[132] _Page 202, note 1._ Mr. F. B. Sanborn, in his _Life of Thoreau_, says that Webster gave, as a reason for not visiting Concord in his later years, that “Many of those whom I so highly esteemed in your beautiful and quiet village have become a good deal estranged, to my great grief, by abolitionism, free-soilism, transcendentalism and other notions which I cannot but regard as so many vagaries of the imagination.” [133] _Page 204, note 1._ Or who, with accent bolder, Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer? I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook! And in thy valleys, Agiochook! The jackals of the negro-holder. ... Virtue palters; Right is hence; Freedom praised, but hid; Funeral eloquence Rattles the coffin-lid. _Poems_, “Ode,” inscribed to W. H. Channing. See also what is said of “the treachery of scholars” in the last pages of “The Man of Letters,” _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_. [134] _Page 209, note 1._ This appeal for a general movement in the free states to free the slaves and to recompense the planters, unhappily brought up to the institution, for their loss, was so much better in an anti-slavery address in New York, in 1855, than in the Concord speech four years earlier, that I have substituted the later version here. In Mr. Cabot’s Memoir, pp. 558-593, a portion of the New York speech, including this paragraph, is given. THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, NEW YORK, 1854 Writing to his friend Carlyle on March 11, 1854, Mr. Emerson said:— “One good word closed your letter in September ... namely, that you might come westward when Frederic was disposed of. Speed Frederic, then, for all reasons and for this! America is growing furiously, town and state; new Kansas, new Nebraska looming up in these days, vicious politicians seething a wretched destiny for them already at Washington. The politicians shall be sodden, the States escape, please God! The fight of slave and freeman drawing nearer, the question is sharply, whether slavery or whether freedom shall be abolished. Come and see.”