ABSTRACT
Manliness as a moral ideal had guided Oliver Wendell Holmes actions and thoughts throughout his life. It had inspired him to idolize Plato, Socrates, and Emerson. Without absolving Holmes for the sexist prejudices which he, like countless men of his generation, entertained, it should be underscored that Holmes readily accepted some women, much more so than many men, as his intellectual and social peers. Those men like Everett lacked the courage to fulfill the obligations of their gender; those women like Margaret that demonstrated brilliance exceeded the expectations attendant to theirs. Holmes's worldview, while mottled with some of the gendered assumptions of his day, was hardly governed by misogyny, as some scholars have charged. For Holmes, then, a woman could be a valuable citizen without necessarily being a valuable soldier. Holmes accordingly uncoupled an ancient association that had been used to exclude women from citizenship.
