Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803-April 27, 1882) was the American poet who composed some of the best loved poems in American literature, including The Concord Hymn, written in 1837 for the dedication of the monument where the Revolutionary War began at Concord's North Bridge, April 19, 1775, which made famous the line, "the shot heard around the world."
The most recognizable stanza of this poem is inscribed on the base of Daniel Chester French's Minute Man Statue:
<By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood;
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps,
And Time the ruined bridge has swept,
Down the dark stream that seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We place with joy a votive stone,
That memory may their deeds redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
O Thou who made those heroes dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
-Bid Time and Nature gently spare,
The shaft we raised to them and Thee.> 1803RE001
Ralph Waldo Emerson acknowledged:
<America is another name for opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine Providence in behalf of the human race.> 1803RE002
Friends with writers Nathaniel Hawthorne and Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson commented on John Quincy Adams:
<No man could read the Bible with such powerful effect, even with the cracked and winded voice of old age.> 1803RE003
When abolitionist publisher, Elijah Lovejoy was murdered and his printing press destroyed in 1838, Emerson said:
<It is but the other day that the brave Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights of free speech and opinion.> 1803RE004
In 1848, Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Paris between the February Revolution and the bloody June Days, a sort of Occupy Wall Street demonstration. When he saw near the Champ de Mars, that mobs had cut down trees to form barricades across downtown city streets, he wrote in his journal:
<At the end of the year we shall take account, & see if the Revolution was worth the trees.> 1803RE005
During the Civil War, Emerson lectured at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., stating:
<Emancipation is the demand of civilization.> 1803RE006 Charles Sumner took him to the White House to meet Lincoln. Emerson stated:
<I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.> 1803RE007
In 1865, Emerson spoke at a memorial service for Lincoln:
<I doubt if any death has caused so much pain as this has caused.> 1803RE008
On September 12, 2001, the day after the fundamentalist Muslim terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Congressman J.C. Watts, Jr., quoted Emerson:
<Politics has taken the day off. Today Congress remembers and recognizes the afflicted and the sorrowing and those who come to the aid of their fellow man. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 1842, captured what we are thinking as a nation today:
'Sorrow makes us all children again,
destroys all differences of intellect.
The wisest knows nothing.'
I thank my colleagues for their service and leadership during this national tragedy.> 1803RE009
Ralph Waldo Emerson acknowledged:
<All I have seen has taught me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.> 1803RE010
In his 1851 essay The Fugitive Slave Law, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:
<Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.> 1803RE011
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1803RE001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Concord Hymn, the most recognizable stanza, inscribed on the base of Daniel Chester French's Minute Man Statue in Concord, MA. http://www.nationalcenter.org/ConcordHymn.html
1803RE002. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Ralph Waldo Emerson. Charles Wallis, ed., Our American Heritage (NY: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1970), p. 57.
1803RE003. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Ralph Waldo Emerson. Comment concerning John Quincy Adams. Edmund Fuller and David E. Green, God in the White House-The Faiths of American Presidents (NY: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1968), p. 59.
1803RE004. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Ralph Waldo Emerson. Comment regarding the murder of abolitionist publisher, Elijah Lovejoy in 1838. John McAleer, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Days of Encounter (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, (1984), p. 531.
1803RE005. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1848, Journal entry during visit to Paris between the February Revolution and the bloody June Days, near the Champ de Mars. Gay Wilson Allen, Waldo Emerson (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 512-514.
1803RE006. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Ralph Waldo Emerson. January 31, 1862, Lecture at the Smithsonian, Washington, D.C. Carlos Baker, Emerson Among the Eccentrics: A Group Portrait (New York: Viking Press, 1996), p. 433.
1803RE007. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Ralph Waldo Emerson. At a meeting in Concord, MA. Barbara L. Packer, The Transcendentalists (Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2007), p. 232.
1803RE008. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1865, at a memorial service for Abraham Lincoln. Atkinson Brooks, Mary Oliver, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (USA: Modern Library, 2000), pp. 827, 829.
1803RE009. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Ralph Waldo Emerson. September 12, 2001, quoted by Congressman J.C. Watts, Jr., on the day after the fundamentalist Muslim terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Subj: Terrorism invades our borders, 9/12/2001 5:18:40 PM CDTime, From: ampac@lists.postmastergeneral.com (American Renewal PAC). 1803RE010. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds., Spirit of Seventy-Six (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1958), p. 156. Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Glory of America (Bloomington, MN: Garborg's Heart'N Home, Inc., 1991), 5.25. Bless Your Heart (series II) (Eden Prairie, MN: Heartland Sampler, Inc., 1990), 7.14.
1803RE011. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Ralph Waldo Emerson. In his 1851 essay, The Fugitive Slave Law.