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Fighting for the Higher Law: Black and White Transcendentalists Against Slavery

byPeter Wirzbicki

Peter Wirzbicki recasts Transcendentalism as a political philosophy forged in the interracial struggle against slavery. He places Black abolitionists such as William Cooper Nell, Thomas Sidney, and Charlotte Forten alongside Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and other familiar thinkers. Together, these activists developed a “Higher Law” tradition that judged government by moral reason rather than constitutional compromise. The book shows how this democratic, antislavery current shaped later labor, feminist, civil-rights, and environmental movements while restoring Black intellectuals to the history of American Transcendentalism.

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Publication date

2021-03-26

Format

Hardcover

Pages

336

ISBN

9780812252910