Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a seminal American hero, is the subject of a new biography by historian Douglas R. Egerton. Higginson was a poet, boxer, warrior, Harvard Divinity School graduate, essayist, novelist, feminist, abolitionist, spiritualist, and politician. He commanded the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first authorized Union regiment made up of freed black men in the Civil War. Higginson interacted and often befriended his era's most seminal figures, including Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mark Twain, and Henry David Thoreau. His military career ended after a cannonball nearly took off his head, but he continued to fight for equal pay for black soldiers and other causes.