This is the great turning point in Emerson’s life. The chapter starts with a comparison to William Ellery Channing’s heroic arc of antislavery activism. Despite dying before the annexation of territories from Mexico that galvanized abolitionism, Channing, starting as a moderate like Emerson, progressed dramatically in his commitment. Where was Emerson in all this? (See Chapter 2.) Suddenly, in 1856 Emerson pivots and from then on rises spectacularly in the abolitionist world. Not because of violence done to Black bodies, but because of violence done to his White friend Charles Sumner and to White settlers in Kansas. The chapter analyzes why Emerson had contempt for most abolitionists and how he became one himself without the characteristics of those whom he disdained. William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience is an important text here. He used him as an example of someone undergoing a “soft” conversion.