The transcendentalist revolt against materialism

Americans, who have gathered from the planet entire, have long regarded "government" as a necessary evil. No one brooks interference without caution. A great fear of a "welfare state" has long loomed on the brow of the good citizen, and also, in the furtive looks over the shoulder of the pirate looking for a fence. Since Pericles, Frederick Douglas, and Andrew Jackson, we have been vexed by the choices involved in the effort to improve our lives. Clearly, some type of cooperation--collusion, conspiracy, flash-mob--can work most effectively to accomplish a higher standard of living.

About 1836, a group began meeting in Ralph Waldo Emerson's home in Concord, Massachusetts. They were dreadfully tired of labored excuses given for Slavery show more and piracy, which were cruel and unjust. Wicked hypocrisy took all the oxygen out of discourse. The learned folk yearned for the stimulation of new ideas being originated in Germany, and England. A snickering neighbor christened the gathering "the Transcendentalists", for what seemed an uncouth term from the much-discussed philosophy of Immanuel Kant. [v].

The economic depressions of 1839 only temporarily checked a great tide of material prosperity. Farmland was expanding from Illinois to Oregon, canals, steamboats, and railroads were opening up a booming fur trade, cotton culture, and whaling industry. Yet "politics" had soiled the arena and commercialism had demeaned institutions supporting the sharing of prosperity.

Theodore Parker elaborated the experience of the evils which Americans were facing with a white-hot letter read to his congregation. Thoreau practiced civil disobedience. Emerson dominated the Chautauqua circuits with the most popular public lectures in America of the time. The Transcendentalists sought to awaken consciousness and conscience.

In the political world, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster were promoting the ascendency of moneyed interests, while Jeffersonian rabbles of small farmers, fearful of financial power in the hands of a few, sought to make the national government an instrument to protect wagers from exploitation. Yet, ultimately the Transcendentalists failed to politicize. When W.H.Channing crusaded against Slavery, Emerson responded that he had "slaves to ignorance, superstition, and fear" to free.

This slim volume is a collection of thirteen essays by "eye-witness" historians. Includes Arthur Schlesinger's controversial essay on the Jacksonian counter-reforms, and Martin Luther King's short credit to Thoreau for convincing him that "non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good". A brilliant resource for information about the Transcendental Movement led by the Unitarian Universalists, who are remembered fondly and with considerable awe to this day. As the People, who own this Republic, we have this great power in our hands. show less