This thesis contains an abbreviated biography, which will stress the development of Parker's religious thought; an analysis of the historical background of the period, focused on the climate of opinion in New England which spawned the Transcendental movement; a definition of Transcendentalism; and an examination of Parker's Transcendentalism as expounded in his lectures and sermons.

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1988. / Title from title page screen, viewed September 6, 2005. Dissertation Committee: L. Moody Simms (chair), Roger J. Champagne, Mark A. Plummer, Lawrence W. McBride, David W. Wright. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [262]-270) and abstract. Also available in print.

This paper focuses on the Secret Six who consisted of Theodore Parker, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Samuel Gridley Howe, George Luther Stearns, and Gerrit Smith, and the concepts that these men believed in regarding the type of society they wanted established in the United States. The dominant theme in the minds of this Secret Six was the romantic belief in the free individual. The belief in the free individual living in a free, progressive society held out the promise that America could become a perfect community of autonomous individuals and an example for all the world. But the Secret Six realized that for America to be this perfect community of autonomous individuals, America had to be freed of any determinism in its institutions. These six crusaders had such faith in their theories of individualism, that they abandoned moral persuasion and accepted violence as the principal means of establishing their society. These men believed that only the type of an individual who was willing to use violence if necessary and to die for the dictates of his conscience, could reform America into a community that exemplified to the world a belief in the free individual.