“We are gratified (says the Transcript,) that the Commonwealth has secured the services of Mr. William B. Greene as Colonel of the Essex (14th) Regiment. Mr. Greene is a native of Essex County, and is forty-two years of age. He left West Point at the end of two years on account of ill health, but after regaining his strength, was selected to drill troops for many months upon Governor’s Island. He then procured active service as a Lieutenant in 7th U. S. Infantry in the Florida war. He distinguished himself in that severe service, having, most of the time, the command of two companies, and at one time a Major’s command. He is not only a thorough-trained, modest, brave, and high-toned officer, but is a man of marked intellectual capacity. He has shown that he has the “born gift” of leading men. He will know how to temper strict discipline with kindness, and stern command with courtesy. Mr. Greene has resided with his family for several years in Paris, but as soon as he heard of the attack upon our troops in Baltimore, he sold his country-place, shut up his house in Paris, and came to offer his services to his native state. We congratulate the 14th Regiment upon its good fortune.” [Boston Daily Advertiser, (Boston, MA) Saturday, June 29, 1861]
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William Batchelder Greene, “The Blazing Star” (1871)
Some men — not all men — see always before them an ideal, a mental picture if you will, of what they ought to be, and are not. Whoso seeks to follow this ideal revealed to the mental vision, whoso seeks to attain to conformity with it, will find it enlarge itself, and remove from him. He that follows it will improve his own moral character; but the ideal will remain always above him and before him, prompting him to new exertions. What is the natural conscience if it be not a condemnation of ourselves as we are, mean, pitiful, weak, and a comparison of ourselves with what we ought to be, wise, powerful, holy? It is this Ideal of what we ought to be, and are not, that is symbolically pictured in the Blazing Star. […]
William B. Greene, Foreign Correspondence (1854–1855)
Do what you will, the crater of the revolutionary volcano is bound to be reopened. England must revolutionise Hungary, and put the nationalities of southern Europe once more upon their feet. The triumph of democracy is approaching. England and France have not two armies to lose, while Russia can have one army after another annihilated without feeling her energies exhausted. In Finland, Poland, Italy, Hungary, there and there only—with the assistance of certain populations of Asia—can the immense masses be found which are required for the adequate opposition of Russia. […]
William B. Greene, “Equality—No. 6. Cain and Abel” (1850)
Like several of the other articles that he contributed to The Worcester Palladium, this early article by William Batchelder Greene contains some of his most direct expressions of anarchistic and socialistic ideas, but weaves them […]