The Man at the Top of the Stairs

At the top of the stairs in the Emerson house hangs a photograph of a distinguished gentleman. This picture is displayed among portraits of cherished family members and United States Presidents Lincoln and Grant. Who was this individual, and how did his image come to occupy such an honored place in the Emersons’ home?

The portrait depicts Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. Sumner served in the United States Senate from 1851-1874. He was a vocal and fervent abolitionist, advocating antislavery agendas in Congress. Emerson’s connection with Sumner strengthened around their mutual antipathy toward the Fugitive Slave Act (September 1850). The law required citizens of free states to comply with the seizure and return of self-emancipated individuals to enslavement. “This is a filthy enactment,” Emerson wrote in his journal. Addressing the citizens of Concord on May 3, 1851, he declared, “Here is a statute which enacts the crime of kidnapping — a crime on one footing with arson and murder. A man’s right to liberty is as inalienable as his right to life.” He continued, “This law must be made inoperable. It must be abrogated and wiped out of the statute book. But whilst it stands, it must be disobeyed.”

On August 26, 1852, Senator Sumner spoke on his motion to repeal the Fugitive Slave Act. His speech established him as the voice of anti-slavery in the Senate. The galvanizing moment of Sumner’s senatorial career came during the Kansas -Nebraska debates, (May 19-20, 1856), when he delivered a five-hour speech (32 double columned pages) entitled The Crime against Kansas. He railed against slavery and hurled invective and insult against the South, and South Carolina in particular, personally naming some congressional members and their families.

This dishonor to the South would not go unanswered. On May 22, 1856, fury became violence on the Senate floor, as South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks, beat Sumner with a gold-headed walking cane, nearly killing him. Sumner’s lengthy, painful recovery lasted almost three years, ending in his return to the Senate in 1859.

On May 26, 1856, Emerson spoke to the citizens of Concord about The Assault Upon Mr. Sumner. He said, “I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute one state. I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.” As the Civil War approached, Emerson continued to press for peace, realizing that this option was fast disappearing.

In January 1862, Emerson’s lectures brought him to the Smithsonian Institute in the war-torn nation’s capital. With introductions from Sumner, Mr. Emerson met President Lincoln and the members of his cabinet.

Following the terrible Civil War, Sumner was active in Reconstruction, and from 1861-1871 he served as the influential Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. During his last years in Congress, he introduced the Civil Rights Act in 1870. It was not passed until 1875, after his death the previous year.

Sumner had remained engaged in the work of the Senate until his death from a massive heart attack on March 11, 1874; he was sixty-three years old. On his death bed, Sumner asked Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, former Attorney General, to deliver a message back to Concord. He said, “Judge, tell Emerson how much I love and revere him.”

Sumner lay in state at the US Capitol and in the Massachusetts State House. His coffin was guarded by Civil War veterans from the famed African-American Fifty Fourth Massachusetts regiment. With Emerson among the pallbearers, Sumner was interred in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Sumner is remembered today with an imposing statue in the Boston Public Garden, and another in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Thomas Carlyle

On October 22, 1847 Emerson arrived in Liverpool, England to conduct a lecture tour. His decision to go was in reaction to increased pleas from his connections in Europe and confidence that financially he could create a lengthy tour. He sailed from Boston on October 5 (his wife Lidian, Henry David Thoreau and Bronson and Abigail Alcott saw him off). Shortly after arrival he writes, “I found…a letter which had been seeking me, from Carlyle (author Thomas Carlyle), addressed to ‘R.W.E. the instant when he lands in England’ conveying the heartiest welcome and urgent invitation to house and hearth.” He stayed with the Carlyle’s for several days. Carlyle and Emerson had met 14 years prior on Emerson’s first trip to Europe and on this second meeting spent much more time together, including a trip to Stonehenge. While they did not always agree, they were lifelong friends.

Emerson lectured in England, Paris and Scotland. While in England, Emerson met with many of the elite literary and artistic talents of the day, including Charles Dickens, William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson, George Eliot, William Makepeace Thackeray and Frederic Chopin. Hearing Chopin play Emerson writes, “…and heard him play; could the denying heaven have also given me ears for the occasion.”

Some comments he wrote in his Journal while on his tour:

“It is certain that more people speak English correctly in the United States than in Britain.”

“People eat the same dinner at every house in England. 1, soup; 2, fish; 3, beef, mutton or hare; 4 birds; 5 pudding and pastry and jellies; 6, cheese; 7, grapes, nuts and wine. During dinner, hock and champagne are offered you by the servant, and sherry stands at the corners of the table….What rivers of wine are drunk in England daily! One would say, every guest drinks six glasses.”

While his eight month tour included more than 70 lectures as well as sightseeing, he was ready to go home. “Never was a well-appointed dinner with all scientific belongings so philosophic a thing as at sea. Even the restless American finds himself, at last, at leisure.” He arrived back in Boston on July 27, 1848.