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Parker Pillsbury MACARISM: “WE CANNOT CAST OUT THE DEVIL OF SLAVERY BY THE DEVIL [OF WAR].” A friend contacted me recently to inquire what Thoreau’s attitude toward the civil war had been. When I responded that Thoreau had felt ashamed that he ever became aware of such a thing, my friend found this to be at variance with the things that other Thoreau scholars had been telling him and inquired of me if I “had any proof” for such a nonce attitude. I offered my friend a piece of background information, that in terms of the 19th Century “Doctrine of Affinities” (according to which, in order to even experience anything, there has to be some sort of resonant chord within you, that will begin to vibrate in conjunction with the external vibe, like an aeolian harp that HDT WHAT? INDEX PARKER PILLSBURY PARKER PILLSBURY is hung in an open window that begins to hum as the breezes blow in and out) for there to be an experience, there must be something inward that is vibrating in harmony. I explained that what Thoreau had been saying in the letter to Parker Pillsbury from which I was quoting, was that in accordance with such a Doctrine of Affinities there must unfortunately be some belligerent spirit within himself, something wrong inside — or he couldn’t even have noticed all that Civil War stuff in the newspapers. This relates, I explained, to an argument I had once upon a time had with Robert Richardson, who I had accused of authoring an autobiography that he was pretending to be a biography of Thoreau. Thoreau scholar Richardson had expressed the attitude during one of the Thoreau birthday celebrations in Concord that of course, had Henry been well, he would have enlisted and picked up a rifle and gone south to fight alongside the other Concord young men — that being what Robert Richardson himself would have done. Henry Thoreau was an American patriot because he was Robert Richardson in a 20th-Century re-enactor costume. I said to my friend that no, Thoreau was acute enough to grasp that in order to solve a serious social problem, we can’t just take a national holiday from the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule and march off and kill one another (after which that serious social problem will be discovered to have magically been improved and rectified). Our nation fighting a Civil War, I opinioned, had amounted to a failure rather than a triumph not only for the white enslavers but also for the black enslaved whose lives would be hopelessly fucked during the ensuing period of “Jim Crow” and “lynch law.” My friend wanted to know how I could take such an attitude, considering that everybody else he was tracking on the internet was arguing that Thoreau wasn’t really a pacifist, wasn’t really a nonviolenter, but was really just as violent and vicious as anyone else would have been such those circumstances. These wannabee scholars were cherry-picking Thoreau quotations taken out of context in order to demonstrate such a point ad infinitum, was what I responded. What I have since discovered, in doing my own diligent Google searches of the material available on the internet, is that the reference materials to which I had been referring, such as Thoreau’s letter to Parker Pillsbury in 1861, are nowhere to be found. Somehow all these cherry-pickers had been able to disregard the contrary cherries, so that they are nowhere to be located by the most diligent Google searching! They are pseudo- facts that don’t exist! I produce the following quotation for our attention: Carleton Mabee, pages 321-2: “Even Thoreau insisted on calling Brown ‘the bravest and humanist [sic] man in all the country.’ As the crisis over slavery deepened, Thoreau, too, the man who had stated the positive philosophy of nonviolent action as sharply as any American of his time, had abandoned what he had called ‘peaceable revolution.’ Thoreau explained that he agreed with Brown that ‘a man has a perfect right to HDT WHAT? INDEX PARKER PILLSBURY PARKER PILLSBURY interfere by force with the slaveholders, in order to rescue the slave.’ Thoreau now believed that circumstances would occur in which he himself could kill, much as he wished to avoid doing so.” The reason I summon this particular quotation is not that this is as bad as it gets. No, the reason I summon this particular quotation is that this is about as good as it gets! Here we witness a dedicated and diligent Thoreau scholar, Carleton Mabee, going hog wild with a “Henry First-Let’s-Go-Kill-Somebody Thoreau” concept. —Par for the course, among all the belligerents who have seized upon the Internet as their venue of choice for making their tendentious case. Now, the fact of the matter is, we know quite a bit more about the life and attitudes of Henry David Thoreau, than about any other particular human being in the course of human history. And yet, and yet, what we have now on the internet amounts to little more than persistent opinioning. It literally makes me sick to my stomach. Well, here’s a biography of Parker Pillsbury for the Internet — and I hope that at least this will prove to be a discoverable venue for the 1861 letter from Thoreau to Pillsbury that most frankly and eloquently sets forth Henry’s attitude toward civil war, that telling piece of correspondence that has been nowhere to be located to date in present Internet searching. HDT WHAT? INDEX PARKER PILLSBURY PARKER PILLSBURY 1809 September 22, Friday: Parker Pillsbury was born in Hamilton, Massachusetts, a son of Oliver Pillsbury and Anna Smith Pillsbury. The family would relocate to a farm near Henniker, New Hampshire. Initially, Parker would work as a wagoner. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6 day 22 of 9 Mo// This Afternoon attended the funeral of Peter Taylor. he was carried to the Meeting House, the funeral was very large & in my opinion conducted with much more decent solemnity than if the meeting was held at his dwelling — My mind was solemnized & believe the minds of many more that were present was also — ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX PARKER PILLSBURY PARKER PILLSBURY 1835 Parker Pillsbury, with the encouragement of his local Congregational Church, entered Gilmanton Theological Seminary. The Genius of Universal Emancipation ceased publication. BENJAMIN LUNDY HDT WHAT? INDEX PARKER PILLSBURY PARKER PILLSBURY 1839 The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 13th issue of its “omnibus” entitled The Anti-Slavery Examiner, containing “On the Condition of the Free People of Color in the United States”; containing, also, “Can Abolitionists Vote or Take Office Under the United States Constitution?”; containing, also, “Address to the Friends of Constitutional Liberty, on the Violation by the United States House of Representatives of the Right of Petition at the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society.” Parker Pillsbury graduated from Gilmanton Theological Seminary. HDT WHAT? INDEX PARKER PILLSBURY PARKER PILLSBURY 1840 Parker Pillsbury studied for an additional year, at Andover Theological Seminary. There he came under the influence of John A. Collins. He would accept a church in Loudon, New Hampshire but, after making an accusation that his association of Congregational ministers was guilty of the “sin of conniving at American slavery,” his license to preach would be revoked. He would become active in the ecumenical Free Religious Association and preach to its societies in New York, Ohio, and Michigan. He would edit the Concord, New Hampshire Herald of Freedom. The platform of the National Anti-Slavery Standard would be the immediate, complete abolition of slavery. The editors would include Lydia Maria Child, Oliver Johnson, Parker Pillsbury, and Aaron Powell. This paper would exist until 1870. Abby Kelley continued to travel, at this point all over New England. She met Frederick Douglass and the radical New Hampshire abolitionist, Stephen Symonds Foster. Many of Abby’s letters and speeches were being published in The Liberator. Abby and Douglass went on a New York tour conducting conventions twice per week, each convention lasting two to three days. While living with Paulina and Francis Wright in Utica NY, Stephen came to stay there during a convention. It was at this point that they decided to marry. ABOLITIONISM January 1, Wednesday: Parker Pillsbury got married with Sarah Hall Sargent (June 14, 1814-March 8, 1898) of Concord, New Hampshire. The union would produce one child, Helen Pillsbury. Waldo Emerson lectured in Boston. This was the 4th lecture of his 10-lecture private “The Present Age” series: “Politics.” THE LIST OF LECTURES HDT WHAT? INDEX PARKER PILLSBURY PARKER PILLSBURY 1841 January 13, Wednesday: It was reported that a branch of the Nonresistance Society was formed for New Hampshire, at Concord, New Hampshire, with the following members: Parker Pillsbury, Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Stephen Symonds Foster, and Amos Wood.1 August 9, Monday: The Lake Erie steamboat Erie departed from Buffalo, New York, heading for Chicago. When it caught on fire off Silver Creek, 215 people perished. At the Liberty Hall in New Bedford, William C. Coffin heard Frederick Douglass speak briefly at the annual meeting of the Bristol County Anti-Slavery Society, and invited him to come along to the Massachusetts Anti- Slavery Society convention that was to take place the next day on Nantucket Island. (Others at this meeting: George Bradburn, John A. Collins, Parker Pillsbury, Edmund Quincy.) In his journal Henry Thoreau mused “If I am not I — who will be?” (He would transcribe this in 1842.) August 9: It is vain to try to write unless you feel strong in the knees.
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