# A History of American Literature/Chapter 14

XII.
THE SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD.
William Ellery Channing (1780–1842).
"There is one word that covers every cause to which Channing devoted his talents and his heart, and that word is Freedom. Liberty is the key of his religious, his political, his philanthropic principles. Free the slave, free the serf, free the ignorant, free the sinful. Let there be no chains upon the conscience, the intellect, the pursuits, or the persons of men."—Bellows.
As Channing was three years the senior of Irving, and as his life-work was nearly done at the opening of the second creative period, he belongs chronologically with the Knickerbockers. But the work of Channing cannot logically be considered apart from that of Emerson and his followers. He was the morning star that ushered in the new era,—the pioneer who made, to a large degree, the new era possible.
Life (by W. H. Channing, 1848; by C. T. Brooks; by Miss Peabody; by II. W. Bellows. There is a fine description of Dr. Channing in George William Curtis' Trumps. See also Prescott's Miscellanies; and Lowell's "Elegy on the Death of Dr. Channing").
Channing was born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1780, and he entered Harvard at the age of fourteen. After his graduation he spent a short time as tutor in a private family in Virginia, studied theology at Cambridge, and ​in 1803 took charge of the Federal Street Church in Boston, where his sermons soon attracted wide attention on account of their solemnity, fervor, and beauty.
In 1812 occurred the separation between the two wings of the Congregational Church, but it was not until 1819, when he boldly and clearly set forth his views in the sermon at the ordination of Jared Sparks at Baltimore, that Channing became the generally recognized head of the Unitarian faction, a position that he was to hold until his death. Channing's sermons during this period were eloquent and thoughtful, and in their printed form are now one of the best commentaries on Unitarianism that have ever been written. Their influence on the times cannot be overestimated. In the words of Emerson,—
"Dr. Channing whilst he lived was the star of the American church, and we then thought, if we do not still think, that he left no successor in the pulpit. He could never be reported, for his eye and voice could not be printed, and his discourses lose their best in losing them. He was made for the public; his cold temperament made him the most unprofitable private companion; but all America would have been impoverished in wanting him. We could not then spare a single word he uttered in public, not so much as the reading a lesson in Scripture or a hymn, and it is curious that his printed writings are almost a history of the times, as there was no great public interest, political, literary, or even economical (for he wrote on the tariff), on which he did not leave his brave and thoughtful opinion. A poor little invalid all his life, he is yet one of those men who indicate the power of the American race to produce greatness."—Life and Letters in New England.
Channing was one of the active spirits in the Transcendentalist movement, being one of the founders of the Transcendentalist Club that originated the Brook ​Farm Community. But for his death he would have been undoubtedly its most prominent leader. During his whole life he was an active antislavery worker.
As a Writer.—But aside from his work as a religious and social reformer in the van of a movement that was destined to accomplish great things, Channing was a man of letters of high rank, exerting an influence on pure literature in New England equalled by no one before the time of Emerson. In 1822 he visited Europe, returning full of enthusiasm, an enthusiasm which be at once imparted to all about him. In his Remarks on a National Literature, 1823, he plead with eloquence for an American literature that should be free from European fetters.
"We are more and more," he said, "a reading people. Books are already among the most powerful influences here. The question is, Shall Europe, through these, fashion us after its pleasure? Shall America be only an echo of what is thought and written under the aristocracies beyond the ocean?"
Shortly after this address Channing published in the Christian Examiner, the literary organ of the new church, an essay on The Life and Character of Napoleon Bonaparte, and in 1826 The Character and Writings of John Milton, a powerful production, easily the superior of the essay on the same subject which made Macaulay famous three years later. "The appearance," says Underwood, "of these essays marks an era in American letters." Emerson declared them "the first specimens in this country of that large criticism which in England had given power and fame to the Edinburgh Review." ​Their style is elegant yet simple; their judgments weighty and valuable. Throughout they give evidence of an imaginative power and a cultivated critical taste of high order. Of the same rank is Channing's essay on Fénelon and his Self-Culture, a work that has proved stimulating to thousands of young people.
Suggested Reading.—Self-Culture and the Essay on Milton.
The Unitarian movement was aided by some of the most scholarly and eloquent clergymen of the century. Among these were Henry Ware (1764-1845); his son Henry Ware (1794–1843), a theologian and hymn writer; Andrews Norton (1786–1858), a strong and scholarly thinker; and Orville Dewey (1794–1882), one of the profoundest thinkers of his generation. Later on the movement gained strength by the accession of men like Theodore Parker, J. S. Buckminster, and James Freeman Clarke, a voluminous writer on many subjects and a leader among the Transcendentalists. Of these later Unitarians, Buckminster, a classical scholar of high rank, exerted an influence on the moral and intellectual life of Now England second only to that of Channing.