[224] pretty thorough men. The result of the Convention will probably be a new organization on the principle of the Inviolability of Human Life. Now, as it will be well to be prepared for such a result, I write you, at his request, to ask you and your brother, G. W. Benson, to lay your heads together and concoct a Declaration of Sentiments and Constitution, or a Constitution, including the emphatic annunciation of this great principle. Especially try to fix upon a name for the association— something that shall convey the idea of the principle of the movement: the anti-man-killing principle. This last has puzzled us a good deal. Brother Wright is going to Scituate to spend1 a week with Bro. May, with whom he is to attempt what we ask of you. I shall apply to Amasa Walker here to assist me in concocting something of the kind; so that when we come together at the time of the Convention, we shall be tolerably well prepared for the emergency. Please not to neglect this.On August 30, 1838, Mrs. Chapman, recovered from2 the almost fatal attack of fever induced by the fatigue of her Philadelphia experience, informs Mr. Garrison that ‘H. C. Wright has recently been at Weymouth, much to the discomfiture of Mr. Perkins. He delivered seven lectures there, the people hearing him gladly. We all hope to see you at the Peace Convention, which, as far as I can learn, bids fair to excite a general interest.’3 Finally, Mr. Garrison himself, replying, September 8, to S. J. May, tells of domestic sickness having prevented him from drawing up the report desired of him, or indeed
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2 Ms. May 25, 1838, W. L. G. to G. W. Benson.
3 Mrs. Chapman adds: ‘I send you Emerson's oration [the famous discourse before the Harvard Divinity School, July 15, 1838]. It is rousing the wrath of the Cambridge “powers that be” in an astonishing manner. How cowardly are Unitarians generally! They take the alarm at sentiments which differ only in shading from their own (in matters of doctrine, I mean).’ It was with reference to this epoch-making event that J. Q. Adams wrote in his diary on Aug. 2, 1840: ‘A young man, named Ralph Waldo Emerson, a son of my once loved friend, William Emerson, and a classmate of my lamented son George, after failing in the everyday avocations of a Unitarian preacher and schoolmaster, starts a new doctrine of Transcendentalism, declares all the old revelations superannuated and worn-out, and announces the approach of new revelations and prophecies. Garrison and the non-resistant abolitionists, Brownson and the Marat Democrats, phrenology and animal magnetism, all come in, furnishing each some plausible rascality as an ingredient for the bubbling cauldron of religion and politics.’
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