What a difference 30 years (actually 29) makes in Emerson’s opinion of war. Back in 1938 when he gave an address in Boston on the subject, war was something that belonged to a juvenile state of mind. Emerson saw a movement away from war as a movement toward civilization and reason. But now the Civil War has come and gone and Emerson is addressing his fellow citizens of Concord on April 19, 1867. The occasion is the Dedication of the Soldier’s Monument in Concord. It also happens to be the anniversary of the invasion of British troops into Concord in the American Revolution, and the anniversary of the departure of the first volunteers from Concord in the Civil War. An auspicious day.
Concord has erected a granite obelisk in honor of those who died in the war. Emerson talks about what the monument symbolizes–the correcting of a “violation” and “subtle poison,” slavery, that was allowed by the founders of the U.S. to exist and that the present generation has now had the sense and courage to correct.
Emerson spends, as one would expect, a good part of the speech praising those who fought and died and those who were present who fought and survived. He focuses mainly on one Colonel Prescott who left Concord as Captain of the Thirty-Second Massachusetts Regiment and died as a Colonel, just a couple of weeks before Lee’s surrender, leading a whole brigade in the battle for Petersburg. He survived Gettysburg in spite of being shot three times, and he wrote home, proud that while many of his men died, all of them were accounted for. Prescott was well thought of by his men, He took care of them and was respected by everyone. Emerson eulogizes Prescott, but he becomes also a representative of all the men from Concord, each one acting as bravely and honorably as Prescott.
As Emerson describes the war and the doings of the 32nd Regiment that he gleaned from letters and the stories of the men who returned, he glorifies their suffering. I had a hard time seeing any glory in it though. I saw only the horror and it brought tears to my eyes. The men and boys who went to war were not soldiers, they were
domestic men, just wrenched away from their families and their business by this rally of all the manhood in the land. They have notes to pay at home; have farms, shops, factories, affairs of every kind to think of.
And I wondered what the men who had been there were thinking as Emerson praised them. Did they suffer from what we call today post-traumatic stress disorder? And the families of the men who came back, did they find them changed? And what of the families of the men who did not come back? The women who lost their husbands and their sons, who no longer had anyone to support them and found they had to learn to be farmers, work at something else, or hope for kindness from friends and strangers. It all made me so sad.
About war in particular, it is clear Emerson never fought in one. His understanding of war is wholly intellectual (as is my understanding, but I have a one up on Emerson in that our modern age has war footage video and movies that allows us “experience” war from the safety of home or theater. This is not the same as being there, but it is a few steps closer than Emerson got). This is maybe how he could change his view of war, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Instead of something that exhibits a lack of civilization, war has now become something that “civilizes, rearranges the population, distributing by ideas, –the innovators on one side, the antiquaries on the other.” It is a “pulling down the wrong and building up the right.”
And suddenly, an army becomes civilization:
As cities of men are the first effects of civilization, and also instantly causes of more civilization, so armies, which are only wandering cities, generate a vast heat, and lift the spirit of the soldiers who compose them to the boiling point. The armies mustered in the North were as much missionaries to the mind of the country as they were carriers of material force, and had the vast advantage of carrying whither they marched a higher civilization. Of course, there are noble men everywhere, and there are such in the South;…But the common people, rich or poor, were the narrowest and most conceited of mankind,…The invasion of Northern farmers, mechanics, engineers, tradesmen, lawyers and students did more than forty years of peace had done to educate the South.
This is frightening not only for what is says about war, but also in its attitude toward those on the other side of the battle line. No wonder there is still animosity between North and South in some quarters of this country. Emerson’s words and the ideas they express still appear to carry validity in our own day. Except the United States has found, and is finding, that those we want to “educate” are learning the wrong things. I can only hope that someday we will come to realize that the best and most useful education doesn’t happen with guns and bombs.
Next week’s Emerson: Editors’ Address
Ouch. That is a worrying shift is it not? And certainly one that could only be undertaken by a theorist at a careful distance from the battlefield. But I guess on the other hand he has to make sense of it and give it value or else all those poor young men died in vain, for a political caprice or for uncontrolled aggression. But that is an interesting question in itself – should someone like Emerson always write to please and satisfy his audience, or should he have delivered some more piercing home truths?
Amen to your comments – and whew, to Emerson’s. . . For a man so in touch with much of the world’s nature, he does seem to miss out on the fundamentals of being human and of respecting others.
I’ve probably mentioned how much I admire your Emerson posts. I try and catch them (though I don’t usually comment–I feel like I should have started reading your posts from the beginning). Do you have a book you’re reading from? I see the link–are you reading his work online? And are you reading in order or picking and choosing?
To think that war can spread civilization seems absurd to me — like a logical impossibility. Isn’t war a kind of anti-civilization?
Litlove, you make some interesting comments. It is indeed a worrying shift, it sounds like something a politician might say today about Iraq. But as you generously propose, Emerson may have been attempting to make sense of the situation. Given how earlier Emerson encourages us to follow our own path no matter how lonely, I would expect him to refuse speaking in platitudes and speak the hard truth.
Andi, I’m learning aging Emerson is different than young, idealistic Emerson. It’s like he is two different people.
Danielle, thank you, you are so nice. I began reading Emerson from a book, Modern Library’s Essential Emerson. But it doesn’t have all of Emerson so then I borrowed some books from the library and bought a book or two and now I am reading the remaining pieces online from the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society’s website. The have his complete works online, though they need a good proof reader because they tend to have quite a few typos and other errors.
Dorothy, I agree with you. I think part of Emerson’s problem is that he assumes war is fought over ideas and principles. While that may be true sometimes, we know wars are fought for all kinds of reasons.