L EN G OUGEON Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty In August of 1844, Ralph Waldo Emerson committed himself publicly to the abolition of slavery in America. In a major address titled “Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies,” he celebrated the tenth anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. Emerson was hopeful that a similar development would eventually occur in America. In his address, he presented a detailed history of the events that led to West Indian emancipation. As Emerson noted, Great Britain’s decision to abolish slavery throughout its vast empire had come about as the direct result of a persistent grass-roots movement led by Thomas Clarkson and supported in Parliament by William Wilberforce. 1 The British government at the time was technically a Constitutional Monarchy, but historical forces were moving it in the direction of representative democracy. The franchise had been expanded through the Reform Act of 1832 and efforts like the Chartist Movement (1838-1848) pushed for further reforms, including universal male suffrage. During this period, the Parliament was not oblivious to the will of the people. In his abolition address, which was informed in part by his reading of Clarkson’s History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade (1808), Emerson recounts how the British populace “was roused to enthusiasm” by Clarkson’s campaign and the resulting debates in Parliament. As a result of these efforts, “three hundred thousand persons in Britain pledged themselves to abstain from all articles of island produce.” The result was that “the planters were obliged to give way” and a bill abolishing the slave trade was passed in 1807 (AW 13). Unfortunately, the suffering of slaves in the British Empire continued despite this measure. As Emerson goes on to note, “These outrages rekindled the flame of British indignation” and again, the common people spoke out. “Petitions poured into Parliament; a million persons signed their names to these” and in 1833 a bill providing for emancipation of slaves throughout the empire was debated and passed (AW 14). For Emerson, Clarkson’s campaign was further evidence of the irresistible progress of liberty in a democratic society. He believed that freedom 1 For Emerson’s historic 1844 speech, see Emerson’s Antislavery Writings, 7-38. For a discussion of the circumstances leading to Emerson’s commitment to the antislavery cause at this time, see Gougeon, “Emerson’s Antislavery Conversion.” 180 L EN G OUGEON is an innate human imperative. Therefore, in a state where citizens are able to express their wishes through their government, ever greater degrees of liberty will result. In his address, Emerson compared England and America. “[I]n the last few days that my attention has been occupied with this history [of British emancipation]” he noted, “I have not been able to read a page of it without the most painful comparisons. Whilst I have read of England, I have thought of New England. Whilst I have meditated in my solitary walks on the magnanimity of the English Bench and Senate, reaching out the benefit of the law to the most helpless citizen in her world-wide realm, I have found myself oppressed by other thoughts” (AW 23). Those “other thoughts” included the realization that America had yet to follow the magnanimous example of the mother country. While he expressed his belief, reinforced by the British example, that in a democracy, “What the masses of men wish done, will be done,” and that “government exists to defend the weak and the poor and the injured party” (AW 26, 28), so far that was not the case in America. The national government had failed to meet this primary obligation. The reason for this anomaly, as Emerson saw it, was that the representatives of the Free States allowed themselves to be cowed and intimidated by the more aggressive representatives of the Slave States. Additionally, the political clout of the Southerners had been enhanced over the years by the effects of the three-fifths clause of the Constitution. This provision allowed Southerners to include three-fifths of the slave population when calculating their representation in Congress. 2 The result of this “three-fifths compromise” over the decades following ratification of the Constitution was that Southern representatives came to office in larger numbers, promoting policies and laws that were actually dictated by a relatively small number of people. To many Northerners, the ostensibly democratic South was actually ruled by an oligarchy. Indeed, John Gorham Palfrey (a man for whom Emerson would actively campaign when he ran for Congress on the Free Soil ticket in 1851) made this very argument. Writing in the Boston Whig in 1846, Palfrey held that “the so-called free people, both of the free and of the slave States, amounting to some eighteen millions in number, are subjects of an oligarchy of about one hundred thousand owners of men. There are perhaps three hundred thousand slaveholders in the country,” he noted. “Allowing for minors and women, probably not far from one-third the number are voters, and they administer our 2 According to this provision, “Representatives … shall be apportioned among the Several States … according to their respective Numbers which shall be determined by adding the whole Number of free Persons … and … three fifths of all other Persons.” The “other Persons” were slaves (Article 1, Section 2). Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 181 affairs.” 3 As a result of this influence, the Federal government had become, in the eyes of many Northerners, the instrument of Southern will. A compelling example of this influence came in 1845 when, despite the protests of abolitionists and many others in the Free States, Texas was annexed and added to the ranks of the Slave States, further enhancing their influence. War with Mexico soon followed. By 1847 it was clear that the inevitable American victory in the conflict would soon add yet more new territories, all potentially Slave States. The Federal government, in Emerson’s view, was dominated by a corrupt and tyrannical minority. As he noted in his journal, “The name of Washington city in the newspapers is every day of blacker shade. All the news from that quarter being of a sadder type, more malignant. It seems to be settled that no act of honor or benevolence or justice is to be expected from the American Government, but only this, that they will be as wicked as they dare” (JMN 10: 29). In response to his depression and anger at these developments, Emerson decided to get away for awhile. As he wrote in his journal, “In this emergency, one [friend] advises Europe, & especially England. If I followed my own advices … I should sooner go toward Canada. I should withdraw myself for a time from all domestic & accustomed relations & command an absolute leisure with books - for a time” (JMN 10: 29). As it turned out, his choice was England. Emerson departed on 5 October 1847 and would remain in England, lecturing, visiting with friends, and touring, until his return in July of 1848. While his purpose was to take his mind off of political affairs in America, the turmoil in England made that almost impossible. Demonstrations by the Chartists, and the various revolutions that swept the rest of Europe in 1848, especially that in France, would have a profound effect on his thinking about social reform and the future of American democracy. While in England, Emerson attended sessions of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, as well as meetings of the radical Chartists. The Chartist Movement was the world’s first independent movement for the rights of the working class. The group had been formed in 1838 and their “People’s Charter” called for six specific reforms: voting by ballot, universal male suffrage, annual Parliaments, equal electoral districts, no property qualifications for members of Parliament, and payment of members. During Emerson’s stay in England, the Chartists were bolstered by news of the social uprisings in other European countries where a variety of reforms were demanded, including greater representation of the working class in 3 Papers on the Slave Power: First Published in the Boston Whig, 1846, pamphlet in the Birney Anti-Slavery Collection, Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University. For further information on the effects of the three-fifths clause see, Garry Wills, “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power (Houghton Mifflin, 2003). 182 L EN G OUGEON government. Emerson attended a Chartist gathering on 9 March 1848, called to celebrate recent events in France. During this volatile period, there were Chartist demonstrations in London almost every day. Emerson was moved by this agitation and felt that the scholars of the day should support the demand for greater liberty. He observed in his journal, “I fancied, when I heard that the times were anxious & political, that there is to be a Chartist revolution on Monday next, and an Irish revolution in the following week, that the right scholar would feel, - now was the hour to test his genius. His kingdom is at once over & under these perturbed regions. Let him produce its Charter now, & try whether it cannot win a hearing, & make felt its infinite superiority today, even today” (JMN 10: 310-11). Despite this initial enthusiasm, when the demonstrations came to little more than the breaking of shop windows and the stealing of goods, Emerson disapproved (Reynolds, Revolutions, 28). Perhaps drawn by the dramatic events taking place there, Emerson traveled to Paris in early May 1848. During his stay he visited the Louvre, listened to lectures at the Sorbonne, and attended plays. In addition to these more mundane pastimes, Emerson also observed meetings of the National Assembly and attended various radical gatherings at such places as the Free Trade Club and the Barbes Club. What he heard had a profound effect on his social consciousness (Reynolds, Revolutions, 33ff.). In a long letter to his wife, Lidian, Emerson described the excitement of the place, where he witnessed “streets full of bayonets, and the furious driving of the horses dragging cannon towards the National Assembly,” as an attempted coup d’etat failed to gain popular support. He also noted, though I have been to many places I find the clubs the most interesting - the men are in terrible earnest. The fire & fury of the people, when they are interrupted or thwarted, are inconceivable to New England. The costumes are formidable. All France is bearded like goats & lions, then most of Paris is in some kind of uniform red sash, red cap, blouse perhaps bound by red sash, brass helmet, & sword, and every body suppose to have a pistol in his pocket. But the deep sincerity of the speakers who are agitating social not political questions, and who are studying how to secure a fair share of bread to every man, and to get the God’s justice done through the land, is very good to hear. (L 4: 73-74) These French demonstrations for the rights of the workingman, especially those that involved the use of violent force in the pursuit of social justice, had a significant impact on Emerson. They gave him a new way of viewing the goals of liberal democracy and how they might best be reached. In his journal he notes, “I have been exaggerating the English merits all winter, & disparaging the French. Now I am correcting my judgment of both, & the French have risen very fast” (JMN 10: 327). When he returned to England, Emerson was clearly more sensitive to the enormous class disparity there, a Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 183 sharp contrast to his New England environment where democracy ruled. In his journal he recorded the following: In England, every man is a castle. When I get into our first class cars on the Fitchburg Road, & see sweltering men in their shirt sleeves take their seats with some well drest men & women, & see the very little difference of level that is between them all, and then imagine the astonishment that would strike the polished inmates of English first class carriages, if such masters should enter & sit beside them, I see that it is not fit to tell Englishmen that America is like England… . England is the Paradise of the first class; it is essentially aristocratic… . In England, every man you meet is some man’s son; in America, he may be some man’s father. (JMN 10: 329). For the first time, it seems, Emerson’s eyes had been opened to the fact that the difference between liberty in Old England and liberty in New England was vast. This insight led him to look upon the Chartists and their movement with greater sympathy. He felt a new appreciation for their cause. He also became highly critical of the British literary class. For the most part, these elite intellectuals refused to support the lowly Chartists, despite the fact that they thought of themselves as progressive, liberal thinkers: The writers are bold & democratic. The moment revolution comes, are they Chartist & Montagnards? No, but they talk & sit with the rich, & sympathize with them. Should they go with the Chartist? Alas they cannot: These have such gross & bloody chiefs to mislead them, and are so full of hatred & murder, that the scholar recoils; - and joins the rich. That he should not do. He should accept as necessary the position of armed neutrality abhorring the crimes of the Chartist, yet more abhorring the oppression & hopeless selfishness of the rich, &, still writing the truth, say, the time will come then these poor enfans perdus of revolution will have instructed their party, if only by their fate, & wiser counsels will prevail, & the music & the dance of liberty will take me in also. Then I shall not have forfeited my right to speak & act for the Movement party. Shame to the fop of philosophy who suffers a little vulgarity of speech & of character to hide from him the true current of Tendency, & who abandons his true position of being priest & poet of those impious & unpoetic doers of God’s work. (JMN 10: 325-26) The increasingly personal tone of the latter part of this passage suggests that Emerson was very likely thinking of himself and his relationship with another group of unwashed reformers, namely, the American abolitionists whose cause he had embraced, with some reservations, in 1844. 4 When Emerson returned to America, he would take the example of the Chartists and the French radicals with him. 4 For more information about Emerson’s early reservations regarding abolitionism and its proponents see, Gougeon, Virtue’s Hero, 54-56. 184 L EN G OUGEON Upon returning home in July of 1848, Emerson resumed his role as lecturer - and social reformer - with renewed zeal and confidence. When called upon by William Lloyd Garrison (the nation’s most prominent antislavery activist) to speak once again at an abolitionist rally celebrating Emancipation in the British West Indies, he accepted. The gathering was held on 3 August 1849 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and an estimated five thousand abolition supporters attended (Gougeon, Virtue’s Hero, 135). Emerson’s mood was optimistic and his message upbeat. Undoubtedly buoyed by events in Europe the previous year, he felt that the spirit of liberty was on the march and that America, too, would soon feel its effects. “The force of history is one everywhere,” he told the crowd. “Revolutions, as we say, never move backwards.” He believed that the desire for liberty and justice was an irresistible force in the hearts of all men. He also realized that it is usually those at the bottom of the social ladder who are most sensitive to its demands. As Emerson well knew, American abolitionists, like the Chartists, were largely working-class people who were moved by a common desire to rectify a great moral wrong. The presence on this particular occasion of five thousand activists (undoubtedly the largest gathering that he had ever addressed to that point) must have reinforced his optimistic assumption that the movement was gaining momentum. “It should be praise enough for our friends who have carried forward this great work,” he told them, “friends to whom it seems to me always, the country is more and more indebted, that it is the glory of these preachers of freedom that they have strengthened the moral sense, that they have anticipated this triumph which I look upon as inevitable, and which it is not in man to retard” (AW 48, 49). Unfortunately, the optimism and enthusiasm that Emerson felt in August of 1849 would be short-lived. Barely a year passed before the U.S. Congress, once again bowing to the demands of Southern slave owners, passed the Fugitive Slave Law. It was one in a series of five legislative initiatives enacted into law at this time. They were designed to resolve the growing tensions between North and South that had arisen in the aftermath of the Mexican War. These tensions were exacerbated by the persistent agitation of the slavery issue in the North. Collectively, the measures came to be known as the “Compromise of 1850.” The Fugitive Slave Law was the most controversial by far. The law allowed Southern agents to enter Free States in order to seize fugitive slaves who had taken refuge there. In effect, the law reinstated an original Constitutional provision requiring that any “person held to Service or Labour in one State … escaping into another … shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due” (Article 4, Section 2). This provision (couched in what Emerson called “lavender language” deliberately designed to avoid the use of the word “slave”) had been effectively nullified in the decades following ratification by popular Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 185 resistance in the Free States. Additionally, many of these, including Massachusetts, had passed “Personal Liberty Laws” specifically designed to protect runaway slaves. These laws were enacted largely in response to a majority opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court rendered by Justice Joseph Story in a case known as Prigg v. PA (1842). In his opinion, Story declared that the return of slaves was a federal, not a state, responsibility, thus making it possible for the states to actually protect runaway slaves. One of the most important features of the 1850 Act, therefore, was to provide for federal officers and means to enforce the law. The 1793 Fugitive Slave Law, which was an expansion of the original Constitutional clause, had no such provision. The personal liberty laws passed by various free states would have had little effect without Story’s decision. The federal enforcement provisions of the 1850 Act undercut those personal liberty laws. 5 Emerson was well aware of this sad history. It seemed to him to be further evidence of the contraction of liberty in America under the oppression of the slave oligarchy. In his address, “The Fugitive Slave Law” (1854) he would note that “There was a fugitive slave law, but it had become, or was fast becoming, a dead letter; and, by the genius and laws of Massachusetts inoperative. The new Bill made it operative; required me to hunt slaves; and it found citizens in Massachusetts willing to act as judges and captors. Moreover, it disclosed the secret to the new times; that slavery was no longer mendicant, but was become aggressive and dangerous” (AW 80). Emerson was shocked and appalled by the passage of this law with the tacit co-operation of the representatives of the Free States, including Massachusetts’s own Senator Daniel Webster. It must have seemed to him that the democratic “moral force” that had propelled the evolution of reform up to this point had been effectively negated by the political power of the Slave States. In response, Emerson threw himself into a personal campaign of resistance. In his journal he wondered how such a “filthy enactment” could have been “made in the 19 th century, by people who could read & write.” Like other people of conscience in the North, he vowed; “I will not obey it, by God” (JMN 11: 412). In a letter to his abolitionist friends, published in The Liberator on 18 April 1851, Emerson openly advocated civil disobedience, demanding resistance to the law “in every manner, singly or socially, in private and in public, by voice and by pen - and, first of all, by substantial help and hospitality to the slave, and defending him against his hunters” (AW 51). Subsequently, despite the threat of fine, imprisonment, and possible violence, he and a number of Concord neighbors agreed to provide aid and shelter to any runaway slave who should appear at their doors (Richard- 5 I am indebted to Prof. Brook Thomas for bringing this important feature of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law to my attention. 186 L EN G OUGEON son, 496). Emerson’s open defiance of the law and his personal commitment to protecting runaway slaves from their pursuers, indicate a significant evolutionary step in his approach to social reform. Physical resistance had now replaced moral suasion as the instrument of choice. His recent experience in London and Paris was undoubtedly a factor. Also, during this time he and other Transcendentalists were most certainly influenced by the example of Margaret Fuller. Fuller had been sent to Europe in 1846 as the foreign correspondent for Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. She ended up in Italy at the beginning of the revolution there. Fuller soon fell in love with Marchese Ossoli, an Italian revolutionary, and joined the republican cause. She suffered through the June 1849 siege and bombardment of Rome by French armies sent there to restore the Pope to his secular throne (Fuller, 2). Not surprisingly, her dispatches to New York were filled with praise for the revolutionaries. In describing the scenes of violence and carnage wrought by the French attack, she notes in one dispatch that, “wounds and assaults only fire more the courage of [Rome’s] defenders. They feel the justice of their cause, and the peculiar iniquity of this aggression. In proportion as there seems little aid to be hoped from man they seem to claim it from God. The noblest sentiments are heard from every lip, and, thus far, their acts amply correspond.” The cry that Fuller heard from the Italian revolutionaries could not help but resonate in the hearts of those seeking justice for African-American slaves. “We want always one thing,” they cried, “we want liberty” (Fuller, 299), and they were willing to die for it. 6 Unfortunately, the revolution was eventually crushed and Fuller, along with her husband and their infant child, set about to return to the United States. Sadly, all three drowned when their ship wrecked in a storm off of Fire Island, N.Y., 19 July 1850. Her revolutionary example, however, would not be forgotten. In his many antislavery speeches, as well as other writings throughout the 1850s, a time of increasingly violent clashes between pro and antislavery factions, Emerson was frequently reminded of his experiences in England and the plight of the Chartists. 7 He came to associate the influence of British conservatism with American slavery. Thus, in his second address attacking the Fugitive Slave Law in 1854, Emerson alludes to Great Britain’s failure to support the various liberal revolutions of 1848. “The Anglo-Saxon race is proud and strong but selfish,” he asserts. “They believe only in Anglo- Saxons. Greece found it deaf, Poland found it so, Italy found it so, Hungry found is so. England goes for trade, not for liberty; goes against Greece, 6 For a detailed and insightful discussion of this issue see, Larry J. Reynolds, “Religious Violence: The Roman Republic and Margaret Fuller’s Revolutionary Example.” 7 The Chartist Movement ended with a failed demonstration in London in April of 1848. Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 187 against Hungary; against Schleswig-Holstein: against the French Republic whilst it was yet a republic.” In Emerson’s view, a similar moral apathy and narrow self-interest infects the conservative property class in America, especially in the South. “And the like torpor exists here,” he notes, “throughout the active classes on the subject of domestic slavery and its appalling aggressions” (AW 86). The following year, in his “Lecture on Slavery,” Emerson again attacked the “Party of Property” in America for resisting “every progressive step.” They “do not wish to touch the Constitution. They wish their age should be absolutely like the last one.” Like their counterparts in England where they find their model, this conservative American aristocracy is wedded to the preservation of their own comfort and privilege. By contrast, the progressives insist that “Democracy stand[s] really for the good of the many… of the poor… for the elevation of entire humanity” and most of all for “relieving this country of the pest of slavery” (AW 95). Throughout the address, Emerson argues that, “the theory of our government is Liberty.” Therefore, the goal of American democracy should always be to insure “to each man the largest liberty compatible with the liberty of every other man… . That is the meaning of our national pride.” He further advises that in America, “No citizen will go wrong who on every question leans to the side of general liberty.” Obviously, this principle is absolutely antithetical to the gross abomination of human slavery. Significantly, Emerson came to realize at this time that in order to accomplish reform in a democracy, the masses must be engaged. Hence, despite his previous insistence on the importance of selfreliance, he now asserts “It is so delicious to act with great masses to great aims. For instance the summary or gradual abolition of slavery” (AW 104, 105). 8 Such a commitment is the natural, liberal and democratic counterforce to the “Anglo-Saxon selfishness” that he had noted in his earlier address. Some of these same opinions are expressed in the one work that was based primarily upon Emerson’s European experience, English Traits (1856). In this study, which offers an extended treatment of the considerable strengths and weaknesses of English character, Emerson emphasizes the cultural difference between England and America. This difference is largely a matter 8 Emerson clearly appreciated the power of the masses in a democracy, and he sought to activate and direct that energy by appealing to the sense of justice inherent in collective humanity, Thus, Hans von Rautenfeld argues that Emerson functioned throughout his career as a representative of the collective values of American democracy. As he notes, “It is the quality of being ‘plastic and permeable to principles’ and therefore representative of something common that is the source of political authority and power in Emerson’s thought” (189). Von Rautenfeld’s argument succeeds, however, only if it is limited to the liberal values of the democratic North. It is clearly not applicable where the antithetical values of the slaveholding South are concerned. 188 L EN G OUGEON of the progress of democracy in each society and the presence or absence of a rigid class structure. “The English dislike the American structure of society,” he points out, “whilst yet trade, mills, public education, and chartism are doing what they can to create in England the same social condition.” Additionally, despite the absence of a “ruling class,” America has prospered, a fact that makes many upper-class Englishmen uncomfortable. “America is the paradise of the economists; is the favorable exception invariably quoted to the rules of ruin; but when he speaks directly of the American, the islander forgets his philosophy, and remembers his disparaging anecdotes” (CW 5: 85). Emerson further observes that in England the upper class maintains a “monopoly of political power,” not unlike the Southern slave holder. The result is that the privileged live in “the paradises of the nobles, where the live-long repose and refinement are heightened by the contrast with the roar of industry and necessity, out of which [they] have stepped aside” (CW 5: 103). In England, as in the American South, the common man (or slave) labors while the privileged indulge themselves with the comforts of leisure and prosperity. Despite such inequality, however, Emerson does credit the British for promoting, within limits, the principles of liberty by abolishing the grossest forms of exploitation. Thus, while “the foreign policy of England, though ambitious and lavish of money, has not often been generous or just… [s]ome public regards they have. They have abolished slavery in the West Indies and put an end to human sacrifices in the East.” The British have also promoted global free trade and all of the material and cultural benefits that accrue from it, a policy that Emerson traces back to the ultimate source of British liberty, the Magna Charta (CW 5: 170). It is clear from his comments throughout English Traits that Emerson saw England’s example as both a help and a hindrance to the further development of liberty in America. While a nascent form of liberal democracy was the rule in the Free States, a conservative oligarchy ruled in the Slave States. Both were strongly influenced by different aspects of the British model. Despite the passage of years, Emerson never forgot the vivid contrast between rich and poor that he witnessed in England in the 1840s. When the Atlantic Monthly was established in 1857 as the voice of American progressivism in literature, art, science, and politics, Emerson contributed an essay and three poems to the first issue. One of the poems was “The Chartist’s Complaint,” a piece that he had first drafted during his stay in England (Howe, 24). 9 In the poem, Emerson makes explicit the painful and hypocritical nature of the division of classes in this presumably free and democratic nation. 9 The poem can be found in W 9: 232. The first draft can be found in JMN 10: 49. Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 189 DAY ! hast thou two faces, Making one place two places? One, by humble farmer seen, Chill and wet, unlighted, mean, Useful only, triste and damp, Serving for a laborer’s lamp? Have the same mists another side, To be the appanage of pride, Gracing the rich man’s wood and lake, His park where amber mornings break, And treacherously bright to show His planted isle where roses glow? The outbreak of the American Civil War and the British reaction would crystallize Emerson’s opinion of the limitations of British liberty. During this time of national crisis, it soon became clear to him that Great Britain was dominated by the conservative voices of the privileged elite and that the future of democracy and liberal government, if it was to have a future, would be determined by the outcome of the war. When Abraham Lincoln was elected President in November of 1860 on a Republication platform that called for the containment of slavery, he failed to receive a single electoral vote from the South. Shortly thereafter, several Southern states declared that they were seceding from the Union and forming a new Confederacy. The firing on Fort Sumter in April of 1861 merely confirmed that the conflict that had been simmering for ten years was now in the open. Emerson was elated. In one of his first lectures following the firing on Fort Sumter, a lecture which he appropriately titled “Civilization at a Pinch,” he declared that the conflict was inevitable and had been ongoing, albeit covertly, for some time. “It was war then, &it is war now,” he asserted, “but declared war is vastly safer than war undeclared.” 10 One of the most critical issues for the Union from the outset of the Civil War was its relationship with Great Britain. Although initially surprised by the outbreak of hostilities, many Britons of the upper class maintained that secession was a natural development of American affairs that should be accepted peacefully by the North. These conservatives considered American democracy, in the words of one historian, “a defective form of government which naturally deteriorated into anarchy and despotism.” The present struggle seemed for many to confirm that (Bellows, 509). Also, for British nationalists the breakup of the American union was not totally unwelcome because it would serve to curtail the rapid growth of American world power, which was seen by many as threatening. Many prominent British statesmen, intellectuals, and writers shared these views. It has been noted 10 23 April 1861. Ms. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Quoted with permission. 190 L EN G OUGEON that in England “widespread acceptance of secession by political commentators led to a general antinorthern attitude.” When Lincoln expressed his determination to preserve the Union at all costs, “Journal articles and political tracts, appealing to middle-and upper-class Britons, doubted the North’s effort could be justified legally, morally, or politically.” Additionally, “the literary ‘sages’ of Victorian England argued in actual defense of slavery, and in so doing expressed another reason that democracy, in their opinion, had brought civil war.” This group included Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, Charles Kingsley, and others (Bellows 513, 520). The British government decided at the outset to stay out of the American conflict. Consequently, on 13 May 1861 the “Queen’s Neutrality Proclamation” was issued. This measure prohibited British participation in the struggle in any form, but it also granted belligerent status to the new Confederacy. This provision of the Proclamation, in most Northern eyes at least, was tantamount to recognition of Confederate independence. It soon became a source of considerable irritation and tension (Crawford 418). Northern concern over British intent heightened when it was revealed that the British Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell, had met with Confederate representatives twice in May before the Proclamation was issued. An already bad situation worsened rapidly when in November the American Captain of the U.S.S. San Jacinto stopped the British steamer Trent on the high seas and removed the Confederate commissioners James M. Mason and John Slidell. This event became known as the “Trent Affair.” There followed, in the words of one historian, “a devastating collapse in Anglo-American understanding” (Crawford 406). New England authors and intellectuals, as well as the general public, responded to these increasingly critical developments with growing hostility towards Great Britain. 11 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow noted the “angry articles in the papers about England” in his private journal on 29 May 1861. Longfellow’s personal view undoubtedly reflected the popular sentiment of the time. “John Bull is not behaving well about this rebellion of ours,” he noted. “He chooses to put Civilization and Barbarism on an equality, and to take sides with neither which is virtually [? ] taking sides with barbarians.” 12 The “barbarians” were the slave holders of the South. James Russell Lowell expressed a similar view publicly in a satirical essay, “The Pickens-and-Stealin’s Rebellion” in the June 1861 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. In his article, Lowell chides the British generally, and the Saturday Review in particular, for their criticisms of American democracy. From Lowell’s perspective, “nearly all the 11 For additional information on how prominent New Englanders responded to the British, see Gougeon, “Emerson’s Circle and the Crisis of the Civil War.” 12 Ms. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Quoted with permission. Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 191 English discussions of the American Crisis… have shown far more of the shop-keeping spirit than of interest in the maintenance of free institutions” (758). It was clear to both Longfellow and Lowell, although perhaps not to the British, that the North occupied the high moral ground in the struggle. This was because the New Englanders saw the war as being against slavery. In fact, however, the officially declared purpose of the war at this point was only to restore the Union as it was, that is, with slavery. Overall, the crisis tended to highlight real and substantive differences between American and British political values. Under its Constitutional Monarchy and Parliamentary system, the real political power in Great Britain remained in the hands of the ruling elite, an oligarchy if you will. This model, of course, resembled closely that of the American South. The North, on the other hand, was committed to a nascent form of liberal democracy that vested power in the people, the “common man.” The struggle developing in America between these two political ideologies resembled a similar struggle in England where the heirs of the Chartists and their liberal supporters continued to press for political reform that included extending the franchise to the workingman. This divide influenced British opinion throughout the war with British liberals supporting the Union cause, and British conservatives (mostly the upper class) tacitly supporting the Confederacy. Most major British writers were in the latter category, just where Emerson had found them in 1848. Views on the war were communicated in various journals published on both sides of the Atlantic, and also through private correspondence. One of the most active trans-Atlantic correspondents of the period was Charles Eliot Norton. A Harvard graduate and member of a prominent Boston family, Norton was a frequent contributor to the Atlantic Monthly and would become joint editor, with James Russell Lowell, of the North American Review in 1864. Norton wrote to John Ruskin following the shocking Union defeat in the first Battle of Bull Run in July of 1861 indicating that the North had learned a hard lesson, but that it would eventually prevail. In response, Ruskin stated that he was pleased by Norton’s hopefulness about the war, but he goes on to say, “It interests me no more than a squabble between black &red ants. It does not matter whether people are free or not, as far as I can see - till - when free they know how to choose a master” (Ruskin-Norton 67). This comment reflects the kind of political elitism that Ruskin shared with other major British writers. Some years before the war, Thomas Carlyle, Emerson’s friend and long-time correspondent, expressed his view that the rule of nations was best left to the gifted elite and, correspondingly, that certain races, because of their hopeless inferiority, had no part to play in society other than to serve. Thus, while Emerson had celebrated emancipation in the British West Indies in 1844 as a great humanistic triumph in the continuing evolution of the principle of 192 L EN G OUGEON human liberty, Carlyle had another view. In his essay “The Negro Question,” published in an 1849 issue of Fraser’s Magazine, Carlyle attacked the British policy of emancipation in the West Indies as an unfortunate decision that had disastrous economic consequences in both the West Indies and England. In Carlyle’s mind, blacks were grossly inferior to whites and must be subject to benevolent, paternalistic authority in order to function productively. His Latter-Day Pamphlets, published in 1850, attacked liberal democracy as an impossible ideology because it failed to recognize that some men are born to govern and others are born to serve. These sentiments are also found in Carlyle’s works of the late 1850s. One critic has observed that “Carlyle lived out the decade of the fifties in the glow of his righteousness. He devoted himself to his magnum opus, Frederick the Great, the ‘Last of the Kings,’ the first two volumes of which appeared in 1858. Frederick became the Bible of the Hohenzollerns, while Latter-Day Pamphlets provided an argument for conservatism everywhere” (Straka 41). Given these views, it is not surprising that Carlyle’s writings were popular in the American South. In 1850 “The Negro Question” was reprinted in De Bow’s Review under the title “Carlyle on West Indian Emancipation.” That same journal published a very positive review of Frederick the Great in 1860, which asserted that “a master race necessarily improves upon itself, and practices as severe a drill as it subjects its inferiors to.” As a result, the reviewer insists, Southern society has produced a superior specimen of humanity who are hardworking and who “have no taste for that prurient love of licentious liberty which has depraved and demoralized free society” (qtd. in Straka 49-50.) Not surprisingly, like his conservative British cohorts, Carlyle saw the American conflict as a doomed effort to “make two men equal when the universe has determined that they are not” (Conway 908-9). Like Carlyle and Ruskin, Matthew Arnold also saw the American Civil War as evidence of the ultimate failure of liberal democracy as a political ideology. In “The Popular Education of France” (May 1861) Arnold states, What is now passing in the United States of America is full of instruction for us. I hear numberless English lamenting the disruption of the American Union; they esteem it a triumph for the enemies of all freedom, as discouragement for the principles of self-government, as they have been long understood and put in practice in this country as well as in America. I, on the contrary, esteem it a great and timely lesson to the over-individualism of the English character. We in England have had, in our great aristocratical and ecclesiastical institutions, a principle of cohesion and unity which the Americans had not; they gave the tone to the nation, and the nation took it from them; self-government here was quite a different thing from self-government there. In a passage that would be especially infuriating to high-minded New Englanders, Arnold also observed in this essay that “the capital misfortune of Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 193 the American people [is] that it is a people which has had to grow up without ideals” (Democratic Education 385, 160). In another work on public education titled “A French Eton,” portions of which appeared in Macmillan’s Magazine in September 1863 (and then later in book form), Arnold provides further insight into British attitudes at the time. He indicates that many Englishmen are pleased to witness the present turmoil in America because “there existed in the most impartial and thoughtful minds a profound dissatisfaction with the spirit and tendencies of the old American Union, a strong aversion to their unchecked triumph, a sincere wish for the disciplining and correcting of them.” For Arnold, Americans are undisciplined and unsophisticated, the victims of their own unchecked liberty. As a result, the American Union is “full of rawness, hardness, and imperfection … greatly needing to be liberalized, enlarged, and ennobled, before it could with advantage be suffered to assert itself absolutely. All the energy and success in the world could not have made the United States admirable so long as their spirit had this imperfection” (319). He later sent a copy of this work to Emerson with a note that he hoped the bard would “not be offended” by what he said about America (L 5: 361-62). Arnold and his fellow literati would soon be apprised of Emerson’s view of the matter. In some instances British intellectuals and writers sympathized privately with the Southern cause while they maintained a public silence on the war. This, however, was interpreted by many New Englanders as tantamount to public support of the enemy. Such was the case with Alfred Lord Tennyson, the Poet Laureate and one of the most influential artistic voices in England at the time. In commenting to a correspondent on a recent speech by Charles Sumner in which the Massachusetts Senator condemned the Southerners as “traitors,” Tennyson maintained the technical legality of secession and added, “I am disappointed nay disgusted with the Northerners ever yelling and mouthing against their old European mother - who is now at least - the most unaggressive power in the Universe” (2: 318-19). Not surprisingly, those British writers, intellectuals, and political figures who were identified with the Liberal or “Radical” cause in England sympathized openly with the Union, proving once again that “all politics is local.” Notable among these were John Stuart Mill, Arthur Hugh Clough, Elizabeth Gaskell, Aubrey De Vere, John Elliot Cairnes, Goldwin Smith, and others. These individuals were well aware of the fact that the educated and aristocratic upper ranks of British society saw the American example of liberal democracy as a threat. Goldwin Smith, for example, who held a chair in history at Oxford University, wrote Charles Eliot Norton in November 1863 that “the aristocracy are against you almost to a man. The great capitalists are against you, and they have done a good deal to give a wrong turn 194 L EN G OUGEON to the City and to the London Press. The clergy of the Establishment are against you, as a Commonwealth founded on liberty of conscience.” He also notes that “a good many of the middle class are against you” because they pander to the aristocracy. 13 In a later letter he indicates that he stands “nearly alone among people of my own class” in supporting the Union cause and adds, “we are not so strong as we ought to be among the literary class or in the more powerful part of the Press.’” 14 Like others, Emerson was very much aware of the position of British intellectuals and the British press at the outset of the war, and he was greatly disturbed by it. In an address to the students at Tufts College, “Celebration of the Intellect” (June 1861), he noted rather caustically that “The English newspapers and some writers of reputation disparage America. Meantime,” he observes, “I note that the British people are emigrating hither by thousands which is a very sincere, and apt to be a very seriously considered expression of opinion. The immigration into America of British … is the eulogy of America by the most competent and sincere arbiters” (LL 2: 243). For Emerson, the common people, by “voting with their feet,” tell a different and more trustworthy story than the elite such as Arnold. From the outset, Emerson saw the Civil War as an opportunity to reform America by destroying slavery and extending the principle of equal rights to all Americans. He was especially aware of the importance of granting the franchise to all Freedmen in order to protect their hard-won liberty and insure their civil rights. Emancipation alone was not enough. This was, indeed, a radical position at the time, even among abolitionists. 15 In his lec- 13 Goldwin Smith to Charles Eliot Norton, 7 November 1863. Ms. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Quoted with permission. 14 Goldwin Smith to Charles Eliot Norton, 26 May 1864. Ms. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Quoted with permission. Smith remarked when addressing a Boston audience during a visit to New England in 1864, “I came to America to see and hear, not to lecture. But when I was invited by the Boston ‘Fraternity’ to lecture in their course, and permitted to take the relations between England and America as my subject, I did not feel at liberty to decline the invitation. England is my country. To America, though an alien by birth, I am, as an English Liberal, no alien in heart. I deeply share the desire of all my political friends in England and of the leaders of my party to banish ill-feeling and promote good-will between the two kindred nations. […] We are united by blood. We are united by a common allegiance to the cause of freedom.” (749). The Atlantic Monthly, “England and America,” Dec. 1864. 15 In a lecture titled “Perpetual Forces” (Nov. 1862), Emerson described his vision of the new America that he believed would eventually emerge from this crisis. It is a decidedly liberal one. When the Constitution is re-written, Emerson felt, it will be necessary to “Leave slavery out. Nothing satisfies all men but justice, let us have that, and let us stifle our prejudices against commonsense and humanity, and agree that every man shall have what he honestly earns, and, if he is a sane and innocent man, have an equal vote in the state, and a fair chance in society” (LL 2: 30). The notion of universal Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 195 ture “American Civilization,” which would later appear under the same title in the Atlantic Monthly (April 1862), Emerson offered an eloquent plea for emancipation (which was not as of yet a Union goal) as the first step in the process of moral and political reform. “Civilization depends on morality,” he states. “Everything good in man leans on what is higher” (504). Morality is the basis of all civilization, and because of this “Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue” (509). Emerson would reinforce his argument yet further in his “Moral Forces” lecture, which was delivered at the Parker Fraternity in Boston on the thirteenth of April. In this address, Emerson reminded his audience that from a moral standpoint the Union cause was the cause of all humanity. He alludes to the recent abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia (as a result of Lincoln’s initiative) as proof that “[t]hings point in the right way,” and that “[t]he nation is every day more equal to the crisis.” Other positive developments were occurring spontaneously. “An army of slaves is already escaped from the ‘Service to which they were held,’ in the lavender phrase of the law,” and the North has “begun to instruct them by sending noble intelligent youths to teach them to read and to think.” The nearly constant criticism of the British elite, Emerson asserts, is merely an indication of their fear of the great liberal energy that is now literally on the march in America. “The very degradation of the leading London journal [the Times] into spite and affected sarcasm is truer homage to the power and destiny of the Union, than the compliments of weaker nations.” Conservative British critics are well aware that “The Genius or Destiny of America is no log or sluggard, but a man incessantly advancing… . The office of America is to liberate, to abolish king-craft, priest-craft, caste, monopoly, to pull down the gallows, to burn up the bloody statute book, [and] to take in the immigrant” (LL 275, 284-5). In Emerson’s eyes, the destruction of slavery was just the beginning of this new, liberal revolution. Emerson saw even a limited declaration of emancipation as a vitally important step since he assumed it would mute overt British criticism and put the Union squarely on the high moral ground as the force of liberty and emancipation that Emerson articulated in this speech was a radical concept. Even Lincoln in his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation had restricted emancipation to those states that remained in rebellion after 1 January 1863. Apparently, Emerson’s concept of equal rights, including universal male suffrage, was more than even some liberals could bear. Following his lecture, a newspaper reported that Emerson’s presentation was “a re-hash of his Abolition sophistry” and noted specifically that “When he argued in favor of forcible emancipation, a few old ladies and gentlemen applauded; but when he insisted that the negro should have ‘an equal chance with the white man,’ even they were indignantly silent” (qtd. in LL 2: 288). 196 L EN G OUGEON justice. Without the Federal government’s official commitment to emancipation, however, the moral question remained ambiguous. Consequently, Emerson began outlining in his journal yet another argument for emancipation. After noting that “all Europe will back France & England” if they recognize the Confederacy, which was a real possibility at the time, he goes on to suggest that “Emancipation makes all this impossible. European govts. dare not interfere for Slavery, as soon as the Union is pronounced for Liberty” (JMN 15: 207). Unfortunately, he was to be greatly disappointed in this assumption. Following the Union’s technical victory at Antietam in September of 1862, Lincoln felt that he could now issue his “Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation,” which stipulated that all slaves in the rebel states would be declared forever free on 1 January 1863. Limited emancipation was now officially a Union goal. Emerson was delighted. He celebrated this long-awaited event in “The Emancipation Proclamation,” a lecture which he delivered in Boston on 12 October. The address was published the following month as “The President’s Proclamation” in the Atlantic Monthly. In his presentation, Emerson outlined clearly the difference between Northern democracy and Southern aristocracy. “In the Southern States,” he notes, “the tenure of land and the local laws, with slavery, give the social system not a democratic but an aristocratic complexion,” which is a reflection of the British model. This aristocratic quality, however, is totally incompatible with the democratic values of American society. Therefore, Emerson asserts, “the aim of the war on our part is indicated by the aim of the President’s Proclamation, namely, to break up the false combination of Southern society, to destroy the piratic feature in it which makes it our enemy only as it is the enemy of the human race, and so allow its reconstruction on a just and healthful basis” (W 11: 324-25). As noted earlier, he also believed that the British would abate their hostility to the Union cause once the slavery issue had been cleared up in order to maintain their posture as the world’s most civilized nation. Unfortunately, responses to the emancipation proclamation in Great Britain were severely negative. Southern sympathies there remained strong, and many of the elite chose to see the declaration as a crass war measure designed to incite the slaves into a bloody “servile insurrection.” The London Times offered severe criticism of the measure and questioned pointedly, “Is the reign of the last President to go out amid horrible massacres of white women and children, to be followed by the extermination of the black race in the South? Is - [the name] Lincoln, … ultimately to be classed among the catalogue of monsters, the wholesale assassins and butchers of their kind” (qtd. in Adams 102). 16 Adding insult 16 It is worth noting that many American conservatives were also unhappy with Lincoln’s stand on emancipation, as well as his other war measures such as suspension Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 197 to injury, the Quarterly Review ran a blatantly pro-Southern article titled “Fort Sumter to Fredericksburg” in April. And in the same month, Fraser’s published an article (perhaps with Emerson’s recent celebration of emancipation in The Atlantic Monthly in mind) titled “American Literature and the Civil War.” The latter article claimed that the poets of the Northern United States “have judged slavery from their own mental and moral standpoint,” thus, the blacks are elevated “in the mind and heart of the poet, to his own plane” (519). Apparently such a radical notion of equality was unthinkable to British conservatives for whom class distinctions were absolute. Emerson’s patience was now near the breaking point. The continuing decline of Anglo-American relations was capped by an event that would rouse him to an untypical anger. The August 1863 issue of Macmillan’s Magazine carried a brief satirical squib by Carlyle entitled “Ilias (Americana) in Nuce” (the American Iliad in a Nutshell), in which “Paul and Peter,” representing the South and the North, attempt to beat each other’s brains out because one “hires servants for life” and the other hires servants “by the month or the day.” The piece clearly expresses Carlyle’s elitist view of things. After all, servants are servants whether you call them slaves of habeas corpus, press censorship, and the use of military tribunals in lieu of civil courts, all of which they saw as attacks on the constitution and civil rights. Emerson did not share these concerns. In his “American Civilization” address in Washington in 1862 he noted that “Government must not be a parish clerk, a justice of the peace. It has, of necessity, in any crisis of the state, the absolute powers of a dictator. The existing administration is entitled to the utmost candor. It is to be thanked for its angelic virtue, compared with any executive experiences with which we have been familiar” (W 11: 302). At first blush, Emerson’s support for the President’s “dictatorial” powers might seem to contradict his concern for the expansion of liberty. If examined closely, however, the opposite proves true. Emerson recognized that the Union was in a deep crisis and that the survival of the democratic principles for which it stood were at stake. Extreme circumstances sometimes justify extreme measures. The principle of “martial law” supports this notion. More importantly, however, Emerson provides a more philosophical defense of his position in “Uses of Great Men,” the introductory essay of Representative Men (1850). In this work he indicates that “Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is upheld by the veracity of good men” and that “the race goes with us on their credit.” These men have a certain power, but the power which they communicate is not theirs. “When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which Plato was debtor” (CW 4: 3,12). It is these “ideas” that serve mankind. At this critical time of civil war, the great ideas represented by Lincoln, those very ideas which are the basis for his moral authority, are the ideals of equality, freedom, and justice. Therefore, to support Lincoln in his effort, even in violation of the Constitution, is to support the moral superiority of a “higher law” over a flawed “lower law” which must eventually be changed. In his journal in 1862 Emerson notes, “I speak the speech of an idealist. I say let the rule be right. If the theory is right, it is not so much matter about the facts. … All our action now is new & unconstitutional, & necessarily so” (JMN 15: 301-02). 198 L EN G OUGEON or not, a view undoubtedly shared by Ruskin, Arnold, and others. This comparison was made explicit just months later in another British journal. While loath to approve the institution of slavery openly, British conservatives often argued that slaves were better off under a paternalistic institution where they could be “guided” to perform useful labor. The same was true of the British workingman. An article titled “Slaves and Labourers,” appearing in the, The Saturday Review (16 January 1864), made this very correlation: In the Southern States, both the wealth and the civilization of the community depend largely on the enforced labour of the negro population. The African works where the white man cannot work except with great danger, and the ease, the tone of confidence, the languid kindliness, and the elegance of Southern manners, where they exist at all, bear manifest traces of having sprung from the influences which large plantations carry with them. In England too, it may be said without any great straining of facts, that society rests on the existence of a vast population born to do mean things, born to perform the rudest labour, and engaged in nothing else from birth to death. England is the government of a minority, resting on the subjection of a majority forced by circumstances to fulfill all the coarser tasks and more repulsive duties of the human race. And in both England and the South, the political system which prevails rests on facts, not on theories. The South says that it is absurd to talk of treating the Negroes as on an equality with the white race, because, as a matter of fact, they are not on an equality. Theoretically it might be delightful if they were, but they are not. Whatever changes the future may bring with it, the African is not at present capable of governing. (72) The writer then proceeds to make his correlation even more explicit: The language currently held in England, when a sweeping Reform Bill is proposed, does not differ widely from this. It is absurd, wise men say, to suppose that the rude British hind can be made fit to vote by giving him a vote. He is not capable of using political power. When an unknown and inconceivable millennium dawns, and he is a well-educated, independent, thriving, moderately-worked, sweet-smelling creature, then he shall have a vote, but until then the British Constitution very sensibly provides that he shall be governed by his betters. Thus the governing classes in England speak, and there is truth and justice in what they say; but a Southerner would not recognize in it any great difference from much that he has heard at home. (72) By this time, most New England intellectuals and literary men, like Emerson, were fully aware of the integral relationship between the Civil War, slavery, and the future of liberal democracy both in England and America. Thus, an article in the August, 1864 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, titled “Our Recent Foreign Relations,” makes the following observation regarding the potential consequences of a Northern defeat on the future of democracy in both countries: Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 199 In the failure of man’s self-governing capacity here, where every circumstance has been favorable to its exercise, the rising spirit of a broader liberty in England must foresee the death-blow to its own hopes. Our failure will not be fatal to us alone; it will involve the fate of the millions who are now seeking to plant themselves against the tremendous force of kingly and patrician prestige. They have hitherto derived from our example all the inspiration with which they have struggled upward. (Towle 246) Because of this, the writer notes, the opposition of the British aristocracy, the ruling class and their supporters, to the Northern cause has been a constant throughout the long struggle: The aristocracy would view with complacency the disruption of the Union because we are a rival power, and they are thoroughly pledged to British aggrandizement because the success of the Union would belie the principle whence they derive their prerogative, and encourage the opposing element of popular rights to greater exertions for ascendancy; because hatred of democracy is a sentiment inherited, as well as a principle of self-preservation; and because they have not forgotten the former dependence of America on England. (Towle 246) Many New Englanders saw British sympathy for the South as based on their similar aristocratic social structures and an inherent antipathy towards liberal democracy in the North. Thus, an earlier editorial by Charles Eliot Norton, published by the New England Loyal Publication Society in May, 1863 states, “while the secessionists and their Northern allies are the main fomenters of war on this side of the Atlantic, the aristocrats in England are the only war party there. They are naturally in sympathy with the slaveholders. The success of the nation in this contest in which we are engaged, a success which is assured if we keep from foreign war, is the success of democracy everywhere; it is the success of equal rights, of free institutions, of free and well paid labor, of individual independence all the world over.” 17 In the context of this ongoing cultural and political conflict, Carlyle’s brief squib in the August issue of Macmillan’s was undoubtedly the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back for many New Englanders. In response, Cyrus Bartol, a Harvard Divinity School graduate, author, and abolitionist, wrote to Emerson in mid-August to suggest that something must be done to address the continuing outrages coming from the pens of British intellectuals whom the New Englanders once considered their “English cousins.” “This unfriendliness of English scholarship to our cause, - is it not worth seriously considering & noticing? Martineau & even Tennyson are against us - Carlyle makes himself a public shame - … . Ought there not to be an address of the literary men of this country to their Order 17 Records of the Loyal Publication Society, Boston Public Library. 200 L EN G OUGEON across the sea, on the ground which learning, philosophy & poetry should take in the premises which touch them as well as legislation & politics? ” Bartol then suggests to Emerson, “Might it not appear to you a duty to put into the press a truly friendly letter to Carlyle? ” If this was not possible, he proposed that Emerson prepare a statement for publication in the Atlantic. “I hold it critical you should draw it up,” Bartol urged, “whether it be an article simply, or a manifesto signed by yourself, Bryant, Whittier, Lowell, Whipple, Holmes, etc. - by literary & no sort of professional men.” 18 Ultimately, Emerson’s response would come in the form of a lecture titled, “Fortune of the Republic.” It would prove to be one of the most important of his career. This lecture came at a most critical juncture in the war, a time that would determine the future of liberal democracy in America, and possibly the world. The winter of 1863-1864 was a period of crisis for the Union. Despite victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July of 1863, the Confederacy yet endured, and the war dragged on with no end in sight. Many in the North were calling for an end to hostilities through compromise at any cost, even the restoration of the Union as it was, with slavery. There was unrest in Lincoln’s own Republican party. Many thought it likely that he would not win re-nomination (Donald 470-92). 19 It was within this critical period that Emerson delivered his “Fortune of the Republic” address no fewer than fourteen consecutive times, travelling throughout Massachusetts, and into New York, Maine, and Vermont in the process (Charvat 38-39; von Frank 390-93). He had never repeated a address with such frequency. The fact that the deliveries were consecutive presentations, over a brief period of approximately two months (1 December 1863 to 9 February 1864) was also exceptional. The repeated presentations suggest that Emerson felt a sense of urgency. In this highly political address, Emerson offered strong support for Lincoln. He also used the occasion to present his own vision for the new republic that he hoped would emerge from the ashes of war. Additionally, Emerson severely castigates the British ruling class for their constant antipathy toward the Union cause, which clearly was the cause of liberty. In the address Emerson recalls the example of the Chartists and insists that their vision of a truly representative democracy, while defeated 18 Cyrus Bartol to Emerson, 14 August 1863, Cabot Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College. Quotations from the Cabot Papers are printed with permission of the Schlesinger Library. 19 Regarding the military and political situation generally, David Herbert Donald states, “Lincoln saw clearly that the fate of his reconstruction plan depended on the outcome of the race for the presidential nomination. In turn, that contest would depend on the success of the Union armies, and in the winter of 1863-1864 the outlook for the Lincoln administration was bad” (488). Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 201 in England for the time, will find fulfillment at last in a reunited and free America, which is now clearly the last, best hope of mankind. For Emerson, the vision of this ideal was first articulated by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately, it was blurred at the outset by a moral compromise, a compromise that has finally resulted in the present bloody conflict. 20 Emerson’s decision to come to Lincoln’s aid at this time was undoubtedly based in part on his personal regard for the man and his integrity. It is also clear that they shared many of the same values and goals regarding the future of the Republic. Additionally, Emerson came to see Lincoln as a common man of the people and a true representative of the new democratic spirit that was emerging as a result of the war. In his journal he states, “Why talk of President Lincoln’s equality of manners to the elegant or titled men with whom Everett or others saw him? A sincerely upright & intelligent man as he was, placed in the Chair, has no need to think of his manners or appearance. His work day by day educates him rapidly & to the best. He exerts the enormous power of this continent in every hour, in every conversation, in every act; - thinks & decides under this pressure, forced to see the vast & various bearings of the measures he adopts: he cannot palter, he cannot but carry a grace beyond his own, a dignity, by means of what he drops, e.g. all pretension & trick, and arrives, of course, at a simplicity, which is the perfection of manners” (JMN 15: 465). Not surprisingly, British critics who supported an aristocratic model of government saw Lincoln as coarse and unrefined, especially when compared to the presumably elegant Jefferson Davis, the product of privilege. Often they pointed to the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, the “rail splitter,” as examples of crudity raised to high places, something, they noted, that could only happen in liberal America. By contrast, Jefferson Davis was often described by conservative British commentators as a model statesman. Indeed, the entire administration of the Confederacy, both political and military, was seen as superior because its personnel were “selected” to serve 20 In his lecture “Books,” (1864) Emerson notes “The builders of the Constitution put in some granite and some rotten-stone. They tucked in rubbish and a lie, and they will crumble. Through their cracks and crevices have leaped the armed men that now shake the continent.” He also describes the Declaration of Independence as “the greatest achievement of American literature,” and observes, “The shaft-words of the preamble of the Declaration - ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ - these words, little heeded at the time, deemed oratorical, lampooned by flippant rhetoricians in our day as ‘glittering generalities,’ have turned out to be the only immortal words, the fresh, the matin song of the universe” (Uncollected Lectures 40). 202 L EN G OUGEON by a privileged elite, while Union leaders, both political and military, were depicted as the products of a tawdry political process dominated by “attorneys” and “wire pullers.” This comparison was made explicit in an article published in the Quarterly Review in the spring of 1863. And as with her generals, so also with her statesmen, the irresistible forces of national character gave the advantage to the South. The military genius of Lee and Johnstone [sic], and Jackson and Beauregard, does not more conspicuously transcend that of M’Clellan and Burnside, and M’Dowell and Pope, than does the administrative talent of President Davis and the Southern Cabinet the pettifogging incapacity of President Lincoln and the attorney Ministers of the North. The Southern leaders were not the mere mediocre tools and puppets of trading politicians; they were men selected for those very qualities of talent and command most dreaded and disliked by the “wire pullers” of the North (“Fort Sumter to Fredericksburg,” 333). By contrast, a later article maintains that “Lincoln was another example of that deplorable rule, long enforced by the exigencies of the Union, which practically excludes all able and eminent men from the Presidential office” (“The Close of the American War,” 111). In light of all this, it is not surprising that in his “Fortune of the Republic” address Emerson answers British critics in tones of anger informed by moral outrage. Despite such criticisms, however, and the current perilousness of the Union position, he saw the moment as full of hope and promise, as suggested by his title. “Never country had such a fortune, - as men call fortune, - as this, - in its geography, its history, in the present attitude of its affairs, and in its majestic possibility.” For Emerson, America represents more truly than any other nation on earth, “the future of mankind” (AW 139). However, he acknowledges that the country is now passing through a “great crisis,” the outcome of which will determine the final destiny of the nation and “will make the peace and prosperity, or the calamity of the next ages” (AW 139). An unconditional cessation of hostilities at this point, although appealing to some, ignores what is at stake in this great struggle. The North is fighting for the principles of equality, liberty, and social justice. The Confederacy and its British supporters represent the antithesis of these ideals. Any effort at accommodation would necessarily be a moral as well as a political catastrophe. Emerson here insists on the importance of continuing the struggle, and pursuing it to its ideal end, the end which was originally expressed in the Declaration of Independence in the phrase “all men are created equal.” “It is the young men of the land, who must save it: it is they to whom this wonderful hour, after so many weary ages, dawns, the Second Declaration of Independence, the proclaiming of liberty, land, justice, and a career for all men: and honest dealings with other nations” (AW 140). Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 203 In Emerson’s view, the current spirit of accommodation, a tacit acceptance of the undemocratic, aristocratic pretensions and principles of the South, reflects a lingering European, and specifically British, influence in America. “I call this spirit a remainder of Europe, imported into this soil,” notes Emerson. “To say the truth, England is never out of mind. Nobody says it, but all think and feel it. England is the model in which they find their wishes expressed, not, of course, middle-class England, but rich, powerful and titled England” (AW 140). As Emerson had observed during his visit in 1847-48, and later in English Traits, the British social and political model, like the Southern model, emphasizes privileged self-indulgence and the exploitation of the poor and weak. It was clear from the earlier response of the literati to the Chartists that the British elite would do anything to preserve their position of privilege, while pretending throughout to represent the very highest level of civilization and culture. As he goes on to note of England, “Never a lofty sentiment, never a duty to civilization, never a generosity, a moral self-restraint is suffered to stand in the way of a commercial advantage. In sight of a commodity, her religion, her morals are forgotten” (AW 141). Again, reaching back to his earlier experience there, Emerson asserts that “England is Chinese in her servility to wealth, and to old wealth. Hence the discovery in 1848, - that Paris was the capital of Europe, and not London… . They had the creed that the idea of human freedom was selfish and mixed, a liberty quite too much drenched in respect for privileges, castiron aristocracy and church hierarchy” (AW 141). The intellectual and literary class in England are a major source of this noxious and undemocratic elitism. 21 Emerson offers his old friend Thomas Carlyle as an unfortunately perfect example of this failing. Undoubtedly with Carlyle’s late satirical jab in mind, Emerson’s criticism is sharp and obviously heartfelt. “Even her [England’s] ablest living writer, a man who has earned his position by the sharpest insights, is politically a fatalist. In 21 It should be emphasized that Emerson did not indict all British writers and intellectuals. As noted earlier, John Stuart Mill, Elizabeth Gaskell, Arthur Clough, and others offered strong support for the Union cause for which Emerson was very grateful. In his address, while emphasizing his own meaning of the word., he refers to the “truly cultivated class” of intellectuals, undoubtedly with these supporters in mind. In speaking of England, I lay out of question the truly cultivated class. They exist in England, as in France, in Italy, in Germany, in America. The inspirations of God, like birds, never stop at frontiers or languages, but come to every nation. This class like Christians, or poets, or chemists, exist for each other, across all possible nationalities, strangers to their own people, - brothers to you. I lay them out of question. They are sane men, as far removed as we, from the arrogance of the English press and the shoptone of the cities. They wish to be exactly informed and to speak and act not for us or against us, both for the public good and the truth. (AW 151-2). 204 L EN G OUGEON his youth he announced himself as a ‘theoretical sansculotte fast threatening to become a practical one.’ Now he is practically in the English system, a Venetian aristocracy, with only a private stipulation in favor of men of genius” (AW 141). 22 Emerson found ample evidence of this aristocratic elitism in Carlyle’s most recent work. “In the ‘History of Frederick the Great,’” he notes, “the reader is treated as if he were a Prussian adjutant, solely occupied with the army and the campaign. He is ever in the dreary circle of camp and courts. But of the people you have no glimpse. No hint of their domestic life. Were there no families, no farms, no thoughtful citizens, no beautiful and generous women, no genial youth with beating hearts then alive in all the broad territories of that kingdom? ” Emerson sums up this criticism of his erstwhile friend with a stinging rebuke. “We should not bring this criticism on another writer,” he insists. “But from Carlyle, who has taught us to make it, we had a right to expect an account of a nation, and not of a campaign” (AW 141). 23 Emerson goes on to describe the current American struggle as one of the major stepping stones in the evolution of universal human rights. “There have been revolutions which were not in the interest of feudalism and barbarism, but in that of society.” These were revolutions “in which a principle was involved.” Among these, he names the planting of Christianity, the establishment of free institutions in England, France, and America, and “the destruction of slavery” (AW 142). This latter revolution is now at a critical stage. It is a struggle where the highest principles of mankind are pitted against the lowest. Clearly, this is a war of ideas and ideals, a political as well as a cultural war. “When the canon is aimed by ideas, then gods join in the combat, then poets are born… . When men die for what they live for, and the mainspring that works daily urges them to hazard all, then the cannon articulates its explosions with the voice of a man. Then the rifle seconds the cannon, and the fowling-piece the rifle, and the women make cartridges, and all shoot at one mark, and the better code of laws at last records the victory.” For Emerson, the present revolution is “the chieftest of these” and represents the “culmination of these triumphs of humanity” (AW 142-43). In the immediate past, largely because of America’s unconscionable compromise with slavery, as a nation “we had no character” says Emerson, but now America has the opportunity to develop and perfect a true national character. The process is now at a critical stage. “We begun well. No inquisi- 22 For the complete story behind this episode see Gougeon, “Carlyle, Emerson and the Civil War.” 23 Emerson notes in his journals that Carlyle, “seems to have made a covenant with his eyes not to see the foibles of his Cromwells & Fredericks.” He later notes, “Channing thinks Carlyle does not recognize the people, in “Life of Friedrich” (JMN 15: 302, 355). Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 205 tion here; no kings, no nobles, no dominant church. In every other country, the accusation of heresy brings want and danger to a man’s door,” but not here (AW 143). And now, with the deleterious Southern influence finally expunged from the Federal government, great strides have been made to enhance the quality of life in America and to improve the conditions of all her citizens, especially the poor and unprivileged. These benefits are rendered largely in the form of an expanded system of public education made possible through the establishment of Land Grant Universities as provided by the Morrill Act, passed by Congress in 1862. This measure, combined with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, provided a quantum leap in the evolution of liberal democracy: And if one sees the tendency of our steps, the gifts to learning by private benefactors; the enlarging appropriations of town meetings and of states to the schools; the gift of scholarships and fellowships; recent foundation of agricultural schools, - of military, of naval, of gymnasiums, of the Nautical Almanac, and astronomic observatories; it looks as if vast extension was given to the popular culture, and, as the appetite grows by feeding, the next generation will vote for their children, - not a dame school, nor a Latin school, but a university, complete training in all the arts of peace and war, letters, science; all the useful and all the fine arts. And thus the voters in the Republic will at last be educated to that public duty. (AW 144) 24 Through this process, the common man will continue to be elevated to higher and higher levels of social responsibility, and American civilization will finally possess what Lincoln promised, a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” This truly unique character of the American experience was becoming ever more prominent now that the aristocratic influence of the South was largely neutralized. The distance between the people and their leaders has shrunk. “In America, the government is acquainted with the opinions of all classes, knows the leading men in the middle class, knows the leaders of the humblest class. The President,” says Emerson, “comes near enough to these: if he does not, the caucus does, - the 24 In the absence of Southern opposition, the Thirty-seventh Congress managed to enact a great deal of important legislation including a National Banking Act, the Homestead Act (which granted 160 acres of land to any person who was willing to farm it for five years), chartered a transcontinental railroad, established a system of land-grant colleges, and created the Department of Agriculture. All of this was accomplished in addition to raising armies and fighting a civil war (Donald, Lincoln 424). As early as his “Address … on … the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies” (1844) Emerson noted the deleterious effects of slavery on all attempts at social progress. “Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mailbag, a college, a book, or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay” (AW 21). 206 L EN G OUGEON primary ward - and the town-meeting, and, what is important does reach him.” Throughout Lincoln’s administration there has been, in Emerson’s opinion, a unique and deliberate effort to reach out to the people, to become the people’s President. 25 Such leveling has not happened in autocratic Europe, or in America before now. “Not such, - far enough from such - is England, France, and Austria: and, indeed, not such was America under previous administrations” (AW 144). By comparison, the elitist politics of Europe remain essentially “Feudal” and the “six demands of chartism,” have still not been granted in England, while “they have all been granted here to begin with,” at least in the Free States (AW 144). America has obviously superseded England as the world’s most progressive democracy now that the last vestiges of aristocratic influence are being purged from the national character. “We are coming, - thanks to the war, - to a nationality. Put down your foot, and say to England, we know your merits. In past time, we have paid them the homage of ignoring your faults. We see them still. But it is time that you should hear the truth, - that you have failed in one of the great hours that put nations to the test” (AW 144-45). The final emergence of this new American nationality, one that emphasizes equality, liberty, and social justice, is obviously contingent on winning the war, followed by a policy of reconstruction that will abolish slavery and its poison forever. 26 To compromise at this point without achieving this goal would be the greatest of tragedies. “We [are] in the midst of a great revolution still enacting the sentiment of the Puritans, and the dreams of young people of thirty years ago, - we [are] passing out of old remainders of barbarism into pure Christianity and humanity, - into freedom of thought, of religion, of speech, of the press, of trade, of suffrage, or political right, and working through this tremendous ordeal” (AW 146). This new, and now more truly democratic government, is pro-active in serving the needs of the people. In addition to laying the groundwork for Land Grant Universities, through the Homestead Act (1862) the government now offers “a patch of land in the wilderness to every son of Adam who will till it.” Addition- 25 In 1862 Emerson met with Lincoln twice in the company of Senator Charles Sumner. Emerson was in Washington to deliver a lecture at the Smithsonian Institute where he urged that emancipation should become an official government policy. Lincoln may have attended this lecture (Gougeon, Virtue’s Hero 277-79). 26 In October of 1864, Emerson met with George Stearns, Wendell Phillips, and “Mr. Fowler of Tennessee,” to discuss the politics of reconstruction. On this topic he notes, “The two points would seem to be absolute Emancipation, - establishing the fact that the United States henceforward knows no color, no race, in its law, but legislates for all alike, - one law for all men: - that first; and, secondly, make the confiscation of rebel property final, as you did with the tories in the Revolution.” Such a course, notes Emerson, would also “redeem your wicked Indian policy, & leave no murderous complications to sew the seed of future wars” (JMN 15: 445). Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 207 ally, we have begun “to strike off the chains which snuffling hypocrites have bound on the weaker race.” Emerson offers the Homestead Act as an example of equal opportunity in its purest form, something which would never have passed in a Congress dominated by conservative Southern slave interests. All of this progress, however, has come as the result of enormous sacrifice. In the struggle to liberalize democracy, many young Americans have imperiled their “lives and fortunes for a principle,” just as the Founding Fathers did with their Declaration of Independence (AW 146-47). For Emerson, a government that was truly “of the people” would care for those most in need, rather than ignoring, or worse yet, oppressing them as in the South and in England and throughout Feudal Europe. Such caring is an integral part of his vision for the new republic: Chartism in England asks that intellect and not property, or, at least, intellect as well as property, be represented in Parliament. Humanity asks that government shall not be ashamed to be tender and paternal; but that democratic institutions shall be more thoughtful for the interests of women, - for the training of children, for care of sick and unable persons and serious care of criminals, than was ever any the best government of the old world. (AW 147) The greatest threat to all of this progress is in reconciliation and compromise. “Through the whole war,” notes Emerson “there has been danger that on the first hint of peace from the South, our people would forget and forgive all, and rush inconsiderately into the arms of their returning prodigals, and, in the gladness of the hour, would accept any terms, - the Union as it was, - losing by this social weakness half the fruit of their valor and their sacrifice of life and treasure” (AW 149). He was not about to let this happen. The promise that democracy will fulfill itself in America is too great to be frittered away in the name of a false peace. Part of that promise, as Lincoln had indicated in his message to Congress in July 1861, was the opportunity for every man to rise to his highest potential. The war, he told the Congress at that early juncture, “is essentially a People’s contest. On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men - to lift artificial weights from all shoulders - to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all - to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life” (4: 438). Obviously, Emerson shared this vision. For him it included all Americans, especially those who have been until now the most repressed and abused, the newly emancipated slaves. The government, he notes, now reaches out to the needy to offer opportunities for self-improvement. We “have a longer scale, and can reach the highest and the lowest degrees… . The steps already taken to teach the freedman his letters, and the decencies of life, are not worth much if they stop there. They teach the teacher, - open his eyes to new methods. They 208 L EN G OUGEON give him manliness and breadth he had not; and accustom him to a courage and poise” (AW 149). 27 The result of such efforts will be that which “the earth waits for, - exalted manhood, the new man, whom plainly this country must furnish” (AW 151). Unlike Carlyle and most of his British cohorts, Emerson was confident that emancipated slaves would eventually rise to take their rightful place in American society, once the intolerable burden of slavery has been lifted from their shoulders. Thus, in a later lecture titled “Books” (1864), Emerson notes, “There is much in the calamities we have suffered which is disinfecting. We have learned to forget foreign nations. We have grown internally - have begun to feel the strength of our strength. While European genius is symbolized by some majestic Corinne crowned in the capitol at Rome, American genius finds its true type - if I dare tell you - in the poor negro soldier lying in the trenches by the Potomac, with his spelling book in one hand and his musket in the other” (Uncollected Lectures, 41-42). Despite his earlier harsh remarks about Carlyle and the British, Emerson, in approaching the conclusion of his presentation, struck a conciliatory note by suggesting that we should not “go to war with England on account of Punch’s pictures, or the opinion of a drunken Lord Soft” (AW 152). 28 He reminds his listeners that “the times are dark, but heroic. The war uplifts us into generous sentiments.” Emerson also prophesies that in the future a reborn American nation will “work for honest humanity, for the poor, for justice, genius, and the public good. I wish to see that this country, the last found, is the great charity of God to the human race” (AW 152). Clearly, for Emerson the perfection of American society will come only when the powers of all the people, regardless of class, color, or gender are allowed to flourish. It was clear that Emerson’s vision of a truly democratic nation hinged on the successful prosecution of the war, and this, in turn, hinged on 27 Emerson had for some time been aware of the success of the Port Royal experiment where, early in the war, freed slaves in Port Royal, South Carolina, were organized and educated. Emerson’s wife and daughters, as members of the Women’s Antislavery Society in Concord, provided clothing and other support to the group. See Gougeon, Virtue’s Hero, 277-278. Emerson also made a cash contribution to the enterprise in which many of his friends were active. See von Frank, Chronology, 325. 28 The British satirical magazine Punch, in response to Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September, 1862, ran a cartoon in the October 18, 1862 edition showing a very devilish looking Lincoln playing his “last card” in a poker game, atop a powder keg, with a neatly dressed Confederate adversary. The cartoon expressed a commonly held British assumption that Lincoln’s emancipation policy was a desperate war measure designed to incite a bloody “servile insurrection” in the South. This, and other such cartoons, served only to exacerbate the already strained relationship between the United States and Great Britain (Klinefelter, 28-35). Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 209 Lincoln’s re-election. Despite the difficulties of the moment, however, Emerson remained confident that grass-roots democracy would save the day, now that the Southern stranglehold on government has been broken. “In each new threat of faction,” he asserted, “the ballot of the people has been beyond expectation right and decisive” (AW 152). 29 It is true that tremendous sacrifices have been made in the prosecution of the war, and that further sacrifices will undoubtedly be necessary to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. “Slavery is broken, and, if we use our advantage, irretrievably. For such a gain, - to end once and for all that pest of all free institutions, - one generation might well be sacrificed, - perhaps it will be, - that this continent be purged, and a new era of equal rights dawn on the universe. Who would not, if it could be made certain, that the new morning of universal liberty should rise on our race, by the perishing of one generation, - who would not consent to die? ” (AW 153). Undoubtedly with the President’s re-nomination and re-election in mind, Emerson closed his address with a reminder to his audience of the power of their votes in a true democracy. “You will stand there for vast interests, North and South, East and West will be present to your mind, and your vote will be as if they voted. And you well know that your vote secures the foundations of the state, goodwill, liberty, and security of traffic and of production, and mutual increase of goodwill in the great interests, for no monopoly has been foisted in, no weak party or nationality has been sacrificed, no coward compromise has been conceded to a strong partner” (AW 153-54). America, after all, was not England. Here the common man could have his say in order that justice might prevail. Lincoln was re-elected in November of 1864 and lived to see the Union Army triumph in the field at last. Emerson viewed the eventual Union victory in the war as an affirmation of the principles of liberal democracy, the idea that government has an obligation to protect the weak from the strong, 29 Emerson, as a Transcendentalist, always believed in the importance and integrity of voting and also in its integrity. Because humanity is essentially good and guided by the divinity that is within, a free expression of the common will is more likely to be right than wrong. In “New England Reformers” (1844) he states that “Nothing shall warp me from the belief, that every man is a lover of the truth … the entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. There is no skepticism, no atheism but that. Could it be received into common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet.” He goes on to report, approvingly, that “I remember standing at the polls one day … and a good man at my side looking on the people, remarked, ‘I am satisfied that the largest part of these men, on either side, mean to vote right’”(CW 3: 163-64). It is this unshakable faith in the common decency of humanity that informs Kerry Larson’s assertion that “If Emerson can be said to have invented a religion of democracy, then its central tenet and inspiration is the summoning of an equality in the form of a radical likeness that connects each to all” (316) 210 L EN G OUGEON and to insure freedom, justice, and equal rights for all citizens, regardless of race or gender. 30 Regarding the British, while he may have eventually forgiven, he certainly never forgot the perfidious role played in the war by so many notable writers whom he deeply respected. Their tacit defense of slavery was clearly a violation of all that was decent in human nature. As such, it represented a grotesque failure of the very civilization that these writers sought to defend. In his journal he wrote, more in sadness than in anger, the following: Could we have believed that England should have disappointed us thus? that no man in all that civil, reading, brave, cosmopolitan country, should have looked at our revolution as a student of history, as philanthropist, eager to see what new possibilities for humanity were to begin, - what the inspirations were; what new move on the board the Genius of the world was preparing. No, but every one squinted; Lords, Ladies, statesmen, scholars, poets, all squinted, … Edinburg, Quarterly, Saturday Review, Gladstone, Russell, Palmerston, Brougham, nay Tennyson; Carlyle, I blush to say it; Arnold. Every one forgot his history, his poetry, his religion, & looked only at his shoptill, whether his salary, whether his small investment in the funds, would not be less: whether the stability of English order might not be in some degree endangered… . Every poet, every scholar, every great man, as well as the rich, thought only of his pocket book, & to our astonishment cried, Slavery forever! Down with the North! Why does not England join with France to protect the slaveholder? (JMN 15: 433-34) In the post-war period, Emerson continued to promote a pro-active government that would provide opportunities for education and economic development and thus promote the social and material advancement of all citizens. In the years immediately following the war, he was pleased to see the liberties that had been so dearly won enacted into law. The passage of the 13 th Amendment (1865) ended slavery forever; the 14 th Amendment (1866) guaranteed equal protection to all citizens, and the 15 th Amendment (1870) guaranteed suffrage to all adult males “without regard to race, color, or previous conditions of servitude.” Collaterally, the Union victory also reinforced the Liberal cause in England where the political descendents of the lowly Chartists were finally able to persuade Parliament to pass the Reform Act of 1867, substantially expanding the franchise for the first time 30 After the Civil War, Emerson became involved in the Women’s Suffrage Movement and offered them strong support. In a speech delivered in Boston at a gathering of the New England Woman’s Suffrage Association, in May 1869, and later reported in detail in the Boston Post (27 May 1869), he declared without qualification that, “The claim now pressed by woman is a claim for nothing less than all, than her share in all. She asks for her property; she asks for her rights, for her vote; she asks for her share in education, for her share in all the institutions of society, for her half of the whole world; and to this she is entitled.” At the close of the meeting, he accepted the titular vice-presidency of the organization. (Gougeon, Woman Question 588-90). Emerson and the British: Challenging the Limits of Liberty 211 since 1832. Reflecting on all of this in 1871, Emerson took comfort that a truly great victory had been won. Slavery had been defeated and “the Constitution not only amended, but construed in a new spirit” (LL 2: 344). In one of his last public addresses, Emerson returned once again to the topic of “The Fortune of the Republic” (1878). In this presentation, he offered a brief and succinct summary of his vision of the new liberal democracy that emerged from the war. It is one that America might well remember even now, at the beginning of a new millennium: The genius of this country has marked out our true policy, opportunity. Opportunity of civil rights, of education, of personal power, and not less of wealth; doors wide open. If I could have it, - free trade with all the world without toll or custom-houses, invitation as we now make every nation, to every race and skin, white men, red men, yellow men, black men; hospitality of fair field and equal laws to all. (W 11: 541) 212 L EN G OUGEON Works Cited Anonymous, “American Literature and the Civil War.” Fraser’s Magazine. April 1863, 517-527. Anonymous, “Fort Sumter to Fredericksburg.” Quarterly Review. April 1863. 323-353. Anonymous, “Slaves and Labourers.” The Saturday Review. 16 Jan. 1864. 71-72. Anonymous, “The Close of the American War,” Quarterly Review, April, 1865, pp. 107- 136. Adams, Ephraim Douglass. Great Britain and the American Civil War New York: Russell &- Russell, 1958 [1925]. 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