Once while Hawthorne was in Boston, Mr. Hillard tried to
persuade him to go to Cambridge and dine with Longfellow; but he would
not, and went home by the next train.
He was pro-slavery in politics, partly because his two friends were so,
and partly because he disliked the abolitionists. It is not necessary to
suppose that the pro-slavery people of the North in those days believed
that human slavery was morally right. It is doubtful if any one believed
that. A great many considered it, as Webster did, a serious evil but a
dangerous matter to interfere with (and so it proved); some were
influenced by mercenary motives; and the northern Democrats, misled by
the illogical doctrine of State Sovereignty, believed they had no right
to interfere with it. Mr. Hillard held the first of these positions, and
General Pierce the last. Very likely Hawthorne shared in both of them;
but he never explained himself, and what he thought on the subject will
always remain a mystery. The political element seems almost to have been
left out of his composition; and in one of his books he speaks of the
Concord fight with a certain kind of indifference.
Alcott was almost the only man in Concord who had the courage to call on
Hawthorne. Sometimes they even went to walk together. How much
satisfaction Hawthorne found in these visits it would be difficult to
say, for the very philosophic breadth and extension of Alcott's interest
were enough to make Hawthorne feel rather shy of him.
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