From Abolition to Dickinson, Rev. Higginson made his mark.

Byline: Albert B. Southwick

The Telegram recently ran a brief article on the life and career of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911), the radical Worcester Unitarian minister of 150 years ago. The article was all right, as far as it went, but it left out some important features of Rev. Higginson's astonishing life story. Worcester has had its share of striking personalities and careers, but nothing to equal the Higginson saga.

Just a brief summary: He was a teacher, a preacher, a radical reformer, a gunrunner, a dedicated abolitionist, an apostle of physical fitness, a writer, an editor, a military leader, a prominent intellectual and a strong supporter of John Brown, the terrorist who massacred pro-slavery settlers in Kansas in 1856 and later led the ill-fated 1859 raid at Harper's Ferry that was aimed at setting off a slave rebellion.

When he was minister of the Worcester Free Church in 1855, he sponsored Worcester's first Christmas party for children, black and white, with a Christmas tree and gifts. It may have been the city's first Christmas tree publicly displayed.

As a member of the Worcester School Committee in 1854, he supported Catholic parents who did not want the King James Version of the Bible read in class. He was ousted from the School Committee when the anti-Catholic Know-Nothing Party swept state and local elections in 1855.

He presided over the unconventional wedding of feminist Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell. Lucy kept her maiden name and the service had no reference to her "obeying" her husband.

He carried guns and weapons to the Free Soilers who were emigrating to the Kansas Territory in the 1850s.

The Compromise of 1850 opened Kansas up for settlement under the new "popular sovereignty" idea, which meant that the new state would decide later whether it would be slave or free.

New England sent thousands of families to Kansas in an effort to ensure that the state vote would be for freedom and against slavery. The issue was finally settled by the Civil War.

Rev. Higginson was the discoverer, editor and publisher of Emily Dickinson, the reclusive poet of Amherst. He paid her a visit and wrote the only contemporary account of her home and surroundings and personal appearance.

He was a believer in physical fitness and the outdoor life. He once led an expedition of men and women to the top of Mount Katahdin in Maine, the women attired in the new "bloomer" garb. One of his skating parties on Lake Quinsigamond attracted more than a thousand people.

In 1854, he led a contingent of Worcester activists to Boston to save Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave, from being returned to his master in Virginia. In a confrontation at the courthouse in Boston, a guard was killed. Rev. Higginson escaped being arrested and tried only because the authorities did not want to set off another mob riot. When U.S. Marshal Asa Butman, the man who had captured Burns, showed up in Worcester a few weeks later, supposedly to capture another former slave, the Rev. Higginson and his friends organized a protest that turned into a riot. It ended with Mr. Butman being forcibly escorted out of town after being badly beaten by enraged black citizens.

He was a strong supporter of John Brown, even after the massacre at Ossawotamie, Kan. When Mr. Brown began to make plans for instigating a slave rebellion in Virginia, Rev. Higginson joined a group called "The Secret Six" to support the wild-eyed scheme.

After the bloody fiasco at Harper's Ferry, the hanging of John Brown and the discovery of incriminating documents, some members of the "Secret Six" went to Canada to escape arrest. Not Rev. Higginson. He stayed in Massachusetts and even organized a plan to free some of Mr. Brown's men, then being held in a Virginia prison. The plan eventually was deemed suicidal and was abandoned, but Rev. Higginson remained convinced that slavery would have to be put down by force.

Shortly after the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln and the secession of the South, Rev. Higginson was organizing and drilling a company of Worcester volunteers, part of the 51st Massachusetts Regiment. On Nov. 14, 1862, the Army invited him to become the commanding colonel of the first black regiment in the Union army - the First South Carolina Volunteers. Rev. Higginson's troops were former slaves, mostly illiterate. Many army officers believed that they would be poor material for army duty, but under his leadership, they became an effective, disciplined force. Most of their action was along the Georgia and Florida coasts. Rev. Higginson was invalided out of the army in 1864 because of a festering wound, but he remained convinced for the rest of his life that black people, even those raised under the crippling environment of slavery, were entitled to exercise the obligations of full citizenship.

Despite all that, Rev. Higginson's fame today is probably most linked with the career of Emily Dickinson, the reclusive poet from Amherst, whose pungent, quirky poems have established her reputation as one of America's most remarkable writers. Had he not discovered her, encouraged her and finally published her poetry after her death, Emily Dickinson might not have been known or remembered at all.

So it is an unusual and illustrious career that we are describing when we talk about the Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. I think it fair to say that Worcester has never seen anything quite comparable.

Albert B. Southwick's column appears regularly in the Telegram & Gazette.

ART: PHOTO

CUTLINE: The Rev. Thomas W. Higginson

PHOTOG: FILE PHOTO