Essay
At town meeting on March 2, 1835, the citizens of Concord appointed a committee to consider the celebration of the upcoming bicentennial of its incorporation in September. At the April 6th town meeting, this committee recommended a public procession and an oration to commemorate the event. An appropriation of not more than $75 was approved to cover expenses. At the April meeting, a Committee of Arrangements was chosen to make the necessary preparations. Members included Nathan Brooks, Daniel Shattuck, Phineas How, Josiah Bartlett, Reuben Brown, Nathan Barrett, and William Munroe, among others. In May, John Keyes was elected Chairman.
Ultimately, Ralph Waldo Emerson was asked to be the keynote speaker on this occasion. (A letter written to Frederic Henry Hedge on June 25th indicates that he had been asked by that date.) From our retrospective vantage point, the selection of Emerson as orator seems natural. But Emerson was not the first choice of the Committee of Arrangements, nor even the second. Despite his family ties to the town, he was, after all, a new resident, and not a native Concordian. Moreover, although he already enjoyed a considerable reputation as a lecturer, he was not quite yet the recognized representative of Transcendental philosophy that he would soon become with the publication of his Nature (1836), his “American Scholar” oration (1837), and the “Divinity School Address” (1838).
Edward Jarvis (1803-1884)—a physician, pioneer in the care of the mentally ill, statistician, and social historian—grew up in Concord, and lived and practiced medicine here between 1832 and 1837. Late in life, he recorded his recollections, research, and analyses relating to the town during his youth and early adulthood in two manuscript volumes (Traditions and Reminiscences of Concord … 1779 to 1878 and Houses and People in Concord, 1810 to 1820). He also extensively annotated his personal copy of Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A History of the Town of Concord (which was published shortly after the town’s celebration of its incorporation on September 12) to correct and supplement information in the book. He added a lengthy description of the process by which the 1835 Committee of Arrangements selected an orator. His manuscript account provides an eye-opening insider’s view of the way in which personalities, politics, and agendas influenced the course of events, then as now.
Jarvis wrote: “The town elected a large committee to carry [its] vote into execution … They first determined to have an oration, but they had unnecessarily much difficulty in obtaining an orator. Among the committee and in the town there were very different ideas of the object and character of the celebration. Some wished it to be a domestic, a Concord, celebration, at which all the citizens of all the town should be gathered and … all those then living in other places who had emigrated from Concord and also as many of the children and children’s children who could be drawn into this occasion. They wished the sympathy of other towns especially those of the neighborhood and would invite all these to this love feast. They would have an oration, singing and religious exercise in the meetinghouse and a dinner in a tent large enough to accommodate great multitudes and so simple and plain that none should be kept away on account of the cost … In their opinion this should be a new cement of all Concord life wherever found and however remotely descended.”
He continued: “Others desired this to be a grand celebration to draw men of high degree from other towns and sites, and give Concord a name and fame abroad. They wanted an orator of the greatest eloquence and renown whose speech should impress the world and carry the name of Concord with it. They wanted a magnificent dinner … and speeches from noted men whose words would give honor and dignity to the occasion in other lands and in after times.”
Finally, Jarvis addressed the subject of engaging the speaker: “The last prevailed, and it was agreed to invite Mr. Webster to be the orator. He declined. Then they asked Mr. Everett to be their speaker … But he also declined. Then Mr. Choate was thought of. I do not now remember whether he was invited and could not be obtained, certainly he was not the orator. After much doubt and anxiety as [to] distinguished men whom they could not invite, the committee came to the very man whom they should have first asked and who would better represent the hearts and history of Concord and be more an honor to the people and their principles. They asked Mr. Ralf [Ralph] Waldo Emerson.”
Although he was not Concord’s first choice as speaker, Emerson nevertheless did the town proud.
Through the summer of 1835, Emerson researched Concord history. He consulted the manuscript town and church records going back to the 17th century, Peter Bulkeley’s Gospel-Covenant, Ezra Ripley’s Half Century Discourse and A History of the Fight at Concord on the 19th of April, 1775, the proof sheets of Shattuck’s history, and printed historical works by a number of other writers (Johnson, Shepard, Mather, Winthrop, Hutchinson, and Bancroft among them). The resulting discourse, which took an hour and three quarters to deliver, was the first of many public addresses he would make here.
The weather was fine on Saturday, September 12th. The people of Concord gathered at the First Parish at 11:30. Emerson’s brother Charles wrote on September 14, 1835 to their brother William, “There we had music enough—voluntary, & ode, & psalm, & ode again, & original hymn. The psalm was … from the old New England version, written chiefly by John Eliot, & used in the Churches from 1640. It was a noble ancient strain, and had the more effect from being ‘deaconed’ out, a line at a time, after the fashion of our grandfathers, & sung by the whole congregation.” Emerson’s fellow celebrants included surviving veterans of the Concord Fight. Among the invited dignitaries were Massachusetts Governor Samuel T. Armstrong and Harvard professor, orator, and public servant Edward Everett, who had declined Concord’s invitation to deliver the keynote address. After the ceremonies, the ladies of the town served refreshments in the Court House on Monument Square.
As it turned out, expenses for the celebration came to more than twice the amount appropriated by the town. The deficit was made up by private subscription and by contributions from members of the Committee of Arrangements.
Charles Emerson judged his brother’s bicentennial discourse
“a faithful historical sketch of this Town”—a speech absolutely appropriate
to the occasion. In some of his later writings, however, Emerson
dealt with Concord history with greater philosophical detachment than he
did in 1835. For example, in the poem “Hamatreya” (first published
in 1846), he focused on the materialism and illusory pride in property
of Concord’s first settlers and affirmed a broader, more spiritual outlook
on history than that which emphasized the individual achievements of particular
men. The historical perspective of Emerson the philosopher differed
from that of Emerson the citizen of Concord.
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