects which people the air, then go to the libraries and see what kind of prayer and glorification of God is there recorded. Massachusetts has published her report on “Insects Injurious to Vegetation,” and our neighbor the “Noxious Insects of New York.” We have attended to the evil and said nothing about the good. This is looking a gift horse in the mouth with a vengeance. Children are attracted by the beauty of butterflies, but their parents and legislators deem it an idle pursuit. The parents remind me of the devil, but the children of God. Though God may have pronounced his work good, we ask, “Is it not poisonous?” Science is inhuman. Things seen with a microscope begin to be insignificant. So described, they are as monstrous as if they should be magnified a thousand diameters. Suppose I should see and describe men and houses and trees and birds as if they were a thousand times larger than they are! With our prying instruments we disturb the balance and harmony of nature. P.M.– To Second Division. Very warm. Looking from Clamshell over Hosmer’s meadow, about half covered with water, see hundreds of turtles, chiefly picta, now first lying out in numbers on the brown pieces of meadow which rise above the water. You see their black backs shine on these hummocks left by the ice, fifty to eighty rods off. They would rapidly tumble off if you went much nearer. This heat and stillness draws them up. It is remarkable how surely they are advertised of the first warm and still days, and in an hour or two are sure to spread themselves over the hummocks. There is to-day a general resurrection of them, and there they bask in the sun. It is their sabbath. At this distance, if you are on the lookout, especially with a glass, you can discover what numbers of them there are, but they are shy and will drop into the water on a near approach. All up and down our river meadows their backs are shining in the sun to-day. It is a turtle day. As we sat on the steep hillside south of Nut Meadow Brook Crossing, we noticed a remarkable whirlwind on a small scale, which carried up the oak leaves from that Island copse in the meadow. The oak leaves now hang thinly and are very dry and light, and these small whirlwinds, which seem to be occasioned by the sudden hot and calm weather (like whirlpools or dimples in a smooth stream), wrench them off, and up they go, somewhat spirally, in countless flocks like birds, with a rustling sound; and higher and higher into the clear blue deeps they rise above our heads, till they are fairly lost to sight, looking, when last seen, mere light specks against the blue, like stars by day, in fact. I could distinguish some, I have no doubt, five or six hundred feet high at least, but if I looked aside a moment they were lost. The largest oak leaves looked not bigger than a five-cent-piece. These were drifting eastward,–to descend where? Methought that, instead of decaying on the earth or being consumed by fire, these were being translated and would soon be taken in at the windows of heaven. I had never observed this phenomenon so remarkable. The flight of the leaves. This was quite local, and it was comparatively still where we sat a few rods on one side. Thousands went up together in a rustling flock. Many of the last oak leaves hang thus ready to go up. I noticed two or more similar whirlwinds in the woods elsewhere this afternoon. One took up small twigs and clusters of leaves from the ground, matted together. I could easily see where it ran along with its nose (or point of its tunnel) close to the ground, stirring up the leaves as it travelled, like the snout of some hunting or rooting animal. See and hear chewink. See a little snake on the dry twigs and chips in the sun, near the arbutus, uniformly brown (or reddish-brown) above except a yellowish ring on the occiput, the head also lighter than the body; beneath vermilion, with apparently a row of light dots along each side. It is apparently Coluber amaenus (?), except that it has the yellowish ring. Luzula campestris. Also the Oryzopsis Canadensis by the Major Heywood path-side, say a day, or April 30th, six inches high or more, with fine bristle-like leaves. See a thrasher. What is that rush at Second Division? It now forms a dense and very conspicuous mass some four rods long and one foot high. The top for three inches is red, and the impression at a little distance is like that made by sorrel. Certainly no plant of this character exhibits such a growth now, i. e. in the mass. It surprises you to see it, carries your thoughts on to June. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The climbing fern is persistent, i.e. retains its greenness still, though now partly brown and withered.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

May 25, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson’s 56th birthday. He wrote in his journal:

The warblers at this season make much of the beauty & interest of the woods. They are so elegant in form & coat, and many of them here but for a short time; the Blackburnian warbler rarely seen by H.D.T.; the trees still allowing you to see far. Their small leaflets do not vie with the spaces of the sky — but let in the vision high — and (yesterday) Concord was all Sicily.

May 25. Dragon-flies have begun to come out of their larva state in numbers, leaving the cases on the weeds, etc. See one tender and just out this forenoon. Meadow fox-tail grass abundantly out (how long?), front of E. Hosmer’s by bars and in E. Hubbard’s meadow, front of meeting-house. The Salix petiolaris is either entire or serrate, and generally, I should now say, was becoming serrate, the later leaves, e. g. that one, a fertile one, nearly opposite the Shattuck oak. The river is quite high for the season, on account of the late rains. Hear within a day or two what I call the sprayey note of the toad, different and later than its early ring.

Emerson’s Journals “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Fall: It was perhaps during this fall season that, as Waldo Emerson mused in his journal about a discussion with Mrs. Anna Barker Ward (the banker’s wife who had gone from Quakerism to Unitarianism to Catholicism) and about a remark Henry Thoreau has made about the education of the young in regard to the eloquence of John Brown, he began to think of the imminence of an unjust death for Brown and this thought of Brown’s truthfulness, combined with this thought of Thoreau’s advice, began to lead Emerson’s mind toward the wisdom of “drop[ping] the load of Memory & of Futurity, Memory & Care, & let[ting] the moment suffice us.” Frightened by this devouring thought, Emerson’s pen immediately secreted a blot of Platonism, and in the midst of an obscuring cloud his mind made its usual escape. When his mind re-emerges from its cloud, Thoreau is absent and Emerson is with his maidservant:128

Anna Ward was at a loss in talking with me, because I had no church whose weakness she could show up, in return for my charges upon hers [Roman Catholic??]. I said to her, Do you not see that though I have no eloquence & no flow of thought, yet that I do not stoop to accept any thing less than truth? that I sit here contented with my poverty, mendicity [sic], & deaf & dumb estate, from year to year, from youth to age, rather than adorn myself with any red rag of false church or false association? My low & lonely sitting here by the wayside, is my homage to truth, which I see is sufficient without me; which is honored by my abstaining, not by superserviceableness. I see how grand & selfsufficing it is; how it burns up, & will none of your shifty patchwork of additions & ingenuities.

Brown shows us, said H.D.T., another school to send our boys to — that the best lesson of oratory is to speak the truth. A lesson rarely learned — To stand by the truth. We stand by our party, our trade, our reputation, our talent, but these each lead away from the truth. That is so volatile & vital, evanescing instantly from all but dedication to it. And yet inspiration is that, to be so quick as truth; to drop the load of Memory & of Futurity, Memory & Care, & let the moment suffice us: then one discovers that the first thought is related to all thought & carries power & fate in its womb. Mattie Griffith says, if Brown is hung, the gallows will be sacred as the cross.

128. This Mattie Griffith of whom Emerson wrote was the daughter of a Southern slavemaster who had in 1856 authored a novel which had posed falsely as an authentic , THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FEMALE SLAVE. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1860

October 17, Wednesday 11:15AM: An earthquake struck in Canada but was not noticed in Concord. Waldo Emerson would record an interesting domestic dispute about this in his journal:129

Queenie’s private earthquake. We had disputed about the duration LIDIAN EMERSON of the vibrations, which I thought lasted 12 seconds, and she insisted returned at intervals of two minutes. Of course our accounts could not agree; but, yesterday, it chanced to turn out, that her earthquake was in the afternoon, & that of the rest of the world at 6 in the morning.

November 15, Friday: Waldo Emerson recorded in his journal that:

The news of last Wednesday morning (7th) was sublime, the pronunciation of the masses of America against Slavery. And now on Tuesday 14th I attended the dedication of the Zoological Museum at Cambridge, an auspicious & happy event, most honorable to Agassiz & to the State. On Wednesday 7th, we had Charles Sumner here at Concord & my house. Yesterday eve I attended at the Lyceum in the Town Hall the Exhibition of Stereoscopic views magnified on the wall, which seems to me the last & most important application of this wonderful art: for here was London, Paris, Switzerland, Spain, &, at last, Egypt, brought visibly & accurately to Concord, for authentic examination by women & children, who had never left their state. Cornelius Agrippa was fairly outdone. And the lovely manner in which one picture was changed for another beat the faculty of dreaming. Edward thought that “the thanks of the town should be presented to Mr [James??] Munroe, for carrying us to Europe, & bringing us home, without expense.” An odd incident of yesterday was that I received a letter or envelope mailed from Frazer, Pennsylvania enclosing no letter but a blank envelope containing a Ten dollar bank note.

(This is more likely to have been in regard to Boston printer James Munroe than to Concord cabinetmaker William Monroe — but can we be sure?)

129. There had been two magnitude-4 earthquakes in the early hours of March 17th off Provincetown, but these had not been noticed in Concord. This particular quake occurred at 11:15AM Greenwich Mean Time and was of magnitude 6 centered at Riviere Ouelle in Québec. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1861

Because Adam Gurowski was comfortable in 8 languages, his friend Senator Charles Sumner, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was able to get him a job and an income as a translator for the US Department of State in Washington DC (he would translate foreign newspaper articles for their internal use until 1863, when general tactlessness and a relentless mockery of Secretary of State William Henry Seward would result in a belated termination).

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Gurowski asked, “Where is this bog: I wish to earn some money: I wish to dig peat.” — “Oh, no, indeed, sir, you cannot do this kind of degrading work.” — “I cannot be degraded. I am Gurowski.”

The journals of Waldo Emerson for this year as assembled by his son Edward Emerson in 1904-1914 would instance the following contents: “Health is circulation. Stereoscopic pictures. Discoveries are first divined. Sir Thomas Browne’s idealism. Eight eras. Laplace’s answer to Napoleon. A criticism of Thoreau. Aristotle’s dying speech. We know not what we do. No ‘shall’ or ‘shan’t.’ Henry James’s five spiritual statements. The illusion ‘No fit company.’ The Mount of Vision. Health is subjugation of matter. Immortality. Try to pay the debt. Grattan on Plutarch. Classes of Men. The attraction of boy and girl. Music to the unprepared ear. Magic of grand design. Indian copper-mining. The buried bird’s-nest. Hindoos shed light on Imagination. Boston’s worthies. Brave Count Gurowski. Good of evil. The martyrs’ crown of flame. The Boston mob breaks in on the Anti-slavery meeting. Strong speech of the street. Thoreau on music. Lord Dundonald and the shipwright. Grimm on Vasari. Notices of Conduct of Life. Southerner’s life prepares him for a soldier. Liberty. Detachment by illumination. Companions. We want spirit. Sects. The harp - shell’s beauty; continual growth; the festal memory of young days, of Collins, Gray, Moore. Clough’s Bothie. The bluebird of Auburndell. Words and images fly to the inspired poet. Dreary Sabbaths. The Traits of Genius; its definition. As school- committee man. Saturday Club. Recovered treasures of our age. Boston course of lectures. A clergyman’s supposed joy in religion; a strife of Christians. An advantage of old age. Pliny on luxury. Nature’s architects. On boys. Our Massachusetts regiments. War has cleared the air. Doctrine of Leasts. A bad cause. Our horizon. Tufts College address. Southern inconsistency. Newcomb on Dante. Taste. Freedom; boys have it. A misfortune of war. War rapidly educates to great principles. Thought the one prosperity. Captain Hodson’s Life; self-help; Honour, your closest friend. Talk with Alcott. The larger consideration. Nation’s capital can be moved. How best to repair oneself. Resources. The AEolian harp; Nature’s musicians. Sir Robert Wilson’s decoration, his counsel as to France. The war gives the chance to deal with Slavery; the great laws will control the issue. Miss Austen’s novels. Occupation of Fort Hatteras. The pictorial dream. Story of Friar Ives and the woman of Damascus. Inspiration of Political Economy. Partiality of minds; disproportion and new scales: man like a revolving light. Eloquence. ‘American Nationality’ at Music Hall. Good discipline for a writer. Intellect rather valued than True Being. The race advances. Originality. Social talent versus scholarship. Lincoln; brave will rare, also good writing; The Psalms and Gospels stand the test, so do the old Bards. Luck in literature; Hogg’s ‘Kilmeny.’ Alcott. Under the snow. Seeing eyes. Benefits of old age. Worldly London. Literary heritage of the new generation. Realism heard of, not used. Could we use immortality? Reading.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I often say to young writers & speakers, that their best masters are their faultfinding brothers & sisters at home, who will not spare them, but be sure to pick & cavil, & tell the odious truth. It is smooth mediocrity, weary elegance, surface finish of our voluminous stock-writers, or respectable artists, which easy times & a dull public call out, without any salient genius, with an indigence of all grand design, of all direct power. A hundred statesmen, historians, painters, & small poets, are thus made: but Burns, & Carlyle, & Bettine, and Michel Angelo, & Thoreau were pupils in a rougher school.

MICHELANGELO Albert J. von Frank has commented that “One could not tell from Emerson’s journals or letters that Henry Thoreau was mortally sick at this time, that he was confined to his house during January and February, and –though he rallied during the summer months– that he was visibly failing by the end of the year. In fact, Emerson often simply refused to acknowledge sickness or pain. In 1859, when he was hobbling with his sprained ankle, he had told Bronson Alcott an amazing untruth — that he had “never known any restraint of limb or liberty before, nor a fever or sickness of any sort.”

[Wendell] Phillips has the supreme merit in this time, that he & he alone stands in the gap & breach against the assailants. Hold up his hands. He did me the honor to ask me to come to the meeting at Tremont Temple, &, esteeming such an invitation a command, though sorely against my inclination & habit, I went, and, though I had nothing to say, showed myself. If I were dumb, yet I would have gone & mowed & muttered or made signs. The mob roared whenever I attempted to speak, and after several beginnings, I withdrew. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May: J.P. Morgan fronted the money, and one Arthur Eastman procured, from the US Army arsenal at Governor’s Island, New York, a lot of 5,000 carbines that had been condemned as dangerously liable to explode and blow off the rifleman’s right thumb. They paid our government $3.50 each; in August these rifles would be sold out west, to General John Frémont, as “new” guns for $22.00 each. When the government would discover the fraud, the sale would be stopped — but Morgan would sue and the courts would award him the money. US CIVIL WAR

The backers of Abraham Lincoln had found out that guess what, they were not only actually the Northern party, but they were also ideally the party of Freedom. They held the moral high ground — how convenient, to be the defenders of Freedom rather than a mere pack of sectionalists, should they decide they needed to off someone! Back in Concord, Waldo Emerson was recording in his journal, in his usual sanctimonious manner, memories about the high spirits and economic blessings that had come out of the war of American Northerners upon despicable American Southerners, known as Mexicans, won of course by us righteous American Northerners, and recording also his sanguine hopes for a new administration of such high spirits and economic blessings from a war to come against this new despicable American Southern grouping, which would of course again accrue to the benefit of us righteous American Northerners. War is good not only for business, but also for the spirits of the victors, he alleges:

The country is cheerful & jocund in the belief that it has a government at last. The men in search of a party, parties in search of a principle, interests & dispositions that could not fuse for want of some base — all joyfully unite in this great Northern party, on the basis of Freedom. What a healthy tone exists! I suppose when we come to fighting, & many of our people are killed, it will yet be found that the bills of mortality in the country will show a better result of this year than the last, on account of the general health; no dyspepsia, no consumption, no fevers, where there is so much electricity, & conquering heart & mind. So, in finance, the rise of wheat paid the cost of the Mexican War; & the check on fraud & jobbing & the new prosperity of the West will pay the new debt.

How wrong this bloodthirsty Emerson was! In actuality, the disillusion caused by the carnage of the Civil War would taint even the lives and the souls of its biggest beneficiaries, and quite typically we find in their biographies that these Northern warriors went to the end of their years on earth in utter irremediable cynicism and disgust.

“No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.” — Lily Tomlin HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Possibly in this month, possibly in June, Emerson made the following entry:

Our horizon is not far —say, one generation, or 30 years— we all see so much. The older see two generations, or 60 years; but what has been running on through three horizons, or 90 years, looks to all the world like a law of nature, & ’tis an impiety to doubt. Thus, ’tis incredible to us if we look into the sermons & religious books of our grand-fathers, how they held themselves in such a pinfold. But why not? as far as they could see, through two or three horizons, nothing but ministers, ministers, ministers. In other countries or districts, ’tis all soldiering, or sheep farms, or shoe-making, or Vermont cattle-driving. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 15, Friday: For several days news of the forcible seizure of Confederate emissaries James Mason and John Slidell by Captain Charles Wilkes of the USS San Jacinto from the British mail packet RMS Trent a week earlier off Cuba, and their detention at Boston, had been being processed and reprocessed as sober minds considered its potential for defeat of the North in a war participated in by England. On this day the USS San Jacinto surrendered the two emissaries at Fortress Monroe, Virginia.

His Excellency the President of the Confederate States of America Jefferson Davis having set this day apart for fasting, humiliation, and prayer, the Reverend Henry Holcombe Tucker delivered a sermon “God in the War” before the legislature of Georgia, in the capitol at Milledgeville.

US CIVIL WAR

Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. — PSALMS 46: 8-9. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Henry Thoreau made no journal entry on this day. He wrote to cousin-by-marriage George A. Thatcher in Bangor: Concord Nov 15th 1861 Dear Cousin, We are glad to hear that you are in the neighborhood, and shall be much disappointed if we do not see you & Caleb. Come up any day that is most convenient to you— Or, if you stay so long, perhaps you will spend Thanksgiving (the 21st) with us. Yrs, in haste. Henry D. Thoreau

Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

The news of last Wednesday morning (7th) was sublime, the pronunciation of the masses of America against Slavery. And now on Tuesday 14th I attended the dedication of the Zoological Museum at Cambridge, an auspicious & happy event, most honorable to Agassiz & to the State. On Wednesday 7th, we had Charles Sumner here at Concord & my house. Yesterday eve I attended at the Lyceum in the Town Hall the Exhibition of Stereoscopic views magnified on the wall, which seems to me the last & most important application of this wonderful art: for here was London, Paris, Switzerland, Spain, &, at last, Egypt, brought visibly & accurately to Concord, for authentic examination by women & children, who had never left their state. Cornelius Agrippa was fairly outdone. And the lovely manner in which one picture was changed for another beat the faculty of dreaming. Edward thought that “the thanks of the town should be presented to Mr [James??] Munroe, for carrying us to Europe, & bringing us home, without expense.” An odd incident of yesterday was that I received a letter or envelope mailed from Frazer, Pennsylvania enclosing no letter but a blank envelope containing a Ten dollar bank note.

BETWEEN ANY TWO MOMENTS ARE AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MOMENTS, AND BETWEEN THESE OTHER MOMENTS LIKEWISE AN INFINITE NUMBER, THERE BEING NO ATOMIC MOMENT JUST AS THERE IS NO ATOMIC POINT ALONG A LINE. MOMENTS ARE THEREFORE FIGMENTS. THE PRESENT MOMENT IS A MOMENT AND AS SUCH IS A FIGMENT, A FLIGHT OF THE IMAGINATION TO WHICH NOTHING REAL CORRESPONDS. SINCE PAST HDT WHAT? INDEX

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MOMENTS HAVE PASSED OUT OF EXISTENCE AND FUTURE MOMENTS HAVE YET TO ARRIVE, WE NOTE THAT THE PRESENT MOMENT IS ALL THAT EVER EXISTS — AND YET THE PRESENT MOMENT BEING A MOMENT IS A FIGMENT TO WHICH NOTHING IN REALITY CORRESPONDS.

Emerson’s Journals “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1862

It was perhaps in this year that Waldo Emerson jotted the following into his journal:

Thoreau’s page reminds me of Farley, who went early into the wilderness in Illinois, lived alone, & hewed down trees, & tilled the land, but retired again into newer country when the population came up with him. Yet, on being asked, what he was doing? said, he pleased himself that he was preparing the land for civilization.

HERMITS ILLINOIS

The journals of Waldo Emerson for this year as assembled by his son Edward Emerson in 1904-1914 would instance the following contents: “The pinch of war begins. Memory, vanishing dreams. Argument impossible. English and American employers. Serene farmer, anxious newspaper readers. Slavery’s statistics unheeded. The inspiring woods. Talent without character; Montaigne. Talk with chicadee; illusions; how far to respect them? War a new glass to see old things; trades go on, and amusements. Praise of Lowell’s verses. John Thoreau’s two wonderful gifts. Friends begin to die. Opinions are fluxional quantities. Cicero on civil war. Man’s reserve right of war. Bassett on outrages on Northerners in Slave States. The current guides us better than we ourselves. Iron, not words. Grand commerce, paralyzed politics. Governments not heroic. The thinkers speak, not to their own, but next generation. Dr. Reed’s strange experience. Happily nations tire of a fetich, like Union-saving. England’s low plane of policy. Snow and Freedom. Be thankful for honest government, if slow, and for our good cause. Revolution in France. Keep our record clean before the nations. Hitch your wagon to a star. Ideas triumph over numbers. Richter’s Titan. Burke on sentiment and policy. Mr. Emerson lectures in Washington at the Smithsonian. ‘Civilization at a Pinch’: pleasant meeting with President Lincoln. Sees Secretaries Chase, Stanton; also Seward with J. M. Forbes and Governor Andrew; visits Sumner. Dinner with Chase. Call on Mrs. Fremont; more talk with Seward. Seward’s dislike of Massachusetts and complaint of Congress; he takes Mr. Emerson to Episcopal church, then to call on President; his boys and their rabbit. The giving up Mason and Slidell; Lord Lyons. Seward’s talk of the Prince of Wales’s visit, and of Thurlow Weed. Dinner at Mr. Hooper’s with Governor Andrew. Mrs. Schuyler’s story of Talleyrand and . Sumner’s letters from the Argylls. Reception at Mr. C. Eames’s. The Capitol and Library. Recreant Northerners. Raleigh on army in fleet. Majorities. Von Ense on war and aristocracy. Correctness is rare. The stuttering wit. Good of antagonisms; man rooted in Nature, self-helpful, then refined. Thoreau’s liking for Whitman; on false preachers; advice to drunkard. Old-time Bostonians in church. Weak Republicans in Congress. Holmes, and the Lowells. The meeting with the titmouse. Greenwood’s oratory. Joinville’s story of the friar. Shy goodness. The magic cannon in Mexico. Strong Unitarians were originally Calvinists. Les Chevaux de Sahara. Facts and Ideas; materialist and prophet. Freedom loves the North. Whiggery. War the touchstone of reputations, corrects brag and sentimentality. Shallow poetry; wish to teach rhetoric and oratory. The dying Thoreau brave and happy; his praise of Concord River. Our negative success. Mommsen on the poet. Brownell’s ‘Old Cove.’ Mid-April ice on Walden. Cottle’s Reminiscences. Spring’s wise delay. Florian. The birds. Peace uses most gunpowder. Country resources. Memory. Thoreau’s death and burial; his English friend Cholmondeley and the gift of East Indian scriptures; list of those bequeathed to Emerson. Writers of romance, Harriet Prescott, Elizabeth S. Sheppard, Bettine von Arnim, George Borrow; Disraeli, Goethe. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Misfortune from the negro. Feats, victory over the calf. Imaginative books; Nala and Damayanti. Wholes, you must take and give. The clear eye. Pansies. Real writing. Carlyle’s Frederick. Untuning. McClellan. Two things in a picture. Memory of Thoreau. Farmer’s standard of living. The gracious lady. Thoreau’s sayings; the solitary rock. Courage. The inconvertible sentimentalist. Success of the North secure; the wind of battle scatters complications. Useless ephemeral reading. Thoreau’s journals will beget naturalists; sentences from these. Concord prisoners of Bull Run return; welcome to them. Destruction of slavery worth the cost. The saints pictured as ugly. ‘The grand style.’ Sensitive reputation. Strong homely speech. Your own fault, if your book neglected. Blessing of conceit. The wood - tortoise. Talk with George Sennott. Seventeenth-century writing. Nature in leasts. Beliefs. Hold to your own standard. Shallow talk about Nature; she gives to each his own. Sentences from Thoreau. The motives to Emancipation. The war North and South; our government might let it out to contractor; Letter to C. G. Loring. Bonaparte’s way; Gentz’s Diary. Renan on Sacrifice. The Volunteer army. Friends. Iteration in verse. Uninventoried goods of farm. Delusions of lawyers and clergy. Sensibility is all. Excellence justifies. Musicians. Walden’s bottom. Levity of the people. The world comes to you. Believing sceptics. The Emancipation Proclamation; its opponents. November splendor. Health. Incubus of Slaver.y. Art and religion. Unintelligent or biased voting. Garrison and Phillips. Victorious new generation. Southern victories but temporary; Moral law will win. Lincoln’s slow policy. Armies or ships. Von Ense on the earthly and the heavenly alliance. The Nation on trial. Movements of an aristocracy and a democracy. The ‘Divine Institution.’ Poetry’s charm. ‘American Nationality,’ War’s service and power; the coming Reconstruction, let that be sound. Carlyle fears hypocrisy, but blind as to hero’s foibles. The orchard’s great bounty. Holmes’s social talent. Father Isaac Hecker comes to Concord. Seeking for the Law. Household worship. Value of clubs, and of cheering books. The American problem. Hazel blossoms. Death in ancestral letters. Lyceum’s three needs. Quotations from Borrow. Necessarily a bard. Reading.”

January 17, Friday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Old Age As we live longer, it looks as if our company were picked out to die first, & we live on in a lessening minority.... I am threatened by the decays of Henry T.

The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway delivered “The Golden Hour” at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, and then he and the Reverend William Henry Channing walked over to the White House and met with President Abraham Lincoln. Channing was talking up the practicalities of reimbursement for emancipation, and other such real-world accommodations, and the President was responding to that, which perplexed a Conway who had only one arrow in his quiver, could only orate about absolutist principles.

Concerto for piano and orchestra no.1 op.17 by Camille Saint-Saëns was performed for the initial time, in Salle Pleyel, Paris, with the composer himself at the keyboard.

At the American Embassy in Havana, Louis Moreau Gottschalk formally renounced allegiance to his home state of Louisiana and declared fidelity to the United States of America, after which he boarded ship for New- York. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 31, Friday: At his lecture in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, Waldo Emerson chastised the Lincoln administration for its half-hearted prosecution of civil war. He asserted that emancipation was the demand of civilization and that objections to this principle were nothing but intrigue. As Lincoln groped for principles to unite the nation, Emerson noted, the Union war effort limped along. He stated that emancipation with compensation to loyal citizens would revitalize American patriotism. Emerson reasoned that the relentless logic of civil war would compel emancipation despite the efforts of generals and politicians to prevent it. If fought on high moral principles, he believed that civil war would heal a deeper wound than it made. He would be paid $84.00 for this:

At Washington, 31 January, 1 Feb, 2d, & 3d, saw Charles Sumner, who on the 2d, carried me to Mr Chase, Mr Bates, Mr Stanton, Mr Welles, Mr William Henry Seward, Lord Lyons, and President Abraham Lincoln. The President impressed me more favorably than I had hoped. A frank, sincere, well-meaning man, with a lawyer’s habit of mind, good clear statement of his fact, correct enough, not vulgar, as described; but with a sort of boyish cheerfulness, or that kind of sincerity & jolly good meaning that our class meetings on Commencement Days show, in telling our old stories over. When he has made his remark, he looks up at you with great satisfaction, & shows all his white teeth, & laughs. He argued to Sumner the whole case of gordon, the slave- trader, point by point, and added that he was not quite satisfied yet, & meant to refresh his memory by looking again at the evidence. All this showed a fidelity & conscientiousness very honorable to him. When I was introduced to him, he said, “O Mr Emerson, I once heard you say in a lecture, that a Kentuckian seems to say by his air & manners, ‘Here am I; if you don’t like me, the worse for you.’" Mr Seward received us in his dingy State Department.... He began, “Yes I know Mr Emerson. The President said yesterday, when I was going to tell him a story, ‘Well, Seward, don’t let it be smutty.’ And I remember when a witness was asked in court, ‘Do you know this man?’ ‘Yes, I know him.’ — ‘How do you know him?’ ‘Why I know him. I can’t say I have carnal knowledge of him, &c.’”

THE LIST OF LECTURES HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Our Perennial Quest to Do Harm So Good Will Come

Extermination of the Pequot Tribe 1634-1637 “King Phillip’s” Race War 1675-1676 Secession from Britain 1776-1783 The 1812-1815 The Revolution of the Texians 1835-1836 War on Mejico 1846-1848 Race War in the Wild West 1862-1863 Secession from the Union 1862-1865 War to End War 1916-1919 Stopping Hitler 1940-1945 The Korean Police Action 1950-1953 Helping South Vietnam be Free 1959-1975 Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 yada xxxx yada yada xxxx yada yada yada xxxx HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“To be active, well, happy, implies rare courage. To be ready to fight in a duel or a battle implies desperation, or that you hold your life cheap.” — Henry Thoreau HDT WHAT? INDEX

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We should notice that this high moral ground of emancipation of the American slaves would become operative toward the middle of our bloody Civil War not because it would be an improvement in the lives of the black Americans but because the ostensive, apparent seizing of such a high moral ground would provide legitimacy for the sectional bloodshed that had already been taking place. There is an exact parallel for this, and this exact parallel to be found in the “W” administration’s belated repurposing of the 2d Iraq War in 2003, after the unfortunate fact that no Weapons of Mass Destruction at all had been found. In proof of that exact parallel, I will include here an OpEd article “Presidents Remade by War” by Thomas L. Friedman, that appeared in the New York Times for December 7, 2003: Anyone who has listened to President Bush’s recent speeches about the need to promote democracy in the Arab-Muslim world can’t but walk away both impressed and dubious — impressed because promoting democracy in the Arab world is something no president before has advocated with Mr. Bush’s vigor, and dubious because this sort of nation-building is precisely what Mr. Bush spurned throughout his campaign. Where did Mr. Bush’s passion for making the Arab world safe for democracy come from? Though the president mentioned this theme before the war, it was not something he stressed with the public, Congress or the U.N. in justifying an Iraq invasion. Rather, he relied primarily on the urgent need to pre-emptively strip Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. A cynic might say that Mr. Bush was always interested only in stripping Iraq of its W.M.D. But with no W.M.D. having been unearthed thus far in Iraq, and with the costs of the war in lives and dollars soaring, the president felt he needed a new rationale. And so he focused on the democratization argument. But there is another explanation, one that is not incompatible with the first but is less overtly cynical. It is a story about war and events and how they can transform a president. “It often happens,” argues Michael Sandel, the Harvard political theorist, “that presidents, under the pressure of events, especially during war, find themselves needing to articulate new and more persuasive rationales for their policies — especially when great sacrifices are involved. This happened to Lincoln during the Civil War. At the outset, the purpose of the Civil War for Lincoln was to oppose secession and preserve the Union. It was really only after the battle at Gettysburg that Lincoln articulated a larger purpose for the Civil War — namely freedom and the elimination of slavery. Henceforth, the Civil War was not only to preserve the Union, but to bring about the promise of the Declaration of Independence — written four score and seven years earlier.” As Lincoln insisted in his Gettysburg Address (while dedicating the cemetery at Gettysburg), “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom.” In Lincoln’s case the rationale for the war shifted, not because he couldn’t find any W.M.D. in Dixie, but rather, argues Mr. Sandel, “because of the enormity of the sacrifice that the war was requiring. It no longer made moral sense that this great sacrifice could just be about keeping these states together, could just be about a political structure. It had to be about a bigger purpose and that was freedom and equality.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Woodrow Wilson went through a similar transformation, notes Mr. Sandel. He campaigned for re-election in 1916 boasting of having kept the country out of Europe’s messy war. But by April 2, 1917, Mr. Wilson was standing before a joint session of Congress, seeking a declaration of war against Germany and insisting that the world “must be made safe for democracy.” The irony, notes Mr. Sandel, is that Mr. Bush’s decision to emphasize the democracy rationale puts him in the company of Wilson, the president who made liberal internationalism the core of his foreign policy. “Indeed,” he adds, “President Bush, who campaigned for the presidency as an ardent realist, scorning nation-building and idealism in foreign policy, is now quoting President Wilson and speaking about the need to make the Middle East safe for democracy. It shows how the burden of the office and the power of events can transform presidents.” Personally, I’m partial to Mr. Bush’s new emphasis on the freedom and democracy argument, which for me was the only compelling rationale for the Iraq war. The question is how deeply Mr. Bush has internalized this democracy agenda, which is going to be a long, costly enterprise, and to what extent he can persuade Americans to stick with it. If you listen to him speak about it, it seems heartfelt, almost a religious conviction. But the fact is, Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address himself. Mr. Bush’s democracy speeches were written for him. Only the future will tell us whether his attachment to this issue is the product of epiphany or expediency — or both.

Bush postures with a prop HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February: Waldo Emerson lectured to the Reverend Theodore Parker’s “Fraternity” in Boston, and made some remarks in his journal about the dying Henry Thoreau:130

H D T ... Perhaps his fancy for Walt Whitman grew out of his taste for wild nature, for an otter, a wood-chuck, or a loon. He loved sufficiency, hated a sum that would not prove: loved Walt & hated Alcott. * * * Therien came to see Thoreau on business, but Thoreau at once perceived that he had been drinking; and advised him to go home & cut his throat, and that speedily. Therien did not well know what to make of it, but went away, & Thoreau said, he learned that he had been repeating it about town, which he was glad to hear, & hoped that by this time he had begun to understand what it meant.

WALT WHITMAN THE LIST OF LECTURES

Emerson also remarked in his journal about Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, mobilizing for this purpose a Thoreau trope:

Holmes came out late in life with a strong sustained growth for two or three years, like old pear trees which have done nothing for ten years, & at last begin & grow great. The Lowells come forward slowly, & H.T. remarks, that men may have two growths like pears.

130. We may here treat as a projection of his own attitudes, a displacement, Waldo Emerson’s strange and entirely unsupported assertion that Henry Thoreau’s affect toward Bronson Alcott amounted to a species of contempt, and we may likewise desire to distance ourselves from Emerson’s idea that Thoreau in this reported incident with Alek Therien was merely expressing a hostile attitude — rather than attempting to administer to this long-term friend a much needed corrective.

As a temperance Friend, John Greenleaf Whittier “would have been quite incapable of such an act as Henry Thoreau committed when he advised an intemperate man who came to see him under the influence of liquor to go home and cut his throat and do it quickly.… [He] contributed an article to The American Manufacturer on ‘Cultivation of the Vine’” (pages 24-25 of Wagenknecht, Edward. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER: A PORTRAIT IN PARADOX. NY: Oxford UP, 1967). There is abundant evidence that, despite temperance convictions, despite being known as “a cold-water man by habit and principle,” Whittier not only drank hard cider and used alcoholic drinks for medicinal purposes and for sleeplessness but even, while traveling, carried on his person a flask of brandy. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 3, Monday: Wiener Chronik op.268, a waltz by Johann Strauss, was performed for the initial time, in the Dianabad-saal, Vienna.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:131

The snow still lies even with the tops of the walls across the Walden road, and, this afternoon, I waded through the woods to my grove. A chicadee came out to greet me, flew almost within reach of my hands, perched on the nearest bough, flew down into the snow, rested there two seconds, then up again, just over my head, & busied himself on the dead bark. I whistled to him through my teeth, and (I think, in response) he began at once to whistle. I promised him crumbs, & must not go again to these woods without them. I suppose the best food to carry would be the meat of shagbarks or castille nuts. Thoreau tells me that they are very sociable with wood-choppers, & will take crumbs from their hands.

131.I wonder if this comment is to be taken to indicate that Emerson never read WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS — or if it is to be taken to indicate that his reading of WALDEN was so utterly superficial that he could not retain even the most lively and descriptive portions? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 24, Monday: A funeral procession in memory of Fromental Halévy traveled from the Institute Palace to the Place de la Concorde to the cemetery of Montmartre. An estimated 15,000 people attended some part of the proceedings. Music included the Marche funèbre from La Juive. There were a series of 8 funeral orations.

At the head of the thumbnail file of the life of the Reverend Samuel Joseph May and his contacts with people who were in contact with Henry Thoreau, there stands the following inscription: In the index to Raymond Borst’s THE THOREAU LOG: A DOCUMENTARY LIFE OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU 1817- 1862, there is one and only one reference to a person bearing the surname “May.” That reference is to page 604, on which, under the date March 24, 1862, “Abigail Alcott writes to her brother, Samuel May,” about the weak condition of “Our poor Thoreau.” So who was this brother Samuel May and what had been his contact with Thoreau? This file provides a bit more detail.

Here is the post from Abba Alcott to her minister brother as reprised by Borst: Our poor Thoreau is most gone– Elizabeth Hoar is arranging his papers– Miss Thoreau copying for him — he is too weak to do any of the mechanical part himself. Mr Ticknor has been up to buy the right of all his works– He means to get up a uniform edition– Mr Alcott has written a beautiful sketch of Thoreau which is to appear in the April number of the “Atlantic” preparatory to this works– Mr Fields thought it a good introduction– He is very calm, but earnest about every thing as if his moments were numbered– Mr Alcott carries him sweet apples and now and then a Bottle of Cider which seems to please him.

ELIZABETH SHERMAN HOAR BRONSON ALCOTT SOPHIA E. THOREAU Sheriff Sam Staples visited the Thoreaus and the next day recounted the substance of his visit to Waldo Emerson:

Samuel Staples yesterday had been to see Henry Thoreau. Never spent an hour with more satisfaction. Never saw a man dying with so much pleasure & peace. Thinks that very few men in Concord know Mr Thoreau; finds him serene & happy. Henry praised to me lately the manners of an old, established, calm, well-behaved river, as perfectly distinguished from those of a new river. A new river is a torrent; an old one slow & steadily supplied. What happens in any part of the old river relates to what befalls in every other part of it. ’Tis full of compensations, resources, & reserved funds. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This happens to be the first recognition among Emerson’s journal jottings that Thoreau had been for some time in an irreversible and inevitable process of wasting away and dying. The situation had become so much more than obvious as to be no longer avoidable. [At some point during his terminal illness (I'll insert this here) Thoreau heard an organ grinder on the street, “loosening the vary paving stones and tearing the routine of life to rags and tatters,” and insisted “Give him some money. Give him some money.” This was reminiscent of what he wrote in his Journal for August 8, 1851: “The really inspiring melodies are cheap & universal –& are as audible to the poor man's son as to the rich mans. Listening to the harmonies of the universe is not allied to dissipation.… All Vienna cannot serve me more than the Italian boy who seeks my door with his organ.”] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Summer: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

If we should ever print Henry’s journals, you may look for a plentiful crop of naturalists. Young men of sensibility must fall an easy prey to the charming of Pan’s pipe.

If there is a little strut in his style, it is only from a vigor in excess of the size of his body. His determination on natural history is organic: he sometimes felt like a hound or a panther &, if born among Indians, would have been a fell hunter: restrained, modified by his Massachusetts culture he played out the game in this mild form of botany & ichthyology. I see many generals without a command, besides Henry.

Henry T. remains erect, calm, self-subsistent, before me, and I read him not only truly in his Journal, but he is not long out of mind when I walk, and, as today, row upon the pond. He chose wisely no doubt for himself to be the bachelor of thought & nature that he was — how near to the old monks in their ascetic religion! He had no talent for wealth, & knew how to be poor without the least hint of squalor or inelegance. Perhaps he fell, all of us do, into his way of living, without forecasting it much, but approved & confirmed it with later wisdom.

This undated journal entry also may have been written during this period:

Thoreau’s page reminds me of Farley, who went early into the wilderness in Illinois, lived alone, & hewed down trees, & tilled the land, but retired again into newer country when the population came up with him. Yet, on being asked, what he was doing? said, he pleased himself that he was preparing the land for civilization. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

July: Waldo Emerson decided that war was one of his Good-Things-Leading-To-Human-Elevation:

I shall always respect War hereafter. The cost of life, the dreary havoc of comfort and time, are overpaid by the Vistas it opens of ... reconstructing and uplifting Society.

The central building that had been created for the new University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee –the institute for Episcopal students– was destroyed by Federal troops.

US CIVIL WAR Dr. Samuel Kneeland, Jr. entered the corps of surgeons of volunteers and was placed in charge, successively, of the university hospital in New Orleans, and of the marine hospital in Mobile. (Hopefully, he would not murder any of the soldiers there in the course of medical experiments.)

When he would learn that his son Toussaint L’Ouverture Delany had been among the survivors of the frontal assault of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers upon Fort Wagner, Dr. Martin Robison Delany HDT WHAT? INDEX

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would commit himself wholeheartedly to the cause of the war against the Southern states.

Frederick Douglass was assured personally by Secretary of War Stanton in Washington DC that in exchange for recruiting black Southerners as Union soldiers he would be receiving an officer’s commission. (—Q: Would Stanton keep his promise? —A: Stanton would be a white man.)

NO!

US CIVIL WAR

John Andrew, a Massachusetts lawyer and politician, offered the following words of encouragement to Robert HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Gould Shaw, the white leader of the black recruits:

I know not, Mr. Commander, where in all human history to any given thousand men in arms there has been committed a work at once so proud, so precious, so full of hope and glory, as the work committed to you.

Carleton Mabee’s BLACK FREEDOM

The Tappanite-related American Peace Society itself acquiesced in the war. In doing so, it indulged in the sophistry of considering the war not to be a war in the usual international sense, but merely the attempt of a government to punish its own subjects for breaking the law. Indirectly the peace society ... supported the federal law as necessary without indicating concern to secure exemption for conscientious objectors.... Among the Concord transcendentalists, Thoreau, who had once advocated going to prison to shame the state into giving up both war and slavery, in a sharp reversal now believed that suffering in this war was regenerating the nation. Similarly, the once anti-institutional, individualistic Waldo Emerson now argued that government must have dictatorial powers during wartime and that participation in war taught self-reliance — surely not the same kind of nonconformist self-reliance that he had once valued. To the disillusionment of Moncure Daniel Conway, one of Emerson’s individualistic, antiwar, antislavery disciples, Emerson even accepted an appointment as an official visitor at West Point.

Pencil sketch of Fort Ridgely in the summer of 1863 after the race war HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

August: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

How shallow seemed to me yesterday in the woods the speech one often hears from tired citizens who have spent their brief enthusiasm for the country, that Nature is tedious, and they have had enough of green leaves. Nature and the green leaves are a million fathoms deep, and it is these eyes that are superficial.

“Thoreau” appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. At Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau’s insistence Emerson had omitted the implicit reference which he had made, during his funeral oration, to Walt Whitman, “one who is not known to those here assembled.” Emerson did include in the article, however, a version of something that Elizabeth Sherman Hoar had said to him during Spring 1843, “I love Henry, but do not like him,” casting this as “I love Henry, said one of his friends, but I cannot like him; and as for taking his arm, I should as soon think of taking the arm of an elm-tree.”

E.H. says, “I love Henry, but do not like him.” Young men like Henry Thoreau owe us a new world & they have not acquitted the debt: for the most part, such die young, & so dodge the fulfilment. One of our girls ... said, Henry never went through the kitchen without colouring.

In his oration over Henry Thoreau’s corpse Emerson had mentioned the dead man’s “mythical record of ... disappointments.” Now, although we don’t have documentation that he had ever bothered to read through WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, this, clearly, would amount to a categorization of the hound/horse/ turtledove passage as an attempt at myth (as well as one of the author’s “riddles”), characterizing it as having to do with some series of personal life disappointments — and it would constitute evidence that Emerson had at least skimmed the first few pages of the book although it might not constitute evidence that he had HDT WHAT? INDEX

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considered the material very carefully.

WALDEN: In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men’s, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint “No Admittance” on my gate. I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves. To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been about mine! No doubt many of my townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.

The The WALDEN other parable analyses HDT WHAT? INDEX

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It may well be that it was during this month that Emerson confided to his journal a discovery that the generals of the North were womanly:

Strange that some strong-minded president of the Woman’s Rights Convention should not offer to lead the Army of the Potomac. She could not do worse than General Maclellan [George B. McClellan].

During this month Union General John Pope would suffer defeat at the 2nd Battle of Bull Run on August 29- 30, a defeat for which General Fitz-John Porter would be held responsible since he had failed to commit his troops quickly to the battle: by 1863 this hesitant “womanly” officer would be forced out. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 31, Sunday: Winthrop E. Faulkner mustered at Camp Wilson near Lowell, Massachusetts with Company E of the 6th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, for the Nine Months’ Campaign, at the rank of Captain.132

Edward Waldo Emerson arrived in Sacramento after his overland trip to California.

At some point during August or September or October of this year, Waldo Emerson jotted into his journal what appears to have been his synopsis of what he had taken away from various conversations he had had from time to time with Henry Thoreau:

Henry said, “I wish so to live as to derive my satisfactions & inspirations from the commonest events, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbors may inspire me, & I may dream of no heaven but that which lies above me.

132. The unit would relocate to Washington DC on September 9th to the 12th. From there it would relocate to Virginia on September 14th and 15th, where it would be attached to Foster’s Provisional Brigade, Division at Suffolk, 7th Army Corps, Department of Virginia until April 1863, and then to 2nd Brigade, 1st Division, 7th Army Corps, Department of Virginia until June 1863. It would participate in an expedition to Western Branch Church on October 3-4, 1862 and in expeditions to Blackwater on October 24-26 and on November 17-19 involving a skirmish at Lawrence’s Plantation on November 17th. It would participate in an expedition to Beaver Dam Church on December 1-3. It would see action on the Blackwater River near Franklin on December 2d. It would participate in an expedition to Zuni on December 11-13, taking part in an action at Zuni on December 11th, 1862. It would take part in an action at Deserted House on January 30, 1863. It would participate in the siege of Suffolk from April 12th to May 4th, when the siege would be raised. It would take part in operations on the Seaboard & Roanoke Railroad from May 12th to the 26th, being at the action at Holland House on May 15-16. It would relocate to Boston on May 26-29, and there muster out as of June 3, 1863. This entire regiment would lose during these nine months of service two officers and 11 enlisted men killed or mortally wounded, and in addition 18 enlisted men would succumb to illness. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

November/December: Waldo Emerson to his journal, in regard to Father Isaac Hecker and Anna H. Barker Ward, former Quaker, former Unitarian, wife of the wealthy New-York banker Samuel Gray Ward:

Isaac Hecker, the Catholic priest, came to see me, & desired to read lectures on the Catholic Church, in Concord. I told him that nobody would come to hear him, such was the aversion of people, at present, to theological questions; & not only so, but the drifting of the human mind was now quite in another direction than to any churches. Nor could I possibly affect the smallest interest in anything that regarded his church. We are used to this whim of a man’s choosing to put on & wear a painted petticoat, as we are to whims of artists who wear a medieval cap or beard, & attach importance to it; but, of course, they must say nothing about it to us, & we will never notice it to them, but will carry on general conversation, with utter reticence as to each other’s whimsies: but if once they speak of it, they are not the men we took them for, & we do not talk with them twice. But I doubt if any impression can be made on Father Isaac. He converted Mrs Ward, &, like the lion that has eaten a man, he wants to be at it again, & convert somebody.

December 8, Monday: [Waldo Emerson, in regard to the race question] “our President Lincoln will not even emancipate slaves, until on the heels of a victory, or the semblance of such.” “One lesson they [soldiers] all learn –to hate slavery, –tererrima causa. But the issues does not yet appear. We must get ourselves morally right. Nobody can help us. ’Tis of no account what England or France may do. But even the war is better than the degrading & descending politics that preceded it for decades of years, & our legislation has made great strides, and if we can stave off that fury of trade which rushes to please at the cost of replacing the South in the status ante bellum, we can... leave the problem to another score of years.”133 ABRAHAM LINCOLN

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

133. Slater, Joseph, ed. THE CORRESPONDENCE OF EMERSON AND CARLYLE. NY: Columbia UP, 1964, page 536. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1863

Adam Gurowski was comfortable in 8 languages, so his friend Senator Charles Sumner, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had recommended him as a translator to the Department of State in Washington DC. However, he had there engaged himself in a relentless mockery of Secretary of State William Henry Seward. Sumner had given up on the man’s general boorishness and withdrawn support — so in this year the count’s employment was terminated.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Eloquence a power, Sketch of Thoreau, in Cause & Effect.

April/May 1863: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

In reading Henry Thoreau’s Journal, I am very sensible of the vigor of his constitution. That oaken strength which I noted whenever he walked or worked or surveyed wood lots, the same unhesitating hand with which a field-laborer accosts a piece of work which I should shun as a waste of strength, Henry shows in his literary task. He has muscle, & ventures on & performs feats which I am forced to decline. In reading him, I find the same thought, the same spirit that is in me, but he takes a step beyond, & illustrates by excellent images that which I should have conveyed in a sleepy generality. ’Tis as if I went into a gymnasium, & saw youths leap, climb, & swing with a force unapproachable — thought their feats are only continuations of my initial grapplings & jumps. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 16, Thursday: Near the Straits of Shimoneski, the USS Wyoming sank two Japanese ships in retaliation for the sinking of the US ship Pembroke in May. Shogun Tokugawa Iemochi approved of the action as it helped him win influence over the emperor at the expense of anti-foreign elements. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

William Waterman Chapin (1834-1922) of Providence, Rhode Island, who had been drafted to serve in the Union army, “Paid $300 & bo’t my exemption papers.” US CIVIL WAR

There was fighting at Grimball’s Landing / Secessionville / James Island. To divert Confederate reinforcements from a renewed attack on Fort Wagner, General Gillmore designed two feints. An amphibious force ascended Stone River to threaten the Charleston & Savannah Railroad bridge. A second force, consisting of Terry’s division, landed on James Island on July 8. Terry demonstrated against the Confederate defenses. On July 16, the Confederates attacked Terry’s camp at Grimball’s Landing. Because of incomplete reconnaissance of the difficult, marshy ground, the disorganized Confederate attack was soon aborted. Their mission accomplished, Federal troops withdrew from the island on July 17. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Rode this p.m. with [Ellery] Channing in wagon to White Pond. ’Tis perhaps ten years ago since I was there with him before, and in the reflections of the larger grown trees in the lake noticed the same peculiarities. The trees were all done in minute squares, as in the crochet work of girls; the colors of the foliage, russet & ruddy, added to the beauty. Pines on the distant shore, of which we saw only the short stem veiled above by the branches, in the water showed the stem of the tree to the top! We were on the farther side of the pond at the “Cove,” & talked with a party, a young man & three young women from Sudbury 1 3 /2 miles distant. They left the shore in a boat. C. & I agreed that a picnic is like a “revival,” it charges a man in an instant, & he forgets his home & habits, & thinks he will come & live with Nature. But he returns to his village to put up his horse, stops at the Post Office, takes tea with his family, and does not for ten years get a glance at the Paradise again. After a bath in the Pond came home by the beautiful road through Nine- Acre-Corner, where the farms were in richest array. An old hemlock tree in one field should teach every body to plant and guard a hemlock, that it may some day be old. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1864

Spring: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I have found my advantage in going to a hotel with a task which could not prosper at home. I secured so a more absolute solitude, for it is almost impossible for a housekeeper who, in the country, is also a small farmer, & who has guests in the house, to exclude interruptions & even necessary orders, thought I bar out by system all I can, & resolutely omit to my constant loss all that can be omitted. In the hotel, I have no hours to keep, no visits, & can command an astronomical leisure. At home the day is cut up into short strips. In the hotel, I forget rain, wind, & cold, heat. At home, I remember in my library the wants of the farm, & have all too much sympathy. I envy the abstraction of some scholars I have known, who might sit on a curb-stone in state street & solve their problem. I have more womanly eyes. All the conditions must be right for my success, slight as that is. What untunes is as bad as what cripples or stuns me. Therefore I extol the prudence of Carlyle, who, for years, projected a library at the top of his house, high above the orbit of all housemaids, and out of earshot of doorbells. Could that be once secured —a whole floor —room for books, & a good bolt — he could hope for six years of history. And he kept it in view till it was done. And I remember that Henry Thoreau, with his cynic will, yet found certain trifles disturbing the delicacy of that health which composition exacted — namely, the slightest irregularity or the drinking too much water on the preceding day. And George Sand’s love of heat agrees with mine. Even the steel pen is a nuisance. A capital prudence, too, I learned from old President Quincy, who told me that he never goes to bed at night, until he has laid out the studies for the next morning.

May 24, Tuesday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment was advancing toward Dallas, Georgia. People were continuing to kill each other at North Anna / Jericho Mill / Hanover Junction. In addition, on this day, people were killing each other at Wilson’s Wharf / Fort Pocahontas. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

In Concord on this day, however, people were burying each other. Waldo Emerson recorded in his journal that:

Yesterday, May 23, we buried Hawthorne in Sleepy Hollow, in a pomp of HAWTHORNE sunshine and verdure, and gentle winds. James Freeman Clarke read the service in the church and at the grave. Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Agassiz, Hoar, Dwight, Whipple, Norton, Alcott, Hillard, Fields, Judge LONGFELLOW Thomas, and I attended the hearse as pallbearers. Franklin Pierce was J.R. LOWELL with the family. The church was copiously decorated with white flowers delicately arranged. The corpse was unwillingly shown, — only a few PROF. AGASSIZ moments to this company of his friends. But it was noble and serene in its aspect, — nothing amiss, — a calm and powerful head. A large company JUDGE E.R. HOAR filled the church and the grounds of the cemetery. All was so bright and J.S. DWIGHT quiet that pain or mourning was hardly suggested, and Holmes said to me C.K. WHIPPLE that it looked like a happy meeting. C.E. NORTON Clarke in the church said that Hawthorne had done more justice than any other to the shades of life, shown a sympathy with the crime in our BRONSON ALCOTT nature, and, like Jesus, was the friend of sinners. HILLARD I thought there was a tragic element in the event, that might be more JAMES T. FIELDS fully rendered, — in the painful solitude of the man, which, I suppose, JUDGE THOMAS could not longer be endured, and he died of it. I have found in his death a surprise and a disappointment. I thought him a greater man than any of his works betray, that there was still a great deal of work in him, and that he might one day show a purer power. Moreover, I have felt sure of him in his neighbourhood, and in his necessities of sympathy and intelligence, — that I could well wait his time, — his unwillingness and caprice, — and might one day conquer a friendship. It would have been a happiness, doubtless to both of us, to have come into habits of unreserved intercourse. It was easy to talk with him, — there were no barriers, — only, he said so little, that I talked too much, and stopped only because, as he gave no indications, I feared to exceed. He showed no egotism or self-assertion, rather a humility, and, at one time, a fear that he had written himself out. One day, when I found him on top of his hill, in the woods, he paced back the path to his house, and said, “This path is the only remembrance of me that will remain.” Now it appears that I waited too long. Lately he had removed himself the more by the indignation his perverse politics and unfortunate friendship for that paltry Franklin Pierce awakened, though it rather moved pity for Hawthorne, and the assured belief that he would outlive FRANKLIN PIERCE it, and come right at last. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“The Wayside” would be occupied by the widowed Mrs. Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, with her daughters Una Hawthorne and Rose Hawthorne and her son Julian Hawthorne, until, while again living in Europe, in October 1868 they would vend the place to George and Abby Gray. OLD HOUSES HAWTHORNE MAY 23, 1864 How beautiful it was, that one bright day In the long week of rain! Though all its splendor could not chase away The omnipresent pain. The lovely town was white with apple-blooms, And the great elms o’erhead Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms Shot through with golden thread. Across the meadows, by the gray old manse, The historic river flowed: I was as one who wanders in a trance, Unconscious of his road. The faces of familiar friends seemed strange; Their voices I could hear, And yet the words they uttered seemed to change Their meaning to my ear. For the one face I looked for was not there, The one low voice was mute; Only an unseen presence filled the air, And baffled my pursuit. Now I look back, and meadow, manse, and stream Dimly my thought defines; I only see — a dream within a dream — The hill-top hearsed with pines. I only hear above his place of rest Their tender undertone, The infinite longings of a troubled breast, The voice so like his own. There in seclusion and remote from men The wizard hand lies cold, Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen, And left the tale half told. Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power, And the lost clew regain? The unfinished window in Aladdin’s tower Unfinished must remain!

Summer: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Henry pitched his tone very low in his love of nature — not on stars & suns ... but tortoises, crickets, muskrats, suckers, toads & frogs. It was impossible to go lower. yet it gave him every advantage in conversation: For who that found him always skilled in facts, real experience in objects which made their objects & experiences appear artificial, could tax him with transcendentalism or over-refining: And yet his position was in Nature, & so commanded all its miracles & infinitudes. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

Emerson to his journal:

In Journal, 1852, August 6, he writes, “Hearing that one with whom I was acquainted had committed suicide, I said, ‘I did not know, when I planted the seed of that fact, that I should hear of it.’” I see the Thoreau poison working today in many valuable lives, in some for good, in some for harm.

July: Waldo Emerson recorded in his JOURNAL for about his period, that:

Mrs Cynthia Thoreau, Henry’s mother, was a woman of a sharp & malicious wit, and a very entertaining story-teller, I have been told. But my wife repeats two or three passages of her wit. When I first bought a horse in Concord I looked about for a cheap carriage of some kind. Samuel Staples offered to sell me one called a rockaway which would carry four persons, & was decent & convenient. My wife had occasion to speak of it at Mrs Thoreau’s, and she replied, “O yes, I know it very well. ’Tis the old one in which Sam Staples always carries his prisoners to jail: they sat right in front of him so they could not get away.” A speech quite new to my wife, & which Mrs Thoreau hoped would not recommend her new carriage much to her imagination.

CYNTHIA DUNBAR THOREAU

DUNBAR FAMILY

July: Waldo Emerson recorded in his JOURNAL for about his period, that:

When Henry was at Staten Island, he wrote two or three letters to my wife. She spoke of them to his family, who eagerly wished to see them. She consented, but said, “She was almost ashamed to show them, because Henry had exalted her by very undeserved praise.” — “O yes,” said his mother, “Henry is very tolerant.”

CYNTHIA DUNBAR THOREAU DUNBAR FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

July: Waldo Emerson began a notebook labeled “HT” in which he would compile materials about Henry Thoreau. He recorded in his JOURNAL for about his period, that:

Mrs [Lucy Jackson?] Brown who boarded with the Thoreaus, was one day talking with Mrs T. of the remarks made by many persons on the resemblances between Mr Emerson & Henry in manners, looks, voice, & thought. Henry spoke like Mr E. & walked like him, &c. “O yes,” said his mother, “Mr Emerson had been a good deal like David Henry, and it was very natural should catch his ways.”

CYNTHIA DUNBAR THOREAU DUNBAR FAMILY

Professor Henri-Frédéric Amiel, who would be referred to as the “Swiss Thoreau,” wrote in his JOURNAL INTIME: “Among the Alps I become a child again, with all the follies and naïveté of childhood. Shaking off the weight of years, the trappings of office, and all the tiresome and ridiculous caution with which one lives, I plunge into the full tide of pleasure, and amuse myself sans façon, as it comes. In this careless light-hearted mood, my ordinary formulas and habits fall away from me so completely that I feel myself no longer either townsman, or professor, or savant, or bachelor, and I remember no more of my past than if it were a dream. It is like a bath in Lethe. It makes me really believe that the smallest illness would destroy my memory, and wipe out all my previous existence, when I see with what ease I become a stranger to myself, and fall back once more into the condition of a blank sheet, a tabula rasa. Life wears such a dream-aspect to me that I can throw myself without any difficulty into the situation of the dying, before whose eyes all this tumult of images and forms fades into nothingness. I have the inconsistency of a fluid, a vapor, a cloud, and all is easily unmade or transformed in me; everything passes and is effaced like the waves which follow each other on the sea. When I say all, I mean all that is arbitrary, indifferent, partial, or intellectual in the combinations of one’s life. For I feel that the things of the soul, our immortal aspirations, our deepest affections, are not drawn into this chaotic whirlwind of impressions. It is the finite things which are mortal and fugitive. Every man feels it OH his deathbed. I feel it during the whole of life; that is the only difference between me and others. Excepting only love, thought, and liberty, almost everything is now a matter of indifference to me, and those objects which excite the desires of most men, rouse in me little more than curiosity. What does it mean — detachment of soul, disinterestedness, weakness, or wisdom?”

September 24, Saturday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Yesterday with Ellery [Channing] walked through “Becky Stow’s Hole,” dry-shod, hitherto a feat for a muskrat alone. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

September 26, Monday: Waldo Emerson was getting righteously indignant about the Democratic party and its wild Irish element with their terror of black Americans, and indulging in the psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats, of getting with the popular northern war spirit of destroying people with a good conscience.

Take from it the wild Irish element, imported in the last twenty five years into this country, & led by Romish priests, who sympathize, of course, with despotism, & you would bereave it of all its numerical strength.... This war has been conducted over the heads of all the actors in it: the foolish terrors– “what shall we do with the negro?” “the entire black population is coming north to be fed,” &c. have strangely ended in the fact, that the black refuses to leave his climate; gets his living and all the living of his employers there, as he has always done; is the natural ally & soldier of the Republic, in that climate; now takes the place of 200,000 soldiers; & will be, as this conquest of the country proceeds, its garrison, till peace, without slavery, returns. [American] Slaveholders in London have filled English ears with their wishes & perhaps beliefs...

ABOLITIONISM “The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” — Aldous Huxley, CHROME YELLOW, 1922

September/October: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Napoleon’s word that, in 25 years, the United States would dictate the policies of the world, was a little early; but the sense was just, with a Jewish interpretation of the “forty days” & “seventy weeks.” It is true, that, if we escape bravely from the present war, America will be the controlling power.

US CIVIL WAR

(Also, with us in charge the world is going to go up up up to perfection. What could go wrong?) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1865

November 14, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau had commented on an observatory, that he had slept outside of while hiking in the summer of 1844, in A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS:

A WEEK: This observatory was a building of considerable size, erected by the students of Williamstown College, whose buildings might be seen by daylight gleaming far down in the valley. It would be no small advantage if every college were thus located at the base of a mountain, as good at least as one well-endowed professorship. It were as well to be educated in the shadow of a mountain as in more classical shades. Some will remember, no doubt, not only that they went to the college, but that they went to the mountain. Every visit to its summit would, as it were, generalize the particular information gained below, and subject it to more catholic tests.

Waldo Emerson, upon looking through the Alvan Clark telescope at this Williams College Observatory, made the following entry in his journal:

I saw tonight in the observatory, through Alvan Clark’s telescope, the Dumb-Bell nebula in the Fox and Geese Constellation; the four double stars in Lyra; the double stars of Castor; the two hundred stars of the Pleiades.... I have rarely been so much gratified. Of all tools, an observatory is the most sublime. And these mountains give an inestimable worth to Williamstown and Massachusetts. But, for the mountains, I don’t quite like the proximity of a college and its noisy students. To enjoy the hills as a poet, I prefer the simple farmers.... What is so good in a college as an observatory? The sublime attaches to the door and to the first stair you ascend; — that this is the road to the stars. Every fixture and instrument in the building, every nail and pin, has a direct reference to the Milky Way, the fixed stars, and the nebulae, and we leave Massachusetts and history outside at the door when we come in. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1867

April: George Stewart, Jr. replaced his Stamp Collector’s Monthly Gazette with Stewart’s Literary Quarterly Magazine: Devoted to Light and Entertaining Literature, a periodical celebrating confederation that published only Canadian authors.

In the North British Review, under “American Poetry,” a passing reference was made to Thoreau’s life at Walden Pond. It had offered an example of Matthew Arnold’s “strange disease of modern life.”

At about this point Waldo Emerson wrote something into his journal, an undated standalone remark, that has indicated to some scholars that in these years before he became senile, he was managing to overcome at least some of the virulent race hatred that had so disgraced his youth. Let us therefore examine this undated standalone remark in its context, to determine whether we might be able to agree with those scholars. You comptlain [sic] that the negroes are a base class. Who makes & keeps them so, but you, who exclude them from the rights which others enjoy? Emerson’s markup of this sentence was to correct the spelling and replace the phrase “them so” with “the jew or the negro base, who,” so that the final Emerson notation becomes:

You complain that the negroes are a base class. Who makes & keeps the jew or the negro base, who but you, who exclude them from the rights which others enjoy?

In order to understand what this comment meant in 1867, we must situate it within the political context of the Reconstruction period. President Abraham Lincoln was gone and had been replaced by a sympathizer with slavery, Andrew Johnson. Johnson, in an 1864 address, had defined the “political freedom” of the newly freed Negro as “liberty to work.... If he can rise by his own energies, in the name of God, let him rise. In saying this, I do not argue that the Negro race is equal to the Anglo-Saxon.... If the Negro is better fitted for the inferior condition of society, the laws of nature will assign him there.” The President, and Waldo, were looking to the natural laws of market success and failure to settle the hash of the Negro once and for all. Yes, they were in favor of equality of opportunity. Nevertheless, like our President, Waldo was a racist. These two white gentlemen were in favor of equality of opportunity because this was the necessary step prior to a recognition of absolute inequality in ability. The Negro would fail — for them that went without saying. Then, failing, incompetent, ineffective, noncompetitive, the Negro would be forced to direct his faltering steps toward warmer climes, or, perish. Whatever. “We” weren’t destined to have this “Negro problem” for much longer. Here for instance is our guy, in his “Aristocracy”: It will be agreed everywhere that society must have the benefit of the best leaders. How to obtain them? Birth has been tried and failed. Caste in India has no good result. Ennobling of one family is good for one generation; not sure beyond. Slavery had mischief enough to answer for, but it had this good in it, — the pricing of men. In the South a slave was bluntly but accurately valued at five hundred to a thousand dollars, if a good field- hand; if a mechanic, as carpenter or smith, twelve hundred or HDT WHAT? INDEX

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two thousand. In Rome or Greece what sums would not be paid for a superior slave, a confidential secretary and manager, an educated slave; a man of genius, a Moses educated in Egypt? I don’t know how much Epictetus was sold for, or Aesop, or Toussaint l’Ouverture, and perhaps it was not a good market-day. Time was, in England, when the state stipulated beforehand what price should be paid for each citizen’s life, if he was killed. Now, if it were possible, I should like to see that appraisal applied to every man, and every man made acquainted with the true number and weight of every adult citizen, and that he be placed where he belongs, with so much power confided to him as he could carry and use. In the absence of such anthropometer I have a perfect confidence in the natural laws. It won’t be merely the Negro who suffers this fate. The Germans and the Irish, likewise, are inferior to other whites, and given the opportunity, they also will fail, or rather, they will succeed — in transforming themselves into fertilizer: We know in history what weight belongs to race.... The German and Irish millions, like the Negro, have a great deal of guano in their destiny. They are ferried over the Atlantic, and carted over America, to ditch and to drudge, to make corn cheap, and then to lie down prematurely to make a spot of green grass on the prairie. According to the chapter on the Reconstruction period in Christopher Newfield’s THE EMERSON EFFECT: INDIVIDUALISM AND SUBMISSION IN AMERICA (Chicago and London: U. of Chicago P., 1996, pages 175-7: Given his long history with the idea of “self-reliance,” we might have expected Emerson’s emancipation rhetoric to be full of enthusiasm for the new future of black labor and black fulfillment.... Slavery was the most vivid possible demonstration that liberty could be destroyed by equality’s absence.... Emerson’s thought, representative of and influential in the liberal reform center, did not simply lend halfway support to but actively opposed substantial forms of liberty and equality. His beliefs in laissez-faire and black inferiority arose not simply from contingent impurities but from deep and unsuspected allegiances to authoritarian elements in liberal order. Emerson wanted freedom for black Americans not because he hoped it would be good for them but because he hoped it would be hard on them. Freedom would allow the Negro to sink to the level of the mindless animal that he is, and to live, or, better, die, at that level: When the apostle of freedom has gained his first point of repealing the negro laws, he will find the free negro is the type & exponent of that very animal law; standing as he does in nature below the series of thought, & in the plane of vegetable & animal existence, whose law is to prey on one another, and the strongest has it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This, it goes without saying, is not benevolent. It is malevolent.

The book to read about Emerson’s racism is Philip Nicoloff’s EMERSON ON RACE AND HISTORY: AN EXAMINATION OF “ENGLISH TRAITS” (NY: Columbia UP, 1961). Nicoloff points out that Emerson was a “racial determinist.” What you can and cannot be depends entirely on what race you are. Race is destiny. Emerson had derived this attitude from discredited Lamarckian ideas of biology which he absorbed during his reading of the mystic musings of Emanuel Swedenborg: What parents have so thoroughly acquired by use & education that it become a part of their nature, is implanted in their posterity in the form of an inclination. I had sincerely supposed that it had been me who had coined the phrase “The Antislavery Racist,” until I found it in George F. Frederickson’s 1987 monograph BLACK IMAGE IN THE WHITE MIND: THE DEBATE ON AFRO- AMERICAN CHARACTER AND DESTINY, 1817-1914 (Middletown CT: Wesleyan UP, page 159). Frederickson notes that for some people whom he characterizes as “antislavery racists,” the emancipation of the American black slaves was considered to be the necessary preliminary to “genocide by natural causes.” Emancipation was like Pontius Pilate washing his hands: whatever happens next isn’t any of our responsibility.

In accordance with Christopher Newfield’s THE EMERSON EFFECT: INDIVIDUALISM AND SUBMISSION IN AMERICA, there is just no way to parse this 1867 journal entry, to make it read that Emerson had come to believe in black/white social equality. For instance, on page 197: In this framework [of Emerson’s thought], slavery was unnatural not because it violated the African American’s basic human right of liberty of person but because it violated the natural law by which all inferior races are plowed under.... I have found no indication that Emerson ever conceived of the possibility of black-white social equality. Emerson was what one might term a “typologist.” That is, he believed that types, such as nations and races, remain true to their type. Here is Newfield, pages 190-1: [N]othing in Emerson’s views about race inhibited him from a long frolic among stereotypes ... race is natural and cultural, inherent and continuously modified, physiological and historical. Race is where nature controls society, but also where society has access to the modification of nature. Race is fate, but also the conquest of fate as evidenced in the way that the Saxons transformed the barren English isles into the center of the world: “If the race is good, so is the place.” Race is simultaneously agency as well as destiny. Here is the Emerson proof-text from ENGLISH TRAITS as cited by Newfield: Celts love unity of power, and Saxons the representative principle. Race is a controlling influence in the Jew, who, for two millenniums, under every climate, has presented the same character and employments. Race in the negro is of appalling importance. Finally, here is how Newfield sums up Emerson’s attitudes during the Reconstruction period of American life (page 195). That race is doomed — and good riddance to bad rubbish: But like many other opponents of slavery, his commitment to abolition did not lead to support for radical Reconstruction. It also coexisted with a liberal kind of racism.... There seem to have been more full-blown varieties of antislavery racism HDT WHAT? INDEX

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than there were states in the union, enough to hold a new and putatively benevolent explanation of African inferiority for each new week of the year. Horace Bushnell, Theodore Parker, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., along with free-soil humanitarians like Salmon P. Chase and Gamaliel Bailey, liberal reform journalists such as Horace Greeley, and Emerson’s admired associates and fellow members of the Saturday Club Louis Agassiz and Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, generally agreed in picturing former slaves continuing as servants or disappearing once the end of slavery had allowed nature to take its course. The glorious future foretold for the reunited, rapidly industrializing, racially just, fully continental nation coincided with visions of the former slaves using their freedom to drift southward into the alien tropics or nobly to bear their biologically fated racial death. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1869

At the end of the journal entries for this year, Waldo Emerson listed his recent readings in Oriental materials: “Proclus; Zoroaster; the Dabistan.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1870

At the end of the journal entries for this year, Waldo Emerson listed his recent readings in Oriental materials: “Plotinus; Porphyry; Menu; Confucius; Averroës.” EMERSON AND CHINA

The Reverend James Legge received his LLD from the University of Aberdeen. He would be the pastor at Union Church, Hong Kong for the following three years, visiting mission stations at Shanghai, Chefoo (Yantai) and Peking (Beijing), and returning to England via Japan and the USA in 1873.

February/March: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

How dangerous is criticism. My brilliant friend cannot see any healthy power in Thoreau’s thoughts. At first I suspect of course that he oversees me who admire Thoreau’s power. But when I meet again fine perceptions in Thoreau’s papers, I see that there is defect in his critic that he should under-value them. Thoreau writes, in his Field Notes, “I look back for the era of this creation not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough” —a fine example of his affirmative genius.

April-June: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Henry Thoreau was well aware of his stubborn contradictory attitude into which almost any conversation threw him, & said in the woods, “When I die, you will find swamp oak written on my heart.” I got his words from Ellery Channing today. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November/December: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I delight ever in having to do with the drastic class, the men who can do things, as Dr. Charles T. Jackson; & Jim Bartlett; & Boynton. Such was Thoreau. Once out of doors, the poets paled like ghosts before them. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1871

Summer: John Muir invited Waldo Emerson on a 2-week excursion in Yosemite Valley.134

Upon his return from this excursion, according to Muir’s friend John Swett, Emerson commented about Muir: “He is more wonderful than Thoreau.”

Emerson, Muir, James Thayer, and others rode 25 miles on horseback to Mariposa to view a grove of giant sequoias. Thayer would Emerson as having been “always accessible, cheerful, sympathetic, considerate, tolerant and showing respectful interest in those with whom he talked.” When they reached the grove, Emerson strolled around quoting from Genesis. Muir would describe their departure: “Emerson lingered in the rear ... and when he reached the top of the ridge, after all the rest of the party were over and out of sight, he turned his horse, took off his hat and waved me a last good-bye.” That evening Muir would sit alone by his campfire, musing that, as he would record later, “Emerson was with me in spirit, though I never again saw him in the flesh.”

Emerson subsidized publication of THE WANDERER, A COLLOQUIAL POEM, a blank-verse pastoral poem written by Ellery Channing and edited by Franklin Benjamin Sanborn with a preface by Emerson. Henry Thoreau was a character in this poem in which “still he heard that drumming in his dreams, / And schemed 134. Refer to:

Thayer, James Bradley. A WESTERN JOURNEY WITH MR. EMERSON. Boston MA: Little, Brown, 1884 McAleer, John. RALPH WALDO EMERSON: DAYS OF ENCOUNTER. Boston MA: Little, Brown, 1984, pages 601-08 Muir, John. “The Forests of Yosemite Park,” in OUR NATIONAL PARKS. Boston MA: Houghton, Mifflin, 1901, pages 131-36 Wolfe, Linnie Marsh. SON OF THE WILDERNESS: THE LIFE OF JOHN MUIR. NY: Knopf, 1945, pages 145-51 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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reforms to agitate the earth / With penny wisdom, and insure the peace.” The book sold well until the remaining copies were consumed by fire — probably the great Boston fire of 1872.

How vain to praise our literature, when its really superior minds are quite omitted, & utterly unknown to the public.... Thoreau quite unappreciated, though his books have been opened & superficially read.

Another poet of the period, Emma Lazarus, did not find Ellery Channing quite so inspiring. She would describe him as “a pathetic, impossible creature, whose cranks and oddities were submitted to on account of an innate nobility of character.”

Emerson to his journal:

[T]he splendors of this age outshine all other recorded ages. In my lifetime have been wrought five miracles, — namely, • 1, the Steamboat; • 2, the railroad; • 3, the Electric telegraph; • 4, the application of the Spectroscope to astronomy; • 5, the Photograph; — five miracles which have altered the relations of nations to each other.

At the end of the journal entries for this year, Emerson listed his recent readings in Oriental materials: “Iamblichus; Max Müller.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1872

July 24, Wednesday: From the roof of the burning Emerson home, Ephraim Bull, Jr., the son of Ephraim Wales Bull who had lost an arm in the Civil War, directed the firefighting as a number of volunteers pitched books and belongings out of windows into the yard where the Emersons were standing in their nightgowns, and carried them off to safety. Although the house would be lost, almost all possessions including the books and papers would be salvaged. (Among the items which would appear to have been lost, however, was the 1862 photograph of Mary Moody Emerson, the only one that had ever been taken.) Waldo Emerson to his journal:

House burned.

(One of the maids of the household had been rooting around in a trunk in the attic at 2AM, using a candle for light.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1873

October 29, Tuesday: String Quartet no.1 op.27 by Edvard Grieg was performed for the initial time, in the concert hall of the Cologne Conservatory. The composer was present, participating in other sections of the program. This was a great success.

At a “Club” meeting at the Emerson home attended by Ellery Channing, the Franklin Benjamin Sanborns, and Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, Waldo Emerson read from his journals on the topic of Henry Thoreau. EMERSON TO HIS JOURNAL HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1877

January 22, Monday: An undue disparaging comment having been made about Henry Thoreau in a “Evenings in the Library” article in Belford’s Monthly Magazine, Waldo Emerson wrote a prompt but polite corrective letter to the author of that comment, George Stewart, Jr.

Thoreau was a superior genius. I read his books & manuscripts always with new surprise at the range of his topics & the novelty and depth of his thought. A man of large reading, of quick perception, of great practical courage & ability, — who grew greater every day, &, had his short life been prolonged would have found few equals to the power & wealth of his mind.

He had wasted ink, paper, and postage. Ignoring Emerson’s correction, Mr. Stewart would promptly have this material reissued through Belford Brothers in Toronto complete with its over-the-top derogation of Thoreau in EVENINGS IN THE LIBRARY: BITS OF GOSSIP ABOUT BOOKS AND THOSE WHO WRITE THEM (St. John, New Brunswick: R.A.H. Morrow). EVENINGS IN THE LIBRARY

“Doesn’t Emerson resemble Thoreau a little?” “Thoreau resembles Emerson you mean. He was brought up alongside of Emerson and Hawthorne in Concord, and his writings at first were undeniably cast from the Emersonian mould. They were a good deal like the philosopher’s; they ran in the same groove, and appeared to be similar in every way. Unpleasant people said he borrowed largely from Carlyle and Emerson, and did so without credit. Any way he did write remarkably like his neighbor; so much so indeed, that Mrs. Thoreau the mother of the hermit, once said to a lady friend that ‘Mr. Emerson wrote very much like her son.’ THis was exceedingly delicious, when it is remembered that the reverse of this was the case. Thoreau was something of a pretender, a semi-charlatan in literature. He was a good deal of the showman, and there was a vast amount of pretence about him. His life was a sham — a mockery. He essayed to be a hermit, and went off into the woods to reside. He wanted to study nature, away from the haunts of men. He wanted to commune with himself, so he shut himself up in the woods, and awaited daily the hamper of toothsome provisions which his kind mother sent him. He had thus the life of a hermit without any of its inconveniences or discomforts. While in the woods he made some wonderful discoveries, some of them quite equal to Mr. Jack Horner’s; the most notable of these were, the habits of the squirrel, which he was foolish enough to print. Thoreau, however, before his death, published some clever things, but few people believed in him, and he was always looked upon with suspicion. He held some ‘advanced’ views, and possessed some originality but he was so affected and unreal with it all, that few were found willing to HDT WHAT? INDEX

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believe in him, or in his philosophy. He has left behind some admirers, and they pretend to think Thoreau was ill-used and misjudged, but the circle is very small indeed.” “Now I rather like Thoreau, and think you are too severe on him, because he committed a few errors in his youth. He did not steal from Emerson, but only borrowed some of this thoughts. The language in which he framed them was his own. He had an original mind, and the writings of his latter days are exceedingly happy. His thought, too, is vigorous, and his style is certainly terse if not delightful. I think you are hasty in denouncing Thoreau in so wholesale a manner. He was a man of good parts, and he will be remembered as one of Concord’s great men.” “Well, have it as you will, perhaps I am a little prejudiced, but I hate plagiarism in any form. And next to that sin, I detest affectation, and Thoreau had that fault if he hadn’t the other. In England Thoreau has few readers, while Emerson is almost as much appreciated as Carlyle and Matthew Arnold. Indeed the men of the Carlyle school of thought rank Emerson as one of themselves. They hold some, though not all, characteristics in common. A few years ago Emerson went over to England, and visited a number of his old friends. His health was not good, and he appeared jaded and worn. His manner was still sweet and gentle, however, and his conversation was a brilliant as it was a quarter of a century before....” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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EMERSON’S JOURNALS AT THE HARVARD LIBRARY

Box 1, Folder 1: Cabot’s M, 1819 Mar.-1829. 1st copy, 1929. Box 1, Folder 2: Pythologian Journal, 1819-1821. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 3: The Wide World, nos. 1-4, 1820 Jan.-1822 (Cabot’s D, E, F, G). 1st copy, complete, 1929-1931. Box 1, Folder 4: No. XVII (Cabot’s A), 1820 Jan. 12; no. XVIII (Cabot’s B), 1820 Sept.-1821 Jan. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 5: The Universe, nos. 1-8 (a quotation book), 1820-1821 (Cabot’s C). 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 6: The Wide World, nos. 6-8 (Cabot’s I, J, K; no. 5 missing), 1822. 1st copy, complete, 1929-1932; partly revised to agree with later copies. Box 1, Folder 7: The Wide World, nos. 9-12 (Cabot’s L), 1822-1824. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 8: No. XVII (Cabot’s M), 1823 Jan.-1829. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 9: Journal, Walk to the Connecticut, 1823 Aug. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 10: Letter from M.M.E. to R.W.E., 1824 Apr. 13. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 1, Folder 11: Early journals, no. XVI (Cabot’s S), 1824-1826. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 12: he Wide World, no. XIII (Cabot’s N), 1824 Feb.-Aug. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 13: Encyclopedia, 1824 Aug.-1834 (?) 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 14: Early journals, no. XV (Cabot’s O?), 1824 Oct.-1826. 1st copy, 1929. Box 1, Folder 15: Cabot’s PII, 1825 Mar. 1. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 16: Cabot’s T, U, and V (T: Blotting book I, 1826 or earlier & 1827; U: Charleston, S.C., St. Augustine, Fla., 1827; V: Blotting book II, 1826 Dec. 19); Sermons & journals, 1828-1829. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 17: Cabot’s Q, 1826-1828. ("N.B. Another Q, so marked by Emerson further on, 1832"). 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 18: abot’s R, 1826-1828; "Little Journal at St. Augustine," 1827 Jan.-Mar. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 19: Preaching record, 1826-1838; Paper read at a meeting of former scholars; Extracts from "S" salvage; Juvenile verses; "Trees"; Excerpts from "Books"; Excerpts from RT "Rhetoric"; Excerpts from TO "Intellect." 3rd carbon copy, 1938. Box 1, Folder 20: Blue book, undated [1826]. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 21: Blotting book Y, 1829-1830. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 22: Blotting book ?, 1830-1832. 1st copy, 1929. Box 1, Folder 23: Blotting book IV, 1830 Oct. 27. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 24: Blotting book III, O, 1831-1832. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 25: Journal Q, 1832-1833. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 26: Journals of travel (Pocket note-books), 1833: Sicily (Cabot’s 1), Jan. 2-Mar.; Italy (Cabot’s 2), Mar.7-Apr. 17; Italy & France (Cabot’s 3), Rome, Apr. 20-London, July 20; Scotland & England (Cabot’s 4), Glasgow, Aug. 23- Kendal, Aug. 20. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 27: Pocket note-book (Cabot’s 5), 1833; Original notes on Thaddeus Blood’s reminiscences of Concord Fight, Apr. 19, 1775; Misc. accts, &c.; Collectanea (RO, Pocket note-book), 1835. 1st copy, complete, 1929. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Box 1, Folder 28: Journal A, 1833-1834. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 29: Visits to France, England, 1833-1834; Fragment of a journal in Maine, 1834. 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 30: Journal B, 1835-1836 (Pt. I). 1st copy, complete, 1929. Box 1, Folder 31: Journal B, 1835-1836 (Pt. II). 1st copy, complete, 1930. Box 1, Folder 32: Journal L, "Concord," 1835. 1st copy, complete, 1930. Box 1, Folder 33: Journal RO, 1835 and 1855-1856. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 1, Folder 34: Journal F (1), 1836-1837. 1st copy, complete, 1930. Box 1, Folder 35: Journal C, 1837 (Pt. I). 1930 copy, complete. Box 1, Folder 36: Journal C, 1837 (Pt. II). 1930 copy, complete. Box 1, Folder 37: Journal Z, Pt. 1, 1832; Pt. 2, 1842 Nov.-1843 Mar. 1st copy, complete, 1930. Box 2, Folder 1: Journal D, 1838-1839 (Pt. I). 1st copy, complete, 1930. Box 2, Folder 2: Journal D, 1838-1839 (Pt. II). 1st copy, complete, 1930. Box 2, Folder 3: Journal E, 1839-1842. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932; p. 1-127. Box 2, Folder 4: Journal E, 1839-1842. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932; p. 128-286. Box 2, Folder 5: Notebook ABA, A.B. Alcott, [184-]-[186-]. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 2, Folder 6: Journal F (2), 1840. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 7: Journal G, 1841. 3rd carbon copy, 1942. Box 2, Folder 8: Journal ?, 1841-1857. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 9: Journal H, 1841. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 10: Journal J, 1841-1842. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 11: Journal K, 1842. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 12: ournal N, 1842. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 13: Journal R, 1843. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 14: Journal U, 1843. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 15: Journal V, 1844. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 16: Journal W, 1845. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 17: Journal X, 1845. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932; typed p. 1-108 incl. Box 2, Folder 18: Journal X, 1845. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932; typed p. 109-217 incl. Box 2, Folder 19: Journal Y, 1845. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 20: Journal O, 1846. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 21: Journal AB, 1847. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 22: Journal CD, 1847. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 23: Journal ED, 1847-1848. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 24: Journal GH, 1847. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 25: London Journal, 1847-1848. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

Box 2, Folder 26: ournal LM, 1848. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 27: Journal OP, Gulistan, 1848. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 28: ournal RS, 1848. 3rd carbon copy, 1932-1936. Box 2, Folder 29: Journal TU, 1849. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 30: Journal AZ, 1850. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 31: Journal BO, 1850-1851. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 32: Journal Co, 1851. 3rd carbon copy, complete, 1932. Box 2, Folder 33: Journal DO, 1852. 3rd carbon copy, 1936. Box 2, Folder 34: Journal GO, 1852. 3rd carbon copy, 1936. Box 2, Folder 35: Journal HO, 1853-1854. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 2, Folder 36: Journal VS, 1853-1854. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 2, Folder 37: Journal IO, 1854. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 1: Journal NO, 1855. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 2: Journal EA, 1856. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 3: Journal SO, 1856. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 4: Journal ZO, 1856. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 5: Journal VO, 1857. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 6: Journal AC, 1859. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 7: Journal BL, 1859-1860; Book of Lectures, 1859. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 8: Journal CL, 1859-1860. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 9: Orientalist, 1859. 3rd carbon copy, 1938. Box 3, Folder 10: Journal DL, 1860-1866. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 11: Journal GL, 1861-1863. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 12: Journal, War, 1862. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 13: Journal VA, 1862-1863. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 14: Journal FOR, 1863. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 15: Journal HT, 1864. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 16: Journal KL, 1864. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 17: Journal ML, 1865-1869. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 18: Journal LN, 1866. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 19: Journal WA, 1866-1867. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 20: Journal NY, 1868-1870. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 21: Journal ST, 1870-1875. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. Box 3, Folder 22: Journal L, Camadeva, [18— - 1875]. 3rd carbon copy, 1937. 1). No. XVII, 1820. Date: 1820. Earlier titles: IO ; Cabot A. Published in: JMN, I, 206-248. 2). Wide World 1, 1820. Date: 1820. Earlier titles: The Wide World No. 1 ; Cabot D. Published in: JMN, I, 3-32. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

3). Pythologion [1819-1821]. A.MS.s. and MSS.; Cambridge, 1819 Apr 1821 May 1. 38f. (73p.) Date: 1819 Date: 1821 Record book of a Harvard College society of which Emerson was for a time secretary: in various hands, including Emerson's. Not published: see ETL, 405n.2. 4). No. XVIII, 1820-1822. Date: 1820-1822. Earlier titles: No. XVIII ; Cabot B. Published in: JMN, I, 249-357. 5). Wide World 2, 1820-1821. Date: 1820-1821. Earlier titles: The Wide World No. 2 ; Cabot E. Published in: JMN, I, 33-58. 6). Universe 1, 1820-1822. Date: 1820-1822. Earlier titles: The Universe No. 1 ; Cabot C. Published in: JMN, I, 358- 394. 6a). Universe 2, 1820-1822. Date: 1820-1822. Earlier titles: The Universe No. 2 ; Cabot C.Published in: JMN, I, 358- 394. 6b). Universe 3, 1820-1822. Date: 1820-1822. Earlier titles: The Universe No. 3 ; Cabot C. Published in: JMN, I, 358- 394. 6c). Universe 4, 1820-1822. Date: 1820-1822. Earlier titles: The Universe No. 4 ; Cabot C. Published in: JMN, I, 358- 394. 6d). Universe 5,1820-1822. Date: 1820-1822. Earlier titles: The Universe No. 5 ; Cabot C. Published in: JMN, I, 358- 394. 6e). Universe 6, 1820-1822. Date: 1820-1822. Earlier titles: The Universe No. 6 ; Cabot C. Published in: JMN, I, 358- 394. 6f). Universe 7 [A], 1820-1822. Date: 1820-1822. Earlier titles: The Universe No. 7 ; Cabot C. Published in: JMN, I, 358-394. 6g). Universe 8, 1820-1822. Date: 1820-1822. Earlier titles: The Universe No. 8 ; Cabot C. Published in: JMN, I, 358- 394. 7). Wide World 3, 1822. Date: 1822. Earlier titles: The Wide World No. 3 ; Cabot F. Published in: JMN, I, 59-90. 8). Wide World 4, 1822. Date: 1822. Earlier titles: The Wide World No. 4 ; Cabot G. Published in: JMN, I, 91-113. 9). Wide World 6, 1822. Date: 1822. Earlier titles: The Wide World No. 6 ; Cabot I.Published in: JMN, I, 114-158. 10). Wide World 7, 1822. Date: 1822. Earlier titles: The Wide World No. 7 ; Cabot J. Published in: JMN, II, 3-39. 11). Wide World 8, 1822-1823. Date: 1822-1823. Earlier titles: The Wide World No. 8 ; Cabot K. Published in: JMN, II, 40-73. 12). Wide World 9, 1822-1823. Date: 1822-1823. Earlier titles: The Wide World No. 9 ; Cabot L. Had been sewn together with items (12a-12c); (12b&c) now detached. Published in: JMN, II, 74-103. 12a). Wide World 10, 1823. Date: 1823. Earlier titles: The Wide World No. 10 ; Cabot L. Had been sewn together with items (12-12c); (12b&c) now detached. Published in: JMN, II, 104-143. 12b). Wide World 11, 1823. Date: 1823. Earlier titles: The Wide World No. 11 ; Cabot L. Pagination in another hand. Had been sewn together with items (12-12c); now detached. Published in: JMN, II, 144-176. 12c). Wide World 12, 1823-1824. Date: 1823-1824. Earlier titles: The Wide World No. 12 ; Cabot L. Had been sewn together with items (12-12c); now detached. Published in: JMN, II, 187-213. 13). Wide World XIII, 1824. Date: 1824. Earlier titles: The Wide World No. XIII ; Cabot N. Published in: JMN, II, 214-271. 14). No. XV, 1824-1826. Date: 1824-1826. Earlier titles: No. XV ; Cabot O. Published in: JMN, II, 272-351. 15). No. XVI, 1824-1828? Date: 1824-1828? Earlier titles: No. XVI ; Cabot S. Includes notes in the hand of Charles Chauncy Emerson.Published in: JMN, II, 396-412. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

16). College Theme Book, 1819-1821,1822?, 1829? Date: 1819-1821, Date: 1822?, 1829? Earlier title: Cabot M. Published in: JMN, I, 161-205. 16.1). No. XVIII [A], 1821?-1829. Date: 1821?-1829. Earlier titles: No. XVIII; Cabot M. In the same volume as (16). Published in: JMN, II, 355-395. 17). Journal 1826, 1825-1826, 1827?-1828. Date: 1825-1826, Date: 1827?-1828. Earlier title: Cabot Q. Pages 59-107 are missing. Published in: JMN, III, 3-41. 18). Journal 1826-1828, 1824-1828. Date: 1824-1828. Earlier title: Cabot R. Published in: JMN, III, 42-112. 19). Charleston, St. Augustine, undated. Earlier titles: Charleston South Carolina, St. Augustine, Florida; Cabot's U. Published in: PN, 3-15. 20). Memo St. Augustine, 1827. Date: 1827. Earlier title: Mem. for Journal St. Augustine. With annotation in the hand of Edward Emerson. Published in: JMN, III, 113-118. 21). Sermons and Journals, 1828-1829. Date: 1828-1829. Click for color digital image, p.48Earlier title: Sermons and Journals. Published in: JMN, III, 119-158. 22). Blotting Book Y, 1829-1830. Date: 1829-1830. Earlier title: Blotting Book Y. Includes letter to Mary Moody Emerson. Published in: JMN, III, 163-202. 23). Blotting Book IV, 1830, 1831?, 1833. Date: 1830, 1831?, 1833. Earlier title: Blotting Book No. IV. Published in: JMN, III, 359-375. 23.1). Blotting Book IV [A], 1830, 1832-1834. Date: 1830, Date: 1832-1834. In the same volume as (23). Published in: JMN, VI, 102-114. 24). Blotting Book Psi, 1830-1832. Date: 1830-1832. Earlier title: Blotting Book Q. Published in: JMN, III, 203-263. 25). Blotting Book III, 1831-1832. Date: 1831-1832. Earlier title: Blotting Book No. III S. Published in: JMN, III, 264- 329. 26). Q, 1831-1832. Date: 1831-1832. Earlier title: Q. Back cover with index, noted in JMN as torn off and missing, is present as of 2001. Published in: JMN, IV, 3-101. 27). Sicily, 1833. Date: 1833. Earlier titles: Sicily; Cabot 1. Published in: JMN, IV, 102-133. 28). Italy, 1833. Date: 1833. Earlier titles: Italy; Cabot 2. Published in: JMN, IV, 134-162. 29). Italy and France, 1833. Date: 1833. Earlier title: Cabot 3. Published in: JMN, IV, 163-208. 30). Scotland and England, 1833. Date: 1833. Earlier title: Cabot 4. Published in: JMN, IV, 209-235. 31). Notebook 1833, 1833-1836. Date: 1833-1836. Earlier title: Cabot 5. Published in: JMN, VI, 235-254. 32). France and England, 1833. Date: 1833. Earlier title: Visits to Maine, France England. Published in: JMN, IV, 395- 419. 32.1). Sea 1833, 1833. Date: 1833. Found loose within (32): see JMN, IV, 395. Published in: JMN, IV, 236-248. 32.2). Maine, 1834. Date: 1834. Found loose within (32): see JMN, IV, 395. Published in: JMN, IV, 388-391. 33). A, 1833-1834. Date: 1833-1834. Earlier title: A. Published in: JMN, IV, 249-387. 34). B, 1835-1836. Date: 1835-1836. Earlier title: B. With 3 loose sheets of later index material. Published in: JMN, V, 3-268. 35). C, 1837-1838. Date: 1837-1838. Earlier title: C. With envelope addressed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, removed from 43-2124. Published in: JMN, V, 277-509. 36). D, 1838-1839. Date: 1838-1839. Earlier title: D. Includes printed poem. Published in: JMN, VII, 3-262. 37). E, 1839-1842. Date: 1839-1842. Earlier title: E. Published in: JMN, VII, 263-484. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

38). F 2, 1840-1841. Date: 1840-1841. Earlier title: F No. 2. Published in: JMN, VII, 485-547. 39). Journal G, 1841. Date: 1841. Earlier title: G. Published in: JMN, VIII, 3-77. 40). Journal H, 1841. Date: 1841. Earlier title: H. Published in: JMN, VIII, 78-145. 41). Journal J, 1841-1842. Date: 1841-1842. Click for color digital image, p.47Earlier title: J. Published in: JMN, VIII, 146-197. 42). Journal K, 1842. Date: 1842. Earlier title: K. Published in: JMN, VIII, 198-247. 43). Journal N, 1842. Date: 1842. Earlier title: N. Published in: JMN, VIII, 248-308. 44). Z, 1831?, 1837-1838, 1841? Date: 1831?, Date: 1837-1838, Earlier title: Z. Published in: JMN, VI, 287-316. 44.1). Journal Z [A], 1842-1843. Date: 1842-1843. Earlier title: Z[A]. In the same volume as (44). Published in: JMN, VIII, 309-348. 45). Journal R,1843. Date: 1843. Earlier title: R. Published in: JMN, VIII, 349-441. 46). U, 1843-1844. Date: 1843-1844. Earlier title: U. Published in: JMN, IX, 3-92. 47). V, 1844-1845. Date: 1844-1845. Earlier title: V. Published in: JMN, IX, 93-181. 48). W, 1845. Date: 1845. Earlier title: W. Published in: JMN, IX, 182-255. 49). Y, 1845-1846. Date: 1845-1846. Earlier title: Y. Includes clipping. Published in: JMN, IX, 256-354. 50). O, 1846-1847. Date: 1846-1847. Earlier title: O. Published in: JMN, IX, 355-470. 51). AB, 1847. Date: 1847. Earlier title: AB. Published in: JMN, X, 3-57. 52). CD, 1847. Date: 1847. Earlier title: CD. Published in: JMN, X, 58-123. 53). GH, 1847-1848. Date: 1847-1848. Earlier title: GH. Clippings and loose sheet now detached from front cover verso. Published in: JMN, X, 124-199. 54). LM, 1848. Date: 1848. Earlier title: LM. Published in: JMN, X, 288-362. 55). ED, 1852-1853. Date: 1852-1853. Earlier titles: ED; England. Published in: JMN, X, 494-568. 56). London, 1847-1848. Date: 1847-1848. Earlier title: London. Missing penciled slip [197a]. Published in: JMN, X, 208-287. 57). RS, 1848-1849. Date: 1848-1849. Earlier title: RS. Published in: JMN, XI, 3-86. 58). TU, 1849. Date: 1849. Earlier title: TU. Published in: JMN, XI, 87-182. 59). AZ, 1849-1850. Date: 1849-1850. Earlier title: AZ. Published in: JMN, XI, 183-278. 60). BO, 1850-1851. Date: 1850-1851. Earlier title: BO. With clipping. Published in: JMN, XI, 279-365. 61). BO Conduct, 1851. Date: 1851. Earlier titles: BO; Conduct of Life. Published in: JMN, XII, 581-599. 62). CO, 1851. Date: 1851. Earlier title: CO. Published in: JMN, XI, 366-452. 63). DO, 1852-1854, 1856, 1858. Date: 1852-1854, Date: 1856, Date: 1858. Earlier title: DO. Published in: JMN, XIII, 3-57. 64). GO, 1852-1853. Date: 1852-1853. Earlier title: GO. Published in: JMN, XIII, 58-128. 65). VS, 1853-1854. Date: 1853-1854. Earlier title: VS. Published in: JMN, XIII, 129-206. 66). HO, 1853-1854. Date: 1853-1854. Earlier title: HO. Published in: JMN, XIII, 207-289. 67). IO, 1854. Date: 1854. Earlier title: IO. Published in: JMN, XIII, 290-378. 68). NO, 1855. Date: 1855. Earlier title: NO. Published in: JMN, XIII, 379-469. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

69). RO, 1855-1856. Date: 1855-1856. Earlier title: RO. One leaf has been transferred to bMS Am 1280.202 (12), f.49. Published in: JMN, XIV, 3-39. 69.1). RO Mind, 1835. Date: 1835. In the same volume as (69). Published in: JMN, V, 269-276. 70). SO, 1856-1857. Date: 1856-1857. Earlier title: SO. Published in: JMN, XIV, 40-118. 71). Notebook ZO, undated. Earlier title: ZO. Published in: TN, III, 178-237. 72). VO, 1857-1858. Date: 1857-1858. Earlier title: VO. Published in: JMN, XIV, 119-207. 73). AC, 1858-1859. Date: 1858-1859. Earlier title: AC. Published in: JMN, XIV, 208-290. 74). CL, 1859-1861. Date: 1859-1861. Earlier title: CL. Published in: JMN, XIV, 291-369. 75). DL, 1860-1866. Date: 1860-1866. Earlier title: DL. Published in: JMN, XV, 3-87. 76). GL, 1861-1863. Date: 1861-1863. Earlier title: GL. Published in: JMN, XV, 88-168. 77). WAR, 1862-1864. Date: 1862-1864. Earlier titles: WAR; War & Politics & Washington City. With additional clipping. Published in: JMN, XV, 169-233. 78). VA, 1862-1863. Date: 1862-1863. Earlier title: VA. Published in: JMN, XV, 234-312. 79). FOR, 1863-1864. Date: 1863-1864. Earlier titles: FOR; Forces and Forms. Published in: JMN, XV, 313-413. 80). KL, 1864-1865. Date: 1864-1865. Earlier title: KL. With additional clipping. Published in: JMN, XV, 414-480. 80.1). Notebook KL[A], undated. In the same volume as (80): see JMN, XV, 414. Published in: PN, 564-579. 81). Notebook ML, undated. Earlier titles: ML; Moral Law. Published in: TN, III, 238-328. 81a). LN, 1866-1868. Date: 1866-1868. Earlier title: LN. With additional loose sheet. Published in: JMN, XVI, 3-96. 82). Notebook XO, undated. Earlier titles: XO; Inexorable; Reality and Illusion. Published in: TN, I, 218-256. 83). Notebook IT, undated. Earlier titles: IT; Natural History of Intellect. Published in: TN, I, 130-185. 84). NY, 1868-1870. Date: 1868-1870. Earlier title: NY. Published in: JMN, XVI, 97-200. 85). ST, 1870-1877. Date: 1870-1877. Earlier title: ST. Published in: JMN, XVI, 201-321. 86). Notebook PH, undated. Earlier titles: PH; Philosophy. Published in: TN, II, 330-384. 87). Notebook TO, undated. A.MS.; [n.p., n.d.]. 146f. (242p.) Earlier titles: TO; Intellect, the Guardian. Includes loose sheet (4p.) at p.275, clippings. Not published: see TN, I, 2. 88). Notebook IL, undated. A.MS.s.; [n.p., n.d.]. 147f. (254p.) Earlier titles: IL; Notes on Intellect; Affirmative. Not published: see TN, I, 2. 89). Notebook EO, undated. Earlier titles: EO; Fate.Published in: TN, I, 57-92. 90). Notebook PY, undated. Earlier titles: PY; Theory of Poetry. Published in: TN, II, 256-329. 91). Walk to the Connecticut, 1823. Date: 1823. Earlier title: Walk to the Connecticut. Published in: JMN, II, 177-186. 91a). Encyclopedia, 1824-1836. Date: 1824-1836. Earlier title: Encyclopedia. Published in: JMN, VI, 115-234. 92). Notebook NP, undated. Earlier titles: NP; New Poetry. Published in: PN, 468-563. 93). Collectanea, 1825-1828? Date: 1825-1828? Earlier title: Collectanea. Published in: JMN, VI, 3-10. 93a). No. II, 1825. Date: 1825. Earlier titles: No. II; Cabot P. Published in: JMN, II, 413-420. 94). Blotting Book I, 1826-1827. Date: 1826-1827. Earlier titles: Blotting Book I; Cabot T. Published in: JMN, VI, 11- 57. 95). Blotting Book II, 1826-1829. Date: 1826-1829. Earlier titles: Blotting Book II; Cabot V. Published in: JMN, VI, 58-101. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

96). School and preaching, [1826-1838]. A.MS.; [v.p.] 1826-1838. 38f. (60p.) Date: 1826-1838. Earlier title: School Record Preaching Record. The first 16 leaves are stubs, with writing on both sides. Not published: see TN, I, 3. 97). T, 1834-? Date: 1834-? Earlier titles: T; Transcript. Published in: JMN, VI, 317-399. 98). L Concord, 1835-1838. Date: 1835-1838. Earlier titles: L; Concord. Published in: JMN, XII, 3-32. 98.1). L Literature, 1835. Date: 1835. Earlier titles: L; Lectures on Literature. In the same volume as (80): see JMN, XII, 3. Published in: JMN, XII, 33-55. 99). Notebook Naturalist, undated. Earlier title: Naturalist. Includes drawing by John Muir of "Samoset," a sequoia that Emerson named while in Yosemite in May 1871. Published in: TN, I, 27-56. 100). F No. 1, 1836-1840. Date: 1836-1840. Earlier title: F No. 1. Published in: JMN, XII, 75-177. 101). Charles C. Emerson, 1837. Date: 1837. Earlier title: C.C.E. Published in: JMN, VI, 255-286. 102). Phi, 1838-1844? 1847-1851? Date: 1838-1844? Date: 1847-1851? Earlier title: [Phi Greek letter]. Published in: JMN, XII, 269-419. 103). Delta, 1837-1841, 1850, 1857, 1862. Date: 1837-1841, Date: 1850, 1857, 1862. Earlier title: [Delta Greek letter]. Published in: JMN, XII, 178-268. 104). Index Minor 1843, 1843-1847? Date: 1843-1847? Earlier title:Index Minor 1843. Published in: JMN, XII, 518- 580. 105). JK, 1843?-1847. Date: 1843?-1847. Earlier title: JK. Published in: JMN, X, 365-404. 106). Index Major 1847. A.MS.s.; [n.p.] 1847. 435f. (870p.) Date: 1847. Earlier title: Index Major 1847. Includes 2 loose sheets (4p.), clippings. Title on flyleaf: Index major to my manuscripts, 1847. Not published: see TN, I, 3. 107). Index II [1847]. A.MS.s.; [n.p.] 1847. 216f. (432p.) Date: 1847. Earlier title: Index II. Titles on pastedown and flyleaf: Old index, (Second) index. With beginning fragment separated from bMS 1280.214 (204): Shakespeare (speech at Saturday Club Shakespeare tricentennial celebration), 1s.(4p.) Not published: see TN, I, 3. 107a). Index Platoniana, undated. Earlier title: Platoniana. Published in: JMN, X, 468-488. 108). Notebook OP Gulistan, undated. Earlier title: OP Gulistan. Published in: TN, III, 27-67. 109). England and Paris, 1847-1848. Date: 1847-1848. Earlier title: England and Paris 1847-1848. Published in: JMN, X, 407-445. 109a). Journal at the West, , 1850-1853. Date: 1850-1853. Earlier title: Journal at the West. Published in: JMN, XI, 510-540. 110). Index Psi, 1839-1842, 1851. Date: 1839-1842, Date: 1851. Earlier titles: v; Q. Published in: JMN, XII, 420-517. 111). Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 1851. Date: 1851. Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 1851Earlier title: Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Published in: JMN, XI, 455-509. 112). Account Book 1 [1828-1840]. A.MS.s.; Boston and Cambridge, 1828-1840. 42f. (86p.) Date: 1828-1840. Earlier title: Account Book 1828-1835. In the same volume as (112.1): see JMN, X, 489-493. Not published: See TN, I, 3. 112.1). Warren Lot, 1849. Date: 1849. Earlier title: Hedge Fence. In the same volume as (112). Published in: JMN, X, 489-493. 112a). Account Book 2 [1836-1840]. A.MS.s.; Concord, 1836-1839. 88f. (176p.) Earlier title: Account Book 1836- 1840. Includes loose sheet. Cover title: Journal 1837 1838. Not published: See TN, I, 3. 112b). Account Book 3 [1840-1844]. A.MS.; Concord, 1840-1844. 88f. (170p.) Earlier title: Account Book 1840- 1844. Includes loose sheets. Not published: See TN, I, 3. 43M-271 HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

112c). Account Book 4 [1845-1849]. A.MS.s.; Concord,1845-1849. 90f. (180p.) Date: 1845-1849. Earlier title: Account Book 1845-1849. Includes loose sheets. Not published: See TN, I, 3. 43M-271 112d). Account Book 5 [1849-1853]. A.MS.s.; Concord,1849-1853. 145f. (295p.) Date: 1849-1853. Earlier title: Account Book 1849-1853. Cover title: Journal June 1849. Includes loose sheets. Not published: See TN, I, 3. 43M-271 112e). Account Book 6 [1853-1859]. A.MS.s.; Concord,1853-1859. 150f. (302p.) Date: 1853-1859. Earlier title: Account Book 1853-1859. Cover title: 1853-1854 Journal. Includes loose sheets, (143b.1).Not published: See TN, I, 3. 112f). Account Book 7 [1859-1865]. A.MS.s.; [n.p.] 1859-1865. 150f (302p.) Date: 1859-1865. Earlier title: Account Book 1859-1865. Cover title: Journal. Includes loose sheets (one from 1854-1856), Jeanne C. Carr letter to Emerson (Madison,1863 Sep 23). Not published: See TN, I, 3. 43M-271 112g). Account Book 8 [1865-1872]. A.MS.s.; Concord,1865-1872. 150f. (302p.) Date: 1865-1872. Earlier title: Account Book 1865-1872. Includes loose sheets. Not published: See TN, I, 3. 43M-271 112h). Account Book 9 [1872-1882]. A.MS.s.; Concord,1872-1882. 150f. (130p.) Date: 1872-1882. Earlier title: Account Book 1872-1882. Cover title: Journal. Includes loose sheets, letters to Emerson from J.B. Hill (Mason, 1872 Jul 17), W.H. Forbes (Boston, 1876 Jul 5), J.M. Forbes (Boston, 1878 Oct 5). Not published: See TN, I, 3. 43M-271 112i). Account Book 10 [1836-1848]. A.MS.s.; [n.p.] 1836-1848. 86f. (174p.) Date: 1836-1848. Earlier title: Account Book (1836-1848) Cover title: Ledger. Includes loose sheets, Samuel Longfellow letter, Cambridge,1843 Apr 7. Not published: See TN, I, 3. 43M-272 112j). Account Book 11 [1847-1872]. A.MS.s.; Concord,1847-1872. 147f. (297p.) Date: 1847-1872. Earlier title: Account Book 1848-1872. Cover title: Leger. Includes loose sheets, letters to Emerson from William Emerson (Staten Island, 1857 May 24) and Emerson's draft memo of agreement with Ticknor and Fields (Concord, 1859 Oct 24). Not published: See TN, I, 3. 43M-272 113). Notebook RT, undated. Earlier titles: RT; Rhetoric. Published in: TN, II, 142-196. 114). Notebook EA, undated. Earlier titles: EA; England and America. Published in: TN, I, 186-217. 115). Notebook Orientalist, undated. Earlier title: Orientalist. Loose sheet p. 29a is from Williams and Norgate, with envelope. Published in: TN, II, 37-141. 116). BL [1859-1860]. A.MS.; [n.p.] 1859-1860. 147f. (286p.) Date: 1859-1860. Earlier titles: BL; Book of Lectures.Includes loose sheet in another hand, annotated C.K.N. Cover title: 1859-60/ Book of lectures of 1859.Not published: see TN, I, 2. 117). HT, 1864-1865? Date: 1864-1865? Earlier title: HT; Henry Thoreau. With envelope and additional loose sheet. Published in: JMN, XV, 483-592. 118). Notebook WA, undated. Earlier titles: WA; Country life; Walking.Published in: TN, I, 257-316. 119). Phi Beta [1867-1878 and undated]. A.MS.s.; [n.p.] 1867-1878 and [n.d.]. 124f. (250p.) Date: 1867-1878 Earlier title: M #Not published: see TN, I, 3. 120). CR [1871 and undated]. A.MS.s.; [n.p.] 1871 and [n.d.]. 150f. (60p.) Date: 1871 Earlier titles: CR; Criticism. Includes loose sheets, W. Joiner letter (New York, 1874 Jun 15). Not published: see TN, I, 2. 121). QL [1875]. A.MS.s.; [n.p.] 1875 Aug Dec. 84f. (170p.) Date: 1875 Earlier titles: QL; Queries on Literature. Includes loose sheets in Emerson's and other hands, clippings, wedding invitation, Ticknor and Fields envelope addressed to Emerson. Not published: see TN, I, 3. 122). Notebook S Salvage, undated. Earlier titles: S; Salvage. Published in: TN, III, 68-177. 122a). Blue Book, 1826. Date: 1826. Earlier title: Blue Book. Published in: JMN, III, 333-337. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

123). NQ [undated]. A.MS.; [n.p., n.d.]. 144f. (100p.) Earlier titles: NQ; Notes and Queries. Includes 2 loose sheets (3p.), clippings. Not published: see TN, I, 2. 124). Parnassus [1871 and undated]. A.MS.s.; [n.p. ] 1871 and [n.d.]. 76f. (154p.) Date: 1871 Earlier title: Parnassus. Includes loose sheets in Emerson's and other hands, receipt (1843), clippings and pamphlet; enclosed material dated 1825-1876 and [n.d.]. Not published: see TN, I, 3. 125). Trees [1836-1874]. A.MS.s.; Concord,1836-1874. 54f. (108p.) Date: 1836-1874. Earlier title: Trees. Includes letter to Emerson from B.M. Watson (1847 Mar 28), plan for Warren lot by William Ellery Channing, draft letter signed XYZ, oak leaf, loose sheets and clippings in Emerson's and other hands. Not published. 125a). Trees[A], 1843-1847. Date: 1843-1847. Earlier title: Trees. Published in: JMN, VIII, 518-533 and 534-549. 126). Notebook EL, undated. Earlier title: EL. Published in: PN, 323-423. 127). Notebook EF, undated. Earlier title: EF. Published in: PN, 264-322. 128). Dialling, 1825? 1841? 1842. Date: 1825? 1841? 1842. Earlier title: Dialling. Published in: JMN, VIII, 483-517. 129). Books Large, 1870-1877. Date: 1870-1877. Earlier title: Books. Published in: JMN, XVI, 325-346. 130). Books Small, 1840?-1846?. Date: 1840?-1846?. Earlier title: Books. Published in: JMN, VIII, 442-479. 131). Index Minor [A], 1843-1847? Date: 1843-1847? Earlier titles: IM; Index Minor. Index Summary missing; with envelope. 132). Notebook X, undated. Earlier title: X. Published in: PN, 109-263. 133). Notebook Rhymer, undated. Earlier title: Rhymer. With additional clipping. Published in: PN, 424-467. 134). Old Man [1877-1878]. A.MS.s.; [n.p.] 1877-1878. 60f. (5p.) Date: 1877-1878. Earlier title: Old Man. Blank notebook except for paste down, flyleaf, pp. 1-2, f.60v. Includes clippings and loose sheets. Not published: see TN, I, 3. 134a). Morals [undated]. A.MS.; [n.p., n.d.]. 145f. (290p.) Earlier title: Morals. Includes clippings, loose sheets. Not published: see TN, I, 2. 135). Notebook LI, [undated]. Earlier titles: LI; Literature. Published in: TN, II, 197-255. 136). Notebook P, undated. Earlier title: P. Published in: PN, 16-108. 137). OP [undated]. A.MS.s.; [n.p., n.d.]. 80f. (85p.) Earlier title: OP. Includes clippings, loose sheets in Emerson's and other hands. Not published: see TN, I, 3. 138). OS [undated]. A.MS.; [n.p., n.d.]. 48f. (150p.) Earlier titles: OS; Odd Sayings. Several leaves torn away, leaving stubs. Includes clippings, loose sheet. Alternate titles on flyleaf: Sketchbook; OS - Odd sayings - Humor. Not published: see TN, I, 3. 139). L Camadava [undated]. A.MS.s.; [n.p., n.d.]. 76f. (149p.) Earlier titles: L; Camadeva. Includes loose sheet. Not published: see TN, I, 2. 140). ART [undated]. A.MS.; [n.p., n.d.]. 88f. (146p.) Earlier title: ART. Includes clippings, loose sheet. In the same volume as (140.1): see JMN, XII, 56-74. Not published: see TN, I, 2. 140.1). Man, 1836. Date: 1836. Earlier title: Man. In the same volume as (140). Published in: JMN, XII, 56-74. 141). Notebook LO, undated. Earlier titles: LO; Beauty and Art. Published in TN, 1, 93-129. 142). Sigma [1830 and undated]. A.MS.s.; [n.p.] 1830 Oct 27 and [n.d.]. 66f. (132p.) Date: 1830 Earlier titles: S ; Anecdotes. Includes loose sheets, clippings, printed broadside of 1866Harvard Class song by Edward Waldo Emerson. Not published: see TN, I, 3. 142a). Xenien, 1848, 1852. Date: 1848, 1852. Earlier title: Xenien. With loose sheet. Published in: JMN, X, 458-467. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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143). Catalogue of Books Read, 1819-1824. Date: 1819-1824. Earlier title: Catalogue of Books Read. Published in JMN, I, 395-399. 143a). Meredith Village, 1829. Date: 1829. Earlier titles; Meredith Village; 1829. Published in: JMN, III, 159-162. 143b). Account Book 6[A], 1853-1854. Date: 1853-1854. Earlier title: Account Book 1853-1854. Not published: see 143b.1. 143b.1). Gardening [undated]. A.MS. single sheet in (112e), one page on "our planted gardens of the care of the world." Earlier title: Notes on Gardening. Not published. 143c). Amos Bronson Alcott, undated. Amos Bronson Alcott, undatedEarlier titles: ABA; Alcott. Not published: see TN, I, 2. 144). Notebook ETE Verses, undated. Earlier titles: ETE; Verses. Published in: PN, 580-606. 145). Charles K. Newcomb [1872 and undated]. A.MS.s.; London and [n.p.] 1872 May 20 and [n.d.]. 300f. (100p.) Earlier titles: CKN; Charles K. Newcomb. Includes loose sheets in another hand, possibly Charles K. Newcomb's, and draft letters, possibly by Newcomb, to Caroline and Mother (Brook Farm, 1844 Feb 1 and 1845 Aug 30). Not published: see TN, I, 2. 146). Mary Moody Emerson 1 [undated]. A.MS.s.; [n.p., n.d.]. 88f. (175 p.) Earlier title: MME1. Includes clippings. Not published: see TN, I, 2. 147). Mary Moody Emerson 2 [undated]. A.MS.; [n.p., n.d.]. 152f. (306p.) Earlier title: MME2. Not published: see TN, I, 2. 148). Mary Moody Emerson 3 [undated]. A.MS.; [n.p., n.d.]. 135f. (150p.) Earlier title: MME3. Includes loose sheets.Not published: see TN, I, 2. 149). Mary Moody Emerson 4 [1835]. A.MS.; Concord, 1835. 145f. (298p.) Earlier title: MME4. Includes clippings, loose sheets. Not published: see TN, I, 2. COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2017. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Prepared: April 5, 2017 HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON’S JOURNALS

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.