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Your task on the discussion board is open ended. Please select one or two quotat
Your task on the discussion board is open ended. Please select one or two quotations from this piece, explain what they mean, and tell us why you found them to be important.
Emerson on Emancipation
Through our textbook reading and supplemental lectures by the most influential historian of the Civil War, we will see how slavery affected the progression toward Civil War, the course of the war, and the process of ending the war.
This is not an observation by historians today analyzing the past. People at the time were keenly aware of the central question that split the nation. This week, please read the following essay written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, for the Atlantic Monthly magazine, in April 1862. Note that he frames the question in terms of civilization. He connects the US example to broader universal ideals of humanity and progress. Then he details how slavery corrupts civilization and man, who is supposed to own his labor and not profit off of another’s labor. Finally, he explains the reason why the government specifically must act to end slavery.
Your task on the discussion board is open ended. Please select one or two quotations from this piece, explain what they mean, and tell us why you found them to be important.
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A certain degree of progress from the rudest state in which man is found, — a dweller in caves, or on trees, like an ape, a cannibal, an eater of pounded snails, worms, and offal, — a certain degree of progress from this extreme is called Civilization. It is a vague, complex name, of many degrees…
In the hesitation to define what it is, we usually suggest it by negations. A nation that has no clothing, no alphabet, no iron, no marriage, no arts of peace, no abstract thought, we call barbarous…
Another measure of culture is the diffusion of knowledge, overrunning all the old barriers of caste, and, by the cheap press, bringing the university to every poor man’s door in the newsboy’s basket…
[T]he chimney taught to burn its own smoke; the farm made to produce all that is consumed on it; the very prison compelled to maintain itself and yield a revenue, and, better than that, made a reform school, and a manufactory of honest men out of rogues, as the steamer made fresh water out of salt: all these are examples of that tendency to combine antagonisms, and utilize evil, which is the index of high civilization. Civilization is the result of highly complex organization.
The evolution of a highly destined society must be moral…What is moral?…Hear the definition which Kant gives of moral conduct: “Act always so that the immediate motive of thy will may become a universal rule for all intelligent beings.”
Civilization depends on morality. Everything good in man leans on what is higher…Thus, all our strength and success in the work of our hands depend on our borrowing the aid of the elements…
[T]he tides drive the wheels and grind corn, and which thus embraces the assistance of the moon, like a hired band, to grind, and wind, and pump, and saw, and split stone, and roll iron.
Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day, and cost us nothing…
And as our handiworks borrow the elements, so all our social and political action leans on principles…
Hitch your wagon to a star…If we can thus ride in Olympian chariots by putting our works in the path of the celestial circuits, we can harness also evil agents, the powers of darkness, and force them to serve against their will the ends of wisdom and virtue. Thus, a wise Government puts fines and penalties on pleasant vices. What a benefit would the American Government, now in the hour of its extreme need, render to itself, and to every city, village, and hamlet in the States, if it would tax whiskey and rum almost to the point of prohibition!
[T]he true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops, — no, but the kind of man the country turns out…
But if there be a country…where speech is not free, — where the post-office is violated, mail-bags opened, and letters tampered with, —…where the laborer is not secured in the earnings of his own hands, — where suffrage is not free or equal, — that country is, in all these respects, not civil, but barbarous…
Morality is essential, and all the incidents of morality, — as, justice to the subject, and personal liberty. Montesquieu says—“Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free”; and the remark holds not less, but more, true of the culture of men than of the tillage of land. And the highest proof of civility is, that the whole public action of the State is directed on securing the greatest good of the greatest number.
Our Southern States have introduced confusion into the moral sentiments of their people, by reversing this rule in theory and practice, and denying a man’s right to his labor. The distinction and end of a soundly constituted man is his labor. Use is inscribed on all his faculties. Use is the end to which he exists. As the tree exists for its fruit, so a man for his work…
Well, now here comes this conspiracy of slavery, — they call it an institution, I call it a destitution, — this stealing of men and setting them to work, — stealing their labor, and the thief sitting idle himself…And standing on this doleful experience, these people have endeavored to reverse the natural sentiments of mankind, and to pronounce labor disgraceful, and the well-being of a man to consist in eating the fruit of other men’s labor.
We have attempted to hold together two states of civilization: a higher state, where labor and the tenure of land and the right of suffrage are democratical; and a lower state, in which the old military tenure of prisoners or slaves, and of power and land in a few hands, makes an oligarchy: we have attempted to hold these two states of society under one law. But the rude and early state of society does not work well with the later, nay, works badly, and has poisoned politics, public morals, and social intercourse in the Republic, now for many years.
The times put this question, — Why cannot the best civilization be extended over the whole country, since the disorder of the less civilized portion menaces the existence of the country? … We live in a new and exceptional age. America is another word for Opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of the Divine Providence in behalf of the human race; and a literal slavish following of precedents, as by a justice of the peace, is not for those who at this hour lead the destinies of this people. The evil you contend with has taken alarming proportions, and you still content yourself with parrying the blows it aims, but, as if enchanted, abstain from striking at the cause.
In this national crisis, it is not argument that we want, but that rare courage which dares commit itself to a principle…We want men of original perception and original action, who can open their eyes wider than to a nationality, namely, to considerations of benefit to the human race, can act in the interest of civilization.
The war is welcome to the Southerner: a chivalrous sport to him, like hunting, and suits his semi-civilized condition…His laborer works for him at home, so that he loses no labor by the war…[A]s long as we fight without any affirmative step taken by the Government, any word intimating forfeiture in the rebel States of their old privileges under the law, they and we fight on the same side, for Slavery…
Congress can, by edict, as a part of the military defense which it is the duty of Congress to provide, abolish slavery, and pay for such slaves as we ought to pay for. Then the slaves near our armies will come to us: those in the interior will know in a week what their rights are, and will, where opportunity offers, prepare to take them. Instantly, the armies that now confront you must run home to protect their estates, and must stay there, and your enemies will disappear…
The power of Emancipation is this, that it alters the atomic social constitution of the Southern people. Now their interest is in keeping out white labor; then, when they must pay wages, their interest will be to let it in, to get the best labor, and, if they fear their blacks, to invite Irish, German, and American laborers. Thus, whilst Slavery makes and keeps disunion, Emancipation removes the whole objection to union. Emancipation at one stroke elevates the poor white of the South, and identifies his interest with that of the Northern laborer…
We want a state of things in which crime shall not pay. This is the consolation on which we rest in the darkness of the future and the afflictions of today, that the government of the world is moral, and does forever destroy what is not.
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