Blog - Page 153 of 286 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Guido Bruno, “Emma Goldman—Fighter and Idealist” (1917)

June 11, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

So far as a man thinks, he is free. Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are. and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper Preamble like a “Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or act. —EMERSON. “Get Miss Goldman,” cried the pale-faced, thin-lipped matron to another white-clad attendant behind the bars of the Tombs. It was a few days after Emma Goldman’s arrest as “the head of a country-wide conspiracy to resist conscription.” I stood in a small, triangular hallway. […]

Bruce Calvert, “In the Jungle” (1908)

June 11, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

But I started out to tell you of my intellectual bat in the city. The jag opened with ‘Gene Debs’ lecture at Orchestra Hall, where the idol of the socialists received the plaudits of three or four thousand enthusiasts. Then I listened to prim and scholarly John Spargo, another socialist speaker and writer, well known to students of economics. Spargo looks for all the world like a Presbyterian deacon, tho he doesn’t talk like one by a darn site. I heard Arthur M. Lewis, also, at the Garrick Theater, and a lecture by ex-Senator Billy Mason on the postal savings […]

Lois Waisbrooker: Eighty Years Young

June 10, 2016

LOIS WAISBROOKER. ANTIOCH, CAL. Eighty Years Young and a Human Dynamo. In reply to your request I would say that I was born in the lower strata of life. My father worked by the day or by the job to support his family. My mother was a quiet retiring woman who died at the age of thirty-six. I have no noted ancestry. I have worked in people’s kitchens year in and year out when I never knew what it was to be rested. Finally I added enough to the little schooling I received in childhood to enable me to meet […]

William Batchelder Greene, Letter to Orestes Brownson (1849)

June 6, 2016

From Orestes A. Brownson’s Middle Life from 1845-1855 (1899): Another Unitarian minister, the son of an old friend, one in whom Brownson had taken a great interest, had his reasonings and speculations submitted to a severe, but not unfriendly criticism, at about the same time as Channing. This was William B. Greene, whose name, however, did not appear as the author of the book to which he refers in the following letter: BROOKFIELD, MASS., Jan. 24th, 1849. DEAR SIR:—I Send you herewith a copy of my “Remarks on Science of History, etc.” I requested Mr. Crosby to send you a […]

Annie Field, from “Whittier: Notes Of His Life And Of His Friendships” (1897)

June 6, 2016

“Whittier: Notes Of His Life And Of His Friendships” From Annie Field’s Authors and Friends It was Whittier’s sad experience to be deprived of the companionship of all those most dear to him, and for over twenty years to live without that intimate household communion for the loss of which the world holds no recompense. For several years, before and after his sister Elizabeth’s death, Whittier wore the look of one who was very ill. His large dark eyes burned with peculiar fire, and contrasted with his pale brow and attenuated figure. He had a sorrowful, stricken look, and found […]

William Batchelder Greene, “The Right of Suffrage” (1875)

June 6, 2016

TOWN and State paupers are persons notoriously incapable of supporting themselves, because demonstrably devoid of the faculties demanded for a successful administration of their own private affairs. Being incompetent to acquit themselves with credit in matters with which they are presumably conversant, they cannot be trusted to exercise sovereignty in matters pertaining to the general welfare. Paupers are persons and people; but they are not voting people. Insane persons and idiots are notorious for their incapacity for self-government, and have, by law, and on account of their incapacity, guardians appointed over them to prevent them from injuring themselves and others. […]

George Willis Cooke, “William Batchelder Greene”

June 5, 2016

“WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE” from George Willis Cooke’s Historical and Biographical Introduction to the Rowfant Club reprint of The Dial (Cleveland, 1902) [NOTE: There is considerable disagreement among sources about the particulars of Greene’s literary output. Titles and dates in this account may be unreliable. In particular, poetry volumes attributed to Greene, such as “Imogen,” may be the work of his son, also William Batchelder Greene. In the third number of the second volume of “The Dial” was printed an article on “First Principles” by William Batchelder Greene, then minister of the Unitarian church at Brookfield, Mass. This was his only […]

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Reminiscences of Rev. Wm. Ellery Channing, D.D. (excerpts)

June 5, 2016

Two fragments from Elizabeth Palmer Peabody’s Reminiscences of Rev. Wm. Ellery Channing, D.D. (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1880) [William B. Greene / Transcendentalism / Emerson – pages 364-365] In the last year of Dr. Channing’s life I one day said to him, showing him a passage in his sermon on “Likeness to God,”–“Lieutenant Greene says the whole Transcendental movement in New England is wrapped up in this paragraph”: “The divine attributes are first developed in ourselves, and thence transferred to our Creator. The idea of God, sublime and awful as it is, is the idea of our own spiritual nature, purified […]

Thomas Wentworth Higginson on William Batchelder Greene

June 5, 2016

Two fragments from Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s Cheerful Yesterdays (Boston, 1898) [William B. Greene at Harvard Divinity School – pages 106-107] Two of the most interesting men in the Divinity School were afterward, like myself, in military service during the Civil War. One of them was James Richardson, whom Frothingham described later as “a brilliant wreath of fire-mist, which seemed every moment to be on the point of becoming a star, but never did.” He enlisted as a private soldier and died in hospital, where he had been detailed as nurse. The other had been educated at West Point, and had […]

James Freeman Clarke, Reminiscences of William B. Greene

June 5, 2016

From James Freeman Clarke’s Diary and Correspondence (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1891) [Col. William B. Greene’s Army command outside Washington, DC, November, 1861 – pages 278-282] The whole aspect of the city is changed. It is like a city of Europe,–like Berlin, or Vienna, or St. Petersburg,–but with a difference. For this of ours is not a mere standing army, to be wielded blindly in the interests of despotism, but an intelligent army of freemen, come to protect liberty and law. It is the nation itself which has taken up arms, and come to Washington to defend its own life and […]