Virtue's Hero

Scholars have long debated the question of Ralph Waldo Emersons relationship to the abolition movement and the degree of his commitment to the antislavery cause. Some early commentators depicted Emerson as an active social reformer, while others have seen him as a contemplative dreamer, serenely aloof from frenetic reform activity. In Virtues Hero, Len Gougeon draws on a huge array of primary documentsunpublished speeches, the correspondence of abolitionists, family papers, records of abolition society meetings, and moreto offer a detailed and comprehensive account of Emersons antislavery position. Tracing the development of Emersons thought in both his personal and public reactions to the social crises that sprang from the slavery issue, Gougeon shows conclusively that the New England Transcendentalist not only philosophized about reform but actually immersed himself in it. Time and again, he demonstrated the depth of his commitment to the power of personal virtue and to the principle articulated in his 1837 address The American Scholar: Action, he declared, is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it he is not yet man.