The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau
Page 49
265 deliver from bondage a dozen: In December 1858 Brown and his men moved from southeastern Kansas into Missouri and attacked the homes of two planters, liberating eleven slaves. He and his party then moved eastward until they reached Detroit, where the slaves embarked for Canada.
266 Governor of Virginia: Henry A. Wise (1806-1876). Thoreau probably knew of his remarks from the report in the New-York Tribune, October 22, 1859.
267 “surprise” party: at the time, a party where a group of people, without invitation, brought food and gifts to a friend’s house.
267 four-and-sixpence: a proverbial figure indicating the trifling sum for which the greedy might debase themselves.
267 Balaclava: During the Crimean War (1853-1856), the British won a battle at Balaklava, but not before Russian artillery had cut down more than five hundred men. Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), the poet laureate, glorified the battle in his poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
267 “insane”: Brown’s lawyer tried to enter an insanity plea at his trial, but Brown rejected the attempt, calling it “a miserable artifice.” After Brown’s sentencing, a group of friends and relations tried to get the governor of Virginia to commute the death sentence, claiming that Brown was subject to a hereditary insanity. As Thoreau indicates, the newspapers were full of speculations about the state of his mind (The Weekly Sentinel, of Portage, Ohio, for example, proclaimed that Brown’s backers were responsible for the crime, “not Brown, for he is mad”). Despite all this, and despite the fact that Brown could be stubborn and wildly single-minded, there is no evidence that he was insane in any modern sense of the word. For a good discussion of the topic, see Stephen Oates’s biography, To Purge This Land with Blood, pp. 324-34.
267 Plutarch: Greek essayist (46?-120?), whose Parallel Lives presented exemplary biographies.
267 Putnam: Israel Putnam (1718-1790), a fabled general in the Revolutionary War who, when a boy, was supposed to have captured a wolf in its den.
267 Tract Society: The New England Tract Society, founded in Massachusetts in 1814, was dedicated to publishing and disseminating Christian literature. It became the American Tract Society in 1823.
267 “American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions”: the first American foreign missionary society, established in 1810 by New England Congregational ists.
268 salt: Various kinds of “salt” (sulfur, usually) were used to deodorize outhouses.
269 Wilson: Republican senator Henry Wilson (1812-1875) of Massachusetts, a Free-Soiler who knew Brown but did not support his actions.
269 egg of chalk: such as may be put into the nest to encourage a hen to lay.
269 game of straws … game of the platter: games of chance. Thoreau’s “Indian Notebooks,” now in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, contain several references to these. See especially volume 11, page 129, the entry for which Thoreau drew from Louis Hennepin, Description de la Louisiane (Paris: Sebastian Huré, 1683), p. 46.
269 Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper.
270 spile: a wooden faucet.
270 bung: the hole in a cask through which it is filled.
271 Walker: William Walker (1824-1860), an adventurer from Tennessee. In 1853 he led an armed invasion of Baja California; in 1855 revolutionaries in Nicaragua enlisted his help, and he was briefly that country’s president. Alternatively, Thoreau might mean Robert J. Walker (1801-1869), pro-slavery governor of the Kansas Territory in 1857-1858.
272 Mason: Senator James M. Mason (1798-1871) of Virginia. He arrived at Harpers Ferry on the day after Brown was captured.
272 Pilate: Roman governor who interrogated Jesus, then ordered his crucifixion.
272 Gessler: legendary fourteenth-century Austrian despot. See the note for William Tell, page 283 of “The Last Days of John Brown.”
272 Sharps’ rifles: long-range cartridge rifles designed by Christian Sharps; those manufactured in the mid-1850s later came to be called John Browns or Beecher’s Bibles.
273 “Any questions”: Brown and the surviving raiders were captured on the morning of October 18, a day and a half after the raid began. That afternoon a contingent of officials and reporters interrogated the imprisoned Brown, who lay wounded on a pile of bedding in one of the armory buildings. The interview lasted three hours and was reported in several newspapers. Thoreau read the version in the New York Herald, October 21, 1859. Here he cites Brown’s response to a question from Virginia senator Mason, “How many are engaged with you in this movement?” Brown had already asserted that he would answer questions about himself “but not about others.”
273 Wise: Henry A. Wise, governor of Virginia.
273 “Colonel Washington”: Brown’s men rounded up several hostages the night of the raid on Harpers Ferry, one of them being Colonel Lewis W. Washington, a local planter and the great-grandnephew of President George Washington.
273 “Stevens”: Aaron D. Stevens, a guerrilla fighter and brawler whom Brown had first met in Nebraska in 1856.
273 “Coppoc”: Edwin Coppoc, a twenty-four-year-old Quaker from Iowa, had joined Brown a year before the raid.
274 Plug Uglies: ruffians or rowdies, especially, at the time, those who practiced politics by intimidation.
274 France and Austria: In 1859 these countries were subject to autocratic rule, France under Napoleon III (1808-1873) and Austria under Emperor Franz Joseph (1830-1916).
274 Treason: Brown was charged with murder, conspiring to start a slave revolt, and treason against the state of Virginia. As Stephen Oates has noted, treason was an odd charge, because Brown “was not a citizen of that state and owed it no allegiance.”
274 cannon-founder: one who casts the metal for cannons.
274 coffle: a group chained together in a line, said especially of slaves.
275 Massachusetts … sent the marines: On the first day of fighting at Harpers Ferry, President James Buchanan ordered three artillery companies and ninety U.S. Marines to the town. These were federal troops and thus supported by all the states in the Union.
275 Vigilant Committee: Following passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, Northern abolitionists organized vigilance committees to engage in acts of resistance. In Boston such committees were organized by the reformer Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876) and the minister Theodore Parker (1810-1860), both of whom were later among the small group—the “Secret Six”—who knew in advance of Brown’s planned raid.
275 Cadi: in Muslim countries, a judge or magistrate.
277 Memento mori: remember to die; that is, that all must die.
278 “dreaded by the Missourians”: Thoreau’s source is the same as for “rural exterior,” page 359 above.
278 “Unless above himself”: from stanza 12 of “Epistle to the Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland,” by Samuel Daniel (1562?-1619).
278 Minotaur: in Greek mythology a monster who devours humans.
280 “No man sent me here”: This and the following quotations come from the New York Herald report of the interrogation of Brown cited above. Here, for example, Brown replies to Representative Vallandigham’s question, “Who sent you here?” Thoreau drops part of the answer, which reads in full: “No man sent me here; it was my own prompting and that of my Maker, or that of the devil, whichever you please to ascribe it to. I acknowledge no master in human form.”
280 our revenge: During the civil war in Kansas, one Martin White shot and killed Brown’s son Frederick. Several years later Brown and his men stumbled upon White at his cabin in Missouri. Despite his companions’ urgings, Brown refused to kill White. He later told a friend: “People mistake my objects. I would not hurt one hair on [White’s] head … . I do not harbour the feelings of revenge. I act from a principle. My aim and object is to restore human rights.” Brown’s mention of “revenge” during the Harpers Ferry interrogation may have set Thoreau thinking of this story. Whether it did or not, the import is that true revenge is the triumph of principle.
Thoreau was invited to speak at a memorial for Brown, July 4, 1860, in North Elba, New York; he could not make the journey but sent this piece to be read. It was published later that month in The Liberator, July 27, 1860.
283 six weeks: from the raid on Harpers Ferry, October 16, to Brown’s hanging, December 2, 1859.
283 Cato: Marcus Porcius Cato, called Cato the Younger (95-46 B.C.), Roman politician and opponent of Julius Caesar. After Caesar’s decisive victory in North Africa, Cato first saw his comrades safely out of Utica, then calmly committed suicide. Thoreau was much interested in the school of the Stoics, for whom Cato was a kind of patron saint.
283 Tell: According to tradition, William Tell insulted the fourteenth-century Austrian despot Gessler, who then demanded that Tell shoot an arrow through the apple on the head of Tell’s son. Tell’s triumphs over Gessler are part of the legendary history of the origin of the Swiss Confederation.
283 Winkelried: Arnold Winkelried (d. 1386), legendary hero of the Battle of Sempach, in which the Swiss Confederation defended itself against the Habsburgs. Winkelried is supposed to have died drawing the fire of enemy spears toward himself so as to open a gap in the Habsburg phalanx. In the nineteenth century he became an example of the individual who sacrifices himself for the common good.
283 “little dipper”: Thoreau’s name for various small diving birds, usually the piedbilled grebe, sometimes the horned grebe.
284 class-teacher: Sunday-school teacher.
284 golden rule: Brown repeatedly said that he based his actions on the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence. At his sentencing he said to the court: “I see a book kissed which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do to them.”
285 modern Democrat: that is, one belonging to the Democratic Party, which presumed Brown’s raid was a plot of the Republican Party and were demanding congressional investigations. Brown himself belonged to neither party, as the Republicans were quick to point out.
285 office: excrement.
285 pachydermatous: thick-skinned.
286 her citizens … to Virginia: It had been reported that the governor of Virginia was trying to have Franklin B. Sanborn (1831-1917), Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876), and others arrested and extradited.
286 “extension”: The word can mean a permission for sale of alcoholic drinks until a later time than is usual (an allowed but unusual evening of drinking being an “extension night”).
286 Charles the First: The king of England from 1625 to 1649, Charles was tried for treason and beheaded in 1649.
287 Raleigh: Sir Walter Raleigh (1554-1618) was imprisoned in the Tower of London for thirteen years, during which time he wrote History of the World (1614). See also the note for page 60 of “Paradise (To Be) Regained.”
287 American book: In the time between his capture and his execution, Brown wrote scores of letters, many of which were printed in the newspapers.
287 to his wife: In a letter written on November 16, 1859, from the jail in Charleston, Virginia, Brown urges that his children be educated first in practical matters and “the common business of life”: “The music of the broom, wash-tub, needle, spindle, loom, axe, scythe, hoe, flail, etc., should first be learned at all events, and that of the piano, etc., afterwards.”
287 Poor Richard: Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack, published annually from 1732 to 1757, contains conventional wise sayings.
287 Irving: The writer Washington Irving (b. 1783) died on November 28, 1859.
287 “It will pay”: The source for this remark is not known.
287 pebbles in your mouth: The Greek orator Demosthenes (384-322 B.C.) supposedly overcame his stammer by practicing speeches with pebbles in his mouth.
288 slave woman: a widespread but apocryphal story. Brown went from his jail cell to the hanging ground surrounded by soldiers and with his hands tied. In The Life and Letters of John Brown (1885), Franklin B. Sanborn writes that before leaving the jail John Brown was asked “if he desired the presence of a clergyman to give him ‘the consolations of religion.’ Brown … said … that he did not recognize as Christians any slaveholders or defenders of slavery, lay or clerical; adding that … if he had his choice he would rather be followed to his ‘public murder,’ as he termed his execution, by ‘barefooted, barelegged, ragged slave children and their old gray-headed mother,’ than such clergymen.” Sanborn adds that from these words “arose the legend that on his way to the gallows he took up a little slave-child, kissed it, and gave it back to its mother’s arms.”
288 “He nothing common did”: “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland,” by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), lines 57-64. Thoreau silently drops two lines.
288 transit: passage; in astronomy the passage of a heavenly body across the meridian of any place or the passage of a celestial body across the sun’s disk (as “the transit of Venus”).
288 his translation: his conversion from a mortal into an immortal; his removal to heaven without death.
288 North Elba: In 1849 Brown moved his family to a farm in North Elba, New York. He is buried on the site.
288 working in secret: Brown’s actions in Kansas were always “secret missions,” and the few Northerners to whom he had revealed his Harpers Ferry plans were known as the Secret Six.
WILD APPLES
This essay was first given as a lecture before the Concord Lyceum in February 1860. It was published posthumously in The Atlantic Monthly, November 1862.
291 geologist: Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), Swiss-born naturalist then at Harvard, though Thoreau’s source is actually Hugh Miller’s book The Testimony of the Rocks; or, Geology in Its Bearing on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed … (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1857). Miller elaborates on a remark by Agassiz.
291 Rosaceae: rose family.
291 Tacitus: Cornelius Tacitus (55?-120?), Roman historian. Thoreau’s source is a three-volume edition of Tacitus, Cornelii Taciti opera ex recensione io (Boston: Wells and Lily, 1817).
291 Niebuhr: Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776-1831), German classical historian. Thoreau’s source for the following citation is Niebuhr’s The History of Rome (Philadelphia: Thomas Wardel, 1835), p. 64.
292 “As the apple-tree”: Song of Solomon 2:3 and 2:5. For “Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples,” the Revised Standard Version reads “Sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples.”
292 Herodotus: Greek historian of the fifth century B.C.
292 “pears and pomegranates”: Homer, The Odyssey VII.117. Alcinoüs is the legendary king of the Phaeacians.
292 Tantalus: in Greek mythology a favorite of the gods until he was caught deceiving them, whereupon he was condemned to hang from a tree in the underworld, thirsty and hungry. Under the tree lay a pool of water, but if Tantalus stooped to drink, the pool dried up. Ripe fruit hung above him, but if he reached for it, the wind lifted the branches away. Homer describes these tortures in The Odyssey XI.582-92.
292 Theophrastus: (372?-287 B.C.), Greek philosopher. A student of Aristotle, he wrote on many topics, including natural history.
292 Prose Edda: a collection of ancient Scandinavian myths and legends, recorded around 1220 by the Icelandic aristocrat Snorri Sturluson.
292 Iduna: in Scandinavian mythology the goddess of spring, “The Rejuvenating One.” She tended the garden where the Apples of Immortality grew.
292 Ragnarök: In Icelandic the gods are called reginn, which means organizing powers. Ragna- is the possessive plural of this word. The suffix –rök means marvels, fate, doom, and ragnarök thus means the gods’ wonders or the gods’ fate/doom. Rök, however, later became confused with røkkr, twilight, and thus the word took on a sense such as Thoreau offers.
292 Loudon: John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843). Here and below Thoreau cites from the second volume of his Arboretum et
fruticetum. See the note for page 251 of “The Succession of Forest Trees.”
292 Pliny: Pliny the Elder (23-79), celebrated Roman naturalist. Thoreau owned. and cites from, Pliny’s Historiae mundi, 3 vols. ([Geneva]: Apud Jacobum Storer, 1593).
293 our Western emigrant: probably a reference to John Chapman (1774-1845), also known as Johnny Appleseed, who is supposed to have dispersed apple seeds throughout the Ohio River valley.
293 “The fruit of the crab”: The source for this citation is not known.
293 canker-worm: name of certain caterpillars destructive to apple (and other) trees. In the United States, for example, the spring cankerworm is Paleacrita vernata.
293 cherry-bird: the cedar waxwing, Bombycilla cedrorum. The kingbird is a flycatcher such as Tyrannus tyrannus.
294 coddling: stewing; boiling gently.
294 Palladius: Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus Palladius (fourth or fifth century A.D.), Roman author of De re rustica, parts of which Thoreau read in an anthology of Latin agricultural writing, Scriptores rei rusticae (Heidelberg: Hier. Commelini, 1595).
294 “Michaelmas”: the feast of St. Michael, celebrated September 29; hence, colloquially, autumn. Thoreau’s source for this couplet is not known.
294 Pomona: the ancient Roman goddess of fruit trees.
295 apples are the heaviest: in Pliny, Historiae mundi, book 13, chap. 55.
295 pomace: the pulp of apples, both before and after being pressed. The root is the Latin pomum, apple.
295 Loki: in Scandinavian mythology the mischief maker who, at the behest of the giant Thjassi, lures the keeper of the Apples of Immortality, Iduna, out of Asgard (the home of the gods) and into Jotunheim (the realm of giants). As a result of this transgression, the gods begin to age, until Loki repairs the damage.