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1 November 1859, Tuesday; 7:30 p.m.
Boston, Massachusetts; Tremont Temple
"The Character and Actions of Capt. John Brown"
[Back to Calendar of Lectures]
NARRATIVE OF EVENT: (See lecture 65 above.)
Late on 31 October 1859, the day after delivering his lecture on Capt. John Brown in the
vestry of the First Parish Meetinghouse in Concord, Thoreau received the following urgent
telegram, addressed to him or to Emerson, from Charles W. Slack of Boston: "Thoreau
must lecture for Fraternity Tuesday Evening—Douglas fails—Letter mailed" (C,
p. 564). Slack was the chairman of the Lecture Committee for the Fraternity Course, which
was a "literary association" established in January 1859 within Theodore
Parker’s Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society. The purpose of the association was to
give Parker and his friends a wider latitude for topics than lecture platforms usually
allowed. Fraternity lectures were delivered in Boston’s Tremont Temple each Tuesday
evening during the lecture season.1
"Douglas," the scheduled
lecturer who had failed, was the famed orator and anti-slavery agitator Frederick
Douglass, who was allegedly implicated in Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal at
Harper’s Ferry and had fled to Canada in an effort to avoid arrest by the U.S.
Marshall. Douglass was able to get word to Slack late Monday—the day before the
lecture—that he would not be able to keep his lecture engagement, whereupon Slack,
apparently having received word of Thoreau’s lecture in Concord the day before, sent
his telegram to Thoreau. According to the New-York Daily Tribune of 4 November, the
topic Douglass had earlier announced for the fifth Fraternity lecture was "Self-Made
Men."
Slack may have scrambled to make
Thoreau’s last-minute substitution for Douglass as widely known as he could under the
circumstances, but on the day of the lecture advertisements appeared in only two of
Boston’s major daily newspapers, the Boston Daily Evening Traveller and the Boston
Daily Evening Transcript, both mentioning that Henry D. Thoreau would deliver the
fifth Fraternity lecture on the subject of "Capt. John Brown, of Ossawottomie,"
doors to open at 6:30 p.m., a "few single tickets" available at the office of
the Tremont Temple at 7:15 p.m. for twenty-five cents, and the lecture to commence at 7:30
p.m. precisely.
The lectures of the Fraternity Course
invariably attracted large crowds, and the crowd that assembled the night of 1 November
was no different. The New-York Daily Tribune of 4 November reported an audience of
twenty-five hundred, and several of the Boston newspapers mentioned that the hall was
full, but not uncomfortably so. The Liberator of 4 November pointed out that the
hall was filled half an hour prior to the commencement of the lecture. According to the Boston
Atlas and Daily Bee of 2 November, Slack went to the podium before the lecture began
and told the audience:
At a late hour on Monday, a message had been received from [Douglass], at a point which
need not be mentioned, and imparting intelligence which could not properly be disclosed.
In this communication Mr Douglass expressed his regret that the fulfillment of his
engagement to lecture was not in his power. A freeman . . . by right of taking that which
to him belonged, as well as by purchase, a citizen of the Empire State, Frederick Douglas
would not, that night, be safe in the city of Boston. However differently the audience
might view the events in the South, there were few present who did not honor the manly
bravery of John Brown, in this hour of his deep distress. If they had not one with them
who, many think, was engaged in the scheme with Brown, they had one who sympathized with
him in his enterprise—Henry D. Thoreau, of Concord.
The same proceedings were reported in the Boston Daily Journal of 2 November in
the following manner:
Charles W. Slack, Esq., said that the
Lecture Committee shared the disappointment of the audience in the absence of the speaker
announced for this evening—Frederick Douglass. At a late hour on Monday the Lecture
Committee had received a communication from Mr. Douglass, written at a point not necessary
to state, and the letter contained information he was not permitted to divulge. But the
reason that the lecturer did not appear was that he, a free man by his original right as
well as by purchase, would not be safe this night in Boston.
Whatever different political opinions were
entertained by the persons in the audience, he believed all had admired the courage and
firmness of John Brown under his present trying circumstances. (Applause)
Douglass would not be safe here because he
was suspected of being connected with that enterprise, of which the brave John Brown was
the leader. But if they did not have the pleasure of listening to Mr. Douglass, they had
one present who had a keen appreciation of the character of Capt. Brown—Henry D.
Thoreau of Concord, who had volunteered to supply the vacant place before the society.
Mr. Thoreau was then introduced to the
audience.
Thoreau then went to the podium and said, "The reason why Frederick Douglass is
not here is the reason why I am."2 He
then read from his manuscript for the next hour and a half or so, giving what seems to
have been one of his best performances on the lecture platform, for the newspaper reports
indicate that the audience listened with enthusiastic approval and that Thoreau’s
speech was several times interrupted by applause.
Although ill during the day, Caroline H.
Dall sat in the Tremont Temple that night, listened to Thoreau’s lecture, and wrote
in her journal afterward, "Many of the sharpest things he said were in very bad
taste—but it was on the whole a grand tribute to the truest American who has lived
since George Washington. —I was surprised for I had thought Mr Thoreau, only a
philosopher."3
More than forty years later, on 4 March
1890, Thoreau’s friend H. G. O. Blake responded to Samuel Arthur Jones’s gift of
"Thoreau: A Glimpse," which Jones had published in the Unitarian of
January, February, and March 1890, "The John Brown episode on wh. you dwell
considerably [in the article], brought out strongly the manly & heroic side of
[Thoreau], but I think he felt, as I [see?] you feel, that it was largely a disturbing
& painful circumstance in his career. He interests me most when, as is usually the
case, he is not aroused by indignation. . . ."4
The feeling Blake shared with Jones, that the John Brown episode was for Thoreau something
of an interlude to his larger career, seems to be borne out when one notes that
Thoreau’s John Brown writings—both published and recorded in his
journal—represent a brief, anomalous foray into "social" or
"political" territory that he did not otherwise travel after the publication of Walden.
With the sole exception of his writings about Brown, Thoreau seems to have held
steadfastly to the resolution he apparently formulated in late 1854, when he wrote at the
top of his "Walking, or the Wild" lecture draft, "I regard this [lecture]
as a sort of introduction to all I may write hereafter" (see lecture 45 above,
especially note 10). We take this sentence to mean that shortly after the publication of Walden,
Thoreau had resolved to write only upon natural history subjects. Indeed, in his lecture
on Brown and in the essay version published later Thoreau wrote, "At any rate, I do
not think it is quite sane for one to spend his whole life in talking or writing about
this matter, unless he is continuously inspired, and I have not done so. A many may have
other affairs to attend to" (RP, p. 133). Those "other affairs" for
Thoreau were the natural history ones he had introduced in his "Walking, or the
Wild" lecture.
ADVERTISEMENTS, REVIEWS, AND
RESPONSES: Thoreau’s delivery of this lecture in Boston was one of his most
widely reported performances. Virtually all the Boston daily, semi-weekly, and weekly
newspapers reported the event, a few of them at great length. The day after the lecture a
177-sentence summary—the longest newspaper summary of any Thoreau lecture, so far as
we know—appeared in the Boston Atlas and Daily Bee, and the same day the Boston
Daily Evening Traveller published a 146-sentence summary of the lecture. Also on 2
November, the Boston Daily Journal published an eighty-nine-sentence summary, the Boston
Daily Advertiser summarized the lecture in thirty-six sentences, and the Boston
Daily Courier summarized the lecture in seven sentences. The Semi-Weekly Advertiser
and the Boston Daily Messenger of 2 November both reprinted the thirty-six-sentence
summary that had appeared in the Daily Advertiser, and the 177-sentence summary in
the Atlas and Daily Bee was reprinted three days later in the New York Herald.
On 3 November, the Springfield
Republican published the following paragraph in a column titled "The
‘Irrepressible Conflict’":
There is not much doubt that Fred
Douglass has fled to Canada, and is still there, to escape arrest for complicity in John
Brown’s plot. He probably had more to do with it than yet appears. He had an
engagement to lecture in the Fraternity course at Boston, Tuesday evening, and his place
was supplied by Henry D. Thoreau of Concord, who delivered a eulogy on John Brown,
commending not only his general character and intentions but his Harper’s Ferry
affair, and said he most feared to hear of his deliverance, for no life could do so much
good as his death. This Thoreau seems to be a thorough fanatic—why don’t he
imitate Brown and do good by rushing to the gallows?
The same day this bit of advice appeared in the Republican, the Worcester
Daily Spy also noted that Frederick Douglass was unable to keep his appointment to
deliver the fifth Fraternity lecture in Boston and that Thoreau had to fill the vacancy,
but the Spy offered Thoreau no advice. The same note was republished in the Massachusetts
Weekly Spy on 9 November.
On 4 November, the following article
appeared in the Liberator over the initials "C. K. W."—probably
Charles King Whipple, who was a frequent contributor to the newspaper and a close
colleague of the editor, William Lloyd Garrison:
Fifth Fraternity Lecture. The programme
of this course of lectures had promised one by Frederick Douglass of Rochester, N. Y., as
the fifth in order.—It was understood that he was to discourse on ‘Self-made
Men,’ a subject on which he is well qualified to speak. Mr. Douglass, however, did
not appear, and the explanation of his absence by the Committee gave us to understand that
he does not now consider himself safe in any part of the United States, in consequence of
his alleged implication in the Harper’s Ferry invasion.
The vacancy thus made at a late hour had
been filled by the voluntary offer of Henry D. Thoreau of Concord, who took for his
subject one in whom all mankind are now interested, ‘Captain John Brown of
Ossawattomie.’ This exciting theme seemed to have awakened ‘the hermit of
Concord’ from his usual state of philosophic indifference, and he spoke with real
enthusiasm for an hour and a half, giving much information respecting Captain Brown’s
earlier life, and bestowing hearty praise upon the enterprize at Harper’s Ferry, and
as hearty dispraise upon the apathy and reserve shown in regard to it by those portions of
the periodical press which did not take the equally shameful ground of direct censure.
Mr. Thoreau took special pains to include
the Liberator in the censure which he had at first bestowed upon the press
generally. In doing this, he ignored the fact that Mr. Garrison has bestowed high and
hearty eulogy upon Captain Brown, representing him as not only (judged from the ordinary
stand-point of patriotism) superior in nobleness to the heroes of the American Revolution,
but entitled to the higher praise of faithfully practising towards the most oppressed
people of our country the lessons of the Golden Rule; and, moreover, he distorted Mr.
Garrison’s first statement, (made on receipt of the first day’s telegraphic
reports,) that the attempt was apparently an insane one, into a charge that he had
represented Captain Brown as insane.
A very large audience listened to his
lecture, crowding the hall half an hour before the time of its commencement, and giving
hearty applause to some of the most energetic expressions of the speaker.
Under its "Personal" column for 4 November, the New-York Daily Tribune
published the following paragraph:
—Frederick Douglass having failed
to appear on the 1st, and deliver his lecture on "Self-Made Men," in the
Fraternity Course at Boston, Henry D. Thoreau of Concord, Mass., took his place at short
notice, and lectured on John Brown of Osawatamie and Harper’s Ferry, to an audience
of twenty-five hundred. Mr. Thoreau is an Abolitionist of the non-voting Garrisonian
school, and of course gave the Republican party back-handed blessing, but declined to
speak of the Democratic party, saying that he regarded it as too debased for notice. He
justified and applauded Brown’s course throughout, insisting that the worst thing
ever said of this country was that, in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, she could
find no better use for a man but to hang him. The lecture was an hour and a half long, and
was heard to the end with enthusiastic approval.
Far less flattering were the reports of Thoreau’s lecture printed in the
Democratic newspapers, the Boston Post and the Boston Press and Post, both
of which on 3 November had attacked Wendell Phillips’s lecture, "The Lesson of
the Hour," as the "miserable sentiments of a fanatic" who "advocated
treason" and who was nothing more than a "foul-mouthed blasphemer," a
"ribald vulture who sniffs the stench of his own mental corruption." Under the
title "Cause and Effect," both newspapers, the Post on 4 November and the
Press and Post on 9 November, panned "the ribald lecture of one Mr Thoreau, on
John Brown, in the Tremont Temple, wherein he exalted the outlaw above the Revolutionary
heroes"—forgetting that those heroes were themselves outlaws during the
Revolution—"extolled [Brown] for opposing law and government, and declared he
would rather see [Brown’s] statue in the State House than that of any other man, all
of which the audience applauded. . . ." For added measure, both the Post and
the Press and Post also printed the following report:
Mr Thoreau, in his Fraternity Lecture,
says there are at least a million free citizens of the United States who would have been
glad if Old Brown’s attempt to incite the slaves of Maryland and Virginia to murder
defenceless women and children had succeeded! He blasphemously likened Brown to Christ,
who "suffered little children to come unto him and forbade them not, for of such are
the Kingdom of Heaven," instead of taking their lives. Thoreau would also
"rather see the statue of John Brown in the State House yard than that of any other
man he knew. (Applause)."
On 6 November, young William Dean
Howells wrote to his father from Columbus, Ohio, expressing reservations about the recent
wavering of support for Brown and his companions by former congressman Joshua R. Giddings,
who had been implicated in Brown’s raid and whose speech appeared four days later in
the Ashtabula, Ohio, Sentinel, which Howells’s father edited. Howells told his
father:
I did hope to see something violent in
the Sentinel on the subject of Harper’s Ferry. I trust that old Gid stands firm.
There was something in his speech, I didn’t like; and I was glad when a Boston man in
a lecture hit him for it. He had said: "The history of this event will occupy but a
brief page in the history of [the] country." "If this be true," said
Thoreau (he is the author of Walden, by the way,) "how long will be the paragraph
that records the history of the Republican party?" —Brown has become an
idea—a thousand times purer and better and loftier than the Republican idea, which
I’m afraid is not an idea at all.5
The next day Bronson Alcott wrote to Thoreau’s friend Daniel Ricketson,
"Thoreau has just come back from reading to Parker’s company a revolutionary
Lecture on Osawatomie Brown, a hero and martyr after his own heart and style of manliness.
. . . I wish the towns might be his auditors throughout the length and breadth of states
and country. He thinks of printing it in pamphlet and spreading it far and wide, North and
South."6 Also on 7 November, Mary Jennie Tappan
of Bradford, New Hampshire, who had likely read one of the newspaper reports of the
lecture, wrote to Thoreau:
I wish to thank you for the utterance
of those brave, true words in behalf of the noble Saint and self-forgetting hero of
Harpers Ferry; just the words I so longed to have some living voice speak, loud,
so that the world might hear—In the quiet of my home among the hills I read them
tonight and feel that my thought has found a glorified expression and I am satisfied, and
through the distance I reach forth my hand to thank you—I hope you will not think
this note, born of this moments impulse an unpardonable intrusion—I believe you will
not—you are not so bound by conventionalisms—to me you are not so much a
stranger as I to you.—
God keep you!7
Finally, on 9 November, the New-York
Daily Tribune printed the following stinging paragraph under a column titled
"From Boston":
Henry D. Thoreau delivered a lecture on
John Brown at the Tremont Temple on Tuesday evening. It was one of the
"Fraternity" course. There were some just and striking remarks in it, and many
foolish and ill-natured ones. Sneers at the Republicans were quite frequent. Men like
General Wilson, and editors like those of The Tribune and The Liberator, who, while the
lecturer was cultivating beans and killing woodchucks on the margin of Walden Pond, made a
public opinion strong enough on Anti-Slavery grounds to tolerate a speech from him in
defense of insurrection, deserve better treatment than they receive from some of the
upstart Abolitionists of the day.
DESCRIPTION OF TOPIC: See
lecture 65 above.
Notes
1. Henry Ward
Beecher and Theodore Parker . . . Total Depavity (Boston: A. Williams, 1859), p. 10. [Back to Text]
2. We distill this
quotation from the following three sentences in the 2 November 1859 issues of the Boston
Daily Advertiser, the Boston Daily Evening Traveller, and the Boston Daily
Journal, respectively: "The reason why Douglass was not there, Mr. Thoreau began,
was the reason why he was"; "Mr. Thoreau, in commencing, said the reason
why Frederick Douglass was not here, was the reason why he (Mr. T.) was here"; and
"He said in commencing, the reason why Douglass is not here is the reason of my being
here." [Back to Text]
3. Quoted from Dall’s
manuscript journal, MHi. [Back to
Text]
4. Toward the Making of
Thoreau’s Modern Reputation: Selected Correspondence of S. A. Jones, A. W. Hosmer, H.
S. Salt, H. G. O. Blake, and D. Ricketson, eds. Fritz Oehlschlaeger and George
Hendrick (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), p. 65. [Back to Text]
5. William Dean Howells, Selected
Letters, ed. George Arms et al., 6 vols. (Boston: Twayne, 1979-83), 1:48-49.
Howells’s attitude toward Brown changed dramatically during late October and early
November, mirroring a change in the attitudes of many abolitionists of the time. In an
earlier letter to his father dated 20 October, Howells had written, "I suppose you
are all dredfully stirred up about the Harper’s Ferry business. . . . In some
respects, it is the most absurd and laughable event of the age; but I’m sorry for
poor crazy Brown" (1:49n7). [Back to Text]
6. Daniel Ricketson:
Autobiographic and Miscellaneous, pp. 130-31. [Back to Text]
7. Quoted from a
transcript in the Thoreau Textual Center, CU-SB; the MS is in the Sewall Collection in the
Thoreau Society Archives, MCo. [Back
to Text] |