Higginson was born in Cambridge, MA. He was the son of a Boston Merchant. In 1837, he enrolled at Harvard and graduated second in his class. He continued on to Harvard Divinity School, dropped out, then reenrolled.
In 1847 he graduated, and then married his second cousin Mary Elizabeth Channing. In September of that same year he became the minister of the First Religious Society of Newburyport, MA. It was a conservative Unitarian town that refused to hear the speeches of people such as William Lloyd Garrison.
However, as a minister there Higginson invited people such as William Henry Channing, Reverend James Freeman Clarke, Theodore Parker, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He also supported the Essex County Antislavery Society. Due to his strong social stances, he was asked to resign after two years.
In 1850, Higginson was moved to run for political office due to the Compromise of 1850. He was defeated. Although he was no longer preaching, he continued to stay in Newburyport for two years, teaching an evening school for adult factory workers and writing newspaper articles.
In Sept 1852 he moved to Worcester and became the minister of the Free Church. Through his position he was a strong activist for abolition, temperance, and the rights of labor and women.
During the 1850s he organized Temperance Conventions with other key temperance people such as Lucy Stone, Abby Kelley Foster, and William Lloyd Garrison.
Higginson was an active abolition supporter. He helped to free fugitive slave Thomas Sims, and also participated in attacking the Boston courthouse, where fugitive slave Anthony Burns was held.
He published letters and articles in the Atlantic Monthly pushing for women's rights, abolition and temperance, among others. It was due to this that Emily Dickinson began to send Higginson her poetry.
In Nov of 1862 he accepted a post to become colonel of the First South Carolina Volunteers. It consisted of slaves freed by the Union Army. He went on to free, enlist, and train former slaves. In May 1864 he was forced to leave he army due to a battle wound and malaria.
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By 1876 he devoted himself to his writing and less on social issues. However, he joined the American Woman Suffrage Association led by Lucy Stone. He also became a contributing coeditor of the Woman's Journal. He later wrote for Harper's Bazaar. In 1890 and 91 he coeditied two volumes of Dickinson's work. In 1879 and 1880 he was elected as a Republican representative for the Massachusetts legislature. In 1888 he ran for Congress as a Mugwump Democrat and was defeated. |
Higginson was also the president of the Free Religious Association of Boston. He spoke against anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism and for free immigration.
He was given a military funeral at his death in 1911.
An Article by Higginson on Denmark Vesey - 1861.06
Emily Dickinson's Letters by Higginson - 1891.10
Thomas Wentworth Higginson: a bio