Concord Sage
Ralph Waldo Emerson Life and Times
by
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Introduction to Concord Sage
“Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call.”
The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
With American history being revised to fit “separation of church and state,” now is the time for an updated biography about Ralph Waldo Emerson that places his Transcendentalist reputation properly within the whole story of his life.
A person’s story has three aspects. The individual sees his/her story up close; excerpts from Emerson’s journals and letters provide glimpses of this. The outsider sees the person’s story colored by their relationship; quotes from Emerson friends and biographers capture this view. Then there is a broader version—what relevance the individual’s life has in the scheme of the world, which Emerson considered his “call.”
Values Passed Down
Waldo Emerson (the name he preferred) inherited the genes of people who dared their lives for a purpose.
Family patriarch, Joseph Emerson, arrived in America aboard a Puritan ship in 1640. He and his sons served as ministers in and around Concord. In 1775, Waldo’s grandfather and young father lived in the Church Manse overlooking the North Bridge on the Concord River. From this spot they watched the first shots of the Revolutionary war being fired.
Had a family feud brought the British soldiers to Concord? Waldo’s grandfather urged his church congregation to resist…while Waldo’s maternal uncle, Daniel Bliss, was a British supporter who knew where rebel weapons were stored in Concord. Each paid a high price for their beliefs. Emerson died during the Revolutionary war and Bliss had to flee to Canada.
Waldo’s grandmother and mother were both left young widows with little means of support. Yet these brave women did what was necessary to make sure two generations of Emerson sons received the best education possible.
American Platform
Revolutionary War ties propelled Waldo Emerson to speak against slavery; just as growing up poor caused him to dislike the greed of the Industrial Revolution and suspect socialism. Even so, he never spoke simply against an issue. He marveled at the scientific discoveries of his day, as indicated on the timeline in this book.
British founder of the Edinburgh Review, Sydney Smith, criticized American creativity in 1820 asking “who reads an American book?” Emerson, through his own works, became America’s answer to that challenge. Emerson also encouraged authors such as Thoreau, Hawthorne and Whitman who were developing American literary forms. He launched the Dial magazine to publish new authors, even while promoting the works of his English friend, Thomas Carlyle, in America.
Emerson and the Transcendental Club challenged the old patterns, stirring up excitement over new possibilities. But Emerson held back. He never joined a commune, knowing firsthand that hard work and personal gain went together. He also knew that Governor William Bradford saved the starving Plymouth colony in 1623 when he introduced free enterprise. Bradford had raised an orphaned male relative of Emerson’s wife, Lidian.
Lecture tours across America and in England became the platform where Emerson expressed his ideas and promoted his books. Greatly admired, he was frequently quoted by reporters. And newspaper editors used articles about him as filler. Such an article on this book's cover tells of Emerson’s honesty in selling a stove; another mentions a bout with measles.
Heroes and Faith
Like young people of every age, Waldo Emerson had heroes. First, these were famous European authors and his own aunt, Mary Moody Emerson. In his thirties, Daniel Webster was a hero until siding with slavery. Emerson also enjoyed short but pivotal friendships with a nephew of Napoleon, a radical abolitionist and a California naturalist.
Emerson met someone his age whom he greatly admired—another hero—Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s life was similar to Emerson’s own, including the death of a young son. The men agreed about Emancipation, and each gained insights into the workings of God during the long Civil War.
Emerson admirers know that he left the church after the early deaths of family members and first wife. Even so, Waldo Emerson always held to his own concept of the Divine, in his writings and within the Transcendental Club.
When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, a devastated Emerson had a decision to make…to forgive and heal or to become bitter. As we might expect, Waldo Emerson chose healing. But the quiet response of this staid New Englander written on April 30, 1865, should surprise many.
Ralph Waldo Emerson—with a talent for seeking and finding wisdom, then sharing it willingly—clearly fulfilled his calling as Concord Sage.
Recommended by The US Review of Books- Professional Book Reviews for the People
Most American high school students are required to read a few pithy selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Usually they are paired with works by his young protégé Henry Thoreau, and often readers come away with the impression that while the mentor was rather aloof and stodgy his more free-spirited disciple was "pretty cool." But there was much more to Emerson than what is revealed in his writings, a fact which the author aptly illustrates in her new biography of one of the nation's most famous thinkers.
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About the Book
Concord Sage
Who was Ralph Waldo Emerson? What made him famous—a celebrity in his own town, country, and beyond? And why is Emerson still quoted today?
An average student and shy young man, Emerson found his calling at the age of thirty. His gifts for writing and lecturing drew New England’s brightest thinkers into his literary circle that became known as the Transcendental Club. Emerson’s moderate style was the guiding factor that kept American culture from extremes—New England religious formalism or European radical ideas.
Family ties to the Revolutionary War prompted Emerson to write words for freedom “heard round the world.” Visitors to Concord, Massachusetts, tour his home, Bush, and the restored North Bridge, where on April 19, 1775, Emerson’s grandparents and father watched from the Church Manse as American history was made and where the following poem by Emerson is now etched in stone.
“Concord Hymn”
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
Shaped by early New England values, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s thinking helped shape America in the nineteenth century. Here is the story of the Concord Sage.
About the Author
Donna Ford thought Ralph Waldo Emerson was a relative until two years of research for this book proved her wrong. She has twenty-plus years experience as a technical writer. Ford lives in New England and enjoys reading and giving YA biographies to her nine grandchildren.