e in
1863, when the settlement was taking place in a different currency,--in
steel and not in gold:--

"Pay ransom to the owner,
And fill the bag to the brim.
Who is the owner? The slave is owner,
And ever was. Pay him."

His sympathies were all and always with freedom. He spoke with
indignation of the outrage on Sumner; he took part in the meeting at
Concord expressive of sympathy with John Brown. But he was never in the
front rank of the aggressive Anti-Slavery men. In his singular "Ode
inscribed to W.H. Channing" there is a hint of a possible solution of
the slavery problem which implies a doubt as to the permanence of the
cause of all the trouble.

"The over-god
Who marries Right to Might,
Who peoples, unpeoples,--
He who exterminates
Races by stronger races,
Black by white faces,--
Knows to bring honey
Out of the lion."

Some doubts of this kind helped Emerson to justify himself when he
refused to leave his "honeyed thought" for the busy world where

"Things are of the snake."

The time came when he could no longer sit quietly in his study, and, to
borrow Mr. Cooke's words, "As the agitation proceeded, and brave men
took part in it, and it rose to a spirit of moral grandeur, he gave a
heartier assent to the outward methods adopted."

* * * * *

No woman could doubt the reverence of Emerson for womanhood. In a
lecture read to the "Woman's Rights Convention" in 1855, he takes bold,
and what would then have been considered somewhat advanced, ground in
the controversy then and since dividing the community. This is the way
in which he expresses himself:

"I do not think it yet appears that women wish this equal share in
public affairs. But it is they and not we that are to determine it.
Let the laws he purged of every barbarous remainder, every barbarous
impediment to women. Let the public donations for education be
equally shared by them, let them enter a school as freely as a
church, let them have and hold and give their property as men do
theirs;--and in a few years it will easily appear whether they wish
a voice in making the laws that are to govern them. If you do refuse
them a vote, you will also refuse to tax them,--according to our
Teutonic principle, No representation, no tax.--The new movement
is only a tide shared by the spirits of man and woman; and you may
proceed in the faith that