Part 4, Chapter 10 Burlington, Section 4 Summary

The Vermont transcendentalists' political views were the minority at the time. Vermont mainly consisted of abolitionists and is proven when 34,000 of its 37,000 eligible men enlisted in the Army for the Civil War.

John Dewey's mother was a social activist and worked closely with Sarah Paine Torrey. She was the daughter of Joseph Torrey. She was married to Henry Torrey. He graduated from the University of Vermont in 1858 and took the position of head of the philosophy department in 1867. He had no formal training in philosophy, so in the primary years in the position, he learned all he could about philosophy. He was in this position when John Dewey attended the University of Vermont.

Dewey actually grew interested in philosophy because of a biology lesson regarding Huxley's description of the human body. He associated it with the Burlington...