Whitman's funeral and burial

After the death of Walt Whitman, his friend Thomas Eakins and an assistant created his death mask as well as a plaster cast of the poet's hand. An autopsy was performed, despite objections from brother George Whitman, but following the request of the poet himself. The funeral for Walt Whitman was held March 30, 1892.

Whitman's polished-oak casket was displayed in the parlor of his Mickle Street home in Camden, NJ. The public viewing was from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. and drew at least a thousand visitors, including neighborhood friends and curious laborers on their lunch break. A police officer was stationed at the door to direct traffic.

A carriage then took Whitman's body to his final resting-place at Harleigh Cemetery. Thousands upon thousands lined the streets to watch the procession. A ceremony featured speakers from Whitman's cadre of disciples (none particularly famous by today's standards). Readings came from Confucious, Buddha, Plato, the Koran, and the Bible. The only blood relative in attendance was George, whose injury during the Civil War inspired the poet's writing and his life. George did not speak and was likely confused by the ceremony and the extravagant praise bestowed on his dead brother. George, when he received his copy of Leaves of Grass, "didn't think it worth reading."

Whitman's $4,000 tomb was built to his specifications on a 20' x 30' plot of land gifted by the Harleigh Cemetery Association. Whitman ordered the construction of the "plain massive stone temple" with an iron gate and large bronze lock, inspired by an etching called "Death's Door" by William Blake. The roof was a foot and a half thick and some of the blocks weighed 8 to 10 tons. Whitman watched its construction, sent photos to friends, and proudly reported it as a celebration of his personality. Friends thought it a bit outrageous and accused the contractors, Reinhalter and Company of Philadelphia, of swindling the elder poet. Whitman himself only paid $1,500 of the cost; a friend settled the rest of the bill. The result was, he wrote, "the rudest most undress'd structure... since Egypt, perhaps the cave dwellers." Later, Whitman's parents and other relatives were moved there as well. Even so, the only name on the tomb's exterior remains "Walt Whitman."

*Photo of the death mask is courtesy of Princeton Libraries.

Louisa May Alcott casts her first vote

Bronson Alcott's wife, Abby May, once declared, "I mean to go to the polls before I die, even if my daughters have to carry me." She was 73 at the time and did not live to see her prophecy fulfilled. However, less than three years after her death, opportunity finally came for the women of Concord, Massachusetts. A change in the law granted permission for tax-paying women in the town to vote for the local school committee. The first woman to register to vote was Louisa May Alcott.

On March 29, 1880, Louisa May and 19 other women attended the Concord Town Meeting to cast their votes; she lamented that so few took part in the historic election. Her father was there, as she wrote, "with a fatherly desire to make the new step as easy as possible." In fact, it was Bronson Alcott who suggested that the ladies be allowed to vote first.

The 20 women lined up and cast their votes. "No bolt fell on our audacious heads, no earthquake shook the town," Louisa May humorously observed. Immediately after, Judge Ebeneezer Hoar motioned that the polls be closed. The motion carried. As biographer John Matteson wrote, "Not only had the women voted, but they had cast the only ballots to be tallied." Though some of the men present seemed uncomfortable that their right to vote had been denied, Louisa May noted that after nearly two centuries of exclusively male suffrage, the one day of exclusively female suffrage was the beginning of a balance.

The Alcott family was raised amid reform movements and took part in nearly all of them, from abolitionism to Utopian communal living. Many of Louisa May Alcott's writings feature women characters trying to find a way to access education or a variety of vocations. She herself supported her family and, in her adult years, was surprisingly financially secure for a writer, though she had to write continuously to do so.

The Twenty-Seventh of March

The poet William Cullen Bryant once wrote, "I think the wedded life of few men has been happier than mine." He married Frances Fairchild in 1821, and they experienced a long and happy marriage. Bryant was so enamored of her, in fact, that he wrote a birthday poem in her honor, "The Twenty-Seventh of March" (she was born March 27, 1797):

Oh, gentle one, thy birthday suns should rise
Amid a chorus of the merriest birds
That ever sang the stars out of the sky
In a June morning. Rivulets should send
A voice of gladness from their winding paths,
Deep in o'erarching grass, where playful winds,
Stirring the loaded stems, should shower the dew
Upon the glassy water. Newly blown
Roses, by thousands, to the garden walks
Should tempt the loitering moth and diligent bee.
The longest, brightest day in all the year
Should be the day on which thy cheerful eyes
First opened on the earth, to make thy haunts
Fairer and gladder for thy kindly looks.

The full poem is much longer and eloquently shows his love for her.

In her later years, she was struck by illness. She died in 1866 at the age of 70, a ripe old age for women in the 19th century. Even so, a day after her death, Bryant wrote to a relative: "Her life seemed to close to me prematurely, so useful was she and so much occupied in doing good, and yet she was in her seventieth year, having been born on the 27th of March, 1797. It is now more than forty-five years since we were married -- a long time, as the world goes, for husband and wife to live together. Bitter as the separation is, I give thanks that she has been spared to me so long, and that for nearly half a century I have had the benefit of her counsel and her example."

Death of Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman died slowly. In 1873, he had suffered a paralytic stroke then suffered several more as the years went on. Knowing he was approaching death, Whitman commissioned a house-shaped tomb for his burial for a whopping $4,000 — twice what he paid for his house in Camden, New Jersey. He often visited his tomb while it was being built — for as long as he was mobile anyway.

Towards the end, Whitman could barely move and was in constant pain. His followers, nicknamed the Whitmaniacs, devotedly attended to him. One wrote: "Walt very frankly expresses his anxiety to die, to shake off this burden, which increases and is heavier every day." To alleviate the pain a little, his friends improvised a sort of water bed on the floor. "O I feel so good!" Whitman said, comparing the splashing water to being on a ship.

Sustained on milk punch, Whitman's body was wasted by tuberculosis. He was partly atrophied, suffered from tumors, abscesses, congestion, and other ailments. Yet, he still lived. Knowing how strange this was, Whitman granted permission for an autopsy, in the name of medical science. This whole time, Whitman was completing his final revisions on the last edition of his book Leaves of Grass, today referred to as the "Deathbed Edition."

Walt Whitman died at 6:43 p.m. on March 26, 1892 at the age of 72. Doctors discovered, in a 3-hour autopsy, that Whitman died of pulmonary emphysema or bronchial pneumonia, that the left lung had entirely collapsed, and the right was only barely functioning. The heart was surrounded by abscesses and "about two and a half quarts of water," according to the New York Times. Whitman's brain was removed and sent to the American Anthropometric Society, where it was accidentally destroyed, allegedly when it fell on the floor and was crushed. His funeral was held four days later.

Your old friend, John G. Whittier

The poet John Greenleaf Whittier often encouraged the work of younger writers, particularly women. One of the women for whom Whittier served as a mentor was the Lowell, Massachusetts-based Lucy Larcom. She once invited him to visit but, being unable, he had to refuse. Rather than write a boring letter, however, he wrote her a poem. It is dated March 25, 1866, sent from his home in Amesbury, Massachusetts (don't worry if you don't get his inside jokes and other references):

Believe me, Lucy Larcom, it gives me real sorrow
That I cannot take my carpet-bag, and go to town to-morrow;
But I'm "Snow-bound," and cold on cold, like layers of an onion,
Have piled my back, and weighed me down, as with the pack of Bunyan.

The north-east wind is damper, and the north-west wind is colder,
Or else the matter simply is that I am growing older;
And then, I dare not trust a moon seen over one's left shoulder
As I saw this, with slender horn caught in a west hill-pine,
As on a Stamboul minaret curves the Arch Imposter's sign.

So I must stay in Amesbury, and let you go your way,
And guess what colors greet your eyes, what shapes your steps delay,
What pictured forms of heathen love, of god and goddess please you,
What idol graven images you bend your wicked knees to.

But why should I of evil dreams, well knowing at your head goes
That flower of Christian womanhood, our dear good Anna Meadows!
She'll be discreet, I'm sure, although, once, in a fit romantic,
She flung the Doge's bridal ring, and married the "Atlantic;"
And spite of all appearances, like the woman in the shoe,
She's got so many "Young Folks" now she don't know what to do.

But I must say, I think it strange that thee and Mrs. Spaulding,
Whose lives with Calvin's five-barred creed have been so tightly walled in,
Should quit your Puritanic homes, and take the pains to go
So far, with malice aforethought, to walk in a vain show!
Did Emmons hunt for pictures? was Jonathan Edwards peeping
Into the chambers of imagery with maids for Tammuz weeping?

Ah, well, the times are sadly changed, and I msyself am feeling
The wicked world my uaker coat from off my shoulders peeling;
God grant that, in the strange new sea of change wherein we swim,
We still may keep the good old plank of simple faith in Him!

P.S. My housekeeper's got the "tissuck," and gone away, and Lizzie
Is at home for the vacation, with flounce and trimmings busy;
The snow lies white about us, the birds again are dumb, —
The lying blue-frocked rascals who told us Spring had come;
But in the woods of Folly-Mill the sweet May-flowers are making
All ready for the moment of Nature's great awaking.

Come when they come; their welcome share: — except when at the city,
For months I've scarce seen womankind, save when, in sheerest pity,
Gail Hamilton came up, beside my lonely hearth to sit,
And make the Winter evening glad with wisdom and with wit
And fancy, feeling but the spur and not the curbing bit,
Lending a womanly charm to what before was bachelor rudeness; —
The Lord reward her for an act of disinterested goodness!

And now, with love to Mrs. F., and Mrs. S. (God bless her!),
And hoping that my foolish rhyme may not prove a transgressor,
And wishing for your sake and mine, it wiser were and wittier,
I leave it, and subscribe myself, your old friend,
                                      John G. Whittier.

Joel Barlow: To Freedom

In the agricultural community of Reading, Connecticut, Joel Barlow was born on March 24, 1755 (sometimes listed as 1754). He was the youngest of ten children (another source says he was the eighth of nine). The young Barlow was prepared for an educated life but, as he was entering college, his father died. He entered Dartmouth College before moving closer to home and finished his degree at Yale College. It was while he was a student that the American Revolution broke out, an event which had long-standing impact throughout Barlow's life.

Barlow turned to poetry while in college. In 1778, at his commencement, he offered the class poem: "The Prospect of Peace." Other equally patriotic poems came later, as his career path took him to the roles of chaplain, bookseller, editor, publisher, real estate agent, and diplomat. Barlow also became associated with a group calling themselves the Connecticut Wits. Writers of humorous verse, the group included Noah Webster, John Trumbull, and others. As a writer, Barlow perhaps got the most attention for his 1807 book Columbiad, which included the poem "To Freedom":

Sun of the moral world! effulgent source
Of man's best wisdom and his steadiest force,
Soul-searching Freedom! here assume thy stand,
And radiate hence to every distant land;
Point out and prove how all the scenes of strife,
The shock of states, the impassion'd broils of life,
Spring from unequal sway; and how they fly
Before the splendour of thy peaceful eye;
Unfold at last the genuine social plan,
The mind's full scope, the dignity of man,
Bold nature bursting through her long disguise,
And nations daring to be just and wise.
Yes! righteous Freedom, heaven and earth and sea
Yield or withhold their various gifts for thee;
Protected Industry beneath thy reign
Leads all the virtues in her filial train;
Courageous Probity, with brow serene,
And Temperance calm presents her placid mien;
Contentment, Moderation, Labour, Art,
Mould the new man and humanize his heart;
To public plenty private ease dilates,
Domestic peace to harmony of states.
Protected Industry, careering far,
Detects the cause and cures the rage of war,
And sweeps, with forceful arm, to their last graves,
Kings from the earth and pirates from the waves.

Barlow was an interesting fellow... I hope to write write posts on him here!

Give me liberty or give me Death!

In a moment of patriotic passion, Patrick Henry shouted to the assembly at St. John's Church in Richmond, "Give me liberty or give me Death!" The speech was given on March 23, 1775 at a court hearing to decide if the commonwealth of Virginia would send its troops into the Revolutionary War. Or, so they say.

In fact, no one recorded Henry's speech that day, including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, both of whom were supposedly in attendance. The first time it appeared in print was 1816, a full seventeen years after Henry's death, in a biography by William Wirt.

Wirt struggled with his book, Life and Character of Patrick Henry. He complained to a friend, "not one of his speeches lives in print, writing or memory. All that is told me is, that on such and such an occasion, he made a distinguished speech." Even Jefferson admitted he didn't remember it. "I myself had been highly delighted and moved, I have asked myself, when he ceased, 'What the devil has he said?' and could never answer the inquiry."

So, for the March 23, 1775 speech, Wirt turned to a witness named St. George Tucker. Wirt let Tucker know the responsibility he wielded, admitting he was taking his testimony "verbatim." According to the reconstructed scene, Henry claimed that "our chains are forged" because of the British military's actions in Boston; war was inevitable and "there is no peace." Wirt's book goes on in the voice of Henry:

'The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"'

He took his seat. No murmur of applause was heard. The effect was too deep. After the trance of a moment, several members started from their seats. The cry, "to arms!" seemed to quiver on every lip, and gleam from every eye... That supernatural voice still sounded in their ears, and shivered along their arteries. They heard, in
every pause, the cry of liberty or death. They became impatient of speech — their souls were on fire for action.

Tucker must have had a fantastic memory to have recalled a 1200-word speech with such specificity... or Wirt just made it all up. Other than Tucker's claim, there is no evidence whatsoever that Patrick Henry said these words.

*The image above depicts an earlier speech by Patrick Henry  in which he spoke out against the Stamp Act of 1765, as painted by Peter F. Rothermel in 1851. In that speech, Henry said, "If this be treason, make the most of it!"

Goethe's death inspires Fuller

The German writer and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died on March 22, 1832 at the age of 82. One of his major American admirers, Margaret Fuller, was 21 years old at the time. Soon, she came to believe that Goethe's work was important enough that it needed to be represented in the United States. Her friend Harriet Martineau suggested that Fuller turn her passion for Goethe into a full-length book. Calling him "one of the Master Spirits of this world," Fuller set out to write his first American biography.

"It is a great work," she wrote, "I hope nobody will steal it from me." By March 1836, she reported that "If it does not kill me, something will come of it." Though she gathered many of his works, translating and publishing a few of them, she lacked sufficient material and wanted to contact people who knew Goethe firsthand. She decided she could only write the book if she traveled to Europe.

But Fuller's responsibilities were in the United States. Her father died in 1835 and she was the main breadwinner for her mother and siblings. Soon, she wast working with Bronson Alcott at his experimental Temple School in Boston. Her plans for Goethe were never completed.

When she finally made it to Europe eleven years after Goethe's death, the idea of writing his biography was abandoned. The major culmination of her research, however, was a long essay published in The Dial while she served as its editor. The essay emphasized Goethe's intellectual side. "It seems to me as if the mind of Goethe had embraced the universe," Fuller wrote in a letter. Her translation of Goethe's Tasso was published posthumously, further adding to Fuller's role in bringing Goethe across the Atlantic. As most scholars agree, no one did as much as Fuller to introduce the work of Goethe in the United States and German Romantic literature in general, both of which had a major impact on Transcendentalists (including Fuller) in particular.

*The image of Goethe dates to 1814, painted by Josef Raabe. The daguerreotype image of Fuller is seen courtesy of the Houghton Library at Harvard University from their exhibit Margaret Fuller: Woman of the Nineteenth Century (for which I served as guest curator). It is free and open to the public, on display only through March 28, 2010.

Hawthorne and Longfellow's fairy tales

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote from Salem on March 21, 1838 to his former Bowdoin College classmate Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow had turned down an invitation to dinner a few days earlier at which Hawthorne intended to discuss a possible literary collaboration. "I wanted to have a talk with you about that book of Fairy Tales which you spoke of," Hawthorne wrote. "I think it a good idea, and am well inclined to do my part toward the execution of it."

By this time, Longfellow had published a handful of books, while Hawthorne had published mostly short stories here and there. As he wrote, "I am terribly harassed with magazine scribbling." He was willing to let Longfellow have the title of editor for the project; "I will figure merely as a contributor," likely assuming that Longfellow had the more famous name. "Possibly we may make a great hit, and entirely revolutionize the whole system of juvenile literature," he wrote optimistically.

Though it seems it was Longfellow's original idea, he had second thoughts. Hawthorne even attempted a magazine project with Longfellow, which also went nowhere.

Even so, Hawthorne was pushed to continue the project of a children's book, partly by his future sister-in-law Elizabeth Peabody. Peabody contacted her future brother-in-law, Horace Mann, who was then secretary of the board of education in Massachusetts, to hire Hawthorne to write a series of books for children. Mann was not initially pleased with the idea, thinking there was not enough of a message to Hawthorne's work.

Eventually, the end result of Hawthorne's project of "juvenile literature" was a collection of historical sketches for children. Published in 1840, the collection, Grandfather's Chair, was printed in Elizabeth Peabody's book shop (with an illustration by Sophia Peabody, his future wife) and had "sequels" in Old People and Liberty Tree, both printed in 1841 by Peabody. The "fairy tale" idea would later evolve into A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, in which Hawthorne re-wrote several myths.

*The images are by the artist Eastman Johnson, who created these crayon and chalk portraits in 1846. He was commissioned by Longfellow himself and both portraits still hang in Longfellow's preserved study at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Uncle Tom's Cabin published

After serializing it in 40 parts for the National Era, Harriet Beecher Stowe agreed to turn her story into a book. Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in that format on March 20, 1852. It was a major success, named a best-seller second only to the Bible. It sold 300,000 copies in its first year alone.

The book tells a fictional story based partly on the autobiography of Josiah Henson, a black man who escaped from slavery in Maryland and helped others settle down and become self-sufficient in Canada. Presented as a sentimental novel, the story tried to draw emotional reactions from its readers. Stowe did this intentionally. In particular, the death of the character Eva drew solid fan support, such that it is claimed that, the year of its publication, 300 girls were named Eva in Boston alone.

Stowe's book also is a bit heavy-handed as a Christian tale, with her narrative voice often interjecting to comment on Christian values. Ultimately, she condemns slavery as immoral and inherently evil. Though it has occasionally been criticized in modern times for perpetuating or even creating stereotypes of black characters (though, in reality, those criticisms are better aimed at the stage version of the book, created without Stowe's approval), there is no denying its purpose: to call upon Americans to end slavery.

The book swiftly drew condemnation from Southerners, including the writer William Gilmore Simms, who said the book's sentiments were completely untrue. In fact, the book spurned a whole genre of literature known as "Anti-Tom" novels. In the northern part of the country, readers were strongly turned against slavery, particularly aiming at the Fugitive Slave Law. The polarizing effect of the book (and, of course, slavery in general) later led to the Civil War — which, in turn, led to the legendary (perhaps apocryphal) meeting between Harriet Beecher Stowe and Abraham Lincoln. Legend has it that the President referred to her as "the little lady who started this great war."

Fuller and Child have dinner

According to a letter, Margaret Fuller dined with Lydia Maria Child on March 19, 1846. Both women were journalists, authors and — perhaps the subject of their conversation that day — reformers, particularly advocating for the rights of Native Americans and for the abolition of slavery.

Each must have admired the other — Child had been the editor of the Liberty Bell at the same time that Fuller was editing The Dial. Both had a great appreciation for writing of all kinds, be it fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. Child once said that Fuller referred to the world as the "literature of God."

Child, older than Fuller by eight years, had published her book An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans in 1833. In it, she argued that people of African descent were just as intelligent as those of European descent and called for the immediate abolition of slavery (she called it "the sacred cause of emancipation"). Fuller's more-recently published book, Summer on the Lakes, 1844, was not directly about slavery but, in it, she discussed both Africans and Native Americans. Child had already advocated for that group, too; her novel, Hobomok, was published anonymously in 1824 and featured a white woman marrying a Native American man.

Likely, both reform ideas were the topic of their discussion the day the two women dined. In fact, they were meeting at the New York home of Isaac Hopper, credited by some as the founder of the Underground Railroad. In his 70s at the time he offered his table to Child and Fuller, Hopper began organizing a system for slaves to escape to freedom when he was 16 years old — at least, according to legend. A year after he died, Child published a biography of him.

At the time they were meeting, each had already published her most enduring work. Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century (considered the first major book on women's rights in the United States) had been published in 1845; though still in print, it doesn't seem to be required reading in most schools or colleges (it should be). Child's most famous work was published as a Thanksgiving poem in 1844. Though certainly not as important, daring, or literary as her other works, "Over the river and through the wood, to Grandfather's house we go..." seems much more familiar

*On a personal note: the image of Fuller, above, is from an original daguerreotype in the collection of Houghton Library, Harvard University. The exhibit "Margaret Fuller: Woman of the Nineteenth Century" is open to the public through March 26; as guest curator, I highly recommend a visit.

Draw up the papers, lawyers

The top of the first column of the fourth page of the Toledo Daily Blade for March 17, 1871 was dedicated to the poem "Betsey and I Are Out." The author, Will Carleton, probably never knew that it almost wasn't published at all.

He was 25 years old and, though a newspaper reporter in Michigan, had never published anything particularly literary. He based his poem on a true story and wrote it in one sitting. He then sent it off to the Toledo Daily Blade, hoping to get the attention of the editor. Instead, it fell into the hands of an assistant, who promptly threw it away. Later, the editor accidentally dropped something in the trash and, retrieving it, found Carleton's poem. "What's this?" he asked his assistant. "Oh, some fellow who thinks he can write poetry, but can't even spell." Or so they say.

"Betsey and I Are Out" was published, either way. It turned out to be popular, and was soon republished (with illustrations!) in Harper's Weekly, bringing Carleton national attention. In 1919, in fact, the state of Michigan passed a law which required at least one of his poems in the school curriculum. This is, perhaps, surprising; the poem was about divorce.

Draw up the papers, lawyers, and make 'em good and stout;
For things at home are crossways, and Betsey and I are out.
We, have worked together so long as man and wife,
Must pull in single harness for the rest of our nat'ral life.

The narrator admits neither are guilty of infidelity but that they simply can't live together any more. Together, they agree that they can't agree. Still, the narrator is happy to give her half of what they owned ("For she has helped to earn it, through many a weary day"). Yet, as he explains to his lawyer his need for divorce, he starts to reminisce about the good ol' days. So, he concludes by asking the lawyer to make sure the hapless couple can still be buried side-by-side:

And when she dies I wish that she would be laid by me,
And, lying' together in silence, perhaps we will agree;
And, if ever we meet in heaven, I wouldn't think it queer
If we loved each other the better because we quarrelled here.

Washington Irving and George Washington

Washington Irving always felt an obligation to pay homage to George Washington, his namesake. Shortly before the end of his life, Irving completed that obligation. On March 15, 1859, he wrote the last words of his 5-volume biography Life of George Washington.

After the birth of their eleventh child, Irving's parent's William and Sarah Irving agreed that "Washington's work is ended... and the child shall be named after him." According to Irving family legend, a few years later, Irving's Scottish nursemaid Lizzie took the young boy around New York trying to find the newly-elected first President of the United States. In a shop, she finally brought the boy and the American Revolutionary hero face-to-face. When Washington was told the 6-year old boy was named in his honor, he placed his hand on little Washington's head, blessing his namesake. Years later, Irving noted: "I have reason to believe he has attended me through life... I can feel that hand upon my head even now."

Irving had toiled for months on what became his last major work. He had already published biographies of Christopher Columbus, Oliver Goldsmith, and the prophet Muhammad. Released over several years, the five volume book was written carefully and purposefully (Irving had never been consistent in his ability to write on cue or for deadlines). "It has been the most wearing and engrossing task that I have had in the whole course of my literary career," Irving admitted.

Suddenly regretting the huge responsibility he had undertaken, the aging Irving was working more and more slowly. But, his publisher (Putnam) announced the final volume would be published in the fall of 1858, without checking first. Irving was having trouble writing anything at all at this point. "I do not fear death," he noted, "but I would like to go down with all sail set." So, he went back to work.

According to his nephew (and first biographer) Pierre Irving, the namesake of George Washington completed the last line of the last volume of his last major work on March 15: "he put the last finishing touch to it." The book went to print without the author bothering to look at the proofs. The book was a huge critical and financial success. Washington Irving was dead less than nine months later.

Nathaniel Hawthorne goes to war, part 2

Nathaniel Hawthorne was already an established literary figure when he traveled to Washington, D.C. with his publisher William Ticknor in 1862. Perhaps that is why he was able to get an audience with the President himself, Abraham Lincoln.

Hawthorne visited Lincoln at the White House on March 13, 1862, partly by squeezing into a private presentation from Massachusetts factory of a commemorative whip, "handsomely encased." The party arrived, as scheduled, at 9:00 a.m. on that Thursday morning. Lincoln was late and sent word he was still having breakfast. "His appetite, we were glad to think, must have been a pretty fair one," wrote Hawthorne, "for we waited about half an hour in one of his ante-chambers." When the moment of meeting arrived, they were rushed into another room, where sat the Secretaries of War and of the Treasury (Stanton and Chase). Apparently, many appointments were delayed by the President's ample breakfast.

"By and by there was a little stir on the staircase and in the passage-way, and in lounged a tall, loose-jointed figure," Hawthorne described. His first impression on seeing Lincoln? "(Being about the homeliest man I ever saw, yet by no means repulsive or disagreeable) it was impossible not to recognize as Uncle Abe." Hawthorne, whose old friend Franklin Pierce was an earlier president, was not star-struck. In fact, scrutinizing the man with "his lengthy awkwardness... [and] uncouthness of movement," Hawthorne concluded that it was easier to assume he was a back-country schoolmaster, rather than the President of the United States.

Yet, Hawthorne admired Lincoln instantly. "I like this sallow, queer, sagacious visage," he concluded.

On returning home, Hawthorne immediately set to writing about his experience, particularly emphasizing his encounter with the President. When he submitted the essay "Chiefly About War Matters" to James T. Fields for the Atlantic Monthly, Fields accepted it from the respected author sight unseen. Hawthorne was, oddly, disappointed, hoping the editor would offer feedback. It turned out to be a mistake for Fields, too; he immediately took issue with the descriptions of Lincoln. "Leave out the description of his awkwardness & general uncouth aspect," Fields insisted.

Hawthorne acquiesced but was not happy about it. "What a terrible thing it is to try to let off a little bit of truth into this miserable humbug of a world!" he lamented. He decided to cut "Uncle Abe" out entirely, but noted it was "the only part of the article really worth publishing."

Emerson enters and leaves the ministry

After Ralph Waldo Emerson's graduation from Harvard Divinity School, he preached in various churches throughout New England until Boston's Second (Unitarian) Church invited him to serve as its junior pastor. Emerson accepted and was ordained on March 11, 1829. Only a few months into the job, however, senior pastor Henry Ware resigned to teach at Harvard. Emerson took over and his salary jumped to a substantial $1800.* He was 26 years old.

The timing was good for the young minister, who had been courting the ill Ellen Tucker. After his appointment, he married the 18-year old woman; their marriage would last only two years before her death.

Her death may be what inspired Emerson to return to the radical theology he considered as a student. "I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry," he confided in his journal. "The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers." Emerson questioned parts of the Bible that many interpreted literally and struggled with traditions and rites which seemed to have no basis. His biggest concern was the Holy Communion, which he believed Christ never intended to be a ritual. He did not see the importance or value in it. He concluded: "This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it."

The irony was that Emerson's predecessor, Henry Ware, had drawn large crowds for his monthly lectures on the Lord's Supper. This may be why the church's governing board was reluctant to accept Emerson's proposals to alter the ceremony, including the removal of the Eucharist and wine. His "indifference & dislike" to the tradition culminated in a sermon on the subject in which he explained why he believed Jesus had not intended a permanent religious institution when he celebrated Passover with his disciples.

Emerson was very well-liked by his parishioners but he no longer felt he could carry on there. The proprietors who had a say in the matter voted 30 to 24 to accept his resignation. He decided to break away for a time and traveled to Europe, setting sail on Christmas Day in 1832.

*This translates to roughly $22,000 today. Not much by our standards but, consider, that the average magazine editor was making $800-$1000 annually.

Dark without & within

James Russell Lowell was known as a boastful, loud, fun-loving intellectual. Throughout his life, however, he suffered many tragedies, struggled financially, and hid a deeper, darker side to his personality. After a rambunctious youth, which carried into his time as a student at Harvard, his marriage to Maria White in 1844 had a calming influence. She pulled him deep into the world of abolitionism (and, for a time, temperance) and seemed to stabilize his life.

The couple, however, faced much hardship. They had four children but three (Blanche, Rose, and Walter) died within a couple years of their birth. Only his daughter Mabel survived into adulthood. But Mabel's mother did not live to see her grow up. Maria White Lowell died in October 1853; she was 32.

Lowell was struck with an overwhelming grief. Cutting himself off from others, he sheltered himself at Elmwood, the family estate in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He lived with his father (now deaf) and his sister (who often went days without speaking a word). His private diaries from this period are riddled with the initials of his dead wife. On March 10, 1854, for example, he wrote: "Dark without & within. M.L. M.L. M.L."

Lowell's friends helped him publish a posthumous collection of Maria White's poems, including this sonnet:

I love thee — not because thy love for me,
Like a great sunrise, did o'ervault my day
With purple light, and wrought upon my way
The morning dew in fresh emblazonry;
Nor that thou seest all I fain would be,
And thus dost call me by mine angel's name,
While still my woman's heart beats free of blame
Beneath the shelter of thy charity.
Oh, no! for wearily upon my soul
Would weigh thy golden crown of unbought praise,
Did I not look beyond the hour's control,
To where those fruits of perfect virtue raise
Their bloom, that thou erewhile, with prophet eyes,
Didst name mine own, in groves of paradise.

*The gravestone pictured above marks the burial place at Mount Auburn Cemetery of Maria White Lowell, James Russell Lowell, and his second wife Frances Dunlap. And if you think this journal entry is dark, wait until you hear about the incident with the pistol...

What does the Lord want to kill me for?

Julia Ward Howe was in New York while her oldest daughter (pictured) was dying. The author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was on tour lecturing (particularly for women's suffrage and other reforms). She rushed home in February to find her daughter, Julia Romana, in poor health — "but not dangerously ill," she wrote. However, Julia Romana thought she felt death was near, saying that the tide was coming to take her away. She had typhoid fever.

But Howe's presence made her feel just a little better. Even so, Howe had further engagements. As March came, she went from her home in Boston to Poughkeepsie, back to Boston to check on Julia Romana, then to Providence, back to Boston, then out to New York. Howe hired two nurses to care for Julia Romana but she was nervous and concerned about her daughter.

On March 9, 1886, she sent a telegram home to see if there was any improvement. On the contrary, Julia Romana had taken a turn for the worse. Howe had to wait until the next morning before a train could take her back to Boston. She brought a bottle of champagne with her but there was no mistaking it: Julia Romana was dying.

With mother holding one hand and her husband Michael Anagnos holding the other, Julia Romana noted she was grateful for the love of her parents and her husband. She asked, "What more can one want?" But, when Michael left the room, she privately asked her mother, "What does the Lord want to kill me for?" She died at the age of 42. What happened next got a little complicated.

Julia Ward Howe recorded that her daughter's last words were: "If this is not the right one, call another priestess — truth, truth." She later claimed an addition to those words: "Be kind to the little blind children, for they are papa's children" (she had worked at the Perkins School for the Blind, a school founded by Julia Ward Howe's husband Samuel Gridley Howe; Julia Romana's husband was its second director). Another daughter noted her sister's last words as: "Take care of the little blind children."

One Howe biographer noted the family tried to clean up the story, to make her into more of a martyr. As Valarie H. Ziegler wrote, "none of them [i.e. the family] had found Julia Romana the easiest person in the world to love."

Birth of Edwin Percy Whipple

Edwin Percy Whipple (that's E. P. Whipple to his readers) was born March 8, 1819. He got his feet wet as a critic for the Philadelphia-based Graham's Magazine for a time before joining the Literary World as a correspondent to the Duyckinck brothers. Ultimately, as historian Perry Miller noted, he became "Boston's most popular critic."

In fact, by the end of his life he was one of the most prolific critics and essayists in the United States. His diverse work led him to write introductions to Charles Dickens ("A Tale of Two Cities is one of the most thrilling narratives in the whole range of the literature of fiction."), to oversee the publication of the speeches of Daniel Webster, to become a trustee of the Boston Public Library, and to collaborate with publisher James T. Fields on a massive compendium of the history of British poetry. He was popular and hung out with all the literary greats; Whipple dedicated a book to John Greenleaf Whittier ("the people's poet" and "loyal friend") and even served as a pallbearer for Nathaniel Hawthorne (who he advised in naming one of his novels) upon his death in 1864.

But, Whipple had one major problem, one which tends to haunt even the best of critics: personal bias. When others made fun of Boston as a "mutual admiration society," they were likely referring to Whipple (and Fields, but that's a different story). Boston became a world where critics, editors, and writers often offered to scratch one's back for a scratch in return. Much of it was innocent, of course, and done without malice; many of these Bostonians were sincere friends, after all. Such is the case of the Saturday Club, of which Whipple was a member.

The Saturday Club met once a month beginning in 1855 at the Parker House (now the Omni Parker Hotel) for extravagant meals — and equally extravagant conversation. The group included writers, philosophers, historians, and scientists, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson's son Edward later wrote a history of the Saturday Club and its members, noting about Whipple (apparently without irony!): "No other member of the Saturday Club has ever been more loyally felicitous in characterizing the literary work of his associates." In other words, any Bostonian was guaranteed a good review from Boston critic E. P. Whipple.

Nathaniel Hawthorne goes to war

When fellow Bowdoin College classmate Horatio Bridge, then paymaster general of the United States Navy, invited his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne to Washington, D.C., his loyal publisher William D. Ticknor went along (invited by Sophia Hawthorne). They left via railroad on March 6, 1862 — a cold, wintry Thursday morning. Hawthorne hoped to see the Civil War for himself. Ticknor handled all the logistical arrangements, purchasing train tickets and even gloves on behalf of Hawthorne. "It is no trouble to me," Ticknor wrote to his wife.

Hawthorne saw the soldiers, fortifications, cannons, and encampments. An author of some status by then, Hawthorne was able to glimpse various important figures: Major General George McClellan, Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and, a couple days after his arrival, President Abraham Lincoln (more on that here).

The author of The Scarlet Letter was no stranger to Washington or of national politics, having visited there with Ticknor in 1853 before taking his role as an overseas diplomat. But Hawthorne's concern over the Civil War was not much more than curiosity. While his friends and neighbors — people like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Ralph Waldo Emerson — were crying out for their pro-Union, anti-slavery causes, Hawthorne was merely an observer. He admitted to Bridge that he was not entirely sure what the war was about, or what it could accomplish. He did, cynically, conclude: "The old Union is smashed. We never were one people, and never really had a country since the Constitution was formed."

Hawthorne's only major response to the crisis in print was his essay "Chiefly About War Matters," written "by A Peaceable Man." Published in the Atlantic Monthly for July 1862, the essay is relatively empty. Even when he borders on passing judgment (dismissing John Brown as "deserving" his execution as a traitor), he undermines it (with a footnote decrying that no true son of Massachusetts would express such an "abominable sentiment" about the heroic efforts of the abolitionist; Hawthorne wrote the footnotes himself).

Phillis Wheatley and the first martyr of the American Revolution

The Boston Massacre was one of several events that eventually pushed American colonists into the Revolutionary War with their mother country of England. It took place on March 5, 1770. Soon after, an early poet described the incident; unfortunately Phillis Wheatley's poem, "On the Affray on King Street, on the Evening of the 5th of March 1770" was presumed lost for centuries.

Phillis* might have had a different perspective on what the war for American freedom meant. She was born in Africa and, nine years before the massacre, was taken from her home and forced into slavery. She was seven years old. Her original name was lost (or, perhaps, purposely forgotten) by the time she landed in Boston. Purchased by the Wheatley family, they named her after the boat upon which she sailed, the Phillis.

Phillis was educated, despite her status as property, and soon she began writing poetry, often with religious overtones. Her first book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in 1773 (the title page was kind enough to list her as a "negro servant"). She is today considered the first black poet in America and some have called her the mother of African-American literature. Her book proved popular, and her owners granted her freedom as a result.

When the Boston Massacre occurred, Phillis was living only a few blocks away. Five were killed that day, including a black man named Crispus Attucks. Some have claimed that Attucks was the first martyr of the American Revolution; Phillis Wheatley said otherwise. In her poem, "On the Death of Mr. Snider Murder'd by Richardson," she gives her own account of the first martyr — an 11-year old boy named Christopher Snider (or Seider), killed two weeks before the Massacre:

In heavens eternal court it was decreed
Thou the first martyr for the common good
Long hid before, a vile infernal here
Prevents Achilles in his mid career
Where'er this fury darts his Pois'nous breath
All are endanger'd to the shafts of death
The generous Sires beheld the fatal wound
Saw their young champion gasping on the ground
They rais'd him up but to each present ear
What martial glories did his tongue declare
The wretch appal'd no longer can despise
But from the Striking victim turns his eyes—
When this young martial genius did appear
The Tory chief no longer could forbear.
Ripe for destruction, see the wretches doom
He waits the curses of the age to come
In vain he flies, by Justice Swiftly chaced
With unexpected infamy disgraced
By Richardson for ever banish'd here
The grand Usurpers bravely vaunted Heir.
We bring the body from the watry bower
To lodge it where it shall remove no more
Snider behold with what Majestic Love
The Illustrious retinue begins to move
With Secret rage fair freedom's foes beneath
See in thy corse ev'n Majesty in Death.

*I choose to call her by this name based on precedent set by several scholars of African-American literature, particularly Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who has often tried to drive up interest in her. The image is from her book; it is considered the only depiction of her taken from life.

Death of Bronson Alcott

If Brook Farm has a specific beginning of the end (the destruction by fire of the Phalanstery), another Massachusetts Utopian community never had a chance. Fruitlands was founded about 40 miles to the northwest by Amos Bronson Alcott, who died on March 4, 1888.

Alcott was an idealist, a bit of a radical even among fellow radicals the Transcendentalists. Fruitlands members (of which there were few, other than the Alcott family) had to follow very strict rules: a vegan diet (even some vegetables were forbidden, including "dirty" ground-dwellers like potatoes and carrots), a ban (for a time) on the use of animal labor or animal products like wool, and the rigid work schedule of a farmer on land not good for crops.

The vision was to avoid the evils of the American economy — something Alcott worked against throughout his life. After Fruitlands failed, the Alcotts moved to Concord. When the family purchased a home they named The Hillside in Concord, Massachusetts in 1845, the patriarch of the family played no part in the purchase; as his wife said, he was "dissatisfied with the whole property arrangement" (i.e. he didn't believe people could really own land).

Bronson Alcott continued his idealism, finding several ways throughout his life to challenge systems of education, philosophy, religion, and economy. As a writer himself, his most well-known works were published in The Dial, a series called Orphic Sayings; most were considered incoherent at worst, a series of one-liners at best.

Possibly organization is no necessary function or mode of spiritual being.  The time may come, in the endless career of the soul, when the facts of incarnation, birth, death, descent into matter and ascension from it, shall comprise no part of her history; when she herself shall survey this human life with emotions akin to those of the naturalist, on examining the relics of extinct races of beings; when mounds, sepulchres, monuments, epitaphs, shall serve but as memoirs of a past state of existence; a reminiscence of one metempsychosis of her life in time.

He lectured frequently to the end of his life. He died at the age of 88. His daughter Louisa May Alcott, by then a famous novelist, died two days later at the age of 55. Both were buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.

Dreams of Brook Farm burn down

Though it was not expressly a literary endeavor, Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, was meant to foster intellectual goals. By pooling their labor on a farm, the founders believed, all members of the community would have the time for their literary, artistic, scientific, or philosophical pursuits. Proponents (who never joined) included Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. Its biggest literary luminary, however, was Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of its founding members in 1841.

As a community based on tenets of Transcendentalism, Brook Farm's philosophies didn't necessarily appeal to Hawthorne (who, despite some false information out there, was never a Transcendentalist; if anything, he was anti-Transcendentalism). The struggling author joined in the hope of making enough money to start off his marriage to Sophia Peabody on secure financial footing. Hawthorne even became the community's treasurer for a time.

However, he soon learned that free time was nonexistent, and his farm duties (including shoveling manure) were too much for him. "Labor is the curse of the world," he wrote his fiancee, "and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutified." Hawthorne left Brook Farm, later using his experience as an inspiration for his novel The Blithedale Romance, at a time when it still had the potential of being successful.

It never was — and most historians agree the beginning of the end for Brook Farm was March 3, 1846.

Brook Farm had recently reorganized as a community based on the ideas of Charles Fourier and spent massive amounts of money on a central community building, the Phalanstery. As Brook Farm founder George Ripley described, it would have "a large and commodious kitchen, a dining-hall capable of seating from three to four hundred persons, two public saloons, and a spacious hall or lecture room." On March 3, it caught fire and burned to the ground within two hours, before construction was completed, after a $7000 investment (nearly $160,000 today).

Uninsured, the community lost most of its money. George Ripley quietly disassociated himself from his experiment at creating Utopia in America. Other participants, who had been very happy there despite financial difficulty, slowly broke away too. Today, most of the land that was Brook Farm is a series of cemeteries.


*The image above is "The Hive," a building which served as the main social center, library, and dining hall. The Phalanstery would have replaced many of its functions but also included living space.

Death of Susanna Rowson

At the age of 63, Susanna Rowson died on March 2, 1824. In her obituary, she was referred to as being "distinguished for her talents, virtues, and intelligence." Rowson is today remembered as the author of the first American best-seller: Charlotte Temple.

Born Susanna Haswell in England, her family moved to Boston when she was five years old (their ship was grounded and its passengers needed to be rescued). Her father, an officer of the Royal Navy, was arrested and considered a prisoner until he was sent back to England in 1778 with his family. Young Susanna became a governess to help support the family. In 1786, she married and published her first book, Victoria. Five years later, she published Charlotte Temple and soon returned to the United States. The American edition of her book was published a year later in 1794.

The book is presented as a true story (it's original subtitle was "A Tale of Truth") and tells of the seduction of a British young woman by a soldier. The couple moves to the United States, where he leaves her, pregnant and sick. After Charlotte's death, the soldier returns and feels sorry for his abandonment and takes their child back to England. The sentimental novel was a warning to young women, who the author directly addresses: "Oh my dear girls—for to such only am I writing."

After the success of her book, Rowson continued writing but she also took to the stage (often performing at Boston's Federal Street Theatre, where the mother of Edgar Allan Poe also performed for a time) and opened a school for girls. After her death, she was buried at St. Matthew's Church in South Boston. A couple decades later, the church was destroyed and all remains were moved to Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. A memorial tablet was installed in her honor with the inscription Memoria En Eterna.

The "real" Charlotte Temple, if she exists, is marked at a grave in New York's Trinity Churchyard. Legend says that it marks the burial place of Charlotte Stanley, a young woman who was seduced by Rowson's cousin — perhaps the model for the fictional Charlotte Temple.

Birth of William Dean Howells as editor

"Don't despise Boston!" publisher James T. Fields once said to William Dean Howells, a native of Ohio. The two were meeting at the home of poet Bayard Taylor. Three days later, Fields sent a letter inviting Howells to serve as assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly. He started working in that role on March 1, 1866 – the anniversary of his birth on March 1, 1837.

The details, as Howells noted, involved proof-reading, correspondence with contributors, gathering manuscripts, and writing a few reviews for each issue. He negotiated with Fields for a $50 a week salary. "Upon these terms we closed," Howells wrote, "and on the 1st of March, which was my twenty-ninth birthday, I went to Boston and began my work."

Howells also met with James Russell Lowell, the monthly's founding editor, to get his blessing. Howells spent the next fifteen years with the magazine, the last ten as its head editor. He enjoyed it, noting he "found it by no means drudgery." Under his guidance, the Atlantic moved beyond its traditional New England roots and established itself as an important national periodical. Through his association with the magazine, he built friendships with Mark Twain, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Celia Thaxter.

Howells was a writer himself; by the end of his life, he published poetry, travel essays, novels, biographies, and everything else. Later in his life, he wrote about his experience as editor of the Atlantic Monthly in "Recollections of an Atlantic Editorship."