PURITAN NATION:

In mid-November 1848, a mad dog was on the loose in Concord, Massachusetts. Roaming freely on the edge of town, the distracted animal posed an immediate threat to livestock and people. Rabies drove the poor creature to lunge at the hogs in one barnyard, bite several dogs in the village, and attack three or four people before it was finally shot dead. In its wake a "great excitement" spread through the town, for nobody knew how many other dogs were now infected with the virus of "hydrophobia." So anxious were the inhabitants that 21 of them banded together and petitioned the town to establish a board of health, with the power "to destroy all the dogs in the town as nuisances and causes of sickness." Among their number was Ralph Waldo Emerson, the philosopher of individualism, who was rapidly gaining a national reputation as the Concord Sage.

Why would a thinker renowned for love of nature and skepticism of government endorse so extreme a measure? [...]

In their perfectionist outlook, the Transcendentalists thought every child was something new under the sun, with an untapped potential for creativity that could not be prescribed or channeled in advance but could be trusted to further the progress of humankind. This vision was democratic and egalitarian. As Emerson remarked, once the principle took hold that "every man has within him somewhat really divine," ancient hierarchies and entrenched inequalities would collapse, and "the unpardonable outrage of slavery" would meet an immediate end. Let individuals learn to "reverence" themselves and heed the "voice of Reason" within; the "citizen" would then be elevated into a "state." Emerson upended the priorities that had guided past societies from time immemorial and affirmed a credo of individualism that is now an American faith. Previous generations, he pronounced, "acted and spoke under the thought that a shining social prosperity was the aim of men, and compromised ever the individuals to the nation. The modern mind teaches (in extremes) that the nation exists for the individual; for the guardianship and education of every man."

Yet, the individualism of Emerson and Thoreau was far too radical for their neighbors, not to mention fellow Transcendentalists, who experimented with social forms and founded such alternative communities as Brook Farm to facilitate the growth of individuals as free and equal beings. In Concord, earnest young people were drawn to Emerson's message--the restlessness with inherited ways, the perception of the divine in nature, the desire for an authentic self, the excitement of widening intellectual horizons, the hopes of social reform. Transcendentalism inspired the rising generation of Thoreau and his contemporaries as they came of age in New England and the North in the 1830s and 1840s. It even reached well beyond Concord and inspired free men and women of color--activists for freedom--in leading cities of the North. But the moment was short-lived, as few in Concord and its environs could turn away from the imperative of being "useful" to society.

The libertarianism of the Transcendentalists was simply too selfish for most Concordians. The townspeople had listened too long and absorbed too well the message from the pulpit that they were "moral and social beings" with duties to their fellow men and women.  Each voluntary association affirmed a higher social purpose. "Every member of the community is obliged to seek and promote the public good," declared the constitution of the Charitable Library Society. "It is the duty of every one, as far as in his power, to relieve the wants of the indigent and the distressed," said the Female Charitable Society. The rules for the schools were progressive; with a child-centered curriculum stressing learning by doing, exposure to up-to-date knowledge, and discouragement of corporal punishment, public education embraced a mission "to bring all the powers and faculties of our nature to the highest perfection of which they are capable." But the development of the individual was not an end in itself, as the school committee explained in its 1830 code of regulations. It was the means to "qualify us for the greatest usefulness in the world" as well as "for the eternal enjoyments of heaven."

This social ethic sustained a local political culture with a strong regard for the common good. Despite the intense polarization between Democrats and Whigs, town government was capable of overcoming partisan divisions and taking robust action at moments of crisis. Whenever cases of smallpox broke out, local authorities took quick steps under state law to isolate the sick, often in "pest houses" at a safe remove from neighbors, and to keep them under quarantine until the illness was over. In 1832, some two years before Emerson arrived, the town launched a campaign to inoculate anybody "who may desire it" against the dread disease, and it hired a physician to visit each of the schoolhouses to vaccinate vulnerable children. Nobody requested an exemption, and should any pupils be absent on the appointed day, the doctor was directed to seek them out at home. Similar precautions were taken to protect the inhabitants against cholera. It was thus in keeping with long precedent that the townsmen, Emerson included, were prepared to protect themselves against rabies by euthanizing the canine population.

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