Virtue's HeroScholars have long debated the question of Ralph Waldo Emerson's relationship to the abolition movement and the degree of his commitment to the antislavery cause. Some early commentators depicted Emerson as an active social reformer, while others have seen him as a contemplative dreamer, serenely aloof from frenetic reform activity. In Virtue's Hero, Len Gougeon draws on a huge array of primary documents unpublished speeches, the correspondence of