Jurisprudence of Antebellum Phi Beta Kappa Addresses

Al Brophy put up a new paper:

Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke at Harvard University in 1837 in a Phi Beta Kappa address. That address known as American Scholar reaches for individual expression, not history and social hierarchy. There are many Phi Beta Kappa addresses, both before and after him. Many Transcendentalists orators at Harvard and a few anti-Transcendentalists orators as well. And many others who are optimists, technology, and utilitarians at many colleges. After the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, three speakers of Harvard, Brown, and Yale advocated law, rather than conscience. All three of them were lawyers.

There was a rich diversity of opinion: Transcendental oratory, anti-Transcendentalists, and optimist, technological, and utilitarian thought. They were concerned about humanity versus the law.

Harvard and Yale were different: Harvard has a lot of Transcendentalists; Yale has a lot of anti-transcendentalists. Here is the download. 

Image: The Unitarian Church at Cambridge is the place where Ralph Waldo Emerson's delivered American Scholar.  I will be putting up some others, soon — I hope… (Perry Miller's Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War, a bibliography, next up.)