In every country and time, the era of national peril has been the
creative era for the intellect. The eloquence of Greece was at its best
when Philip attacked Athens and Demosthenes defended its liberties.
Dante's poems were born of the collision between the despots who sought
to enslave Florence, and the patriots who dreamed of democracy. Milton's
songs were written during the English Revolution, when the Puritan,
seeking to diffuse the good things of life, and the Cavalier, who wished
to monopolize the earth's treasure, came into a deadly collision.

In accordance with that principle it seems natural to expect that the
scholars of the Republic should do their best work during the era of
agitation, when the national intellect was white hot, and public
excitement burned by day and night. The anti-slavery epoch, therefore,
was the Augustan Era of American literature, when the historians, poets
and philosophers lent distinction to American literature. At that time
Motley was writing his "History of the Netherlands"; Prescott, his
"History of Mexico and Spain"; Whittier, his songs of slavery and
freedom; Lowell was the satirist of the debate, and was writing his
"Biglow Papers," and Emerson, the philosopher, was undermining the
foundations and shaking the principles of slavery, even as Samson pulled
down the temple of the olden time.

Emerson, the philosopher, did the thinking, and furnished the
intellectual implements to the abolitionists. Beginning his career as a
preacher, he resigned his position, moved to Concord, and dwelt apart
from men, but "as he mused, the fire burned." Easily our first man of
American letters, he is among the first essayists of all ages and
climes. Essentially, however, he was a man of intellect, an American