THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, 1823-1911.
Source: David Robinson, The Unitarians and the Universalists
(Westport, CN, Greenwood Press, 1985).
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (23 December 1823, Cambridge, MA, 9 May 1911) Education: A.B., Harvard College, 1841; graduated, Harvard Divinity School, 1847. Career: Unitarian minister, First Religious Society, Newburyport, MA, 1847-49; independent lecturer and abolitionist political activist, 1849-1852; minister, Free Church, Worcester, MA. 1852-1857; abolitionist political activist, 1857-62; U.S. military commander, First Carolina Volunteers (freedman) 1862-1864; independent author and lecturer, 1864-1911.
Few Men had more talents, or expressed these talents in more avenues during a lifetime, than Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Indeed, the range ofhis talents was a problem for Higginson, who could not at first find a career that would satisfy his various inclinations. After finishing Harvard he spent three years in private study and indecision, developing both poetic ambitions and a zeal for politcal reform through his involvement with teh abolitionist movement. Intellectually, he was strongly influenced by Transcendentalism and was politically and theologically a "radical." Higginson eventually saw the Unitarian ministry as teh best way to pursue his interests, entering Harvard Divinity School in 1844 and taking a pulpit in Newburyport in 2847, becoming meanwhile more firmly a disciple of Transcendentalism and Garrisonian abolitionism. His outspoken abolitionsim at Newburyport alienated many in his congregation, and he found it necessary to resign, but his intense political activism continued. He led a raid on the Court House in Boston to try to free fugitive slave Anthony Burns, and was wounded in the attempt; later he adied the Free Soil fight in Kansas and became a supporter of John Brown. His political activities culminated in his military appointment as commander of a regiment of freed blacks. In 1863 Higginson was wounded in a battle in South Carolina and discharged in 1864. For the rest of his life, Higginson wrote on a variety of topics and in a varity of forms, becoming an influential literary critic and popular lecturer. His account of his war experiences, Army Life in a Black Regiment, has been hailed by several modern critics as an overlooked masterpiece. He was a frequent contributor to influential periodicals such as the Atlantic Monthly, the Nation, and Harper's Bazaar, becoming an arbiter of literary taste and mentor to many aspiring young writers. Moreover, he became a spokesman for the rights of women, feeling that this was "the next great question" facing the country after the liberation of the slaves. Principally a reformer, his talents spilled over into a profusion of activities that marked him as one iof the leading exponents of liberal values in the middle nineteenthg century.
Bibliography
A. Out-door Papers (Boston, 1863); Army Life in a Black Regiment (autobiographical)(Boston, 1870); Common Sense about Women (Boston, 1882); Cheerful yesterdays (autobiographical) (Boston, 1898); The Writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 7 vols. (Boston, 1900); Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, ed. Mary Thacher Higginson (Boston, 1921).
B. DAB 9, 16-18; autobiographical vlumes (se above); Mary Thacher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson: The Story of His Life (Boston, 1914); Anna Mary Wells, Dear Preceptor: The Life and Times of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Boston, 1903); Tilden G. Edelstein, Strange Enthusiasm: A Life of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (New Haven, 1968); Richard B. Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickinson, 2 vols. (New York, 1974); James W. Tuttleton, Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Boston, 1978).