Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911) was a prominent US abolitionist, social reform advocate, and writer.  His Army Life in a Black Regiment (Boston: Fields, Osgood and Co., 1870) was one of the best-known Civil War histories of the era.  Higginson’s extensive published works include co-editorship with Mabel Loomis Todd of the first edition of Dickinson’s collected poems, Poems by Emily Dickinson (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1892).

Higginson was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, graduated Harvard in 1841, and became a Unitarian minister at Newburyport and then Worcester until 1858.  He maintained continual involvement in antislavery work and allied with the American Anti-Slavery Society.  In 1854 Higginson participated in the unsuccessful effort to break into Boston City Jail in order to free imprisoned fugitive slave Anthony Burns; he was indicted for murder together with other defendants, but charges were dropped. 

During the Civil War, Higginson became an officer in both the Massachusetts 51^st Volunteers and then the First South Carolina Volunteers, a unit composed of ex-slaves.  In his post-war career, Higginson came to represent a model of an engaged intellectual and attained great prestige in American letters. 

His novels include Malbone: An Oldport Romance (Boston: J.R. Osgood and Co., 1869) and Oldport Days (Boston: J.R. Osgood and Co., 1873), together with volumes of essays such as Out-Door Papers (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1863).  He wrote extensively against slavery (Massachusetts in Mourning: A Sermon, 1854) and in support of women’s rights (Woman and Her Wishes, 1853).

For further reading, see The Magnificent Activist: The Writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Howard N. Meyer [ed.] (New York: Da Capo Press, 2000).  Digital editions cited from the Gutenberg Project and the Making of America Collection, University of Michigan.

- Joe Lockard