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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
The Western Messenger (1835–41) has often been given honorable mention in American literary history and has some reputation as one of the best-written magazines to appear in the early American West. Many scholars who are at all familiar with the Messenger associate it primarily with American Transcendentalism and often mention it as a precursor of the Dial. Indeed, it did defend the right of Ralph Waldo Emerson and several others to express the “New Views,” and a few articles which did so were excerpted by Perry Miller for his authoritative anthology The Transcendentalists. However, the material appearing in its five full years of monthly publication cannot so easily be reduced to a single theme. The magazine's original intention was to serve as an organ of Unitarian missionizing, and several of its most supportive writers, wary of the claims of Transcendentalism, continued to contribute articles that emphasized the scriptural basis for a Unitarian interpretation of Christianity. This persistent identification with traditional Unitarianism, alongside support for an open-minded examination of the ideas being put forward by Emerson, William Henry Furness, George Ripley, and Bronson Alcott, illustrates how Transcendentalist thought could be incorporated into a Unitarian forum without the recrimination associated with Andrews Norton's attack on Emerson's Divinity School Address. The denomination, even in its fledgling Western development, was far more diverse and dynamic than has usually been appreciated.
1 See Venable, W. H., Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1891) 72Google Scholar; Rusk, Ralph Leslie, The Literature of the Middle Western Frontier (2 vols.; New York: Columbia University Press, 1926) 2. 178Google Scholar; Mott, Frank Luther, A History of American Magazines, 1741–1850 (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957) 663Google Scholar; and Wecter, Dexton, “Literary Culture on the Frontier,” in Spiller, Robert E. et al., eds., Literary History of the United States: History (3d rev. ed.; New York: Macmillan, 1963) 656.Google Scholar
2 Miller, Perry, The Transcendentalists: An Anthology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950) 7Google Scholar, 43, 164, 167, 169, 178–79, 200, 299, 429, 446–49. (Not all of these pages appear in Miller's index.) Even in Clarence Gohdes' The Periodicals of American Transcendentalism (1931; rpt. New York: AMS, 1970)Google Scholar, the Western Messenger shares a chapter of only twenty pages primarily devoted to the Dial.
3 Although the Messenger was in existence from June 1835 until May 1841, a full six years of issues did not get published because sometimes the editors took a month off between volumes; between the last two volumes there was a hiatus of six months because of William Henry Channing's illness. The dates for the eight volumes (one and eight were for a year each; the rest were for six months) are as follows: 1: June 1835-June 1836 (July 1835 was skipped because the first number was late in coming out); 2: August 1836-January 1837; 3: February 1837-July 1837; 4: September 1837-February 1838; 5: April 1838-September 1838; 6: November 1838-April 1939; 7: May 1839-October 1839; 8: May 1840-April 1941. For further information about the Messenger's publishing history, see my dissertation, “Religion, Life and Literature in the Western Messenger” (University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1981).Google Scholar
4 William Henry Furness (1802–96), George Ripley (1802–80), and Bronson Alcott (1799–1888), all published some of the earliest work to become identified with Transcendentalism during the years of the Messenger's existence. Furness's Remarks on the Four Gospels, Ripley's Discourses on the Philosophy of Religion, and Alcott's Conversations with Children on the Gospels, all published in 1836, were reviewed in the magazine. Andrews Norton (1786–1853), a professor of divinity at Harvard, expressed vitriolic condemnation of Emerson's speech in A Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity (1839). Excerpts from these works can be found in Miller's anthology cited in n. 2, above.
5 Several recent books have begun to redress the imbalance: Howe, Daniel Walker, The Unitarian Conscience: Harvard Moral Philosophy, 1805–1861 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Wright, Conrad, The Liberal Christians: Essays on American Unitarian History (Boston: Beacon, 1970)Google Scholar; and idem, ed., A Stream of Light: A Sesquicentennial History of Unitarianism (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association, 1975).Google Scholar
6 For biographies of these two men see Eliot, Charlotte C., William Greenleaf Eliot: Minister, Educator, Philanthropist (Boston/New York: Houghton, Mifflin-Riverside, 1904)Google Scholar and Tiffany, Nina Moore and Tiffany, Francis, Harm Jan Huidekoper (Cambridge, MA: Riverside, 1904).Google Scholar
7 For further information about Peabody, see a book anonymously published by his sons Francis, and Robert, : A New England Romance: The Story of Ephraim and Mary Jane Peabody (Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1920).Google Scholar
8 Letters by James Freeman Clarke to Ephraim Peabody dated 6 July and 5 November, 1835 (James Freeman Clarke Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University [= Clarke Papers]).
9 Western Messenger 1 (May 1836) 714–18.
10 Some of the evolution of Clarke's thought can be found in his Autobiography (ed. Hale, Edward Everett; 1891; reprint ed., New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968).Google Scholar
11 The comments on Lovejoy were in the Western Messenger 4 (January 1838) 359–60. By the February number Clarke reported that half the subscribers in Alton had canceled their subscriptions (431).
12 Plans for the new emphasis that the magazine was going to have appeared in the Western Messenger 7 (October 1839) 436. Huidekoper communicated his disapproval in a letter to his daughter, Anna Huidekoper Clarke, Clarke's wife, dated 25 January 1840 (Clarke Papers).
13 Lyttle, Charles H., Freedom Moves West: A History of the Western Unitarian Conference, 1825–1900 (Boston: Beacon, 1952) 30.Google Scholar
14 Tiffany and Tiffany, Huidekoper, 206.
15 Ibid., 220.
16 Harm Jan Huidekoper to Ephraim Peabody, 17 December 1831, cited Ibid., 262–63.
17 Eliot, Eliot, 19.
18 Western Messenger 1 (June 1835) viii–xii.Google ScholarPubMed
19 Quoted by Lyttle, Freedom, 36.
20 Eliot, Eliot, 56.
21 Western Messenger 1 (June 1836) 803.Google Scholar
22 Tiffany and Tiffany, Huidekoper, passim.
23 Wilbur, Earl Morse, A Historical Sketch of the Independent Congregational Church, Meadville, Pennsylvania: 1825–1900 (Meadville: N.p., 1902).Google Scholar
24 Gaustad, Edwin Scott, Historical Atlas of Religion in America (New York/Evanston: Harper & Row, 1962) 43.Google Scholar
25 For a comparison with other magazines of the period, see Mott's American Magazines, 800–804.
26 William Greenleaf Eliot to James Freeman Clarke, 8 August 1836 (William Greenleaf Eliot Papers, Special Collections, Washington University Libraries, St. Louis, Missouri [ = Eliot Papers]).
27 Western Messenger 1 (June 1836) 741–45.Google Scholar
28 For a discussion of the contrast between the imagined and the real West in the minds of other contributors to the Messenger, see McKinsey's, Elizabeth The Western Experiment: New England Transcendentalists in the Ohio Valley (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973).Google Scholar
29 William Greenleaf Eliot to Ephraim Peabody, 20 July 1835 (Eliot Papers); Western Messenger 1 (November 1835) 301–8.Google ScholarPubMed
30 Western Messenger 4 (December 1837) 270–83.Google ScholarPubMed
31 Eliot, Eliot, 45.
32 Ibid., 56.
33 Brown, Jerry Wayne, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 1800–1870 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1969) 75–93.Google Scholar
34 The first three letters were labeled “Part of a Correspondence.” The six appeared in Western Messenger 3 (May 1837) 700–702Google Scholar; (June 1837) 761–65; (July 1837) 818–22; 4 (October 1837) 107–12; (November 1837) 150–55.
35 Western Messenger 1 (June 1835) 36–43Google ScholarPubMed; (August 1835) 108–16; (September 1935) 186–93.
36 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Nature, Addresses and Lectures (ed. Spiller, Robert E. and Ferguson, Alfred; Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979) 78.Google Scholar
37 Ibid., 81.
38 Norton, Andrews, A Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity (1839; reprint ed. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1971) 11.Google Scholar
39 Western Messenger 5 (April 1838) 36–44.Google ScholarPubMed
40 Western Messenger 2 (December 1836) 312–18.Google ScholarPubMed
41 William Greenleaf Eliot to James Freeman Clarke, 6 March 1838 (Eliot Papers).
42 Idem to James Freeman Clarke, 16 December 1844 (Clarke Papers).
43 Idem to James Freeman Clarke, 8 August 1836 (Eliot Papers).
44 Western Messenger 3 (March 1837) 526–29Google Scholar; 5 (May 1838) 88–95; (June 1838) 145–49.
45 Western Messenger 5 (August 1838) 290–94.Google Scholar
46 “Martineau's Rationale of Religious Inquiry,” Christian Examiner 21 (November 1836) 225–54.Google Scholar
47 Daniel Walker Howe, “At Morning Blest and Golden Browed,” in Wright (ed.), Stream of Light, 57–61.
48 Tiffany and Tiffany, Huidekoper, 286–87.
49 Ibid., 280, 286.
50 Howe, Unitarian Conscience, 127–28.
51 Western Messenger 1 (November 1835) 311–17.Google ScholarPubMed
52 Western Messenger 1 (September 1835) 163–70.Google Scholar Although there are no initials either at the end of the article or in the Table of Contents, I attribute this article to Eliot because of a letter to Ephraim Peabody describing an essay he was sending, seven pages on the “duty of speaking plainly” (20 July 1835 [Eliot Papers]).
53 Western Messenger 4 (October 1837) 128–29.Google ScholarPubMed
54 “Letter from St. Louis,” Western Messenger 2 (September 1836) 98–101.Google Scholar
55 Western Messenger 4 (October 1837) 128–29.Google ScholarPubMed
56 Eliot, Eliot, 51.
57 Ibid., 216.
58 Western Messenger 8 (August 1840) 145–49.Google Scholar
59 Harm Jan Huidekoper to James Freeman Clarke, 8 November 1839 (Clarke Papers).
60 B[rownson], O[restes] A., “The Labouring Classes: A Review of Chartism, by Thomas Carlyle,” Boston Quarterly Review 3 (July 1840) 358–95Google Scholar; (October 1840) 420–512.
61 The first of Huidekoper's two reviews of Brownson appeared in the Western Messenger 8 (November 1840) 316–30.Google Scholar
62 Smith, Duane E., “Romanticism in America: The Transcendentalists,” Review of Politics 35 (1973) 302–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
63 Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr, Orestes A. Brownson: A Pilgrim's Progress (New York: Octagon, 1963) 99.Google Scholar
64 Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer, Reminiscences of Rev. Wm. Ellery Channing, D. D. (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1880) 416.Google Scholar
65 My definition of Whig history comes from Matthews, J. V., “‘Whig History’: The New England Whigs and a Usable Past,” New England Quarterly 51 (1978) 205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
66 Boston Quarterly Review 3 (October 1840) 517.Google Scholar
67 Western Messenger 8 (February 1841) 433–49.Google Scholar
68 Tiffany and Tiffany, Huidekoper, 284–86.
69 Ibid., 296.