A Man on Fire

Few Americans covered as much ground as Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Born in 1823 to a family descended from Boston's Puritan founders, he attended Harvard, like all the men in his family, and prepared for the settled life of a minister. Instead, he rejected both privilege and convention, and embraced radical causes, attaching himself to nearly every major reform movement of the day, from women's rights to abolitionism. More than merely a fellow traveler, Higginson was a proponent of direct action. He became a member of Boston's Secret Six, supporting John Brown's raid and going to Bleeding Kansas with his rifle, prepared to put his life on the line. During the Civil War Higginson went to South Carolina and led one of the first Black regiments, the 1st Carolina Volunteers, into battle. Until his death in 1911, Higginson played a role in nearly every progressive movement of the nineteenth century, earning a place in studies of abolitionism, feminism, education, temperance, and Victorian fiction, as well as films, novels, and books featuring Dickinson and Harriet Tubman (whom he met in South Carolina during the Civil War). These reveal only aspects of Higginson's storied life. Douglas Egerton's biography embraces all the facets of this American whirlwind, illuminating the ways in which Higginson's lifelong crusade for a more just world resonates today.