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Home » Keywords » ralph waldo emerson

Items Tagged with 'ralph waldo emerson'

ARTICLES

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The President and The Sage: Abraham Lincoln and Ralph Waldo Emerson

April 25, 2025
Richard Smith
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As tensions between the North and South increased throughout the 1850s, Ralph Waldo Emerson, like many Americans, was becoming more resigned to the prospect of civil war. He was convinced that the “insanity” of the South’s attachment to slavery would soon tear the nation apart.


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Lidian Jackson Emerson: Life in the Shadow

January 28, 2025
Marybeth Kelly
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On the list of Concord’s notable 19th century women about whom few people know is Lidian Emerson Jackson; so little is written of her many talents, quiet fortitude, and unwavering support of her famous husband, Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

She was Waldo’s second wife, succeeding his marriage to Ellen Tucker in 1829.


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Prophets of Truth and Enchantment: Thomas Carlyle and the Transcendentalists

August 29, 2024
Richard Smith
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Of all the writers and philosophers who influenced the New England Transcendentalists, none had a bigger impact than Thomas Carlyle. Born in Scotland in 1795, as an essayist, historian, and philosopher, Carlyle had a profound influence on the 19th century, not just in the United Kingdom, but also in America, particularly with the writers in Concord, Massachusetts. 

Virtually every member of the Transcendentalist circle read Carlyle’s writings with great enthusiasm; Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, Theodore Parker, William Henry Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Frederic Henry Hedge, George Ripley, and Henry Thoreau all drew inspiration from Carlyle. In particular, it was his writings on Germanic literature that lit a flame under the Transcendentalists. 


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The Summer of Authors

September 15, 2021
Richard Smith
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In the summer of 1842, Concord was like any other New England town. Sitting 18 miles west of Boston, the town of 2,000 souls was still very rural. The railroad wouldn’t come through for another two years, and there was no telegraph yet; only the daily stagecoach and the post office connected Concord to the rest of the world.  


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The Temptation of Wilderness: Concord’s Land of Dragons & Transcendentalists

May 15, 2021
Jaimee Joroff
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In the wild places of Concord linger old Puritan superstitions and Transcendental possibilities. We begin in the year 1620 when, bearing sea-weary Puritan separatists, the Mayflower arrived off Cape Cod’s coast revealing what Pilgrim leader William Bradford noted as “a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts.”

To the Puritans, the Wilderness was the devil’s territory. Satan would not linger in the exposed coastal regions where the Puritans first settled and kept him at bay with devout prayer, but he was always there, in the wild forests, the swamps, the unexplored places, tempting them to leave the seaside settlements of early Massachusetts and stray from righteousness.


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Mary Moody Emerson: The Godmother of Transcendentalism

December 15, 2020
Victor Curran
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The Marquis de Lafayette visited Portland, Maine during a grand tour of the United States in 1825. When Mary Moody Emerson—fifty years old at the time—was introduced to the aging hero of the American Revolution, she told him she was “‘in arms’ at the Concord Fight.”1 

It was a joke, but as always, her wit had an edge of truth. She was indeed present for the “shot heard ’round the world,” but the “arms” she was in were her those of her mother, clutching eight-month-old Mary as the battle raged 150 yards from her window at the Old Manse.


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Sacred Integrity: Emerson & the Home of Transcendentalism

September 15, 2020
Kristi Lynn Martin
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Ralph Waldo Emerson was not the originator of the romantic ideals known as Transcendentalism. Nor was his premier essay, Nature (1836), the first publication to set forth the philosophy. Emerson was, rather, the most successful public voice of New England Transcendentalism in the nineteenth century. Dissatisfied with his traditional ministry, Emerson embarked on an untried profession as a lecturer, essayist, and poet; gaining an international reputation. His eloquent and provocative prose resonated with a young American republic yearning to define itself against the time-honored past. Emerson turned his personal search for meaning into a national paean for a self-actualized identity. Nature was closely followed by his controversial “American Scholar,” “Divinity School Address,” and iconic “Self-Reliance.” 


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Transcendentalism 101

June 15, 2020
Richard Smith
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In the mid-1830’s, a new word entered the American lexicon; Transcendentalism. It was a word that was vague and confusing, a word that seemed mystical, spiritual, and possibly even blasphemous. Even today, 170 years later, Transcendentalism is still misunderstood, and many people have a hard time explaining what it was and what it means. 

Lexico.com defines Transcendentalism as “an idealistic philosophical and social movement which developed in New England around 1836 in reaction to rationalism. Influenced by romanticism, Platonism, and Kantian philosophy, it taught that divinity pervades all nature and humanity, and its members held progressive views on feminism and communal living. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were central figures.” Simply put, it is the idea that God is present in all things, that we are surrounded by divinity. All of nature is divine, and therefore, since man is a part of nature, we have the capability to be divine as well.


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The Concord Sage and an American Poet

June 15, 2020
Alida Vienna Orzechowski
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In 1855, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a letter that would become one of the most famous pieces of correspondence in American literary history. 

That year was a difficult time for the adolescent country. Already sharply divided over the issue of slavery, “free soilers” and pro-slavery factions were quickly disintegrating into bloody violence. The ongoing gold rush and westward expansion was continuing to displace native populations, while the same year, and without irony, a white, anti-immigrant party in Cincinnati would attack a local German-American neighborhood for being foreigners. 


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Featured Stories

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    Battlefields of the American Revolution: New Commemorative Stamps

    As America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the first battles of the American Revolution, the United States Post Office is commemorating the occasion with 15 new stamps memorializing five turning points in the fight for American independence.
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    Orchard House: A Legacy of Literature and History

    It is rare to find the very home where a beloved feminist author penned her most famous work, Little Women—a novel that has never been out of print for over a century and has been translated into more than 50 languages. Rarer still is to find that home still preserved just as she and her family left it, filled with their personal belongings. Add to that a rich history spanning centuries, and you have Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts.
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    Minute Man National Historical Park: The Birthplace of the American Revolution

    Few places in America capture the spirit and legacy of a nation quite like Minute Man National Historical Park – located along the “Battle Road” corridor of Concord, Lincoln, and Lexington, Massachusetts. It was here that the first running battles of the American Revolution took place on April 19, 1775. Later, in the 19th century, Concord became the epicenter of a literary, philosophical, and environmental movement that endures today. Revolutions—whether on the battlefield or in the mind—demand vision, dedication, and sacrifice. The same is true for preserving the rich history to be found in these remarkable places.

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