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Charles Sumner visits the Greenes in Paris, 1857

September 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Edward Lillie Pearce, Charles Sumner. Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. III, 1845-1860. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1894. “March 26 [1857]. Wrote letters home ; visited the Invalides, and saw the new tomb of Napoleon ; then visited Mr. William B. Greene and his most intelligent wife, living off beyond the Luxembourg; saw something of that quarter ; then dined with Elliot C. Cowdin, a merchant here, once connected with the Mercantile Library Association [of Boston], — the first time I have met company at dinner for ten months ; then to the Italian opera, where I heard the last […]

Lilian Freeman Clarke visits Anna Greene in Paris, 1882

September 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

James Freeman Clarke. Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1889. 369. LONDON, May 29,1882. Our voyage was rather long, cold, foggy and disagreeble, and we were glad last Thursday morning to be at Liverpool, where we took a train at once for London. Lilian joined us Friday evening, coming from Paris, where she has had a pleasant time with Mrs. William B. Greene and Ellen Hale. Yesterday (Whitsunday) we four went to Hampstead, where I preached for Dr. Sadler, a fine old gentleman, in a very pleasant, picturesque English chapel. Hampstead is lovely, half […]

Notice of William B. Greene, Transcendentalism, etc

September 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

“New Publications.” The Religious Magazine and Monthly Review. 45, 5 (May, 1871), 544. TRANSCENDENTALISM, and THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS, and the Philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer, are the titles of two remarkable pamphlets by Mr. William B. Greene, and will furnish what William Corbett would call ” a bone to gnaw,” to those who have a liking for such hard problems in Psychology. We look upon Mr. Greene as an able and independent writer, less satisfactory, perhaps, than he would be were it not for the slight excess of individualism which marks his productions.

Notice of William B. Greene, The Blazing Star

September 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

“Notice of New Books,” The New Englander, XXXII, 1 (January, 1873), 183. MR. WILLIAM B. GREENE’S BLAZING STAR† seems to us to shine by a reflected light, and that light, whatever there is, is reflected from the Appendix on the Jewish Kabbala, if this be not darkness visible. We frankly confess to have been able to gather little or nothing from both except the excitement of our curiosity to learn somewhat more of this same Kabbala. But whatever these first portions of this volume have failed to furnish has been more than compensated by the tract on the Philosophy of […]

Ezra Heywood and prison vaccinations

September 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

“An American Experience,” The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, 1 (April, 1879), 12. AN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. MR. EZRA H. HEYWOOD, a fellow labourer with W. Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Francis Jackson, and Parker Pillsbury, for the abolition of slavery in the United States, has recently suffered imprisonment for the same cause as Mr. Truelove in England, but was liberated by President Hayes. He is turning his prison experiences to account in public lectures, showing how adverse to good are prison influences and regulations. ” I have no personal grievances to vent,” he says. ” I was in a liberal jail. […]

B. W. Ball, The Revolution

August 19, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

B. W. Ball, “The Revolution,” The Radical Review, 720. THE REVOLUTION. There is no pause. Still blow resounds on blow,The order old making to shake and reelFrom base to pinnacle. To dust brought low,Crescent and Cross the shock of ruin feel.Shallow Reaction tries in vain to stemThe Revolution’s surge, which more and more,Drowning tiara, throne, and diadem.Spreads undulating wide from shore to shore.What though Priest, Kaiser, Sultan, King still sitSceptred and crowned above the encroaching flood?Belshazzar’s legend is above them writ,And they grow pale before Man’s altered mood.Voices of Revolution, trumpet-clear,Byron and Shelley, lo, your day is near! B. W. […]

Edward Stanwood, Mr. Spooner’s Island Community

August 19, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Edward Stanwood, “Mr. Spooner’s Island Community,” The Radical Review, 578-581. MR. SPOONER’S ISLAND COMMUNITY. If one could only accept all of Mr. Lysander Spooner’s assumptions as true, his argument would be sound and his conclusions would follow. Unfortunately for him, his most material assumptions have no basis. Letus take his first case: one hundred men on a solitary island; each producing ten bushels of wheat, exactly enough for his own wants; each the possessor of coined money to the amount of what we call five dollars. It is true, wheat would have no price, though it would have a value. […]

I. G. Blanchard, The Warfare

August 19, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

I. G. Blanchard, “The Warfare,” The Radical Review, 533. THE WARFARE. Along the battle’s flaming van We mark the tried and true, —Defenders of the cause of man, A chosen, peerless few.Born to their mission and inspired, Oh, should they fall, we feelNo spirit would like theirs be fired, No hand could wield their steel. Yet, one by one, they step aside, Or on the red field lie,And still their places are supplied, Still rings the battle-cry;Still o’er the hoary walls of Wrong Truth’s startling missiles fly,And still, with steady step and strong, Her hosts are marching by. And so […]

Anarchy in Jamaica Plain, etc.

August 16, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

I had some contact with John Ruch, a writer for the Jamaica Plain Gazette, awhile back. He had seen a letter from William Batchelder Greene to Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler, posted here. I gave him a general rundown on Greene’s life, and what I knew about his time in Jamaica Plain. His article, “Anarchy in JP,” is now available, and thanks largely to Dan Clore has been getting quite a bit of attention in anarchist circles. John did a very nice job, particularly as there are very few very complete biographical sources on Greene. (You can see my own first […]

Misc. notes

August 15, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Traffic on all my blogs has until recently been little more than a trickle, and recent excitements over the archives of Liberty, Lucifer, the Radical Review, and the Alarm has increased that to, well, a strong trickle. But the increase has been enough to inspire me to install some better counters and spend a little more time analyzing traffic. Someone at house.gov is reading Liberty. Lucifer the Light-Bearer is apparently not such a bad name in the 21st century, judging by the continuing interest in that archive. But about that archive. . . The editors of Lucifer were apparently consistently […]