THOMAS WENllV'ORTH HIGGINSON. 869 



there were anti-slavery conventions, with Garrison and Phillips ; then 

 on Sunday there were Theodore Parker and James Freeman Clarke, 

 to show that one might accomplish something and lead a manly life 

 even in the pulpit." Then, as ever after, manliness was with him an 

 essential feature of life, and it was with the thought that " even in 

 the pulpit" a man might lead a "manly life," that he gravitated 

 towards the "liberal ministry," and in preparation therefor entered 

 the Harvard Divinity School. He completed the regular course of 

 study there and graduated in 1847. 



On the 30th of September of that year he married, in Boston, his 

 cousin, Mary Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. Walter Channing. Mrs. 

 Higginson, not long after her marriage, became a confirmed invalid, 

 but she survived until September 2, 1877, when she died at Newport, 

 Rhode Island. In the preface of "Malbone," Higginson makes the 

 statement that " Aunt Jane," a character in that novel, was studied 

 as closely as possible from real life, and the bright sayings of the 

 lady were the fruit of a long habit of jotting down her actual conver- 

 sation. We shall probably not be far out of the way if we conclude 

 that this statement points out where a clue to the character of Mrs. 

 Higginson may be found. 



In 1847, the year that he graduated at the Divinity School, and 

 the year also in which he was married to his cousin, he received a 

 call from the First Religious Society at Newburyport, then ostensibly 

 Unitarian, which call he accepted. He was ordained, at his own 

 suggestion, by the Society itself without the intervention of an ordain- 

 ing council. In Newburyport he was drawn into the temperance 

 agitation, the peace movement, the woman's rights movement, and 

 the anti-slavery movement. He did, indeed, accept in 1848 — though 

 hopeless of election — the nomination for Congress from the Free Soil 

 party, a party defined by him as "political abolitionists," and, while 

 still a settled clergyman at Newburyport, he actually entered upon an 

 active campaign in that congressional district. His nomination was 

 due, partly at any rate, to Whittier. At Cambridge he had been a 

 friend and associate of Lowell. His life at Newburyport brought him 

 in contact with Whittier. The anti-slavery sentiments of both these 

 poets drew him into close and sympathetic touch with them, and 

 though he was strong enough to stand alone, he welcomed the support 

 of their influence. 



His career as an anti-slavery candidate for Congress, stumping the 

 district in search of votes, or perhaps it would be better to say in an 

 effort to create public opinion and to identify himself with a cause, 

 naturally aroused hostility in his congregation. He himself says that 



