(Excerpt from The Monarch of Dreams
Hedge, and by what se...)
Excerpt from The Monarch of Dreams
Hedge, and by what seems an unnecessarily large wood-pile. A low stone wall surrounds the ample barns and sheds, made of unpainted wood, and now gray with age and near these is a neglected garden, where phlox and pinks and tiger-lilies are intersected with irregular hedges of tree-box. The house looks upon gorgeous sunsets and distant mountain ranges, and lakes surrounded by pine and chestnut woods. Against a lurid sky, or in a brood ing fog, it is as impressive in the landscape as a feudal castle; and like that, it is almost deserted: human life has slipped away from it into the manufacturing village, swarming with French Canadians, in the valley below. It was to such a house that Francis Ay rault had finally taken up his abode, leaving behind him the old family homestead in a.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Army Life in a Black Regiment: and Other Writings (Penguin Classics)
(
A stirring account of wartime experiences from the lead...)
A stirring account of wartime experiences from the leader of the first regiment of emancipated slaves
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a Unitarian minister, was a fervent member of new England's abolitionist movement, an active participant in the Underground Railroad, and part of a group that supplied material aid to John Brown before his ill-fated raid on Harpers Ferry. When the Civil War broke out, Higginson was commissioned as a colonel of the black troops training in the Sea Islands off the coast of the Carolinas.
Shaped by American Romanticism and imbued with Higginson's interest in both man and nature, Army Life in a Black Regiment ranges from detailed reports on daily life to a vivid description of the author's near escape from cannon fire, to sketches that conjure up the beauty and mystery of the Sea Islands. This edition also features a selection of Higginson's essays, including "Nat Turner's Insurrection" and "Emily Dickinson's Letters."
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
(" Oldport Days " from Thomas Wentworth Higginson . Americ...)
" Oldport Days " from Thomas Wentworth Higginson . American author (1823-1911). This story is based on the life rushes by, in Oldport, as if all shot from the mouth of a cannon, and endeavoring to exchange visiting-cards on the way.
(Thomas Wentworth Higginson was an American Unitarian mini...)
Thomas Wentworth Higginson was an American Unitarian minister, author, abolitionist, and soldier. He was active in the American Abolitionism movement during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with disunion and militant abolitionism.
(
This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
(Excerpt from Three Outdoor Papers
Higginson had already ...)
Excerpt from Three Outdoor Papers
Higginson had already made himself some thing more than an amateur naturalist; he now taught school a little, but presently found himself very easily in the Divinity School of his college, making ready to be a minister, and during the few years of his pulpit service, becoming more and more absorbed in the one commanding moral revolution which was for upheaving American society.
He has himself told how he took part in the agitation for abolition, and was for ex changing his pastoral crook for a musket when it almost looked as if the first battle between the two forces was to be fought in Boston streets; he had a share also in the colonizing movement which led to the actual preliminary fight in Kansas, and when the war for the Union finally did break out, he stepped down from the pulpit, laid aside his scholar's gown, and put on the habit Of a soldier. From that day he ceased to be the Rev. Mr. Higginson, - a name well known by this time in anti slavery circles, - and shortly became Colonel Higginson, a title which he has ever since retained. He led a regiment Of blacks in South Carolina, and he has told the story Of those historic days in his book, Army Life in a Black Regiment.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Travellers and Outlaws: Episodes in American History (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Travellers and Outlaws: Episodes in American...)
Excerpt from Travellers and Outlaws: Episodes in American History
Ocean. These men were the humbler Drakes, the (f'avendishes, of their day; they had carried the American flag where it was an unknown ensign; they had voyaged from distant island on to island without chart or light-house; they had made and lost great fortunes, - made them commonly for others, lost them for themselves. At twenty they had been ship-masters; at fifty they were stranded hulks. They were like those other seaside products, those floating and home less jelly-fishcs,which at first are borne wherever ocean wills, and then change into a fixed, cling ing creature that rests in some secluded custom house in a cleft of rock, thenceforth to move no more.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
A Larger History of the United States of America to the Close of President Jackson's Administration
(
This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
(Excerpt from Common Sense About Women
Lord melbourne, sp...)
Excerpt from Common Sense About Women
Lord melbourne, speaking Of the fine ladies in London who were fond Of talking about their ail ments, used to complain that they gave him too much of their natural history. There are a good many writers - usually men - who, with the best intentions, discuss woman as if she had merely a physical organization, and as if she existed only for one Object, the production and rearing Of children. Against this some protest may be well made.
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Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson was an American reformer, soldier and author. He was widely known as a reformer who was dedicated to the abolition movement before the American Civil War.
Background
Thomas Wentworth Higginson was born on December 22, 1823 in Cambridge, Massachussets, United States. His father, Stephen Higginson, a prosperous Boston merchant, steward, or bursar, of Harvard College after his impoverishment by the Embargo of 1812, was the son of Stephen Higginson, and was descended from Francis Higginson, first minister in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Louisa Storrow, the second wife of Stephen Higginson Jr. , bore him ten children, of whom Thomas was the youngest.
The name with which he began life, Thomas Wentworth Storrow Higginson, came direct from his maternal ancestry, for his mother was the daughter of an English army officer, Captain Thomas Storrow, a prisoner-of-war at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the Revolution, and Anne Appleton, a great-granddaughter of the first royal governor of New Hampshire, John Wentworth.
Education
Higginson dropped the name of Storrow before entering college. At the age of thirteen he enrolled at Harvard in the class of 1841. "A child of the college, " as he called himself in later life, he had passed his boyhood in the very shadow of it, and was better prepared than his years would suggest to profit from its influences. Graduated at seventeen, he stood second in his class, and was already a voracious reader, with a happily retentive memory.
The outdoor pursuits of a lover of nature and of such athletic sports as the times afforded--swimming, skating, loosely knit football--kept his tall, awkward body in good physical condition.
While an undergraduate he could write in his journal, "I am getting quite susceptible to female charms", and long afterwards had the frankness to recall such tendencies, in their bud, by writing, "I don't believe there ever was a child in whom the sentimental was earlier developed than in me".
He found little satisfaction in the two years of teaching that followed his graduation from college. In 1843 he returned to Cambridge as a "resident graduate" student, and for three years indulged his taste for discursive reading, without a fixed professional goal. The divinity school was reported to be made up of "mystics, skeptics, and dyspeptics, " and did not attract him immediately upon his return to Cambridge, or hold him continuously after he had entered it; but in 1846-1847 he was enrolled in its senior class, with which he graduated.
Career
So pronounced a radical was fortunate in finding any pulpit of his own, but in September 1847 Higginson became pastor of the First Religious Society of Newburyport, Massachussets. For over two years more he remained in the neighborhood of Newburyport, when, in the spring of 1852, he accepted a call to the pastorate of a "Free Church" in Worcester--one of the precursors of later "ethical societies, " and falling as an organization under a definition of "Jerusalem wildcats, " which Higginson evidently relished. In this post he remained till the autumn of 1861, occupied with many things besides his preaching--lecturing on anti-slavery and other topics, school-committee work, temperance and suffrage activities. Through this period anti-slavery took more and more the right of way over other reforms with him.
While still at Newburyport he was summoned hurriedly to Boston on one occasion to join a vigilance committee for the rescue of a fugitive slave, and suffered genuine chagrin at the government's thwarting of the rescue plans.
Three years later, in May 1854, he was similarly summoned from Worcester to take part in the liberation of another fugitive slave, Anthony Burns, about to be returned from Boston to his owner in the South. In this historic case Higginson bore an important part, helping to batter a passage through a door of the court house, and receiving a severe cut on the chin from his encounter with the police. In such enterprises he continued as he began--in sharp contrast with the leading anti-slavery reformers who refused, on principle, to fight.
Twice in 1856 he supplemented his work in the East for freedom in Kansas by going West himself in the interest of organized settlers on debatable ground. His first visit took him to Chicago and St. Louis, his second into Kansas, on an adventurous, semimilitary journey, chronicled in letters to the New York Tribune, which were published also as an anti-slavery tract, A Ride Through Kanzas (1856). This experience brought him into relations with John Brown, which later became those of close confidence and sympathy.
Holding no theories against the use of force, Higginson found it natural soon after the outbreak of war to stop his preaching and prepare for fighting. He was on the point of starting for the front in November 1862, as captain of a Massachusetts regiment he had helped to raise and drill, when the colonelcy of the first negro regiment in the Union army was offered to him. This he accepted, and held the command of the 16t South Carolina Volunteers from November 1862 until May 1864, when the serious effects of a slight wound obliged him to leave the army. His regiment took part in no important battles, but its experiences in camp at Beaufort, South Carolina, and on skirmishing and raiding expeditions up the St. Mary's and South Edisto Rivers afforded abundant material for his excellent book, Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870), besides placing him in physical perils which he appears to have met with fine courage.
When Higginson quitted the army in 1864 his wife had moved, because of her delicate health, from Worcester to Newport, Rhode Island, the scene of his one novel, Malbone (1869), and of his collected sketches, Oldport Days (1873). Here also he produced the two volumes of Harvard Memorial Biographies (1866), a work of high merit, for which he wrote thirteen of the ninety-five memoirs of Harvard graduates and students who gave their lives for the Northern cause in the Civil War.
From his return to Cambridge until his death his life was that of a man of letters and a reformer, especially in the field of women's rights. As a writer he was primarily a "magazinist. " His gifts of graceful and agreeable writing, of broad sympathy, of shrewd observation, both of men and of nature, joined with the equipment of wide reading well remembered, made him a welcome contributor to many periodicals, particularly the Atlantic Monthly in its earlier years. Through not qualifying as a specialist in any one field he felt conscious of a certain resemblance to a celebrated horse, "which had never won a race, but which was prized as having gained a second place in more races than any other horse in America".
While still in Newport he wrote and published his popular and profitable textbook, Young Folks' History of the United States (1875), followed ten years later by his Larger History of the United States (1885). A bibliography of all his writings fills twenty-six closely printed pages of the biography by his widow. The chief books, not previously mentioned in this article, are: Atlantic Essays (1871); Life of Francis Higginson, First Minister in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1891); Writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1900); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1902), in the American Men of Letters series; John Greenleaf Whittier (1902), in the English Men of Letters series; and some other works. Magazine articles, many of which were reprinted in these volumes, besides addresses and pamphlets swell the bibliography to its great size.
The uneventful career of a writer in Cambridge, a term of service (1880-1881) in the Massachusetts legislature, a second and third journey to Europe where he met many congenial spirits, the discovery and heralding of Emily Dickinson and her poetry, a lively interest in the past and present of his community, by a summer residence stretched to include Dublin, New Hampshire, as well as Cambridge--with such concerns, intellectual, social, civic, the years of nearly half a century following the Civil War were happily and gently filled.
He had passed his eighty-seventh birthday when the labors of his active, wellstored mind and faithful pen came to their end.
(" Oldport Days " from Thomas Wentworth Higginson . Americ...)
Religion
In the Unitarian ministry of his time and region, there was an abundant precedent for freedom of speech and action, and Higginson followed it heartily.
Politics
In politics, Higginson was successively a Republican, an Independent and a Democrat. He described his early youth as having an interest in Brook Farm and of Fourierism.
Slender resources and uncertain prospects led to a long engagement, in the course of which the young student, charged with the idealism that produced many "come-outers" of the time, began his devotion to two favorite causes, woman suffrage and opposition to slavery. In the second of these he was no mere anti-slavery theorist, but, at twenty-two, a "disunion abolitionist, " pledged "not only not to vote for any officer who must take oath to support the U. S. Constitution, but also to use whatever means may lie in my power to promote the Dissolution of the Union".
Besides taking his place among temperance, suffrage, and anti-slavery reformers, he ran--unsuccessfully--for Congress as a Free-Soil candidate, and dealt so outspokenly with politics in his sermons that, after two years, he was found, in his own words, to have "preached himself out of his pulpit. "
Higginson's deep conviction in the evils of slavery stemmed in part from his mother's influence. He greatly admired abolitionists, who, despite persecution, showed courage and commitment to the worthy cause. The writings of William Lloyd Garrison and Lydia Maria Child were particularly influential to Higginson's abolitionist enthusiasm during the early 1840s.
Personality
Though Higginson's tall, slender figure and sensitive features conveyed no marked suggestion of the soldier, the title of colonel clung to him through life.
Connections
When only nineteen and still employed in teaching, Higginson became engaged to marry his second cousin, Mary Elizabeth Channing. In Newport he and his wife continued to live until her long invalidism was ended by her death in September 1877, soon after which he went abroad for some months before settling in Cambridge, Massachussets, in the autumn of 1878, for the remainder of his life. In February 1879 he married his second wife, Mary Potter Thacher, of Newton, Massachussets, who survived him.
Two daughters were born of his second marriage. Through the younger of these his old age was brightened by grandchildren.