• A Free Soiler in his Own Broad Sense: Henry David Thoreau and the Free Soil Movement

    Author(s):
    James S. Finley (see profile)
    Date:
    2016
    Subject(s):
    American literature
    Item Type:
    Book chapter
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6976M
    Abstract:
    This chapter explores Thoreau’s engagement with Free Soil ideology and contextualizes Thoreau’s ecologically oriented social reform. Thoreau, I argue, transforms the Free Soil position that slaveholding degrades labor and landscapes, making it more attentive to Transcendentalist ethics and ecological volatility. More specifically, the ecological vision of antislavery that Thoreau articulates in “Slavery in Massachusetts” and the individualist, anticapitalist free soil project that he fashions in "Walden" both point toward his embrace of John Brown as the apotheosis of a uniquely Thoreauvian version of Free Soil.
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Book chapter     Show details
    Publisher:
    Cambridge University Press
    Pub. Date:
    2016
    Book Title:
    Thoreau at 200: Essays and Reassessments
    Author/Editor:
    Kristen Case and K. P. Van Anglen
    Chapter:
    2
    Page Range:
    31 - 44
    ISBN:
    9781107094291
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    6 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved

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