90 10 2124 https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/0beaa334ea0e83b2b86a2015320ee567.jpeg 1b4ae465bb6ee95ea976f38ae6b2cb28 https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/791ebd6322b194e268710ba7b3ce4deb.jpeg c32f51e50b92e763061138564aa54016 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Discourse on Town of Concord Bicentennial Subject The topic of the resource 1835 Town of Concord Bicentennial Description An account of the resource The manuscript of the discourse read by Ralph Waldo Emerson on September 12, 1835 came to the library in 1985 as the gift of David Emerson (great-grandson of Ralph Waldo) in commemoration of the 350th anniversary of Concord’s incorporation. Containing numerous emendations and deletions in the author’s hand, the manuscript was used not only for delivering the speech, but also (as the presence of footnotes suggests) as printer’s copy for the 1835 first publication of the discourse. In his Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Descriptive Bibliography, Joel Myerson refers to a copy of the printed discourse inscribed by Charles Eliot Norton in 1860: “This discourse has become very rare, most of the copies having been destroyed, many years ago, in a fire at the office of the Town Clerk in Concord.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Bicentennial Concord Emerson https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/c4b9a7efc39744b0c299d98877bf917d.jpeg 8cb133ab7d7b700b871626ccfd0158ea https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/aeca26a4e5ef53dfe9bf6de7f512a8a8.jpeg ce7df6fe8929390a2ec1093c960ec10d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Source Material for 1835 speech Subject The topic of the resource Town of Concord Bicentennial Description An account of the resource The Concord Free Public Library holds typed transcripts of the many volumes of Emerson’s manuscript journals deposited in the Houghton Library at Harvard, among them Journal L (“Concord”), which contains Emerson’s notes from a variety of sources in preparing the 1835 discourse. The library also houses the original town records scoured by Emerson for information on the periods of Concord history treated in the address. Both are useful for scholars examining how Emerson adapted his source material in interpreting the town’s history. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Town of Concord Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/c27a05dff31e59ae10c928f699b7a068.jpeg 6079174ccf3cee9a7b9d41b3f41d1f0e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Emerson had begun to think about the book that would eventually be published under the title Nature as early as 1833. After he moved to Concord in 1834, he worked on it while boarding at the Manse and then in the Coolidge house. In preparing it, he drew on material from his journals, sermons, and lectures. On June 28, 1836, he wrote to his brother William, “My little book is nearly done.” Nature—a lengthy essay divided into chapters—was published in September of that year. At the beginning of Nature, Emerson posed the questions, “The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?” For Emerson, the presence of the divine spirit in both nature and the human soul made a direct understanding of God and openness to the natural world key to the understanding of broader truth. In each manifestation of God, man could discover in encapsulated form all universal laws at work. What was required for such perception was neither the received dogma of traditional systems of belief nor reasoned logic, but rather a more mystical intuition capable of revealing truth and morality in the various expressions of the divine. Slim volume though it was, Nature drew response from reviewers. Orestes Brownson wrote about it for the Boston Reformer, for example, the conservative Francis Bowen (a critic of Transcendentalism) for the Christian Examiner, Samuel Osgood for the Western Messenger, and Elizabeth Peabody for the United States Magazine and Democratic Review. The book generated mixed reactions. Even those reviewers sympathetic to Transcendental thought found aspects of Emerson’s presentation radical, unsettling, and unconvincing. Peabody—in many ways the consummate Transcendentalist—urged Emerson in her favorable review to write another book to clarify the philosophy that the reader could only understand “by glimpses” in Nature, and to expand upon certain of his religious ideas. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1836 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Public Library Concord Emerson Transcendentalism https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/589a89259704f829c5472dbf140ae3af.jpeg 67869489b9c441742521f1fe8bdd16ef Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Phi Beta Kappa Oration Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource On behalf of the Phi Beta Kappa standing committee at Harvard, Dr. Cornelius Conway Felton asked Emerson to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration on August 31, 1837. Ironically, he was requested to make what would turn out to be one of his most influential addresses in place of the Rev. Dr. Wainwright, who had agreed to speak but had backed out not long before the event. Emerson referred to the upcoming speech in a letter to his brother William on August 7th, and on August 17th wrote Margaret Fuller, asking her to return from Cambridge to Concord with him and Lidian after its delivery. The Emersons planned a meeting of “Mr. Hedge’s Club” in their Concord home the following day. Emerson read the speech, which lasted an hour and a quarter, after noon on the appointed day, in the meetinghouse at Harvard. His audience included more than two hundred Phi Beta Kappa members and some of his close friends and associates, Bronson Alcott and Frederic Henry Hedge among them. The orator called for a new American thought based on intellectual self-reliance rather than the thought of the past, for a new breed of American thinker freed from slavish devotion to inherited culture to realize his divinely inspired human capabilities. Emerson closed the address powerfully: “A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.” The importance to Emerson of the unifying universal soul underlying the soul of each individual was jovially alluded to in a toast made at the dinner following the speech: “ … I suppose all know where the orator comes from; and I suppose all know what he has said; I give you The Spirit of Concord; it makes us all of One Mind.” The Phi Beta Kappa oration was first published in September, 1837, in an edition of five hundred copies, all of which were sold within a month’s time. (The copy shown here was inscribed by Emerson for Convers Francis, his fellow member of the Transcendental Club.) It was well-received, although—as with Nature—generally favorable reviewers offered criticism as well as praise. In the Boston Quarterly Review, for example, William Henry Channing judged Emerson “true, reverent, free, and loving” but regretted “that Mr. Emerson’s style is so little a transparent one.” It was later described by Oliver Wendell Holmes as “our intellectual Declaration of Independence.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1837 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Harvard https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/853e8b2b55344235dc871fca7bdd3439.jpeg 158cd1a37932abc8c27c64e02f298e0f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource An Address delivered before the senior class, Divinity School, Cambridge Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource In March, 1838, a committee of three students at the Harvard Divinity School—George F. Simmons (who would later become a member of Emerson’s extended family by marrying Mary Ripley, a granddaughter of Ezra Ripley); Harrison Gray Otis Blake, who would become a major promoter of Thoreau’s work and the inheritor of the manuscripts he left at his death; and W.D. Wilson—wrote Emerson, inviting him to deliver the annual address before the graduating class at the school. Emerson spoke on July 15th before a full house. In the address, Emerson deplored the lack of vigor and meaning in established religion and urged a more direct, individual understanding of God. Man needed no “mediator or veil” between himself and God. Emerson proclaimed that the inherent unity of God, man, and nature—termed elsewhere in his writings the Oversoul—ensured each man’s potential for goodness and perfectibility toward divine virtue. Moreover, Jesus represented the highest expression of the divine spirit through the life and actions of a man, served as model and inspiration for other men, but achieved nothing beyond the capabilities of humankind in general. The Divinity School address was published in August, 1838, in an edition of one thousand copies. The entire press run was sold by the end of 1839. For obvious reasons, the address was regarded by some as a threat to established religion. It invited a more polarized response than did Emerson’s earlier offerings. Andrews Norton, a biblical scholar and professor at the Harvard Divinity School, was reactionary and vitriolic in a review for the Boston Daily Advertiser (August 27, 1838). He attacked Emerson’s insult to religion, inability to reason logically, poor taste, vagueness of expression and distortion of ideas, and the influence of the “German Barbarians” and Thomas Carlyle on his thought. Norton’s hostile criticism set off a volley of response and effected Emerson’s banishment from Harvard for decades. Even Mary Moody Emerson—the aunt who had a powerful formative influence on Emerson’s Transcendentalism, a woman of strong religious devotion and intellect, conservative in some ways and liberal in others—regretted the address. She wrote that it “should be oblivion’s, as under the influence of some malign demon.” On the other hand, some of the liberal thinkers who had been drawn to Emerson as spokesman and figurehead for Transcendentalism were deeply moved by the address. Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, present at its delivery, wrote in his journal on July 15th, “ … he surpassed himself as much as he surpassed others in a general way … So beautiful, & just, so true, & terribly sublime was his picture of the faults of the church in its present position … ” In 1839 and 1840, George Ripley—founder in 1841 of the utopian community Brook Farm—responded in a series of pamphlets to Andrews Norton’s Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity (1839), which was written in opposition to the ideas expressed in the Divinity School address. Emerson tried to remain above the controversy that the address generated. He continued lecturing and worked at pulling together his first collection of essays, which was published in 1841. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1838 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/153343847333a7086e2b7d7651c9bed3.jpeg 85fe88fb618837ab8915d3dd83dc3ff4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Dial Subject The topic of the resource The Dial Description An account of the resource Just as the Transcendental Club served as a forum for discussion by its members of religion, philosophy, literature, and society, the quarterly periodical The Dial also kept them in dialogue with one another. The practical details of its editing and publication required frequent communication among them regarding submissions, editorial decisions, production, and finances. Although The Dial never circulated widely, it was important to the Transcendentalists as a stimulus to and medium for their thought. Emerson was a founder of, a major contributor to, and (for two years) the editor of The Dial, and his home in Concord was therefore one of the places where its business was conducted. Conceived at a meeting of the Transcendental Club on September 18, 1839, named by Bronson Alcott, The Dial was issued between 1840 and 1844. It was published in Boston, first by Weeks, Jordan and Company, then (in 1842 and 1843) by Elizabeth Peabody, finally by Emerson’s publisher James Munroe. Margaret Fuller was its first editor; Emerson took over from her in 1842. On March 23, 1842, after agreeing to take over the editorship, Emerson wrote to Frederic Henry Hedge about the difficulties faced by the periodical: “Be it known to you that our poor Dial after staggering through two years of external weakness, friendlessness, publiclessness, and publisherlessness … threatened last Saturday on an inspection that was made of its accounts—to die of atrophy. The publishers, Weeks & Jordan, were not only extremely negligent but when they became bankrupt, were much in debt … to the little Journal. Margaret Fuller has never had a penny for all her time & toil; & now J F Clarke & E P Peabody discovered that they could rely only on 300 subscribers … Very unwillingly I assume the load for a time until a better person appears, more fit for this service & more fond of it … Poor Dial! … I dare not let it perish without an effort. It wants mainly & only, some devotion on the part of its conductor to it, that it may not be the herbarium that is of dried flowers, but the vehicle of some living & advancing mind.” Despite Emerson’s hope of keeping it going, however, The Dial ceased publication with the issue for April, 1844. Emerson was a prolific contributor of poems, essays, lectures, and reviews—a total of more than seventy-five pieces—to The Dial over its four-year run, and particularly during his editorship. Other contributors included Bronson Alcott, Ellery Channing, Lydia Maria Child, James Freeman Clarke, Christopher Pearse Cranch, Margaret Fuller, Frederic Henry Hedge, James Russell Lowell, Charles King Newcomb, Theodore Parker, Elizabeth Peabody, Caroline Sturgis, Henry Thoreau, and Jones Very. One of the pieces by Emerson published in The Dial was “The Transcendentalist” (Myerson E75). Originally delivered as part of a lecture series at the Masonic Temple in Boston in 1840 and 1841, the piece—shown here—was published in the January, 1843 issue of the periodical. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Dial Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1840-44 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Concord Emerson The Dial https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/2a2958e511fb0f71c10b86b0537cd4d2.jpeg 20335cdc0f548a6781a41549b14bda18 https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/40f4865173036cb4250f020b1db2e3f9.jpeg a5733fc472f5a8a634bfbdc57238e723 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Letters Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Letters to Charles King Newcomb Subject The topic of the resource Charles King Newcomb Description An account of the resource In the 1840s, Emerson encouraged a number of young men in whom he saw literary promise, Henry Thoreau, Ellery Channing, Jones Very, and Charles King Newcomb among them. As editor of The Dial, he was in a position to give exposure to the work of unknowns who might otherwise not have had opportunity for publication. Through Emerson’s agency, Newcomb’s “The First Dolon”—part of his “The Two Dolons. From the Ms. Symphony of Dolon”—appeared in the issue for July, 1842. Charles King Newcomb (1820-1894) was raised in relative affluence by a doting mother after his father’s death in 1825. He graduated from Brown University in 1837. From 1841 to 1845 he boarded at Brook Farm, and from 1845 to 1865 lived primarily in Providence. He joined the Tenth Rhode Island Volunteers in 1862 and was sent to defend Washington from possible Confederate attack. He lived in Philadelphia from 1866 to 1871, in Europe from 1871 until his death in Paris in 1894. Newcomb was a diarist, an admirer of Swedenborgian philosophy and at the same time of the trappings of Catholicism, a poet, and a protégé and correspondent of Margaret Fuller as well as of Emerson. His “First Dolon” was his only published work. Emerson first met Charles King Newcomb in Providence in 1840. After he began to edit The Dial, he corresponded with Newcomb, urging him to submit pieces for publication and to visit Concord. In his letters to the young man, he presented an enticing picture of Concord as a place of charming natural appeal, enlivened by the comings and goings of a variety of interesting people. He wrote of Margaret Fuller, Henry Thoreau, Elizabeth Hoar, Bronson Alcott, Caroline Sturgis, Elizabeth Peabody, George Bradford, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edmund Hosmer, and Ellery Channing. Newcomb visited the Emersons in Concord on June 19, 1842. Although the two remained in contact, Emerson’s enthusiasm for Newcomb cooled over time. By 1848, he referred to him as “the spoiled child of culture.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1842 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/30a4525865879803c95d193faeaebbf0.jpeg 000cacf321c721d12b5e86befa6352b3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Cherokees Subject The topic of the resource The Cherokees Description An account of the resource During the period from about 1820 until the Civil War, a heightened awareness of a range of social issues was expressed through a number of active reform movements. Emerson, in his 1841 lecture “Man the Reformer,” assessed the climate of the times, “In the history of the world the doctrine of Reform had never had such scope as at the present hour.” There was not only an outpouring of concerned effort on behalf of the unrepresented and underrepresented—Blacks, Native Americans, the labor force, women, children, the mentally ill—but also a trend toward the idealistic reshaping of society through communal living and through education and moral reform. Emerson found that his liberal contemporaries—including some in Concord—hoped that he would speak out on the causes they embraced. In Emerson in Concord, Edward Waldo Emerson wrote of his father’s involvement in reform: “To all meetings held in Concord for the causes of Freedom, spiritual or corporal, he felt bound to give the sanction of his presence whether the speakers were good or bad; he officially welcomed Kossuth and his Hungarian exiles; he entertained John Brown at his house and gave largely from his, at that time very limited, means, to the fund for the furtherance and arming of the Kansas “Free State” immigration.” Emerson certainly spoke out for reform, in Concord and elsewhere. However, his commitment to reform activism did not come easily. Both temperamentally and philosophically, he had difficulty aligning himself with organized reform. Naturally reserved, he was repelled by the emotionalism that characterized the rhetoric of reform meetings. Moreover, his Transcendental focus was on the intellectual and moral perfection of the individual as the best method of reforming society. Even when he believed in the principles behind a reform effort, he could not support the elevation of society over the primacy of the individual. In his “New England Reformers” (1844), he declared: “ … union must be inward, and not one of covenants, and is to be reached by a reverse of the methods [men] use. The union is only perfect, when all the uniters are isolated … Each man, if he attempts to join himself to others, is on all sides cramped and diminished of his proportion; and the stricter the union, the smaller and the more pitiful he is. But leave him alone, to recognize in every hour and place the secret soul, he will go up and down doing the works of a true member, and, to the astonishment of all, the work will be done with concert, though no man spoke … The union must be ideal in actual individualism.” For this reason, Emerson was skeptical about the benefits of joining utopian communities like Brook Farm and Fruitlands. Nevertheless, Emerson surmounted his disinclination to become involved in reform. He did, in fact, become impassioned about certain issues, foremost among them the abolition of slavery, and repeatedly rose to the occasion when asked to make a public statement. Some of his most rousing addresses were delivered in Concord, which reinforced the town’s reputation as a reform stronghold. Concordians were already sensitive to the issue of slavery by the 1830s. A number of the town’s residents belonged to the Middlesex County Antislavery Society, established in 1834. When the Concord Ladies’ Antislavery Society was formed in 1837, Lidian Emerson was one of its founding members. Others in Emerson’s family—his step-grandfather Ezra Ripley, his brother Charles, and his aunt Mary Moody Emerson—were outspoken in their condemnation of slavery. The Hoars and the Thoreaus were abolitionists, as were many others among his friends and associates. His outrage over slavery developed in an atmosphere that encouraged public expression. Emerson delivered an antislavery address in Concord in November of 1837, in response to the murder of abolitionist publisher Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois. Focusing as much on the right of free speech as on the wrong of slavery, the speech disappointed those who wanted a stronger statement from him. Between 1837 and 1844, Emerson was moved by the unfolding of events that, in their threat to the individual and to conscience, could not be ignored. By 1844, the annexation of Texas was imminent. Emerson was disgusted with the failure of government and political leaders like Daniel Webster to stop the spread of slavery. When Concord abolitionist Mary Merrick Brooks asked him to speak at the Ladies’ Antislavery Society celebration of the anniversary of emancipation in the British West Indies, he agreed. On August 1, 1844, in the Court House on Monument Square, he delivered a powerful speech that placed him among effective public supporters of abolition. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 further fueled Emerson’s antislavery activism. In the 1850s, he spoke at meetings around the country, opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and supported radical abolitionist John Brown. Although he had hesitated in throwing his energies into the cause, he ultimately served in Concord and beyond as the voice of social conscience. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1838 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Concord Emerson Native Americans https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/27c4a970e4d3f68d921a4fffc13cf29a.jpeg e9a96d277eac34d142399c2722536432 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Address on the Anniversary of Emancipation in the British West Indies Subject The topic of the resource Abolition Description An account of the resource This, Emerson’s first powerful attack on slavery, was delivered at the request of radical abolitionist Mary Merrick Brooks, wife of Concord lawyer Nathan Brooks. Following initial delivery of the address, Emerson—now a recognized antislavery advocate—was asked several times to reread it at abolition gatherings. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1844 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Abolition Concord Emerson https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/d676142b33ff25bb0bb5021c787f451f.jpeg af0dc9f4c63666727c60038582497e76 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Address in Concord on the Fugitive Slave Law Subject The topic of the resource Fugitive Slave Law Description An account of the resource The addition of territory through war with Mexico (1846-1848) inflamed slavery/antislavery tensions, resulting in the Compromise of 1850, which was an attempt to delay impending national crisis. By the Compromise, California was admitted as a free state, the territories of New Mexico and Utah would decide the slavery question for themselves upon admission to the Union, the boundary between Texas and New Mexico was established, and the slave trade was abolished in Washington, D.C. The Compromise of 1850 also included the Fugitive Slave Law, which required the return of runaway slaves to their owners. Many Northerners were furious over and unwilling to obey the Fugitive Slave Law. Emerson was outraged by the Fugitive Slave Law and by early attempts to enforce it. His journal and letters after its passage were full of anger. He seethed, for example, in one entry in 1851, “And this filthy enactment was made in the 19th Century, by people who could read & write. I will not obey it, by God.” Edward Waldo Emerson wrote in Emerson in Concord of his father’s preoccupation with the detested law: “He woke in the mornings with a weight upon him … When his children told him that the subject given out for their next school composition was, The Building of a House, he said, ‘You must be sure to say that no house nowadays is perfect without having a nook where a fugitive slave can be safely hidden away.’ ” Edward recalled, too, that his father’s rage was channeled into legal research: “The national disgrace took Mr. Emerson’s mind from poetry and philosophy, and almost made him for a time a student of law and an advocate. He eagerly sought and welcomed all principles in law-books, or broad rulings of great jurists, that Right lay behind Statute to guide its application and that immoral laws are void.” On April 26, 1851, thirty-five of Emerson’s Concord townsmen signed a letter asking him publicly to present his views on the law. On May 3rd, he delivered an impassioned speech –his first of several in reaction to the Fugitive Slave Law. In the address, Emerson openly advocated breaking the law on the grounds that an immoral law carried no authority. (The year before, Henry Thoreau had offered a similar view in his “Resistance to Civil Government,” now known as “Civil Disobedience.”) The speech was well-received by the antislavery community. Although under normal circumstances not much inclined to political activism, Emerson repeated the speech a number of times in various Middlesex locations to support the campaign to elect Free Soil candidate John G. Palfrey to the United States Congress. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1851 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Abolition Emerson Fugitive Slave Law