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