In 1861 with the civil war in its infancy, Henry David Thoreau, an ardent abolitionist who gave the eulogy for John Brown, left the east with young companion - Horace Mann, and began the last and longest journey of his life. From Concord to Minneapolis and back. Thoreau took this journey for health - he was suffering from Tuberculosis and would succumb shortly after returning and his companion from the family known for education reform would also die of the dreaded disease at a very young age.
Thoreau had written his classic works - Walden and Civil Disobedience and was well known as a lecturer in the region. At this time, no movies, no TV's no professional sports teams, and limited theater made good lecturers a form of entertainment and good thought provoking speakers like Emerson and Thoreau were in demand.
We have all the exploits of Thoreau - Maine, Cape Cod, and the Concord and Merrimac Rivers in book form so we can combine them with Walden and his essays and we have a thorough look at this historic icon. But the final journey was not so documented until Corrine Hosfeld Smith took on the task and all Thoreauvians and environmental historians should be grateful, but the readers should not be limited to this audience.
This is a travelogue both historic and modern as Corrine investigated each location and shared the history of the towns, the people, the railroad, and the land that could have met Thoreau and adds her own travel narrative as she sought to find the Thoreau images.
Corrine is a good writer and her combination of efforts to bring Thoreau alive is enjoyable reading. It is also a detective work as she works from minimum resources in the journals of the two men and combines that with the historians and events of the day.
We learn who lived in the towns - not just those we know that Thoreau met and those he did meet are given biographic treatment to fill in their historic presence. We know for example that Walden had been sold out by 1859 and the publisher delayed the second printing until 1862, by which Thoreau was dead, and the book has never been out of print since.
The journey was by train until the Mississippi River at Dunleith - now East Dubuque and then a steamboat took Henry up the mighty Mississippi to the Twin Cities. Imagine how much this active observer must have seen - his notes from botanizing helps us in the Niagara Canyon and in Minneapolis (St Anthony), but there is so much more we wish he could have shared if another book could have been written or a lecture presented.
We owe a debt of gratitude to Ms Smith for pulling together the resources that were compiled in this book and the insights that make the travel and terrain of Thoreau and Mann come alive in our 21st century minds.
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