sort of âFrankenbook,â revising and piecing together Emersonâs unpublished essays for the volume. For me, what was intriguing about this particular book wasnât so much its content, but the path it might have taken to West Wind. There were a number of possible scenarios I could conjure, all of which underscored the interesting and generally forgotten fact that American philosophy often emerged from the most pivotal moments of American history.
The Emersons and Lees went way backâso far back that their long-standing relationship was forged during the American Revolution. Itâs impossible to understand American philosophy without grasping how it sprang from this conflict. Emersonâs grandfather, William, had built the Old Manse in Concord in 1769, a building that now commemorates the first battle of the Revolution. Heâd been the chaplain of the Provincial Congress when it met in Concord in 1774, and then he took up the post of chaplain for the Continental Army when the war began. When he died from camp fever while on campaign, Emersonâs father, also a William, was a boy of only seven.
Leeâs revolutionary roots were even more distinguished. He could trace his family back to Anne Hutchinson and John Cotton. Hutchinson was the Puritan woman who dared to contradict the Puritan ministers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636. Cotton was the minister who inspired her to do so. The freethinking Hutchinson was fed up with her Puritan leadersâ draconian work ethic. The settlers no longer had to be strictly obedient to the British crown, but in those early years the Puritans demanded ever-greater obedience from their followers. Hutchinson was tired of taking orders. Inspired by Cottonâs sermons, she argued publicly that salvation could not be achieved through good works alone but turned on the acceptance of grace, a personal conversion that had absolutely nothing to do with the church hierarchy of the Puritans. She was exiled for her beliefâtruly radical in her dayâthat religious salvation came hand in hand with political and personal freedom. Her ideas percolated through the next five generations of American thinkers. Many years after Hutchinsonâs death, one of her descendants gave birth to Henry Leeâs grandfather, Joseph. By this point the Lee family was no longer terribly interested in ideological or theological matters. Their revolution was to be fought not over the Bible, but over economics and politics. Joseph Leeâs family was one of the most powerful shipping clans in America at a time when the British colonial taxes were particularly onerous. On December 16, 1773, Joseph and several hundred of his most zealous buddies decided to dump English tea into Boston Harbor. When the Boston Tea Party led to the Revolution, Lee allowed his merchant ships to be recommissioned as privateering vessels, and the Beverly Privateers of the American Revolution were born.
What must it have been like to have ancestors like this? More than a little intimidating, I imagined. The unspoken goal for nineteenth-century American thinkers was to live up to their familiesâ revolutionary spirit. No small trick, considering the relative peace and stability that existed in the early 1800s. In the 1830s Emerson and Lee, each in his own way, decided to rebel against the one American institution that hadnât undergone radical transformation in the previous centuryâHarvard. Harvard hadnât changed with the Revolution; it was dominated first by a bunch of old-school Calvinists and then by a surprisingly conservative group of Unitarians. Both groups staunchly disapproved of the liberal Unitarianism that had begun to gather momentum. Echoing his ancestorsâ rejection of institutionalized religion, Emerson argued that salvation could be achieved through intuition of the divine in nature. He was a proper adult when this debate began, and he made a well-respected
The Emersons and Lees went way backâso far back that their long-standing relationship was forged during the American Revolution. Itâs impossible to understand American philosophy without grasping how it sprang from this conflict. Emersonâs grandfather, William, had built the Old Manse in Concord in 1769, a building that now commemorates the first battle of the Revolution. Heâd been the chaplain of the Provincial Congress when it met in Concord in 1774, and then he took up the post of chaplain for the Continental Army when the war began. When he died from camp fever while on campaign, Emersonâs father, also a William, was a boy of only seven.
Leeâs revolutionary roots were even more distinguished. He could trace his family back to Anne Hutchinson and John Cotton. Hutchinson was the Puritan woman who dared to contradict the Puritan ministers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636. Cotton was the minister who inspired her to do so. The freethinking Hutchinson was fed up with her Puritan leadersâ draconian work ethic. The settlers no longer had to be strictly obedient to the British crown, but in those early years the Puritans demanded ever-greater obedience from their followers. Hutchinson was tired of taking orders. Inspired by Cottonâs sermons, she argued publicly that salvation could not be achieved through good works alone but turned on the acceptance of grace, a personal conversion that had absolutely nothing to do with the church hierarchy of the Puritans. She was exiled for her beliefâtruly radical in her dayâthat religious salvation came hand in hand with political and personal freedom. Her ideas percolated through the next five generations of American thinkers. Many years after Hutchinsonâs death, one of her descendants gave birth to Henry Leeâs grandfather, Joseph. By this point the Lee family was no longer terribly interested in ideological or theological matters. Their revolution was to be fought not over the Bible, but over economics and politics. Joseph Leeâs family was one of the most powerful shipping clans in America at a time when the British colonial taxes were particularly onerous. On December 16, 1773, Joseph and several hundred of his most zealous buddies decided to dump English tea into Boston Harbor. When the Boston Tea Party led to the Revolution, Lee allowed his merchant ships to be recommissioned as privateering vessels, and the Beverly Privateers of the American Revolution were born.
What must it have been like to have ancestors like this? More than a little intimidating, I imagined. The unspoken goal for nineteenth-century American thinkers was to live up to their familiesâ revolutionary spirit. No small trick, considering the relative peace and stability that existed in the early 1800s. In the 1830s Emerson and Lee, each in his own way, decided to rebel against the one American institution that hadnât undergone radical transformation in the previous centuryâHarvard. Harvard hadnât changed with the Revolution; it was dominated first by a bunch of old-school Calvinists and then by a surprisingly conservative group of Unitarians. Both groups staunchly disapproved of the liberal Unitarianism that had begun to gather momentum. Echoing his ancestorsâ rejection of institutionalized religion, Emerson argued that salvation could be achieved through intuition of the divine in nature. He was a proper adult when this debate began, and he made a well-respected
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