ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses what may have prompted Oliver Wendell Holmes to fight in the Civil War, the thesis forwarded by Professor Louis Menand. The evidence on offer by Menand consists of two letters: one to Harold Laski, the British scholar and Holmes's great friend, and another to Arthur Garfield Hays, a lawyer who helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union. Lest one think Holmes's racism was the unfortunate byproduct of careless senility, one should note the recorded thoughts of the young Holmes. During the Civil War, a 23-year-old Holmes informed his parents that the members of the black regiment had plenty of pluck. Emerson was not the only important figure to have influenced Holmes, however. In the context of war, there was one man whom he respected more than any other: Norwood Penrose Hallowell. Yet Holmes's adoration for the latter essentially reaffirmed Holmes's adoption of Emerson's core belief that nonconformity was a prerequisite for manliness.
