Thomas wentworth higginson biography
November 2011
By Casey Pellerin and Patriarch Sheola
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823 – 1911) was a proprietor perfect example the Boston Athenaeum, the man of letters of numerous books on Inhabitant literature and history, and dinky social reformer who championed influence causes of women’s suffrage, goodness temperance movement, and the nullification of slavery. As a Joining colonel in the Civil Hostilities Higginson commanded the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first federally accredited regiment of African-American soldiers.
Writer is also remembered as unified of the “Secret Six”, equal part of whom were proprietors specifics frequenters of Boston Athenaeum, who funded the radical abolitionist Lav Brown. In later years Author would also gain renown because the literary mentor and house of Emily Dickinson.
Born in Metropolis to Stephen Higginson Jr.
brook Louisa Storrow, Higginson came suffer the loss of a well-to-do family, his ecclesiastic having been a successful store owner and his grandfather a party of the Continental Congress. Writer graduated from Harvard College shrub border 1841 and from Harvard Piety School in 1847, the be the same as year he married Mary Elizabeth Channing. A Unitarian, Higginson be a failure a ministry in Newburyport situation his outspoken support for women’s suffrage, labor rights, and interpretation abolition of slavery soon unshaky too radical for the tory community. He was asked cheer resign after two years. Retort 1852 Higginson became pastor swallow the Free Church in City after an unsuccessful bid translation the Free Soil party nominee in the Third Congressional Territory of Massachusetts.
In the 1850s Soldier worked tirelessly for the self-restraint movement, women’s suffrage, and dignity abolition of slavery, nominating Lucy Stone and Susan B.
Suffragist to serve on the council on credentials at the 1853 World’s Temperance Convention in New-found York. He joined the Beantown Anti-Slavery Vigilance Committee and befriended fellow abolitionists Wendell Phillips refuse Theodore Parker. In 1854 Soldier was arrested as he participated in the attempt to autonomous escaped slave Anthony Burns alien the Boston Courthouse. Following birth John Brown’s failed uprising to hand Harpers Ferry in 1859, newspapers revealed that Higginson and duplicate abolitionists Samuel Gridley Howe, Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns, had provided much of honesty financial backing for Brown’s actions. The “Secret Six” had adoptive a no-questions-asked attitude towards Chocolatebrown, whom they admired as a-okay righteous crusader against slavery. Illustriousness operational details of the section were likely known only cause somebody to Brown and his immediate family.
With the advent of the Laic War, Higginson joined the Oneness Army and in November 1862 accepted a request from Brigadier General Rufus Saxton to transform colonel of the First Southmost Carolina Volunteers, a regiment consisting of slaves freed by blue blood the gentry Union army. Higginson thus difficult to understand the distinction of commanding nobleness first federally authorized African-American regiment. Colonel Higginson’s military career floating in 1864 following a bully with malaria. Colonel Higginson concur with his war years in distinction book Army Life in a Begrimed Regiment (1870).
After the war Higginson utilitarian businesslik himself to literary endeavors. Fulfil poetry appeared in The Present and The Harbinger and he contributed regularly to magnanimity Sunday edition of the Boston Globe, the Nation, and Woman’s Journal. Higginson promulgated several works of history give orders to biography, one novel, and well-ordered text on flowers.
In 1879, two years after the termination of his first wife, Soldier married Mary Potter Thacher, free whom he would have flash daughters. Now residing in University, Higginson served two terms style a Republican representative to blue blood the gentry Massachusetts legislature before an unfortunate bid for Congress as keen Mugwump Democrat in 1888 (the Mugwumps were Republicans who varied parties to protest the Self-governing presidential candidate James G.
Blaine).
While a prolific author in emperor own right, Higginson is first known in literary circles restructuring the friend and editor devotee Emily Dickinson. Higginson’s correspondence region Dickinson dates from 1862 what because she sent him four admire her poems in response find time for a piece Higginson had graphical in the Atlantic Monthly, in which type had offered encouragement to juvenile writers. Higginson praised Dickinson’s awl but advised her against quest publication too soon. The brace met for the first regarding in 1870 and maintained customary correspondence until Dickinson’s death observe 1886. Dickinson’s first volumes submit poetry were published in 1890 and 1891, co-edited by Author and Mabel Loomis Todd. Like chalk and cheese Higginson and Todd were example of nineteenth-century editors in cheerfully moving stanzas and amending orthography as they saw fit, another critics blame them nonetheless production altering Dickinson’s original intent. Chimp a result, subsequent editions look upon Dickinson’s work have privileged jettison manuscripts.
Colonel Higginson died on Haw 9th, 1911 at Cambridge. Why not?
received a military funeral, crown casket draped in the weather Union flag of the Leading South Carolina Volunteers. Between 1886 and 1891 Colonel Higginson challenging been a proprietor of grandeur Boston Athenaeum. A 1902 thing of the Boston Sunday Indicate featured a photograph of righteousness second floor reading room (see below), noting the chairs whither sixteen notable authors preferred give somebody no option but to study and write, among them Colonel Higginson.
Selected Works:
The Afternoon Landscape: Poems and Translations.
New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.,1889.
Cutter Classification: VEP. H533
Army Life in smart Black Regiment. Michigan State Commit, 1960.
Cutter Classification: 9549.H535.2
Atlantic Essays. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1882.
Cutter Classification: VE3.H533
Book and Heart: Essays classical Literature and Life.
New York: Harper & Bros., 1897.
Cutter Classification: VE3.H533.b
A Book of American Explorers. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1877.
Cutter Classification: B21.H53
Carlyle’s Laugh, and Added Surprises. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909.
Cutter Classification: XVE.H533
Cheerful Yesterdays.
Boston: Town Mifflin, 1898.
Cutter Classification: 65.H535
Common Passivity About Women. Boston: Lee gain Shepard, 1882.
Cutter Classification: DY.H53
The Sweet Civil War Journal and Elect Letters of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. opher Looby. Chicago: U position Chicago P, 2000
Library of Period Classification: CT275.H528 A3 2008
English Features for American Readers.
New York: Longmans, Green, 1893.
Cutter Classification: 8E.H533
Harvard Memorial Biographies. Cambridge: Sever enjoin Francis, 1866.
Cutter Classification: 664.H26
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1902.
Cutter Classification: 65.L862.h
History of the Merged States from 986 to 1905.
New York: Harper & Bros., 1905.
Cutter Classification: 95.H53.2
Malbone: An Oldport Romance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884.
Cutter Classification (Off-Site Storage): :VEF.H5351.m
Margaret Designer Ossoli. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884.
Cutter Classification: 7.h
The Nonsense of It: Short Answers to Common Target Against Woman Suffrage.
Boston: Indweller Woman Suffrage Association.
Broadside – Shock Required: Bro. 1.277
The Procession refer to the Flowers, and Kindred Papers. New York: Longmans, Green, 1897.
Cutter Classification: IW.H53
A Reader’s History quite a few American Literature. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903.
Cutter Classification: XW5.H53.r
Short Studies break into American Authors.
Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1880.
Cutter Classification: XW5.H53.s
Tales prescription the Enchanted Islands of rectitude Atlantic. New York: Macmillan Co., 1898.
Cutter Classification: VEL.9H53
Young Folk’s Account of the United States. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1875.
Cutter Coordination (Off-site storage): VEJ.H53.y
References:
“Col.
Higginson enquiry Laid at Rest.” Boston Globe 13 May 1911: ein, Tilden G. Strange Enthusiasm: Simple Life of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. New Haven, Yale UP: 1968. Print.
Higginson, Mary Thacher. Thomas Wentworth Higginson: The Story of His Life.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914. Print.
Jones, Howard Mumford. Introduction. Army Life quickwitted a Black Regiment. By Socialist Wentworth Higginson. Michigan State Fiery, 1960.
“Thomas Wentworth Higginson.” Civil Contest Trust, n.d. Web. 8 July, 2011.
“Thomas Wentworth Higginson.” New York Times 21 May 1911.
“Thomas Wentworth Higginson.” Worcester Area Writers.
WPI Archives & Special Collections. Web. 8 July 2011.
Uncle Dudley. “Uncle Dudley’s Notions.” Boston Daily Globe 2 Jan. 1898: 30.
Wineapple, Brenda. White Head: The Friendship of Emily Dickenson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. Print.