The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 31 (2020)
Copyright © 2020 Izumi Ogura. All rights reserved. This work may be used, with this noticeincluded, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work may be distributed,
electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without permission from the author.

The Concord Community: Ralph Waldo Emerson
and the Antislavery Movement

Izumi OGURA*INTRODUCTION
Traditional scholarship on Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) tends tofocus on his representative works from the 1830s, such as Nature (1836),“The American Scholar” (1837), and “The Divinity School Address”(1838).1 Many scholars contend that as Emerson emphasized the “selfsupplied powers of the individual,”2 he did not make explicit statements
opposing slavery.3 George M. Fredrickson writes in The Inner Civil War(1965) that Emerson’s “detachment” and seclusion led him to remain aloof
from society and politics and that it was not until the outbreak of the Civil
War that he became “an influential and active citizen.”4 He says that
Emerson’s egoistic self-reliance transformed him into a “useful citizen” ashe got involved in the slavery argument and the Civil War.5 For Emerson,
the question of slavery was the turning point in his acceptance of “collective
feeling as the equivalent of individual intuition.”6 In Virtue’s Hero (1990),
Len Gougeon leads the way in revising past negative interpretations ofEmerson’s attitude toward society. Still, in his 2012 article “Militant
Abolitionism,” he states that even in the twenty-first century, somespecialists consider Emerson as a passive philosopher and pacifist.7 Even in2017, Philp Gura doubted Emersonian reformers’ efficacy in creating a“more pragmatic approach to the nation’s problems, particularly through*Professor, Daito Bunka University

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legislative enactment.”8 Relying on Emerson’s journals after 1850, I first
explore how he moved from moderate views in the 1840s to radical
abolitionism in the 1850s, and second how he communicated with otherintellectuals in Concord, Boston, and Washington, D.C., during the Civil
War. Concord was a “hotbed of abolitionism” and “the nation’s chief
exporter of extremism,”9 home to such activists as Henry David Thoreau(1817–62), Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (1831–1917), and John Brown(1801–59); Emerson was an intellectual leader of the community. He
meticulously covered national politics in his journal and lectures, and we
can know about his sense of justice and persistence in supporting human
freedom by examining his responses to the Trent affair and Reconstruction.
I.

EMERSON’S ATTITUDE TOWARD SLAVERY BEFORE 1850

Emerson began changing his ideas about individualism around 1840. He
sent a letter dated April 23, 1838, to President Martin Van Buren protesting
the removal of Cherokees by the “sham treaty” (W 11:91).10 In the 1840s and1850s, he oscillated between politics and ideals. Politically, he rejected the
expansion of slavery into the West,11 and so he seemed to support the Whigs.
He opposed Andrew Jackson and Van Buren’s Democrats, who had animperialist policy of land expansion into Texas and Mexico, arguing thatannexation must be blocked “with tooth and nail.”12
Emerson strongly supported the emancipation of American slaves in his
1844 lecture “Address on the Anniversary of Emancipation of Negroes in
the British West Indies.” The abolitionist movement in England was basedon the trial Somerset v. Steward (1772). James Somerset was taken by
Charles Steward from England to the British colony of Jamaica to be sold.
Lord Mansfield ruled against the master Steward, stating that slavery wasnever permitted unless explicitly written down in law: “It is so odious, that
nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law.”13 In the first part ofthe lecture, Emerson traces the history of slavery in England after theSomerset ruling. William Wilberforce (1759–1833) submitted an antislavery
bill in 1791, which led to the abolition of the slave trade in the British West
Indies in 1807 and full emancipation in 1834 via the 1833 Slaves Abolition
Act.14 In the second half of the lecture, Emerson laments that the UnitedStates does not have any laws to rescue slaves: “This man, these men, I see,and no law to save them. Fellow citizens, this crime will not be hushed up
any longer” (W 11:130; CW 10:318). He criticizes the “tameness andsilence” (W 11:133; CW 10:319) of Massachusetts senators andTHE CONCORD COMMUNITY

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congressmen, who let the situation stand with no protest, and deplores thewant of courageous men: “It is so easy to omit to speak, or even to be absent
when delicate things are to be handled . . . there is a disastrous want of men
from New England” (W 11:133; CW 10:319).
The US Constitution does not contain the word “slave.”15 Three places inthe text of the Constitution assume the existence of slaves: Article I, Section
2 mentions the “three fifths of all other Persons”; Article I, Section 9 allows
the slave trade up until 1808; and Article IV, Section 2 is called the“extradition clause.” However, it does not mention a process of “recaption”
nor the relationship between state and federal law;16 thus, extradition andrecaption were moot. The first law in the new republic dealing with slavery
was article 6 of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which prohibited slavery
in the Northwest Territory.17 The major turning point was the Compromiseof 1850, when the argument centered on the Fugitive Slave Law, whichstrengthened extradition. It gave power to a federal commission to search forand return slaves to the South and rendered the act of helping or hiding a
runaway slave a crime.18 Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts gave aspeech in support of the law on March 7, 1850. Opposing Webster, William
Seward (1801–72), a senator from New York, made a well-known speech,
proclaiming that there is a “higher law” than the Constitution, requiring
people to regard moral law as superior to the written law. Emerson strongly
criticized Webster in his journal: “The word liberty in the mouth of Mr.
Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan” (JMN
11:346).19
Emerson gave two lectures on the Fugitive Slave Law: one at Concord on
May 3, 1851, and the other in New York in 1854. The 1851 lecture includes
more aggressive contents and is the lengthier.20 Emerson criticizes the law
with strong words: “The law is suicidal, and cannot be obeyed” (W
11:206).21 At the start of the lecture, Emerson says that although he had tried
to evade politics before, he now declares it a duty for a philosopher to be
involved therein: “The last year has forced us all into politics and made it aparamount duty to seek what it is often a duty to shun” (W 11:179; LL
1:260). He describes the shrewd escalation of the law as follows: “The first
execution of the law, as was inevitable, was a little hesitating; the second
was easier; and the glib officials became, in a few weeks, quite practiced andhandy at stealing men” (W 11:196; LL 1:267–68). At the end of the lecture,
he says that only by one’s efforts can safety be obtained: “Let us not lie, notsteal, nor help to steal, and let us not call stealing by any fine name such as‘Union’ or ‘Patriotism’” (W 11:213; LL 1:276).

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The same lecture, entitled “The Fugitive Slave Law” (1854), was given
four years after the law was put into effect and two years after Webster died.
The Kansas-Nebraska law written by Stephen Douglas was enforced in
1854, and people residing in the territories could decide whether their state
would be a free or slave state. This popular sovereignty virtually repealed
the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had prohibited slavery north of
36°30′. Emerson’s friend and Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner (1811–
1874) gave the speech in the US Senate “Crime against Kansas” on May 22,
1856, and was physically attacked by South Carolina congressman Preston
Brooks. Emerson protested this violence in lectures “The Assault upon Mr.
Sumner” and “Speech on Affairs in Kansas.”22 Sumner survived the beating
and later became the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
where he played an important role in the Trent affair.
Emerson vehemently criticized Chief Justice Taney, who ruled in Dred
Scott v. Sandford and called black people “servile races.”23 Emerson attacked
Taney in his journal, saying “Servile races! forsooth, Mr. Justice Taney!”(JMN 14:429). He insisted that the Northwest Ordinance and the US
Constitution were wrong in that they tacitly recognized slavery.
Furthermore, he said that it would have been better if the United States had
not been established: “The fathers made the blunder in the convention in the
Ordinance of 10 July, 1787 to adopt population as the basis of representationand count only three fifths of the slaves. . . . A little crime a minor penalty, agreat crime, a great ruin, and now, after 60 years, the poison has crept into
every vein and every artery of the State” (JMN 13:333–34).
Emerson was introduced to John Brown on Brown’s first visit to Concord
by Thoreau on March 7, 1857, the day after the Dred Scott decision, andwrote a note describing Brown as “a captain” who gave “a good account of
himself ” (JMN 14:125). Concord formed the Middlesex County AntiSlavery Society in 1834, and it became a stronghold of abolitionism.
Cynthia, Helen, and Sophia Thoreau; Elizabeth Hoar; and Lydian Emerson
were also active in the Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society.24 Concord
planned for Brown’s second speech in May 1859. Hearing about the Harpers
Ferry raid on October 16, Emerson commented that John Brown had “losthis head”; however, he gave a lecture in which he praised Brown’s courage,
calling him “a true hero.”25 Emerson gave the lecture “Courage” on
November 8, devoting three pages to praising Brown’s courage: “CaptainJohn Brown, the hero of Kansas, said to me in conversation that ‘for a settler
in a new country, one good, believing, strong-minded man is worth ahundred, nay, a thousand men without character’” (W 7:270; CW 7:136).26

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Emerson also delivered a lecture titled “Remarks at a Meeting for the Reliefof the Family of John Brown” on November 18.27 Thoreau, who did notwrite anything on slavery in his journal from 1854 to 1859, broke his silence
after the Harpers Ferry raid and wrote comments and opinions that would
later form three lectures that he gave on Brown.28 Thoreau started writing
about Brown on October 19, three days after the attack, and continued forfifty-nine pages.29 Rebutting William Lloyd Garrison (1805–79), who called
the raid “a misguided, wild, and apparently insane . . . effort,”30 he defended
Brown as “the savior of four millions of men!” and concluded saying that herejoiced that he was “his contemporary.”31 While the Secret Six, a radicalgroup of abolitionists,32 were criticized for the failed recapture of AnthonyBurns (1834–62) in 1854 in Boston, their militant arguments were graduallyaccepted by Garrison and the transcendentalists.33 In a 2015 article, William
T. La Moy analyzes the letters exchanged between John Brown and theSecret Six and points out that although nowadays the Secret Six are highly
regarded, people who supported Brown were ambivalent about the raid andthe prosecution afterward. However, leaders of the Boston community, such
as Governor Andrew, Frederick Douglass, and Wendell Phillips, allegedly
knew about Brown’s attack beforehand.34 Sandra Petrulionis points out thatmany works on the raid on Harpers Ferry cite “Thoreau and Emerson’s
ringing endorsement of John Brown,”35 and David S. Reynolds, Brown’sbiographer, writes that “it was the Transcendentalists alone who rescued himfrom infamy and possible oblivion.”36
Another example of Concord’s solidarity took place on April 3, 1860.
Franklin Sanborn, a key member of the Secret Six based in Concord, wasexiled to Canada after the Harpers Ferry raid and then secretly returned toConcord. He was almost arrested by the Mason Committee, the searchorganization of the federal government.37 His arrest was prevented by his
sister Sarah, Anne Whiting, his student Grace Michell, and the next-door
neighbor John Shepard Keyes, who rushed to the wagon to rescue him andrang the bell of the First Church to warn of the crisis. While 150 people
gathered and protected Sanborn, John Keyes went to Judge Hoar to obtain awrit of habeas corpus. Thoreau stayed at his house, writing in his journal:“Lodged at Sanborn’s last night after his rescue, he being away.”38 Lemuel
Shaw (1781–1861), Herman Melville’s father-in-law and chief justice of thestate supreme court, voided the federal arrest warrant.39 Watching Sanborn’s
triumphant return, Thoreau described the day as the “hottest fire he[Thoreau] ever witnessed in Concord.”40

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LINCOLN, THE TRENT AFFAIR, AND EMERSON’S PLIGHT (1861–62)

The year 1860 was a decisive one as Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) was
elected president of the United States. On March 4, when Lincoln was
inaugurated, Emerson wrote in his journal: “The news of last Wednesday
morning [Lincoln’s election] was sublime, the pronunciation of the massesof America against Slavery” (JMN 14:363). By 1861 criticism of Emersonfrom the proslavery side was harsh, and he was interrupted by shouts andforced to suspend a speech.41 Since the attack at Fort Sumter, he often wrote
about abolition in his journal “Notebook WO Liberty” (JMN 14:373–430,
esp. 409–23).
President Lincoln did not declare emancipation of the slaves until
September 1862. This delay came about because the Union Army was losing
to the Confederates, and he did not want the remaining boarder slave statesof Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland to secede from the Union.42
For Lincoln, the preservation of the Union was as important as the slavery
issue. The Northern states were not monolithic concerning abolition, they
were divided about emancipation,43 and they did not want to intervene in theSouth politically. According to Albert J. Von Frank, Northerners may nothave wanted to endanger the Union because of the “scruple” of conscience,44
which affected only the blacks.45 Still, Lincoln was determined to fightagainst slavery and had as strong a sense of justice as Thomas Jefferson in
his Notes on the State of Virginia, in which he “trembled for his country
when he remembered that God was just; that his justice cannot sleep
forever.”46
Shortly after the April 12, 1861, Confederate attack on Fort Sumter,which launched the war, Queen Victoria of England issued the “British
proclamation of neutrality in the American Civil War” on May 13, 1861. The
definition of the word “neutrality” led to a major argument during the war
because the proclamation assumed that the Confederacy was a belligerent
and said that Britain would maintain neutrality between “the said contending
parties.”47 The document angered Lincoln, because Britain recognized theConfederates as being in an equal position with the Union and thus able toobtain fuel and supplies in British colonial ports in the Caribbean and makecontracts with British companies.48
President Lincoln and his cabinet members considered the South to berebels, not a sovereign nation. He thought that the British recognition of
belligerency would lead to the diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy.
William Seward, the secretary of state, was angry about the proclamation

THE CONCORD COMMUNITY

9and about British Foreign Secretary Lord Russell’s meeting with theConfederates. Charles Francis Adams (1807–86), US minister to Britain,
conveyed to Russell and Prime Minister Lord Palmerston Lincoln’s message
that Washington considered the war an internal insurrection, not a war of
independence as insisted on by the South. The foreign policy of Seward andAdams was to try to prevent British recognition of the Confederacy and,more important, to prevent foreign intervention in the affairs of the states.
The Confederacy aspired to gain recognition and intervention from Britain
and France, thus, to achieve its independence.
The problem of neutrality led to a major argument in what became known
as the Trent affair. On November 8, 1861, Captain Charles Wilkes of the US
Navy ship San Jacinto intercepted a British mail packet RMS Trent in the
Old Bahama Channel and arrested Confederate diplomats James Mason andJohn Slidell for carrying dispatches inimical to the United States. Mason of
Virginia and Slidell of Louisiana handled diplomacy with England andFrance, respectively. The envoys, who secretly left Charleston for Havanaon the way to London had a mission to explain their view of states’ rights
and the reason for the secession so they could gain diplomatic recognition
for the Confederate States of America and obtain financial and military
support. These individuals were the bêtes noires of the Northern community,
because Mason had proposed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and was thechairman of the federal commission, and Slidell was a strong supporter ofdisunion.49
The North enthusiastically supported the arrest. Britain insisted that thearrest infringed on their neutrality and demanded that the Union release themen immediately and apologize to England. Lincoln and Secretary Seward
were afraid that the looming crisis would trigger a military conflict between
the United States and Britain. However, on December 26, Secretary Seward
freed Mason and Slidell, and they continued their trip to England. They
were released because the arrest of the two envoys resembled search andimpressment, an infringement on basic human rights, and the idea of
humans as contraband of war did not garner the support of many people.50
Britain issued another “Queen’s Neutrality Proclamation” on January 31,
1862.51
Hearing about the Trent affair, Emerson described the government’s
responses in detail. His explanation in his journal shows that he was not an
abstract philosopher but a real critic of politics and diplomacy. He wrote
with admiration, “How rare are acts of will” (JMN 15:153). He mentioned
Duncan Ingraham’s rescue of Martin Koszta from Austria in 1853: “Captain

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Ingraham became famous by taking away a subject of the United Statesfrom the Austrians. . . ; & now Com[mande]r. Wilkes, by taking on his own
responsibility Mason & Slidell” (JMN 15:153). Quoting Lincoln, Emerson
warned of the danger of British intervention: “President Lincoln said wellthat the rebels ‘carried only the ruin of their own country as ground to
invoke the aid of foreign nations’” (JMN 15:178).
Charles Sumner was a close friend of Lord Lyons (Richard Bickerton
Pemmell Lyons, 1817–87), British ambassador to the United States.
Emerson described Sumner’s role in alleviating the tension between the twocountries. He described the diplomatic moves behind the scenes andconcluded that it was a wise move that the president did not meet theambassador in person. Lincoln told Sumner: “If I could see Lord Lyons, I
could show him in five minutes that I am heartily for peace” (JMN 15:190).
While Sumner thought Lincoln’s words were positive, he did not recountthem to Seward or Lyons. He considered that a personal meeting between
the president and Lyons would be an impropriety, and Emerson highly
approved of this judgment: “Well, now that the prisoners are surrendered,
Sumner went to Lyons, & told him what had passed, & he too was verymuch gratified with it, & thanked Sumner for not telling him before, as it
would only have distressed him” (JMN 15:190). As both Seward and Lyons
represented their separate national interests and needed to be “strangers”(JMN 15:190) to preserve diplomatic prestige in the negotiation, they did notwant the head of the state to get involved directly, much less to apologize.
Sumner was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee andcould communicate the Union’s stance to the British government.
On January 31 and February 2–3, 1862, in Washington, D.C., Emerson
had the opportunity to meet President Lincoln, William Seward, Lord
Lyons, and members of the cabinet. He wrote a lengthy paragraph about themeeting in his journal: “The President impressed me more favorably than I
had hoped. A frank, sincere, well-meaning [man], with a lawyer’s habit ofmind, 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” (JMN 15:187). His first impression of the president wasfavorable, as was Lincoln’s impression of him. The president looked
forward to meeting Emerson, quoting the episode how Emerson introduced
himself to the audience, and said to him: “O Mr. Emerson, I once heard you
say in a lecture ‘Here am I; if you don’t like me, the worse for you’” (JMN
15:187). In the State Department, Seward explained to Emerson how
interested Lincoln was in meeting him. When Seward began to briefly

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describe Emerson, the president had stopped him, perhaps because he hadalready acquainted with Emerson’s work, saying, “Yes I know Mr.
Emerson” and “Well, Seward, don’t let it be smutty” (JMN 15:188).
Wondering how the president knew Emerson, he asked him. Lincoln replied,“Why I know him. I cannot say I have carnal knowledge of him” (JMN
15:188). Emerson described this episode as an “extraordinary exordium[first introduction]” (JMN 15:188).52
Emerson’s meeting with cabinet members indicates that he was a wellknown lecturer among statesmen, and, especially, his meeting with Lincoln
symbolized the climax of nationwide antislavery movements. New England
did not want to form an alliance with the Andrew Jackson’s Tennessee andother frontier states when Jackson defeated John Quincy Adams for thepresidency in 1828, and so Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and William
Seward formed the Whig Party to oppose the president from frontier.53
However, the Whigs’ priority of maintaining the union led to compromises
on slavery issues, and they lost support to the Free Soil Party and,eventually, to Lincoln’s Republican Party in 1854. The president, who did
not yet declare emancipation, then welcomed Emerson who had widespreadinfluence in the abolitionist movement.
As the Civil War continued, Emerson’s financial status worsened. Just
before meeting Lincoln, he sent a letter dated January 21, 1862, to his
brother William, stating, “January 1 has found me in quite as poor a plight as
the rest of the Americans. Not a penny from my books since last June, whichusually yield 5, or $600.00 a year” (L 5:263). To compensate for his
difficulty, he expected rent from his wife Lydian’s houses, but “Lidian’s [sic]Plymouth House now for years has paid nothing & still refuses. Her Court
Street rents . . . are now withdrawn for the last year & a half” (L 5:263).
Worse, he was unable to receive lecture fees because the war prevented himfrom holding lyceums and lecture series: “Then lastly, almost all income
from lectures has quite ceased, so that your letter found me in a study [of]how to pay 3 or 400.00 with $50” (L 5:263–64). As a result, he consideredselling his land near Walden Pond, which had remained uninhabited after
Thoreau’s experiment in deliberate living in 1845–47. He wrote, “I havebeen trying to sell a woodlot (the Saw-mill lot) at or near its appraisal,
which would give me more than $300” (L 5:264), but the purchaser did notappear. However, Emerson was optimistic about the future and the war,saying, “But far better that this grinding should go on bad & worse, than that
we be driven by any impatience into a hasty peace, or any peace restoring
the old rottenness” (L 5:264). He was determined to persevere like “candles

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under an extinguisher” (L 5:264).
III. THE CRISIS OF THE UNION AND EMERSON’S IDEAL
Emerson’s journal on August 30, 1862 includes details on the crisis of theUnion in which the South would possibly emancipate its slaves, which herefers to as “several urgent motives point[ing] to the Emancipation” (JMN
15:206). In the crisis, the Confederacy hammered out a policy of
emancipating slaves, albeit temporarily, in order to be recognized as asovereign state by England and France. Historian Bruce Levine explains thesouthern view that the South fought against the “predatory North” and the
Civil War was fought for Southern self-government and states’ rights.54 The
Confederacy even considered the possibility of creating a black regiment as
proposed by Gen. Patrick Cleburne of Tennessee. Acknowledging the deep
crisis of the Union against the South, Emerson wrote, “The danger of the
adoption by the South of the policy of Emancipation. France & England
may peaceably recognize the Southern Confederacy, on the condition of
Emancipation. Instantly, we are thrown into [a] falsest position. All [of]Europe will back France & England in the act, because the cause of theSouth will then be the cause of Freedom, [and] the cause of the North willbe that of Slavery” (JMN 15:207). Responding to this potential contradictory
policy change by the South, President Lincoln took the initiative to forestallsuch a Confederate move after the victory at Antietam on September 17 andannounced a preparatory declaration of emancipation for September 22. By
this proclamation, he altered the significance of the war from that ofpreserving the Union to explicit abolition of slavery, making those“ambivalent about fighting to save the Union” support the war.55
Emerson hailed Lincoln’s preparatory declaration in his lecture “TheEmancipation Proclamation” on October 12, 1862. He said that
“Emancipation is the demand of civilization” (W 11:304; CW 10:406) inanother famous lecture, “American Civilization,”56 which was delivered
several times, including one at the Smithsonian Institution. At the beginningof “American Civilization,” he called slavery not an “institution” but rather“destitution,” and described slavery as the “stealing of men and setting them
to work, stealing their labor, and the thief sitting idle himself” (W 11:297;
CW 10:403). He shared a strong belief in staying united with Lincoln andinsisted that the unjustifiable slavery should not be allowed to collapse theUnited States: “There does exist . . . a popular will that the Union shall not
be broken―that our trade, and therefore our laws, must have the wholeTHE CONCORD COMMUNITY

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breadth of the continent, and from Canada to the Gulf” (W 11:306; CW
10:408). He contended that people must be firm and should not “be lost byhesitation” (W 11:303; CW 10:406). Hearing the preparatory declaration, he
predicted in his journal that the war would be protracted, “for there can be
no durable peace, no sound constitution until we have fought this battle andthe rights of man are vindicated” (JMN 15:293).
Emerson, who was ambivalent and reluctant in the 1840s, found his
destiny in the abolition of slavery in the 1850s. In his journal in 1863, hewrote that “it is impossible to extricate oneself from the questions in which
our age is involved. You can no more keep out of politics than out of the
frost” (JMN 15:28). He knew that his insistence on a “higher law” at lecturesand lyceums would not result in the abolition of slavery. He understood thefuzziness of higher law, because if we maintain the universal aspect ofhigher law, we must make the Constitution and the Supreme Court
inoperative and irrelevant. But, “when it comes to practice, we can only go
to the Constitution” (JMN 15:346).
In understanding the American antislavery movements, it is interesting toknow what distance various intellectuals kept from the Constitution. Daniel
Webster was fully in support of the Constitution and sacrificed abolition to
make the Compromise of 1850. Emerson attacked Webster, who supported
the Fugitive Slave Act, saying that “he had not faith in the power of selfgovernment” but only in “what he finds already written” (W 11:204).
Emerson pointed to the sterile formalism of strictly interpreting theConstitution, which was silent on slavery, and urged the American people touse their eyes to see the justice behind the words of the Constitution.
William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips (1811–84) condemned theConstitution as a proslavery document, viewing it as an “abominableaffront” to natural law.57 Garrison burned it at the annual meeting of theabolitionists in Framingham Grove, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1854.58
Frederick Douglass (1818–95), a former slave, started an abolitionist
movement with his mentor Garrison but felt the limitations of moral suasion
and left him after he published the Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass in 1845.59 For Emerson and Douglass, the culmination of the
project was to “write the moral statute into the Constitution and give thewritten only a moral interpretation” (JMN 15:346). Unless the Constitution
was changed, strict constructionists like Webster would support slavery
based on abstract words such as “three fifths of all other Persons” and“Person held to Service or Labour.” It was imperative to locate and codify
the “higher law” in the Constitution, because “the right to freedom is [a]14

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perfect right, and any invasion of it [is] noxious to human nature, & invalid
therefore” (JMN 15:346). Though Emerson came to criticize Webster after
the Compromise of 1850, he still shared his law-abiding spirit and had adeep reverence for the Constitution.60 In “The Fortune of the Republic”(1863), which he often repeated until the end of his career, he stated that“the end of all political struggle is to establish morality as the basis of all
legislation” (W 11:540). Only when laws embody what is in people’s deeply
held beliefs can people obey them, for “covenants are of no use withouthonest man [men] to keep them; laws of none but with loyal citizens to obey
them” (W 11:234).
The war ended on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox, Virginia, when the
Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered. Emerson deeply mourned
Lincoln’s death on April 15 and gave a lecture titled “Abraham Lincoln” inConcord, calling him “a heroic figure in the centre of a heroic epoch” (W
11:335). In July 1865, he delivered his “Harvard Commemoration Speech”
for the graduating class and stated that the end of the war brought America“integrity” (W 11:342). The Civil War was the deadliest war in US history,
with a death toll of 665,850,61 2 percent of the population then andequivalent to six million today.62 Writing about the war, Emerson stated that“it makes no difference whether we gain or lose a battle, except the loss ofvaluable lives” (JMN 15:400). Despite the massive loss of lives, hecelebrated “the dawn of a new era” (JMN 15:64) in the summer of 1865 andwrote in his journal that “the present war, on a prodigiously enlarged scale,has cost us how many valuable lives; but it has made many lives valuablethat were not so before” (JMN 15:64; JMN 15:434).63
Emerson was not disposed to be tolerant toward the South after the war
ended. He thought about the reconstruction of the South even amid the war
in 1862, writing that the government should not be generous. He compared
the postwar South to a cracked fort: If the plan of the fort is right, it does not
so much matter that you have a rotten beam, because it can be replaced by abetter one without tearing the fort to pieces. However, if the rebuilding of
the South is wrong, “then all is rotten & every step adds to the ruin” (JMN
15:301). His plan was that the Union should take the lead in reconstructing
the South, and no “rotten” Southerners should be allowed to gain control ofnational politics. He strongly opposed bargaining with the Confederates who
had lost the war: “To bargain or treat at all with the rebels, to makearrangements with them about [the] exchange of prisoners or hospitals, or
truces to bury the dead, all unconstitutional & enough [to] drive a strict
constructionist out of his wits (JMN 15:301).” Directly after this sentence, heTHE CONCORD COMMUNITY

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states that “nothing satisfies all men but justice” (JMN 15:301), insisting that“every man shall have what he honestly earns, and . . . have an equal vote in
the state and a fair chance in society” (JMN 15:301–2).
His innovative ideas about black voting rights and equal protection under
the law became more radical after the war. He worried that there was alukewarm reconstruction, stating in his journal on November 5, 1865, “Butthe energy of the nation seems to have expended itself in the war, and every
interest is found as sectional & timorous as before” (JMN 15:77–78).64 He
also said that it was no good negotiating with the South: “Tis far the bestthat the rebels have been pounded instead of negociated [sic] into peace”(JMN 15:459). He warned that the energy and “justice” for regeneration
would be “dissipated” if the former Confederate leaders gained control ofSouthern politics and demanded more radical reforms:65 “I fear that the hightragic historic justice which the nation with severest consideration should
execute, will be softened & dissipated & toasted away at dinner-tables. But
the problems that now remain to be solved are very intricate & perplexing,& men are very much at a loss as to the right action (JMN 15:459).”
Emerson said that the Union should not “toast” or reconcile with the South.
He worried that Democrats would grasp the power, and the Republicans
would be thwarted: “If we let the southern States in to Congress, theNorthern democrats will join them in thwarting the will of the government”(JMN 15:459). To avoid this situation, he proposed letting the freedmen
learn literacy and giving them voting rights: “And the obvious remedy is to
give the negro his vote. And then the difficult question comes, —what shallbe the qualification of voters? We wish to raise the mean white to his rightposition, that he may withstand the planter. But the negro will learn to write& read, (which should be a required qualification,) before the white will”(JMN 15:459). Considering his ambivalence about dealing with the issue ofslavery in his youth, it was a sea change for him to speak up for the voting
rights of the freedmen. However, when examining him from a broader
perspective during and after the war, and in and out of the Concord
community, this is a natural outcome of his unshaken sense of justice. Philip
F. Gura says that the horrors and magnitude of the Civil War would “exhaust
the idealism” that inspired antebellum reforms, because the abolition ofslavery was of such a major scale that they could not be addressed by a few
transcendentalists.66 However, Emerson’s stance and faith never falteredduring the darkest hours of the Civil War, and he inspired people as an
influential lecturer who disseminated antislavery ideas in Concord,
Washington, and throughout the nation. When the reform movements in

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1850 were skeptical of the government, which repeatedly compromised,
Emerson said, “Affirm and affirm [the ideal]” (JMN 15:31) and “Hitch yourwagon to a star” (JMN 15:185). No longer a solitary, self-reliant man in
Concord, he called on people to understand the higher law, the ideal of
human freedom, and sought to crystallize it into practical law. He considered
it a philosopher’s duty to invoke moral attitudes among people. A portion ofhis poem “Voluntaries” was inscribed on a monument in Concord thatcommemorated Robert Gould Shaw, the captain of black soldiers of the 54th
Massachusetts Infantry Regiment who died at Fort Wagner, South Carolina
in 1863:
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can.67
The poem reflects what Lincoln called in his Gettysburg Address “the last
great measure of devotion” to the national ideal. For Emerson and Lincoln,
this ideal meant abolition of slavery, which would enact the higher law in
the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. The war for
Emerson was not an impediment to the ideal but “the very stairs on which he[the American] climbs” toward the realization of it.68 The deaths and ordealsof the Civil War did not mean the death of ideals. Hearing of Lincoln’s
assassination at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, Emerson extolled the slainpresident’s “enormous power of this continent in every hour” (JMN 15:465)
and his legacy of belief that “the right will be done” (JMN 15:65). His own
perseverance in trying to establish “a chronic hope for a chronic despair”(JMN 15:65) made Emerson bear the burden of his mission. Just as the war
was “a new glass through which to see things” (JMN 15:29), so from theravages and ruins of the old did Emerson see a new America. When
Emerson died in 1882, racial equality had not yet been achieved, and asegregated society still existed. However, his antislavery ideas and strong
sense of justice were part of the groundwork for building racial integrationand human freedom in the United States.
NOTES
This article is part of a research project supported by the Japan Society for
the Promotion of Science, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI)
number 16K02506. A shorter version was presented at the Annual Gathering

THE CONCORD COMMUNITY

17of the Thoreau Society, Concord, Massachusetts, on July 11, 2019.
For a critical analysis of Emerson’s life and works, see Joel Porte, Representative Man:
Ralph Waldo Emerson in His Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); andLawrence Buell, Emerson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
2
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (hereafter
abbreviated as CW), ed. Robert E. Spiller, Alfred R. Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory
Wilson, et al., 10 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971–2013), 3:154.
3
Oliver Wendell Holmes’s biography Ralph Waldo Emerson (1884; New York: Chelsea
House, 1980) states that “Emerson had never identified with the abolitionists” (304). See also
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1945); Stanley Elkins,
Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1959); and Anne C. Rose, Transcendentalism as a Social Movement, 1830–
1850 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981).
4
George M. Fredrickson, The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of theUnion, with a new preface (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 179.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid., 66. Fredrickson states that Walt Whitman thought that the maintenance of the Union
was more important than the question of slavery, saying that “the chief thing was to stick
together.”7
Len Gougeon, “Militant Abolitionism: Douglass, Emerson, and the Rise of the AntiSlave,” New England Quarterly 85, no. 4 (2012): 639fn. Gougeon’s article analyzes
Emerson’s influence on Frederick Douglass.
8
Philp F. Gura, Man’s Better Angels: Romantic Reformers and the Coming of the Civil War(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 4.
9
Randall Fuller, From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American
Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 37 and 38.
10Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (hereafter
abbreviated as W), ed. Edward Waldo Emerson, 12 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903–4),
11:89–96.
11
Gougeon, “Militant Abolitionism,” 638.
12
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo
Emerson (hereafter abbreviated as JMN), ed. William H. Gilman, Ralph Orth, Merrell David,
Merton Sealts, Harrison Hayford, et al., 16 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1960–82), 9:74. The abridged version is Joel Porte, Emerson in His Journals (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
13
Quoted by Robert Cover in Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process (NewHaven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975), 17.
14
For a history of emancipation, see Eric Metaxas, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce
and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery (San Francisco, CA: HarperSan Francisco, 2007);and Ira Berlin, The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).
15
The main body of the Constitution does not use the word “slave,” and the word “slavery”
is used only in the Thirteenth Amendment, in which it was abolished.
16
Earl M. Maltz, Dred Scott and the Politics of Slavery (Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 2007), 26–27.
17
Northwest Ordinance, 1787. “An Ordinance for the government of the territory of theUnited States North West of the river Ohio.” Library of Congress, A Century of Lawmaking
for a New Nation: US Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875, Journals of theContinental Congress, vol. 32, 342, https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=lljc&file
1

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Name=032/lljc032.db&recNum=351.
18
For the conservative response by students from the South at Harvard Law School, see
Carla Bosco, “Harvard University and the Fugitive Slave Act,” New England Quarterly 79,
no. 2 (2006): 227–47. See also the excellent analysis of the Fugitive Slave Law by Linck C.
Johnson, “‘Liberty Is Never Cheap’: Emerson, ‘The Fugitive Slave Law,’ and the Antislavery
Lecture Series at the Broadway Tabernacle,” New England Quarterly 76 no. 4 (2003): 550–92.
19
Emerson in his youth admired Webster and imitated his eloquence, but after 1850, hisjournal includes attacks on him. See Geoffrey R. Kirsch, “‘So Much a Piece of Nature’:
Emerson, Webster, and the Transcendental Constitution,” New England Quarterly 91, no. 4(December 2018): 625–50.
20
See his other essays on the antislavery movement: “Man the Reformer” (1841; CW
1:145–60), “New England Reformers” (1844; CW 3:147–67), “Lecture on Slavery” (1855;
Len Gougeon and Joel Myerson, eds., Emerson’s Antislavery Writings [hereafter abbreviatedas EAW], New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995, 91–106), and “American
Civilization” (1861; W 11:295–311). David Robinson analyzes the Fugitive Slave Law indetail in the section “Politics and Ethical Judgment” (80–88) in chapter 4, “Here or Nowhere:
Essays: Second Series,” and the section “Politics Brought Home” (124–33) in chapter 6, “TheOld and New Worlds: English Traits,” in his Emerson and the Conduct of Life: Pragmatism
and Ethical Purpose in the Later Work (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
21
The 1851 lecture also appears in Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Later Lectures of Ralph
Waldo Emerson 1843–1871 (hereafter abbreviated as LL), ed. Ronald A. Bosco and Joel
Myerson, 2 vols. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 1:259–76. The same sentenceappears in LL 1:272.
22“The Assault upon Mr. Sumner” (W 11:245–52); “Speech on Affairs in Kansas” (W
11:253–563; CW 10:371–75).
23
60 US (19 How.) 393 (1857). The court opinion uses the adjective “servile” with four
nouns: “servile character” (Justice Nelson’s concurring opinion 467), “servile birth” (JusticeDaniel’s concurring opinion 478), “servile population” (Justice Campbell’s concurring
opinion 496), and “servile condition” (Justice Campbell’s concurring opinion 498).
24
Laura Dassow Walls, Henry David Thoreau: A Life (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2017), 93.
25
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson (hereafter abbreviated as L),
ed. Ralph L. Rusk and Eleanor M. Tilton, 10 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press,
1939–95), 5:178.
26
See also JMN 14:125; Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, To Set This World Right: The
Antislavery Movement in Thoreau’s Concord (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006),
121–22.
27“Remarks at a Meeting for the Relief of the Family of John Brown” (W 11:265–73).
28
For Thoreau’s writings on Brown, see “‘A Transcendentalist above all’: Thoreau and John
Brown,” in chapter 10, “Wild Fruits (1857–1859),” in Walls, Henry David Thoreau, 445–56;
and Walter Harding, The Days of Henry Thoreau: A Biography (New York: Dover, 1962),
415–26. The three lectures were “A Plea for Captain John Brown” (111–38), “Martyrdom ofJohn Brown” (139–43), and “The Last Days of John Brown” (145–53), in Reform Papers:
The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, ed. Wendell Glick (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1973).
29
Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 12, March 2, 1859–
November 30, 1859, ed. Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1906), 400–58.
30
Ibid., 407.

THE CONCORD COMMUNITY

19

Ibid., 424 and 421.
The members of the Secret Six were Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823–1911), Samuel
Gridley Howe (1801–76), Theodore Parker (1810–60), Franklin Sanborn (1831–1917), Gerrit
Smith (1797–1874), and George Luther Stearns (1809–67).
33
Garrison felt the limits of moral suasion, and Wendell Phillips evaluated Brown as theincarnation of “divine will” (Fredrickson, Inner Civil War, 42). Gougeon, “Militant
Abolitionism,” 646fn. Gougeon quotes David S. Reynolds in this footnote: “TheTranscendentalists had given their earlier notions a political edge, praising . . . not justnonconformity but outright rebellion.” David S. Reynolds, John Brown: The Man Who Killed
Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (New York: Vintage Books, 2005),
188.
34
William T. La Moy, “The Secret Six and John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry: Two
Letters,” New England Quarterly 88, no. 1 (2015): 148.
35
Petrulionis, To Set This World Right, 141.
36
Reynolds, John Brown, 344.
37
Petrulionis, To Set This World Right, 148–51.
38
Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 13, December 1, 1859–
July 31, 1860, ed. Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906),
241.
39
Regarding Sanborn’s arrest and release, see Petrulionis, To Set This World Right, 148–51;
Walls, Henry David Thoreau, 464–65; and William T. La Moy, “Secret Six,” 144.
40
New York Herald, April 7, 1860, quoted in Petrulionis, To Set This World Right, 151.
41
Emerson, “Attempted Speech” (EAW 125–28). The lecture was published for the first timein Emerson’s Antislavery Writings along with “Lecture on Slavery” (EAW 91–106).
42
The state of Virginia joined the Confederacy, but the northwest portion of Virginia wasunder the control of the Union Army and Lincoln’s general George McClellan (1826–85).
This area left Virginia and was admitted to the Union as the independent state of West
Virginia in 1863.
43
Marjory M. Moody, “The Evolution of Emerson as an Abolitionist,” American Literature
17 (1945): 1–21, quote at 19.
44
Albert J. Von Frank, The Trials of Anthony Burns: Freedom and Slavery in Emerson’s
Boston (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 270.
45
Lincoln was not an exception in his belief in black inferiority. For Lincoln’s ambivalence
about abolition, see James T. Kloppenberg, Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule inEuropean and American Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 658–62. Also
see Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 2, 1848–1858, ed. Roy
P. Basler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953). Kloppenberg in Toward
Democracy states that Lincoln might have partly shared “assumptions about the superiorityof the white race” (Kloppenberg, 660) in his Peoria speech of 1854 (Lincoln, 247–82),
wherein he recognized the colonization of blacks in Liberia (Lincoln, 255). During his
debates with Stephen Douglas for the Senate position from Illinois in 1858, he denied he wascalling for abolition and black equality (Kloppenberg, 664–69, esp. 669). Even in 1860, he
stated in his Cooper Union speech that “wrong as we think slavery is . . . we can yet afford to
let it alone where it is” (Kloppenberg, 691).
46
Thomas Jefferson, “Query XVIII ‘Manners’” in Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), in
Thomas Jefferson: Writings (New York: Library of America, 1984), 289.
47
Wikisource, “British proclamation of neutrality in the American Civil War (1861) by
Victoria of the United Kingdom,” https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/British_proclamation_of_
neutrality_in_the_American_Civil_War.
48
For the diplomatic bargaining with Britain during the Civil War, see Howard Jones, Union
31
32

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in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1992).
49
Mason also proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.
50
Henry Adams, the son and secretary of Charles Francis Adams, criticized impressment,saying “What is [in] hell do you mean by deserting now the great principles of our fathers.
. . . You are mad, all of you” (Jones, Union in Peril, 89).
51
“The Queen’s Neutrality Proclamation,” Downing Street, London, February 1, 1862, pdf.
retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/scsm000229/.
52
Nathaniel Hawthorne also met Lincoln in March 1862 and left notes in “Chiefly about
War-matters. By a Peaceable Man,” in Nathaniel Hawthorne: Miscellaneous Prose and Verse,
ed. Thomas Woodson, Claude M. Simpson, and L. Neal Smith, vol. 23 (Ohio State University
Press, 1994), 403–42. He was together with the delegates at a gathering of executives ofhorse whip factories from Massachusetts (410–15). Hawthorne liked “Uncle Abe” (412) andhis warm sympathies, but he described Lincoln as a rustic person having a “sallow, queer,sagacious visage” (413).
53
Boston was once a bastion of Federalists and against Jeffersonian Republicans.
Jefferson’s creed of the separation of church and state was not officially accepted until
Connecticut adopted a new state constitution in 1818 and Massachusetts disestablished its
state-supported church in 1833. The slavery issue brought them into coalition.
54
Bruce Levine, Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during
the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press. 2006), 7, 13.
55
Stephen Oates notes that Emerson regarded the Emancipation Proclamation as equivalent
to the Declaration of Independence. Stephen Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life ofAbraham Lincoln (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 347.
56
The text of “American Civilization” varies across three editions: W 11:295–311; CW
10:394–412; and CW 7:329–36.
57
Kirsch, “So Much a Piece of Nature,” 635.
58
Larry J. Reynolds, Righteous Violence: Revolution, Slavery, and the American
Renaissance (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 24–25; Kirsch, “So Much a Pieceof Nature,” 628.
59
Gougeon, “Militant Abolitionism,” 638; David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of
Freedom (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018).
60
Kirsch, “So Much a Piece of Nature,” 628. Kirsch highly regards Emerson’s andWebster’s reverence for the Constitution in the conclusion to his article.
61
Steven E. Woodworth and Kenneth J. Winkle, Atlas of the Civil War (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2004), 337.
62
Kloppenberg, Toward Democracy, 698.
63
See also James Elliot Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2 vols. (Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin, 1887), 2:611; and Robinson, Emerson and the Conduct of Life, 199.
64
David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 38.
65David Blight has pointed out the radical aspect of Emerson’s ideas concerning
reconstruction. See Race and Reunion, 31–63.
66
Gura, Man’s Better Angels, 264.
67
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson: Collected Poems and Translations, ed. Harold Bloom
and Paul Kane (New York: Library of America, 1994), 168.
68
Quoted by Ronald Bosco, in “Historical Introduction,” to CW 7:lxv; and “The Rule ofLife,” LL 2:387.