Painting of the Assabet River in Concord by Stacy Tolman
The cover of the report of the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws. Image description: Black text on white paper reads the following: "The Attempt to Steal the Bicentennial: The Peoples Bicentennial Commission. Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary. United States Senate. Ninety-Fourth Congress. Second Session. March 17 and 18, 1976. Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary."
United States Committee on the Judiciary - Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws
Photograph of The Awakening of Endymion by Daniel Chester French
All material courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library
Last known to be in the collection of Mary Abbott of Concord, MA
Photograph of the Butt-Millet Memorial Fountain by Daniel Chester French
The Ellipse, Executive Avenue and Ellipse Drive at Northwest Junction
The Butt-Millet Memorial Fountain - Relief
Photograph of a relief from the Butt-Millet Memorial Fountain by Daniel Chester French
The Carpenters Repairing Hubbard's Bridge
One of twelve original paintings done by N.C. Wyeth for Men of Concord and Some Others, as Portrayed in the Journal of Henry David Thoreau(1936)
Gift of Caleb and Ruth Robinson Wheeler in memory of their son Caleb Kendall Wheeler
During the period from about 1820 until the Civil War, a heightened awareness of a range of social issues was expressed through a number of active reform movements. Emerson, in his 1841 lecture “Man the Reformer,” assessed the climate of the times, “In the history of the world the doctrine of Reform had never had such scope as at the present hour.” There was not only an outpouring of concerned effort on behalf of the unrepresented and underrepresented—Blacks, Native Americans, the labor force, women, children, the mentally ill—but also a trend toward the idealistic reshaping of society through communal living and through education and moral reform. Emerson found that his liberal contemporaries—including some in Concord—hoped that he would speak out on the causes they embraced. In Emerson in Concord, Edward Waldo Emerson wrote of his father’s involvement in reform: “To all meetings held in Concord for the causes of Freedom, spiritual or corporal, he felt bound to give the sanction of his presence whether the speakers were good or bad; he officially welcomed Kossuth and his Hungarian exiles; he entertained John Brown at his house and gave largely from his, at that time very limited, means, to the fund for the furtherance and arming of the Kansas “Free State” immigration.” Emerson certainly spoke out for reform, in Concord and elsewhere. However, his commitment to reform activism did not come easily. Both temperamentally and philosophically, he had difficulty aligning himself with organized reform. Naturally reserved, he was repelled by the emotionalism that characterized the rhetoric of reform meetings. Moreover, his Transcendental focus was on the intellectual and moral perfection of the individual as the best method of reforming society. Even when he believed in the principles behind a reform effort, he could not support the elevation of society over the primacy of the individual. In his “New England Reformers” (1844), he declared: “ … union must be inward, and not one of covenants, and is to be reached by a reverse of the methods [men] use. The union is only perfect, when all the uniters are isolated … Each man, if he attempts to join himself to others, is on all sides cramped and diminished of his proportion; and the stricter the union, the smaller and the more pitiful he is. But leave him alone, to recognize in every hour and place the secret soul, he will go up and down doing the works of a true member, and, to the astonishment of all, the work will be done with concert, though no man spoke … The union must be ideal in actual individualism.” For this reason, Emerson was skeptical about the benefits of joining utopian communities like Brook Farm and Fruitlands. Nevertheless, Emerson surmounted his disinclination to become involved in reform. He did, in fact, become impassioned about certain issues, foremost among them the abolition of slavery, and repeatedly rose to the occasion when asked to make a public statement. Some of his most rousing addresses were delivered in Concord, which reinforced the town’s reputation as a reform stronghold. Concordians were already sensitive to the issue of slavery by the 1830s. A number of the town’s residents belonged to the Middlesex County Antislavery Society, established in 1834. When the Concord Ladies’ Antislavery Society was formed in 1837, Lidian Emerson was one of its founding members. Others in Emerson’s family—his step-grandfather Ezra Ripley, his brother Charles, and his aunt Mary Moody Emerson—were outspoken in their condemnation of slavery. The Hoars and the Thoreaus were abolitionists, as were many others among his friends and associates. His outrage over slavery developed in an atmosphere that encouraged public expression. Emerson delivered an antislavery address in Concord in November of 1837, in response to the murder of abolitionist publisher Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois. Focusing as much on the right of free speech as on the wrong of slavery, the speech disappointed those who wanted a stronger statement from him. Between 1837 and 1844, Emerson was moved by the unfolding of events that, in their threat to the individual and to conscience, could not be ignored. By 1844, the annexation of Texas was imminent. Emerson was disgusted with the failure of government and political leaders like Daniel Webster to stop the spread of slavery. When Concord abolitionist Mary Merrick Brooks asked him to speak at the Ladies’ Antislavery Society celebration of the anniversary of emancipation in the British West Indies, he agreed. On August 1, 1844, in the Court House on Monument Square, he delivered a powerful speech that placed him among effective public supporters of abolition. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 further fueled Emerson’s antislavery activism. In the 1850s, he spoke at meetings around the country, opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and supported radical abolitionist John Brown. Although he had hesitated in throwing his energies into the cause, he ultimately served in Concord and beyond as the voice of social conscience.
All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library
Ruth Haskins Emerson wrote to her son William—Ralph Waldo’s older brother—on June 27, 1837: “The 4th of July, the good citizens of Concord talk of celebrating by having a little parade on account of the erection of the Monument—The Hon. S. Hoar is to give an address on the occasion[,] Dr. Ripley, a prayer, & Waldo, has written a hymn, to be sung to the tune of old hundred—when it is printed will send you a copy.” Emerson, in Plymouth on July 4th, did not hear his hymn sung at the dedication of Concord’s monument commemorating the battle at the North Bridge on April 19, 1775. What is now known as the “Concord Hymn”—today perhaps Emerson’s best-known piece of poetry—was first printed for distribution at the dedication of the Battle Monument (Myerson A4.1). The text of later printings, including the version shown here (collected in The Boston Book for 1850), varies somewhat from the original. In 1875, the first verse of the “Concord Hymn” was carved into the granite base of Daniel Chester French’s Minute Man statue, erected on the opposite bank of the Concord River from the Battle Monument for the town’s centennial celebration of the Concord Fight.