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Herald of Freedom: Essays of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers: American Transcendentalist and Radical Abolitionist, with an essay by Thoreau
Herald of Freedom Essays of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers American Transcendentalist and Radical Abolitionist with an essay by Thoreau Author:Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Henry David Thoreau A great and almost unknown American writer from New Hampshire, Nathaniel Peabody Rogers (1794-1846) was the most radical American political voice of the antebellum period. He is also an undiscovered American Transcendentalist, at his best comparable to Emerson and Thoreau. Both men acknowledged Rogers' influence on them, and Thoreau published on... more »e of his first essays - collected here - on Rogers' work, recognizing his excellence as both a political and a nature writer. Anti-slavery drove all his thought, and as an abolitionist writer, only Frederick Douglass and Wendell Phillips are his rivals. Rogers was an anarchist, a pacifist, a feminist, an environmentalist, a religious heretic, an individualist, an anti-capitalist and an advocate of animal rights. His writings are collected here for the first time since 1849, along with Thoreau's essay "Herald of Freedom" and other materials about Rogers and American radicalism of the early 19th century. This volume presents twenty-seven of Rogers' essays and much supporting material on American radicalism of the nineteenth century. "But to speak of his composition. It is a genuine Yankee style, without fiction ? real guessing and calculating to some purpose, and reminds us occasionally, as does all free, brave, and original writing, of its great master in these days, Thomas Carlyle. It has a life above grammar, and a meaning which need not be parsed to be understood. . . . We deem such timely, pure, and unpremeditated expressions of a public sentiment, such publicity of genuine indignation and humanity, as abound everywhere in [The Herald of Freedom], the most generous gifts a man can make, and should be glad to see the scraps from which we have quoted, and the others which we have not seen, collected into a volume." --Henry David Thoreau« less