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understanding of the need for violence but also had discovered and allowed himself to express a need for violent personal responses to social evils which were apparently otherwise unsolvable. He had expressed desires generally forbidden in his society. Writing privately, Parker could exalt in the possibility of acting out an absolute hatred of the institution of slavery and all its human minions. If he were in the Senate, he wrote to Caroline Thayer in 1859, he would declaim, 'yes hate slavery-hate it as hate scarce anything besides; hate it as the sum of all villainies. But is not all; don't merely hate Slavery in the abstract-I hate it in the concrete. hate Slave-hunters, Slave-breeders, Slave-sellers, Slave-holders . . . hate them as hate robbers, murderers and pirates, and shall seek to rid the world of such a nuisance as fast as can.' 30 Parker's only fundamental hesitancy about the uses of violence was tactical :31 the gulf between insight and action was easy to bridge. As early as 1853, he supported the use of all necessary forms of direct action against slavery, including the initiation of aggressive attacks against the South. must make continual aggressions against slavery; resent its attacks; nay, invade slavery on any suitable occasion, and with any weapons it is just, manly, and effectual to use, he wrote; human enactments are amenable to the justice of God.' '32 Parker aided escaping fugitive slaves and led the harassment of southern slavecatchers who came North after escapees.33 He sent arms and money to Kansas and was one of the new and improved edition, and divers Colt's sixshooters also.... But what a comment were the weapons of company on the boasted democracy of America ! Quoted in Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, II, 160. 29 Parker, Slave Power, 344. S?Theodore Parker to Caroline C. Thayer, Oct. 15, 1859, Parker Papers. one point, in 1851, Theodore Parker opposed the use of armed resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law only Because it is not time just yet; it would not succeed. Theodore Parker, Sins and Safeguards of Society (Boston, n.d.), 43. 82Quoted in Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, II, 119. 83 Theodore Parker recorded his conversation with two slave catchers in Boston in 1850. both complained they were ill-treated; they could not step into the street but they were surrounded and followed by men who called out, 'Slave-hunters, slavehunters!' . . . told (them] they were not safe in Boston another night .... told them we ... came to give them a safe conduct, and allow no one to hurt them.... told them had stood between them and violence once-I would not promise to do it again: should not have been successful had it not been thought they had promised to depart This content downloaded from 207.46.13.64 on Sat, 03 Sep 2016 04:31:22 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 676 The Journal of American History of the Boston committee of six, the conspiratorial group armed, financed, and morally supported John Brown's campaigns.34 Parker shared Brown's vision of the coming of a necessarily blood drenched but nevertheless sanctified destruction of slavery. few years ago it did not seem difficult first to check Slavery, and then to end it without any bloodshed, he wrote; I think this cannot be done now, nor ever in the future.35 Parker not only thought the application of violence against moral wrong contained positive moral connotations but also believed such uses of violence by northern men carried an ethnological truth. I am more than ever of [the] opinion, he wrote during the period of guerilla warfare in Kansas in 1856, that we must settle this question in the old Anglo-Saxon way,-by the sword.36 Parker was an early advocate of Teutonic racism; his intensive reading in German scholarship carried him into the racism implicit in early nineteenth-century German anthropology, but he was himself an early and original shaper of racialist ideology.37 As with most racial theorists, Parker believed in the existence of a hierarchy of races. Physically and morally, Parker believed the Germanic Anglo-Saxons were at the apex.38 New England was founded by a tribe of stoutly unrefined, pure-blooded Germanic men. [Tihe AngloSaxons dropped their anchor in Massachusetts bay . . . , he wrote; Fresh blood was in those Anglo-Saxon veins; strong, red, heathen blood, not morning at half-past seven. He said they had never made any promise, nor should they make any. told them could not guarantee their safety another night. We bid one another good morning, and came away. They were considerably frightened. At half-past 2 P.M. they took the New York train at Newton Corner. Quoted in Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, II, 97-98. See also Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Theodore Parker: A Biography (Boston, 1874), 408. 34 Commager, Theodore Parker, 248-54. 3 Quoted in Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, II, 172. When he went to the gallows, John Brown handed his jailer a note containing a strikingly parallel statement: I John Brown am now quite certain the crimes of this guilty, land: will never be purged away; but with Blood. had as now think: vainly flattered myself without very much bloodshed; it might be done. Quoted in Stephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown (New York, 1970), 351. On hearing of Brown's dignity at the gallows, Theodore Parker's heart soared for this plain man who was the inheritor of the aristocratic blood of New England. Brown had acted truly through pure blood. Theodore Parker to J. Lyman, Jan. 13, 1860, Parker Papers. 3 Quoted in Frothingham, Theodore Parker, 439. 37 For a general discussion of the Teutonic origins idea, see Thomas F. Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America (Dallas, 1963), 84-122. For the antebellum growth of the scientific supports for racism, see William Stanton, The Leopard's Spots: Scientific Attitudes toward Race in America 1815-1859 (Chicago, 1960). Theodore Parker's views are fully developed in his correspondence with Edward Desor, the Swiss geologist. See Parker Collection. 38Theodore Parker, Saint Bernard and Other Papers (Boston, n.d.), 279. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.64 on Sat, 03 Sep 2016 04:31:22 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
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