A Revolutionary Conscience: Theodore Parker and Antebellum America
Teed’s is the first complete life study of Parker to appear in many decades. Teed shows readers the full sweep of Parker’s remarkable career and his wide range as a thinker....Teed is the first biographer to recognize Parker’s important role in the antislavery movement as a mediator between the contentious Garrisonian and other political factions; the first to look dispassionately at Parker’s growing support for antislavery violence in the 1850s; the first to deal forthrightly with Parker’s racial theories and his sometimes shockingly racist pronouncements; the first to look critically at Parker’s ideas about gender and women’s rights; and the first to take seriously Parker’s reaction—which shaped his later theology—against the philosophical atheism of Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach.(The Journal of American History)