Frank Otto Gatell (University of California Los Angeles)
The New England of his day regarded John Gorham Palfrey's life as blameless and exemplary, a nineteenth-century "monument to the Puritan ideal of rectitude." Yet he himself once called it "his personal tragicomedy." At least, it was diverse, for Palfrey had been historian, Harvard educator, Unitarian minister, Massachusetts politician, editor of the North American Review, and crusader against slavery, and himself an emancipator. During his lifetime, from 1796 to 1881, Palfrey participated, sometimes reluctantly, in revolutionary changes in the political, economic, and intellectual climate...
The New England of his day regarded John Gorham Palfrey's life as blameless and exemplary, a nineteenth-century "monument to the Puritan ideal of ...
