American Scholars: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joseph Smith, John Brown, and the Springs of Intellectual Schism

The essay examines Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joseph Smith, and John Brown as shapers and representatives of America's common, though riven, culture of intellectual life–charismatic thinkers and actors who spoke to their society's need for general explanatory ideas in idioms that continue to bespeak our nation's deepest commonalities and deepest fractures.