Rethinking Self-Reliance: Emerson on Mobbing, War, and Abolition

A famous proponent of solitude and self-reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson rejected the conformity of Jacksonian mobs and mass parties for solitary nature walks, and so has long been read as an antipolitical figure. Recent scholars have reinterpreted Emersonian self-reliance to include extralegal boycotts of slave-made goods and resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act. This essay takes these accounts a step further, arguing that Emerson saw that some forms of extralegal cooperative action were compatible with self-reliance. Specifically, self-reliance requires contemplating and then acting on personal moral rules. As Northern crowds rallied to rescue and harbor fugitive slaves, Emerson saw that joining an abolitionist crowd allowed unconventional debate and intellectual self-reliance and created a space to act on one’s personal principles, encouraging active self-reliance. Union enlistment similarly let free Blacks and antislavery Northerners enact their principles and achieve a measure of self-reliance. Paradoxically, self-reliance can sometimes be achieved through common action.