Concord Sage , livre ebook

Inspiring Voices - A. Ford Donna

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

44 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Concord SageWho was Ralph Waldo Emerson? What made him famousa 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 Englands brightest thinkers into his literary circle that became known as the Transcendental Club. Emersons moderate style was the guiding factor that kept American culture from extremesNew 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, Emersons 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 HymnBy the rude bridge that arched the flood,Their flag to Aprils breeze unfurled,Here once the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world.Shaped by early New England values, Ralph Waldo Emersons thinking helped shape America in the nineteenth century. Here is the story of the Concord Sage.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Memoir

Informations

Publié par	Inspiring Voices
Date de parution	24 avril 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781462411221
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0240€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

CONCORD SAGE
Ralph Waldo Emerson Life and Times
Donna A. Ford

Copyright © 2015 Donna Ford.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Inspiring Voices books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

Inspiring Voices
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.inspiringvoices.com
1 (866) 697-5313

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4624-1121-4 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4624-1122-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015905584

Inspiring Voices rev. date: 04/22/2015
Contents
Introduction to Concord Sage

Shots Fired
Boston Boyhood
Teacher? Preacher?
Home to Concord
Stirring Words at Bush
Noble Ventures
Fame
Slave or Free?
Fading into the Sunset

Emerson Epilogue
Time Line
Bibliography
Meet the Author
End Notes
Dedica tion
To my parents:
Florence, whose Pilgrim and Puritan genes I inherited;
Ralph, who passed on his Italian story-telling skills.
Introduction to Concord Sage
“Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call.”
The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Eme rson
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 Plat form
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. 1 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. 2
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. 3 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 F aith
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 had short but pivotal friendships with unique people including 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 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 thin kers.”
Shots Fired
“This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do wit h it.”
The American Scholar, 1837 lecture at Harvard, 1849 published in Nature, Addresses & Lect ures

North Bridge, Concord, Massachusetts
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1803. But his story and that of his family is forever tied to the small town of Concord twelve miles west of Boston.
Emersons had lived in Concord, Massachusetts, since 1640 following Joseph Emerson’s arrival in Boston on a Puritan ship. Several Emerson men served as ministers of the Concord church. By 1775, Reverend William Emerson lived with his family in the newly-built Church Manse. This three-story home still overlooks the narrow North Bridge that crosses Concord River.
The morning of April 19, 1775, seven hundred British soldiers led by Lt. Colonel Francis Smith marched into Concord. It wasn’t a friendly visit. Alerted by an Emerson relative loyal to the British, these soldiers were looking for weapons stored by the local militia.
The British wanted to scare its colonists into paying past due taxes. King George believed they should help pay for the earlier French and British Indian wars. The colonists felt that they had already paid enough in lives and service. Many of their men had served with British soldiers during those wars.
Patriots, as some colonists were called, had sent riders from Boston during the night to warn Concord. Paul Revere is the best known of the riders. Militia men from nearby towns responded in the pre-dawn hours. Those from towns farther away would arrive later that day.
Minute Men were an elite group of militia men sworn to be always ready to defend their town. 4 Each man carried his own firearm. This was required by New England laws for protection of their towns. The band of Minute Men followed behind the British until the soldiers entered the town of Concord. Then the Minute Men cut ahead through the woods. They crossed the North Bridge and climbed a hill on the west side to wait and watch.
Reverend William Emerson and his tall six-year-old son, also named William, were outside behind the Church Manse. The field where they stood sloped down to the Concord River. They watched as the British crossed the bridge. Phoebe Emerson and younger children also watched from second-floor windows.
Leaving two hundred men behind to guard the bridge—half on each side—the rest of the soldiers marched west to search the Barrett farm. The loyalist traitor told that weapons were hidden there.
Soldiers remaining in Concord rounded up weapons and stored supplies, too. They stacked these to burn. When