Notes

1. Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) was a pro-Union Democratic senator who ran against Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1860.

2. Speech at Pennsylvania Hall, Philadelphia, May 15, 1838. The hall was destroyed by a mob two days later.

3. Deuteronomy 26:4.

4. The National Typographical Union was formally established in 1852.

5. Concluding stanza of “A Psalm of Life” (1838) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882).

6. The quotation is from the book Character (1871), by Samuel Smiles (1812–1904), and was excerpted in The Canadian Monthly and National Review, vol. 3, no. 1 (January 1873), 64–75. The line “In idleness alone is there perpetual despair” was extracted without credit by Smiles from Past and Present (1843), by Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881).

7. From “Man Was Made to Mourn: A Dirge” (1784), by Robert Burns (1759–1796).

8. Apparently a reference to Henry Darling, The Use and Abuse of the Greatness of Man: A Baccalaureate Sermon (June 18, 1885), which adapts Psalm 8:5. The original King James version reads: “For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.”

9. Allusion to the rich man in the story of Lazarus from Luke 16:19–31.

10. Exodus 20:15.

11. A mill is the smallest unit of American currency, defined as one-tenth of one cent.

12. The source of this poem is unknown.

13. “Compensation,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), first appeared in the volume Essays in 1841.

14. Slight variation of Matthew 26:11, John 12:8, and Mark 14:7. The rendition in Matthew is “For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.”

15. From Matthew 23:14.

16. Proverbs 30:8.

17. One of Debs’s favorite Latin expressions, meaning “final outpost.” Thule was a far northern location that was part of ancient mapmaking, frequently rendered as an island on the borders of the known world.

18. Although presented as a direct quotation, this is actually an extract from the pamphlet The Working Man’s Programme (1884), by Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–1864), 6–9.

19. Snippet from Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field (1808) by Walter Scott (1771–1832).

20. From Genesis 1:28.

21. Arthur T. Hadley, Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of Connecticut for the Year Ending November 30, 1886 (Hartford, CT: Case, Lockwood, and Barnard, 1886), xvi.