Showing posts with label Theodore Parker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theodore Parker. Show all posts

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Theodore Parker to Congressman Horace Mann, September 9, 1850

WEST ROXBURY, Sept. 9, 1850.

DEAR SIR, I suppose that any word of commendation which I could utter would seem to you as a very doubtful compliment; for, if it is a desirable thing laudari a viro laudato, it is undesirable to be praised by a viro odioso. Still, I cannot help saying to you how much I honor and esteem you for the services you have rendered to your country and mankind since you entered Congress. I thought, at the time you first went there, you would find more trouble there than with the Boston schoolmasters and such poor things as Matthew Hale Smith. It seems to me, not only that you have done a great service by your speeches on slavery, but by what you have done in opposition to Mr. Webster. Excuse me for saying so; but there are some things in your Notes which it grieved me to see there. They weakened your position; they gave your doubtful friends an opportunity to pass over to Webster's side; and to your real foes they gave an opportunity of making out a case before the public. Still, to candid men, it must be plain, from your Notes, that Mr. Webster is exceedingly base. In doing this, you have done a great service. Webster has often been attacked, but almost wholly by political rivals or mere partisans, neither of whom were sincere in the charges against him. You attack him on moral grounds. I think your attack must disturb him more than all ever written against him before now. But, in the mean time, you are continually or often attacked yourself, your language misinterpreted, your motives assailed. There is nobody to defend you. Some cannot; others dare not. Then some of the men you have relied upon were never worthy of your confidence, and will do nothing. You have crossed the path of some selfish men by your theories of benevolence, and mortified them by your own life; and they will pay you for both. Some men would gladly have written in your defence; but they would only bring you into trouble. You saw how “Codus Alexandricus,” in the “Advertiser,” tried to couple you with me; and you doubtless appreciated the benevolence of the attempt. I write to you chiefly to suggest to you, whether it would not be a good plan for you to write another letter to your constituents, on the state of the country, the conduct of public men (above all, of Webster), and your own relations to the wicked measures of the past Congress. It seems to me you might, in this way, orient yourself before the public, and give them a good deal of information which they need and want. I suppose, of course, you knew the attempt made in Boston (and by a few in New York) to defeat your election this autumn. Marshall P. Wilder is thought of by some men for your successor. Such a letter as you might write would settle that matter.

I beg you not to answer this letter, which will only occupy your time; but believe me truly your friend and servant,

THEO. PARKER.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 324-5

Thursday, September 21, 2023

Theodore Parker to Congressman Horace Mann, Saturday Night, March 11, 1850

BOSTON, March 11, 1850.        
Saturday Night.
HON. HORACE MANN.

DEAR SIR,—God bless you for your noble speech which I have just read in the Boston Daily Journal. Send me a copy to keep as a monument of the age when the Websters did as they have done, and oblige

Yours truly,
THEODORE PARKER.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 295

Congressman Horace Mann to Theodore Parker, April 24 1850

WEST NEWTON, April 24, 1850.
REV. T. PARKER.

DEAR SIR, I have just returned from a visit of some days into the western part of New York, where I have seen our common friend, the Rev. Mr. May. He has written a letter to you, which I take pleasure in forwarding. I attended service in his church last Sunday morning, where he administered the communion, and spent at least half an hour in enforcing our duty to follow the example of Jesus Christ in our conduct rather than in our profession or creed. He pathetically lamented the apostasy of so many of the clergy at the present time, and their active agency on the side of wrong; and he said, what I and I doubt not many others were rejoiced to hear, that, while so many doctors of divinity were proving faithless to their highest trust, Theodore Parker, the man whom they denounced as an infidel, was more ably and conspicuously faithful to the cause of truth than any of their number. It produced a strong sensation, as home-truths always will. . . .

Yours very truly,
HORACE MANN.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 300

Theodore Parker to Congressman Horace Mann, May 6, 1850

BOSTON, May 6, 1850.
HON. HORACE MANN.

MY DEAR SIR,—Perhaps I ought not to trouble so busy a man as you are to read so unimportant a matter as a letter from me; but I cannot reasonably forbear telling you how thankful I am to you for writing such a noble letter to your friends and constituents. God bless you for it! I intended once, soon after Mr. Webster made his speech, to have written a public letter to you, and reviewed the whole matter before the country; but I am glad I did not, for then I should, perhaps, have prevented you from doing better than any one has done hitherto. A hundred and seventy years ago, John Locke wrote: "Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation, that it is hardly to be conceived that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it."

Yet think of Mr. Webster and his eight hundred "retainers," as the "Advertiser " calls them!

Accept my heartiest thanks for your many services, and believe me your friend and servant,

THEO. PARKER.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 300-1

Sunday, February 19, 2023

Dr. Seth Rogers to his daughter Dolly, March 8, 1863

STEAMER Boston Mouth of St. John's River,        
March 8, 1863.

Waiting, waiting, waiting, with thermometer at 80° F. this bright Sunday. Great sandbanks like snow, atmosphere shimmering in the hot sunlight, while the young, tender foliage softens the landscape into beauty.

At daylight this morning we left Fernandina and arrived off the bar at the mouth of this river at 9.30 A. M. The gunboat Uncas came off to meet us and considerably before noon we were anchored in here with the Uncas, the Norwich and our transport, the Burnside. Why the John Adams has not reached here, we cannot imagine. This delay warns the rebs of our approach to Jacksonville and, if they choose to dispute our landing, I do not see why some lives may not be lost. James [Capt. Rogers] and I have been ashore this afternoon and have seen various wild flowers unfamiliar to us. The Colonel is deep in consultation with gunboat captains, and a steady frown indicates his impatience and perplexity about the John Adams. Rough and ready Capt. Dolly remarked when we passed her, that he was d----d if he didn't admire the Lt. Col. because he was always to be found just where we left him. His theory however about the non-arrival of the Adams is that the chaplain has gone for the last well to be dug. Wells are one of the chaplain's specialties and it would not be surprising if the theory proved correct. To me the worst feature of the delay is the exposure of our men to disease. I dread confinement in close air for them much more than I do rebel bullets.

Yesterday I heard of a little coincidence which quite amused me. One of our captains is not so broad and catholic as Theodore Parker, and very constantly manifests a jealous nature by petty complaints and watchings for evil. Yesterday morning he was speaking to me of the Colonel and remarked that the only fault he could find with him was a lack of discipline, that the men ought not to be allowed to insult their officers without severe punishment. I replied that I did not know of an officer in the regiment who was obliged to cross the track of the men so much as I, and yet, without any specific control over any but those in the hospital department, I never dreamed of being insulted and that if I were, I should feel that the fault were mine. This captain happened to be the officer of the day and, towards evening, I noticed that he was looking very demure and that he was minus his sash. On inquiry I found he had permitted some slight improprieties among the men and that the Colonel promptly put another officer in his place. I have not heard of a better disciplinarian than Col. H. and I doubt not Capt. is getting convinced on the same point.

Just now I found one of our men in a collapsed state, which will prove fatal.

SOURCE: Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Volume 43, October, 1909—June, 1910: February 1910. p. 370-1

Thursday, July 21, 2022

Wilson, of Massachusetts — published June 9, 1856

The Northern papers have been teeming with reports respecting the movements and intentions of this warlike individual. One while, it was said, that he could not leave his room for fear of being butchered in the streets of Washington, then again, that he had paraded the avenue, surrounded by armed friends and put Brooks and Keitt and defiance, and all South Carolina at their backs; then, that he had been graciously permitted by Keitt to walk abroad; then the Rev. Mr. Parker told us that Wilson had paraded before Keitt’s lodgings and was not hurt; then we had a letter from Wilson himself, to the effect that he had walked pretty much all over Washington, for the two days after he declined fighting Brooks, sometimes alone, and sometimes attended by friends. The last version of the matter, we find, as reported below, in the N. Y. Courier:

WILSON AND BROOKS.

To the Editors of the Courier & Enquirer:

I perceive in the N. Y. Commercial Advertiser, of last evening the following telegraphic despatch from Boston:

BOSTON, June 3.—Senator Wilson denies unequivocally the statement telegraphed from Washington to a N. York paper, that Colonel Lane had called on him from Mr. Brooks, with an assurance that he (Brooks) intended to make an assault on him. Mr. Wilson says, “I have sought no controversy and shall seek none, but I shall go where duty requires, uninfluenced by threats of any kind.”

I am enabled to endorse the statement made by Mr. Wilson. The facts are, that Mr. Buffington, the colleague and friend of Senator Wilson, when he bore the refusal of Wilson to fight Brooks, expressed a desire to know whether it was the intention of Brooks to assault Wilson in the street. After some little hesitation, Gen. Lane promised that there should be no attempt to whip Wilson for a week; and subsequently he assured him that Mr. Brooks desired him to say that he did not intend to make any attack whatever upon Mr. Wilson at any time for what was past; and Mr. Buffington so reported before he left the city. The limitations of a week, within which no attack was to be made upon Wilson, was a piece of fun on the part of Gen. Lane and got up a laugh at Buffington’s expense, for making so strange a request.

It was indeed a strange application, and by its extraordinary character, no doubt prevented a street fight, in which, probably, both the principals would have lost their lives.

H. T.
WASHINGTON, June 4, 1856.

SOURCE: Richmond Daily Whig, Richmond Virginia, Monday Morning, June 9, 1856, p. 2

Sunday, July 17, 2022

A few days before he delivered his speech . . .

 . . . Sumner wrote a letter to Theodore Parker, of which the following is an extract:

“The tyranny over us is complete. Will the people submit to it? When you read this, I shall be saying in the Senate that they will not. I shall pronounce the most through philippic ever heard in this legislative body.”

He delivered his “most thorough philippic,” and received therefore a most thorough caning.

This letter was read to an abolition meeting in Boston—and received with great applause. Mr. Parker also read the letter from Hale, which expressed the opinion that all the Northern voters needed just such blows as Sumner received—which did not meet with as much applause. Also a letter from Wilson, which states, that he would have grappled with Brooks, if he had been present—that the times are stormy in Washington—that the eyes of bloody men are upon them as they walk the streets, &c. Parker then stated: “that Keitt had threatened to flog Wilson, if he met him in the street, when Wilson went and walked in front of his lodgings, Keitt was at the door, but did not interfere.”

We see by this sort of proceeding, that these people are for provoking more outrages. When they get what they seek, we hope they will not annoy the country with their howls.

SOURCE: Richmond Daily Whig, Richmond Virginia, Friday Morning, June 6, 1856, p. 2

Wednesday, July 6, 2022

The Assault On Senator Sumner — published May 27, 1856

NEW YORK, May 24.—The Republican County Committee, last night, passed strong resolutions denouncing the assault on Senator Sumner, and calling upon the House of Representatives to expel the assailants. Also upon the course at Washington to punish them, otherwise, the seat of Government must be removed.

BOSTON, May 24.—A meeting of citizens was held here last evening to express the popular sentiment regarding the assault on Senator Sumner. Though called at a late hour on Friday, it was very large. Chapman Hall was found to be too small for the meeting, and it adjourned to Tremont Temple. Prayer was offered by Rev. Doc. Beecher, and Deacon Samuel Greele presided. General indignation was expressed and speeches made by Rev. W. Freeman Clark, Wendel Phillips, Judge Russel, Theodore Parker, J. M. S. Williams of Cambridge, Lyman Beecher, John L. Swift and W. B. Spooner. The speeches of Messrs. Phillips and Parker were almost purely political, with minor reference to the object of the meeting.—Mr. Spooner dissented from the declarations made by both, that men not of the Free Soil Party rejoiced at the assault on Mr. Sumner and justified Mr. Brooks. He said it was not so, and held out a requisition for the use of Fanueil Hall on Saturday night for a mass meeting on the subject, signed by over fifty men of all parties. The Present meeting, he said, was spontaneous one and no special party had the credit of initiation.

The meeting adjourned at 10 o’clock, to meet to-day (Saturday) in Fanueil Hall.

SOURCE: Richmond Daily Whig, Richmond Virginia, Tuesday Morning, May 27, 1856, p. 4

Saturday, February 1, 2020

Samuel Gridley Howe to Theodore Parker, Between December 17 & December 31, 1853

Dear T. P.: — You ask me to tell you what to do with regard to S——!! Lend him no money! dissuade your friends from lending him any. He is becoming demoralized, I fear, by borrowing and living on others. Let him undergo the natural cure — suffer and be saved.

Could I say without a blush to the next runaway, or honest applicant for my help — “I can only give you so much because I have just applied $20 to S——’s case?”

Ever yours,
Chev.

I may be wrong about it — but I am more likely, I fear, to err on the side of leniency of judgment.

S. G. H.

SOURCES: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 397

Saturday, October 5, 2019

Samuel Gridley Howe to Theodore Parker, July 5, 1853

Sunday, 1853.

My Dear Parker: — I have been in to hear you, but did not like what you were saying well enough to stay more than a quarter of an hour in a thorough draught, which I liked still less than your wind.

Why do you hammer away at the heads of Boston merchants, none of whose kith or kin come to hear you, when the rest of the population of the city, and even many of the mechanics, were just as ready to back up the authorities for kidnapping men as the merchants were?

Why do you say, and reiterate so often, that God uses the minimum force to accomplish the maximum ends? Is it so? How do you know? Does God know quantity or space or regard them? Is there more or less with Him? How do you know that without this or that thing or man this or that fact or deed would not have followed?

With the vast waste (or apparent waste) of animal life and mineral resources which geology reveals — families, species, whole races, whole worlds swept away — how do you, Theodore Parker, know that without salt to a potato, or even without salt or potato either, this or that thing would not and could not have been?

That was all very fine about God's great span, Centrifugal and Centripetal, but suppose either one of them should break down or slip a joint, has not the Governor a whole stud in the stable all ready for work? But, coolly, is there not something of what the Turks call Bosh about this? I never knew you to deal in the article before; but did you not go to the wrong barrel this morning? How can you say that without our revolution France would not have had hers — a little later perhaps, but still had it? Who told you that God would have broken down in his purpose if Washington had had the quinsy at a score, instead of three score years; and that New England would have now been worse off than Canada?

I did not stay long enough to hear you say any more unparkerish things, and so I will have done with my comment and close by saying that if I loved you less I might admire you more.

Your incorrigible,
Old Samuel South Boston.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 394-5

Friday, April 5, 2019

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, July 4, 1852

Boston, July 4th, 1852.

Dearest Sumner: — I got your note yesterday, and read most of it to Carter;1 afterwards I sent it to Parker, to be used with care. I have done what I could in a quiet way to inspire others with the confidence I feel in the final success of your plan. I received this morning a note from Parker (written of course before I sent yours) which I think it best to send you. A wise man likes to know how the wind blows, though he may have determined not to vary his course, even for a tempest. I wrote to Parker saying that he was lacking faith, and I feared beginning to lack charity — things in which he had abounded towards you.

I think the crying sin, and the great disturbing force in the path of our politicians is approbativeness; they let public opinion be to them in lieu of a conscience. So will not you do.

I want you to raise your voice and enter your protest, not because it is for your interest to do so, but for the sake of the cause, and of the good it will surely do. The present is yours, the future may not be; you may never go back to Washington even should you be spared in life and health. Again, it may be imprudent to wait till the last opportunity, for when that comes you may be prostrated by illness. Mann made a remark in one of his late letters about you, which I think I have more than once made to you, viz: that you yield obedience to all God's laws of morality, but think you are exempt from any obligation to obey his laws of physiology. You will have a breakdown some time that will make you realize that to ruin the mental powers by destroying that on which they depend is about as bad as neglecting to cultivate them.

However, what I mean to say is this: that though you would not heed all the world's urging you to speak if you thought it your duty to be silent, yet believing with all your friends that you ought to speak, you must not vista everything, in the hope of doing so at a particular moment, when you may be disabled by sickness.

Downer said to-day: “I don't see how it is to be, yet I have great faith that Sumner will come off with flying colours.” He would say so, even if you were prevented from speaking at all this session, and so should I, but so would few others.

Julia has returned and is well; so are all my beautiful and dear children. We go to Newport next Monday to stay awhile in the house with Longfellow, Appleton, etc.2 No news here. Daniel [Webster] is determined to show fight; he has much blood, and it is very black. . . .

S. G. H.
_______________

1 Robert Carter

2 At Cliff House. The party consisted of my father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Longfellow and their children, George William Curtis, Thomas G. Appleton, and two or three others.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 382-3

Monday, December 24, 2018

Thomas Wentworth Higginson to Louisa Storrow Higginson, July 1861

You ask about the “Atlantic” — Fields will edit it, which is a great thing for the magazine; he having the promptness and business qualities which Lowell signally wanted; for instance, my piece about Theodore Parker lay nearly two months under a pile of anonymous manuscripts in his study while he was wondering that it did not arrive. Fields's taste is very good and far less crotchety than Lowell's, who strained at gnats and swallowed camels, and Fields is always casting about for good things, while Lowell is rather disposed to sit still and let them come. It was a torment to deal with Lowell and it is a real pleasure with Fields. For instance, the other day Antoinette Brown Blackwell sent me a very pleasing paper on the proper treatment of old age — called “A Plea for the Afternoon.” I sent it to Fields by express and it reached him after twelve one noon (I don't know how many hours after). At seven that night I received it again by express, with Approval and excellent suggestions as to some modifications. . . . Such promptness never was known in a magazine; it would have been weeks or months before L. would have got to it.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 111-2

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Samuel Gridley Howe to Theodore Parker, Thursday, April 1851

[Envelope addressed;]

The Reverend
Thunder And Lightning
Parker
Everywhere

SUNNYSIDE, Thursday, April, 1851.

My Dear Parker: — I am never well, but for three days past I have been quite under the weather, and such weather!

I am unable to go out, but my chickens have been counting so fondly upon going to your house that I cannot disappoint them.

You will give me credit for usually refraining from shocking your modesty by expressing my views and feelings about your writings, and you will now excuse my saying a word that I must say to somebody. Never in the whole course of my reading have I met with anything that moved the deepest depths of my soul as did the closing part of your Fast Day discourse. It is truly the thunder and lightning of eloquence! It has all the material majesty, power and beauty of Byron's thunder storm in the Alps; — the resistless strength, — the rushing swiftness, — the dazzling light, and the whole dignified and intensified by the moral element of which it is the war. Not “from peak to peak the rattling crags among,” but from heart to heart “leaps the live thunder;” not “every mountain now hath found a tongue,” but every high and towering passion of man's soul; not “Jura answers through her misty shroud, back to the joyous Alps,” but the great spirit of humanity, rending the veil of conventionalism, shouts back “Amen! Amen! and God bless you,” — to you her minister and interpreter.

Excuse, my dear Parker, a fruitless attempt to describe what I have no language to describe, — the effect upon me of your sublime discourse. Tell me you are not destructive? Ha! had not God stored up in your soul a great store of the wrath and indignation with which He wars upon sin, and given you an opportunity of using it without your benevolence to restrain you, we should never have witnessed such a storm and whirlwind as that in which you have come down upon the wicked.

But I can hardly sit up and must not write, or I too shall get up steam, and having no strength of boiler shall explode like the — the — frog in the fable. Regards to Madame and Miss S.

Ever thine,
S. G. Howe.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 346-7

Monday, October 1, 2018

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, about 1858

Mr. Emerson is bounteous and gracious, but thin, dry, angular, in intercourse as in person. Garrison is the only solid moral reality I have ever seen incarnate, the only man who would do to tie to, as they say out West; and he is fresher and firmer every day, but wanting in intellectual culture and variety. Wendell Phillips is always graceful and gay, but inwardly sad, under that bright surface. Whittier is the simplest and truest of men, beautiful at home, but without fluency of expression, and with rather an excess of restraint. Thoreau is pure and wonderfully learned in nature's things and deeply wise, and yet tedious in his monologues and cross-questionings. Theodore Parker is as wonderfully learned in books, and as much given to monologue, though very agreeable and various it is, still egotistical, dogmatic, bitter often, and showing marked intellectual limitations. Mr. Alcott is an innocent charlatan, full of inspired absurdities and deep strokes, maunders about nature, and when outdoors has neither eyes, ears, nor limbs. Lowell is infinitely entertaining, but childishly egotistical and monopolizing.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 93-4

Sunday, August 26, 2018

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, February 1857

February, 1857

. . . Health is the first object,” as the worthy Doctor used to say, so I take naps and gymnasium and read the fascinating Dr. Kane.

I do believe Robinson Crusoe will have to give place hereafter, and that boys will keep some small edition of Dr. Kane instead of Baron Trench in their school desks. I seldom read of anything which I do not fancy I could have done myself, such is the weakness of our common nature; but here I confess myself distanced, even in fancy.

On the other hand, what a dull and unprofitable book is the “Letters of Daniel Webster”; no genius or power in it, or charm of any kind except the letters to his farmers, which are quite delightful. Perhaps his letters about and to his children, especially to the star-eyed Julia, show more domestic feeling than I supposed; there is one quite beautiful burst of fatherly pride where he describes her to somebody as being “beautiful as Juno.” But he shows beyond all question that shallowness of knowledge which Theodore Parker attributed to him, and everything in the shape of thought is amazingly commonplace. . . .

Mary . . . has been reflecting to-day that there's no telling what might have been; for instance, she might have been the wife of Dr. Kane; and what would he have done with her in the Arctic regions? That's the present anxiety.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

I am giving Sunday evening lectures on the “Seven Deadly Sins,” or, as Mary irreverently terms them, “the Deadlies.” The congregations are crowded as much as ever, though half the original ones are gone West.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 90-1

Thursday, June 28, 2018

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, January 27, 1857

Worcester, January 27, 1857

I send you my speech at our Convention. You asked if I was led into it. It was entirely my doing, from beginning to end; nobody else would have dared to do it, because I knew of nobody at first who would take part with me, except the Garrisonians who were Disunionists before, but I found several rather influential persons, and the whole thing has succeeded better than we expected.

A nice pamphlet report will soon appear. I am surprised that you should not see the weakness of Theodore Parker's idea of preserving the Union for the slaves, when everybody admits that but for the Union, ten would escape where one now does, and slavery be soon abolished in the Northern Slave States. Last week Colonel Benton was here, and when he said these things as arguments against Disunion, everybody applauded, much to his surprise. They say his speech did more than our Convention.

I had a note from Mr. Sumner the other day, who thinks that Virginia will secede, first or last, and take all the States except perhaps Maryland, which can only be held by force. If it were not for the necessity of keeping Washington and the Mississippi, it would be well to have it so, but since those must be kept, it is hard to predict the end. I think however that you need feel no anxiety in Brattleboro'; I don't think the battering-rams (of which the old lady in the Revolutionary times, according to Rose Terry, was so afraid, her only ideas of warfare being based on the Old Testament and Josephus) will get so far. And I think there is more danger of compromise than war, at any rate.

I don't know whether you are aware of an impression which exists in many minds, but which I cannot attach any weight to, as yet, that the seceding States will prefer to abolish slavery, under the direction of England and France, rather than come under Yankee domination again. Wendell Phillips thinks this and says the Fremonts are very confident of it. If they made such a bargain, I think it would end the war and separate us and I don't think it would be so formidable a result, certainly. Even as a matter of Union, it would lead to ultimate reconstruction, for nothing but slavery can ever keep us permanently apart. And the slaves may be better off if emancipated by their masters than by us. Still I don't believe there is any chance of it.

Nothing could have happened better fitted to create enthusiasm than to begin the war by such a distinct overt act from the Southern Confederacy — and by a great disappointment. When you consider that such a man as Mr. Ripley firmly expected to see fighting in the streets of New York with the friends of the South there, and that the New York Mayor advocated annexation to the Southern Confederacy, the unanimous enthusiasm there is astonishing, compelling Bennett [of the "New York Herald"] to turn his editorials to the Northern side, for personal safety. Nothing else has been so remarkable as this.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 78-80

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Samuel Gridley Howe to Theodore Parker, August 2, 1850

Edinburgh, August 2nd, 1850.

My Dear Parker: — I have not heard a word from you since I left home, and this causes me regret, because I have no means of answering the questions which I am always asking myself about you and your health and your doings, &c. &c. Do give me the means of satisfying myself.

I was amused and pleased the other day in London, being in the private reading-room of the great Athenaeum Club: — among the books upon the centre table was one much thumb-worn and evidently greatly in use, and I took it up to see what it was; — what think you,— the Bible, — or Hoyle, — or the Court Guide? No; — Parker's Discourses!

I find you useful sometimes even here, as a means of interesting people in my poor talk. The other day, visiting a very quiet family in the country, I found an ancient maiden lady in the library whom I did not know, — that is, we had not been introduced. We tried to talk, but it was dry work, and the weather and politics, &c. were soon used up. At last she, finding I was an American, asked if I knew Theodore Parker, the new light; upon which I said, in Yankee phrase, that “I guessed I did not know anybody else,” — upon which the antiquated maiden grew suddenly bright and animated, waxed warm in looks, and was at once only a bright middle-aged lady. She knew all about you too, and believed in you, and said you were the man for her money, &c., &c. Luckily for you she had never read the description of you by the correspondent of the New York Mirror. I told the maiden that you were not so well stricken in years as you looked. “In short,” said I, “Mr. Parker is not an old man by any means, and though you could hardly believe it if you should see him in the pulpit, he is not much older than I am!

There! did I not pay you a compliment? If you think not, ask Felton, who was not ashamed to pass for my father!

I have come up here to attend the meeting of the British Scientific Association, which you should do next year. I have seen a few big bugs, and some who only feel big; and some little bugs who may be big ones by and by. It is a beautiful city, as you know, and if it were not so confounded cold I should enjoy the remarkable scenery about it more than I do.

I have not done anything since I left home worth writing about. My principal business has been dawdling about the streets, studying nothing, paying close attention to nothing. I let my poor, weak brain lie fallow, and am almost ashamed of so doing; but que voulez vous? one cannot use up his brains and have them too.

I have found out that in the matter of idiocy they do not know so much in England as they do in France, and in France not half so much as they and the world think they do. The French are a little given to charlatanism, it must be said, and the Idiot School of Paris does allow the world to think that the wonderful things done in it are wonderful, upon the supposition that the forward pupils are idiots, which they are not. . . .

Believe me, dear Parker, most truly yours,
S. G. Howe.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 316-7

Thursday, May 31, 2018

Samuel Gridley Howe to Theodore Parker, July 5, 1850

London, July 5th, 1850.

My Dear Parker: — We have been here in this great maelstrom for nearly a week. On entering it and driving on, for miles and miles, through its streets and squares and parks, all hedged in by stores and houses and palaces, and thronged by thousands and hundreds of thousands of men and women, riding or walking, rushing or lounging, labouring or idling, we had the usual feeling of the utter insignificance of the individual in the presence of the mighty mass of the living race. What were we to London? But turning to our little boy, who was sitting and playing with the tassels of the carriage, we had another feeling: the insignificancy of the mass compared to the individual. What is London to Samuel South Boston?1

We have already seen something of life in London; our former acquaintance with some of the big (hum) bugs saving us the usual loss of time in getting into the charmed circle. I was before painfully impressed with the hollowness, the coldness, the selfishness and the sin which pervades high life here; and the pain is more acute now that I have a more vivid perception of the cruel injustice to the masses of the people, upon whose suffering bodies the superstructure of fashion and rank is raised. The inequalities of wealth, of social advantages and of domestic servitude are bad enough with us, but here they are dreadful, and as the French say, “Ils sautent aux yeux at every step you take. Talk about negro slavery! talk about putting iron collars around serfs' necks and stamping them with their owners' names! what are these to taking grown-up men, decent, intelligent, moral men, dressing them like monkeys, with green coats, plush breeches and cocked hats, powdering their heads, and then sticking them up behind your carriage, two or three in a row, — not to do you any service, — not the slightest, not even to open your coach door, for one could do that, — but just to show them off as your serfs, and make your neighbours die with envy because you have the power to commit more sin against humanity than they have! I have no stomach to eat a dinner after having been ushered into the house through a double row of powdered, wigged, liveried lackeys, and sitting down in a chair with half a dozen guests and finding half a dozen men to wait upon them; give me rather brown bread on a wooden platter than turbot &c. off golden plates.

But here I am interrupted by Twisleton,2 who has come to carry us off to the Exhibition, so I must close and trust to luck for finishing what I have to say in a postscript; if that does not get written, good-bye.

Ever yours,
S. G. Howe.
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1 At my brother Henry's birth, Theodore Parker said to my father, “as yon called Julia ‘Romana,’ because she was born in Rome, so you ought to call this boy ‘Sammy South Boston.’”

The boy was named Henry Marion for my mother's two brothers, but my father never forgot Mr. Parker's suggestion, and used often to speak of himself as Samuel South Boston.

2 The Hon. Edward Twisleton, brother of Lord Say-and-Sele.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 313-4

Thursday, May 17, 2018

Thomas Wentworth Higginson to Maria Weston Chapman, Thanksgiving Day, April 13, 1854

You are aware that the Burns case, or its consequences, cannot yet be regarded as over. Our trials on the State process have been constantly delayed by the pressure of cases under the liquor law (which by statute takes precedence of all others), and as those cases do not diminish, the District Attorney almost despairs of ever reaching ours, and would gladly throw them up if he with propriety could do so. The United States processes are only just being announced, in fact only two have yet been made public, and I do not yet know whether I shall come in for a share of those or not. We are all glad that Theodore Parker should be indicted; it must result in a triumph for him in any event, but it is absurd to suppose that a Massachusetts jury will find him guilty. I think this is no doubt the understanding of some on the Grand Jury who voted to file a bill against him; they knew that no harm would come to him and were unwilling that the antislavery excitement should be kept up, in this way.

You have seen in the “Liberator” the account of the Butman riot in this city; it was really a very remarkable affair — as genuine a popular exhibition as the mobbing of Haynau1 by the London brewers. Only there was a sort of dramatic perfection about this; the entire disappearance of Butman's own friends leaving him to be literally and absolutely saved by abolitionists; the fortunate presence of just the right persons — Messrs. Hoar, Foster, Stowell, and myself — I mean the right persons dramatically speaking; this joined with the really narrow escape of the man and the thorough frightening of one who had frightened so many; — all these gave a tinge of romance to the whole thing, such as was perhaps never surpassed. It can be worked up better than was ever the Porteous2 mob by some future Scott. You cannot conceive how frightened the poor wretch was.

. . . If Worcester frightens ex-kidnappers thus, you may imagine how it would be with those who shall pursue the profession.
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1 Haynau was an Austrian officer who took part in the Napoleonic wars and who was noted for his great severity in putting down an insurrection in Brescia. In 1850 he made a tour of Europe, but his reputation for cruelty had preceded him, and in London he was assaulted and beaten by the employees of a brewery — “for which insult the British Government declined to give any satisfaction.”

2 Readers of Scott's Heart of Midlothian will remember the wild mob which seized and executed Porteous, commander of the City Guard of Edinburgh.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 68-9

Friday, May 11, 2018

Samuel Gridley Howe to Theodore Parker,1854


(1854.)

My Dear P.: — I have come to see you: — no public meeting I think, but a band of fifty, to say the man shall not go out into slavery, but over our bodies: — of the fifty one is

S. G. H.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 269