Thomas Wentworth Higginson (December 22, 1823 - May 9, 1911) was an American author, abolitionist, and soldier. December 22 is the 356th day of the year (357th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1823 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... May 9 is the 129th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (130th in leap years). ... 1911 (MCMXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar). ... An author is the person who creates a written work, such as a book, story, article or the like. ... This article is about the abolition of slavery. ...

Higginson was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was a descendant of Francis Higginson, a Puritan minister and emigrant to the colony of Massachusetts Bay. He was a grandson of Stephen Higginson, a member of the Continental Congress, and a cousin of Henry Lee Higginson, founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Cambridge City Hall Cambridge is a city in the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts, United States. ... Francis Higginson (1588-1630) was a colonial American Puritan. ... The Puritans were members of a group of English Protestants seeking further reforms or even separation from the established church during the Reformation. ... Massachusetts Bay is one of the large bays of the Atlantic Ocean that form the distinctive shape of the coastline of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. ... Stephen Higginson (November 28, 1743 – November 28, 1828) was an American merchant and shipmaster from Boston, Massachusetts. ... Henry Lee Higginson (November 18, 1834 - November 14, 1919) was a remarkable Boston banker, amateur musician, Civil War soldier, and energetic philanthropist best known as the founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. ... The Boston Symphony Orchestra is one of the worlds most renowned orchestras. ...

He graduated from Harvard in 1841, and was a schoolmaster for two years. He then studied theology at the Harvard Divinity School, becoming pastor first of the First Religious Society (Unitarian) of Newburyport, Massachusetts, and then of the Free Church at Worcester in 1852-1858. Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ... take you to calendar). ... Theology is reasoned discourse concerning God (Greek θεος, theos, God, + λογος, logos, word or reason). It can also refer to the study of other religious topics. ... Harvard Divinity School Harvard Divinity School is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States of America. ... Historic Unitarianism believed in the oneness of God as opposed to traditional Christian belief in the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). ... Seal of Newburyport, MA Newburyport is a small coastal city located in Essex County, Massachusetts. ...

Higginson was a Free Soil candidate for Congress in 1850, but was defeated. He was indicted with Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker for participation in the attempt to release the fugitive slave, Anthony Burns, in Boston (1853). He was later engaged in the effort to make Kansas a free state after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854. The Free Soil Party was a short-lived political party in the United States organized in 1848 that petered out by about 1852. ... Photograph of Wendell Phillips Wendell Phillips (29 November 1811 - 2 February 1884), born in Boston, Massachusetts, was an American abolitionist, Native American advocate and orator. ... Theodore Parker (August 24, 1810 - May 10, 1860) was a reforming American minister of the Unitarian church, and a Transcendentalist. ... Anthony Burns was an African-American who escaped from slavery in Virginia and was captured by slave-hunters in Boston in 1854. ... Boston is a town and small port c. ... Official language(s) None Capital Topeka Largest city Wichita Area  - Total  - Width  - Length  - % water  - Latitude  - Longitude Ranked 15th 82,277 mi²; 213,096 km² 211 mi; 340 km 400 mi; 645 km 0. ... The Kansas–Nebraska Act was an Act of Congress in 1854 organizing the remaining territory within the Louisiana Purchase for settlement before its admission to the Union. ...

During the Civil War Higginson was a captain in the 51st Massachusetts Volunteers. From November 1862 to October 1864, when he was retired because of a wound received in the preceding August, he was colonel of the First South Carolina (Union)Volunteers, the first regiment recruited from former slaves for the Federal service. The Secretary of War required Black regiments be commanded by white officers. Higgingson described his Civil War experiences in Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870). Higginson also contributed to the preservation of Negro Spirituals by copying dialect verses and music he heard sung around the regiment's campfires. The American Civil War (1861–1865) was fought in North America between the United States of America, called the Union and the Confederate States of America, a new nation formed by 11 seceding states. ...

In politics Higginson was successively a Republican, an Independent and a Democrat. His writings show a deep love of nature, art and humanity, and are marked by vigour of thought, sincerity of feeling, and grace and finish of style. In his Common Sense About Women (1881) and his Women and Men (1888) he advocated equality of opportunity and equality of rights for the two sexes.

Higginson is also remembered as a correspondent and literary mentor to Emily Dickinson, whose literary status he did not esteem very highly until after her death. A young Emily Dickinson, sometime around 1846-1847, for a long time the only known photograph of her. ...

Works

Among his numerous books are:

• Outdoor Papers (1863)
• Malbone: an Oldport Romance (1869)
• Life of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (in American Men of Letters series, 1884)
• A Larger History of the United Stales of America to the Close of President Jackson's Administration (1885)
• The Monarch of Dreams (1886)
• Travellers and Outlaws (1889)
• The Afternoon Landscape (1889), poems and translations
• Life of Francis Higginson (in Makers of America, 1891)
• Concerning All of Us (1892)
• The Procession of the Flowers and Kindred Papers (1897)
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (in American Men of Letters series, 1902)
• John Greenleaf Whittier (in English Men of Letters series, 1902)
• A Readers History of American Literature (1903), the Lowell Institute lectures for 1903, edited by Henry W Boynton
• Life and Times of Stephen Higginson (1907)

Higginson published several memoirs, Cheerful Yesterdays (1898), Old Cambridge (1899), Contemporaries (1899), and Part of a Man's Life (1905). His collected works were published in seven volumes in 1900. Sarah Margaret Fuller (May 23, 1810 - June 19, 1850) was a journalist, critic and womens rights activist. ... Francis Higginson (1588-1630) was a colonial American Puritan. ... Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet who wrote many works that are still famous today, including The Song of Hiawatha, Paul Reveres Ride and Evangeline. ... John Greenleaf Whittier, November 25, 1885. ... As a literary genre, a memoir forms a subclass of autobiography. ...

References

• The Magnificent Activist: The Writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911), edited by Howard N. Meyer, Da Capo Press, 2000, 6000 pp.

• This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, a publication in the public domain.

The 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1910-1911) is the most famous edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

External link

Works by Thomas Wentworth Higginson at Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (often abbreviated as PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive, and distribute cultural works. ...

Thomas Wentworth Higginson: Correspondence from the Carlton and Territa Lowenberg Collection at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries' Archives & Special Collections.