WHITTIER THE REFORMER.
_"God said: 'Break thou these yokes; undo
These heavy burdens. I ordain
A work to last thy whole life through,
A ministry of strife and pain._
_'Forego thy dreams of lettered ease,
Put thou the scholar's promise by,
The rights of man are more than these.'
He heard, and answered: 'Here am I!'"_
WHITTIER, _Sumner_.
On New Year's day of 1831 William Lloyd Garrison issued the first number
of the _Liberator_ from his little attic room, No. 6 Merchants' Hall,
Boston. Its clear bugle-notes sounded the onset of reform and the
death-knell of slavery. It called for the buckling on of moral armor.
Its words were the touchstone of wills, the shibboleth of souls. Cowards
and time-servers quickly ranged themselves on one side, and heroes on
the other. Before young Whittier,--editor, _litterateur_, and poet,--a
career full of brilliant promise had opened up at Hartford. But through
the high chambers of his soul the voice of duty rang in solemn and
imperative tones. He heard and obeyed. The cost was counted, and his
resolution taken. Upon his brow he placed the lustrous fire-wreath of
the martyr, well assured of his power to endure unflinchingly to the end
its sharpest pains. It was the most momentous act of his life; it formed
the keystone in the arch of his destinies.
The first decided anti-slavery step taken by him was the publication of
his fiery philippic, "Justice and Expediency." About this time also he
began the writing of his stirring anti-slavery poems, many of them full
of pathos, fierce invective, cutting irony and satire,--stirring the
blood like a trumpet-call, giving impulse and enthusiasm to the despised
and half-despairing Abolitionists of that day, and becoming a part of
the very religion of thousands of households throughout the land.
It is almost impossible for those who were not participants in the
anti-slavery conflict, or who have not read histories and memoirs of
the struggle, to realize the deep opprobrium that attached to the word
"Abolitionist." To avow one's self such meant in many cases suspicion,
ostracism, hunger, blows, and sometimes death. It meant, in short,
self-renunciation and social martyrdom. All this Whittier gladly took
upon himself; and he knew that it was a long struggle upon which he was
entering. As he says in one of his poems, he was
"Called from dream and song,
Thank God! so early to a strife so long,
That, ere it closed, the black, abundant hair
Of boyhood rested silver-sown and spare
On manhood's temples."
That the martyrdom was a severe one to all who took up the cross goes
without saying. Mr. Whittier remarked to the writer that it was at some
sacrifice of his ambition and plans for the future that he decided to
throw in his lot with the opponents of slavery. He knew that it meant
the annihilation of his hopes of literary preferment, and the exclusion
of his articles from the pages of magazines and newspapers. "For twenty
years," said he, "my name would have injured the circulation of any of
the literary or political journals of the country."
When Whittier joined the ranks of the despised faction, Garrison had
been imprisoned and fined in Baltimore for his arraignment of the slave
traffic; Benjamin Lundy had been driven from the same city by threats of
imprisonment and personal outrage; Prudence Crandall was waging her
battle with the Philistinism of Canterbury, Conn.; and the Legislature
of Georgia had offered a reward of five thousand dollars for "the
arrest, prosecution, and trial to conviction under the laws of the
State, of the editor or publisher of a certain paper called _The
Liberator_, published in the town of Boston, and State of
Massachusetts."
But it is not within the province of this biography to give an
exhaustive _resume_ of the anti-slavery conflict, but only to speak of
such of its episodes as were especially participated in by Mr. Whittier.
How tailor John Woolman became a life-long itinerant preacher of his
mild Quaker gospel of freedom; how honest saddler Lundy left his leather
hammering, and walked his ten thousand miles, carrying his types and
column-rules with him, and printing his "Genius of Universal
Emancipation" as he went; in what way and to what extent the labors and
writings of Lucretia Mott, Samuel J. May, Lydia Maria Child, George
Thompson, James G. Birney, and Gerrit Smith helped on the noble
cause,--to all these things only allusion can be made. For a full
account of those perilous times one must go to the pages of Henry
Wilson's "History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," and to the
fascinating "Recollections" of Samuel J. May. Let us now return to
Whittier and consider his own writings, labors, and adventures in the
service of the cause.
It was in the spring of 1833 that he published at his own expense
"Justice and Expediency; or, Slavery Considered with a view to its
Rightful and Effectual Remedy, Abolition." [Haverhill: C. P. Thayer and
Co.] It is a polemical paper, full of exclamation points and italicized
and capitalized sentences. The hyperbole speaks well for the author's
heart, but betrays his juvenility. He shrieks like a temperance lecturer
or a stump politician. The pamphlet, however, shows diligent and
systematic study of the entire literature of the subject. Every
statement is fortified by quotation or reference. He enumerates six
reasons why the African Colonization Society's schemes were unworthy of
good men's support, and buttresses up his theses by citations from the
official literature of his opponents. A thorough familiarity with
slavery in other lands and times is also manifested. As a specimen of
the style of the book the following will serve:--
"But, it may be said that the miserable victims of the System have
our sympathies.
"Sympathy!--the sympathy of the Priest and the Levite, looking on,
and acknowledging, but holding itself aloof from mortal suffering.
Can such hollow sympathy reach the broken of heart, and does the
blessing of those who are ready to perish answer it? Does it hold
back the lash from the slave, or sweeten his bitter bread?
"Oh, my heart is sick--my very soul is weary of this sympathy--this
heartless mockery of feeling....
"No--let the TRUTH on this subject--undisguised, naked, terrible as
it is, stand out before us. Let us no longer seek to cover it--let
us no longer strive to forget it--let us no more dare to palliate
it."
In his sketch of Nathaniel P. Rogers, the anti-slavery editor, Whittier
remarks incidentally that the voice of Rogers was one of the few which
greeted him with words of encouragement and sympathy at the time of the
publication of his "Justice and Expediency."[13]
[Footnote 13: "He gave us a kind word of approval," says Whittier, "and
invited us to his mountain home, on the banks of the Pemigewasset, an
invitation which, two years afterwards, we accepted."]
* * * * *
On the fourth day of December, 1833, the Philadelphia Convention for the
formation of the American Anti-slavery Society held its first sitting;
Beriah Green, President, Lewis Tappan and John G. Whittier, Secretaries.
This assembly, if not so famous as that which framed the Declaration of
Independence in the same city some two generations previously, was at
any rate as worthy of fame and respect as its illustrious predecessor.
A deep solemnity and high consecration filled the heart of every man and
woman in that little band. Heart answered unto heart in glowing
sympathy. They did their work like men inspired. Perfect unanimity
prevailed. They were too eagerly engaged to adjourn for dinner, and
"baskets of crackers and pitchers of cold water supplied all the bodily
refreshment." Among those who were present and spoke was Lucretia Mott,
"a beautiful and graceful woman," says Whittier, "in the prime of life,
with a face beneath her plain cap as finely intellectual as that of
Madame Roland." She "offered some wise and valuable suggestions, in a
clear sweet voice, the charm of which I have never forgotten."
* * * * *
A committee, of which Whittier was a member, with William Lloyd Garrison
as chairman, was appointed to draw up a Declaration of Principles.
Garrison sat up all night, in the small attic of a colored man, to draft
this Declaration. The two other members of the committee, calling in the
gray dawn of a December day, found him putting the last touches to this
famous paper, while his lamp burned on unheeded into the daylight. His
draft was accepted almost without amendment by the Convention, and,
after it had been engrossed on parchment, was signed by the sixty-two
members present.[14]
[Footnote 14: Twenty-one of these persons were Quakers, as Mr. Whittier
and the writer proved by actual count of the names on Mr. Whittier's
fac-simile copy of the Declaration.]
[Illustration: JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER AT MIDDLE LIFE.]
In the _Atlantic Monthly_ for February, 1874, Mr. Whittier has given an
interesting account of the Convention. Some of his pictures are so
graphic that they shall here be given in his own words:--
"In the gray twilight of a chill day of late November, forty years
ago, a dear friend of mine residing in Boston, made his appearance
at the old farm-house in East Haverhill. He had been deputed by the
Abolitionists of the city, William L. Garrison, Samuel E. Sewall,
and others, to inform me of my appointment as a delegate to the
Convention about to be held in Philadelphia for the formation of an
American Anti-slavery Society; and to urge upon me the necessity of
my attendance.
"Few words of persuasion, however, were needed. I was unused to
travelling; my life had been spent on a secluded farm; and the
journey, mostly by stage-coach, at that time was really a
formidable one. Moreover the few abolitionists were everywhere
spoken against, their persons threatened, and, in some instances, a
price set on their heads by Southern legislators. Pennsylvania was
on the borders of slavery, and it needed small effort of
imagination to picture to oneself the breaking up of the Convention
and maltreatment of its members. This latter consideration I do not
think weighed much with me, although I was better prepared for
serious danger than for anything like personal indignity. I had
read Governor Trumbull's description of the tarring and feathering
of his hero MacFingal, when after the application of the melted
tar, the feather-bed was ripped open and shaken over him, until
Not Maia's son with wings for ears,
Such plumes about his visage wears,
Nor Milton's six-winged angel gathers
Such superfluity of feathers,
and I confess I was quite unwilling to undergo a martyrdom which
my best friends could scarcely refrain from laughing at. But a
summons like that of Garrison's bugle-blast could scarcely be
unheeded by one who, from birth and education, held fast the
traditions of that earlier abolitionism which, under the lead of
Benezet and Woolman, had effaced from the Society of Friends every
vestige of slaveholding. I had thrown myself, with a young man's
fervid enthusiasm, into a movement which commended itself to my
reason and conscience, to my love of country, and my sense of duty
to God and my fellow-men. My first venture in authorship was the
publication, at my own expense, in the spring of 1833, of a
pamphlet entitled 'Justice and Expediency,'[15] on the moral and
political evils of slavery, and the duty of emancipation. Under
such circumstances, I could not hesitate, but prepared at once for
my journey. It was necessary that I should start on the morrow, and
the intervening time, with a small allowance for sleep, was spent
in providing for the care of the farm and homestead during my
absence."
[Footnote 15: Mr. Whittier here made a slip of memory. His first
work was "Legends of New England," as he himself testifies, in
his own handwriting, in a memorandum sent to the New England
Historic-Genealogical Society.]
Mr. Whittier proceeds to tell of his journey to the Quaker City, and of
the organization and work of the Convention. The following pen-portraits
are too valuable to be omitted:--
"Looking over the assembly, I noticed that it was mainly composed
of comparatively young men, some in middle age, and a few beyond
that period. They were nearly all plainly dressed, with a view to
comfort rather than elegance. Many of the faces turned toward me
wore a look of expectancy and suppressed enthusiasm; all had the
earnestness which might be expected of men engaged in an enterprise
beset with difficulty, and perhaps with peril. The fine
intellectual head of Garrison, prematurely bald, was conspicuous;
the sunny-faced young man at his side, in whom all the beatitudes
seemed to find expression, was Samuel J. May, mingling in his veins
the best blood of the Sewalls and Quincys; a man so exceptionally
pure and large-hearted, so genial, tender, and loving, that he
could be faithful to truth and duty without making an enemy.
The de'il wad look into his face,
And swear he could na wrang him.'
That tall, gaunt, swarthy man, erect, eagle-faced, upon whose
somewhat martial figure the Quaker coat seemed a little out of
place, was Lindley Coates, known in all Eastern Pennsylvania as a
stern enemy of slavery; that slight, eager man, intensely alive in
every feature and gesture, was Thomas Shipley, who for thirty years
had been the protector of the free colored people of Philadelphia,
and whose name was whispered reverently in the slave cabins of
Maryland as the friend of the black man,--one of a class peculiar
to old Quakerism, who, in doing what they felt to be duty, and
walking as the Light within guided them, knew no fear and shrank
from no sacrifice. Braver men the world has not known. Beside him,
differing in creed but united with him in works of love and
charity, sat Thomas Whitson, of the Hicksite school of Friends,
fresh from his farm in Lancaster County, dressed in plainest
homespun, his tall form surmounted by a shock of unkempt hair, the
odd obliquity of his vision contrasting strongly with the clearness
and directness of his spiritual insight. Elizur Wright, the young
professor of a Western college, who had lost his place by his bold
advocacy of freedom, with a look of sharp concentration, in keeping
with an intellect keen as a Damascus blade, closely watched the
proceedings through his spectacles, opening his mouth only to speak
directly to the purpose.... In front of me, awakening pleasant
associations of the old homestead in Merrimack valley, sat my first
school-teacher, Joshua Coffin, the learned and worthy antiquarian
and historian of Newbury. A few spectators, mostly of the Hicksite
division of Friends, were present in broad-brims and plain bonnets,
among them Esther Moore and Lucretia Mott."
The year 1834 was passed by Whittier quietly on the farm at East
Haverhill. In April of this year the first anti-slavery society was
organized in Haverhill, with John G. Whittier as corresponding
secretary. Not long after a female anti-slavery society was organized in
the same town. The pro-slavery feeling in Haverhill was as bitter as in
other places.
One Sabbath afternoon in August, 1835, the Rev. Samuel J. May occupied
the pulpit of the First Parish Society in Haverhill, and in the evening
attempted to give an anti-slavery lecture in the Christian Union Chapel,
having been invited to do so by Mr. Whittier. In his "Recollections of
the Anti-Slavery Conflict" (p. 152), Mr. May says:--
"I had spoken about fifteen minutes when the most hideous outcries
and yells, from a crowd of men who had surrounded the house,
startled us, and then came heavy missiles against the doors and
blinds of the windows. I persisted in speaking for a few minutes,
hoping the blinds and doors were strong enough to stand the siege.
But presently a heavy stone broke through one of the blinds,
shattered a pane of glass, and fell upon the head of a lady sitting
near the centre of the hall. She uttered a shriek, and fell bleeding
into the arms of her sister. The panic-stricken audience rose _en
masse_, and began a rush for the doors."
Mr. May succeeded in quieting the fears of the audience, and himself
escaped through the crowd of infuriated ruffians without by walking
between two ladies, one of them the sister of Mr. Whittier and the other
the daughter of a wealthy and determined citizen of the place, who, it
was well known, would take summary vengeance for any disrespect shown to
his daughter. It was well that the audience dispersed when it did, since
a loaded cannon was being drawn to the spot by the furious mob.
This year, 1835, was a year of mobs. On the very same evening that Mr.
May was mobbed in Haverhill, Mr. Whittier and his English friend, the
orator George Thompson, were treated in a similar manner in Concord, N.
H. Whether an account of the Concord mob has been elsewhere published or
not the author cannot say, but the story given here is as he had it from
the lips of Mr. Whittier himself.
"Oh! we had a dreadful night of it," he said. The inhabitants had heard
that an Abolition meeting was to be held in the town, and that the arch
anarchist, George Thompson, was to speak. So on that Sabbath evening
they were on the alert, an angry mob some five hundred strong. Mr.
Whittier, knowing nothing of their state of mind, started down the
street with a friend: the mob surrounded them, thinking that he was
Thompson. His friend explained to them that he was Mr. Whittier. "Oh!"
they exclaimed, "so you are the one who is with Thompson, are you?" and
forthwith they began to assail the two men with sticks and stones. Mr.
Whittier said that both he and his friend were hurt, but escaped with
their lives by taking refuge in the house of a friend named Kent, who
was not an Abolitionist himself, but was a man of honor and bravery. He
barred his door, and told the mob that they should have Whittier only
over his dead body.
In the course of the evening Mr. Whittier learned that the house in
which Thompson was staying was surrounded by the mob. Becoming anxious,
he borrowed a hat, sallied out among the crowd, and succeeded in
reaching his friend. The noise and violence of the mob increased; a
cannon was brought, and at one time the little band in the house feared
they might suffer violence. "We did not much fear death," said Mr.
Whittier, "but we did dread gross personal indignities."
It was fortunately a bright moonlight night, suitable for travelling,
and about one o'clock the two friends escaped by driving off rapidly in
their horse and buggy. They did not know the road to Haverhill, but were
directed by their friends with all possible minuteness. Three miles
away, also, there was the house of an anti-slavery man, and they
obtained further directions there. Some time after sunrise they stopped
at a wayside inn to bait their horse, and get a bite of breakfast for
themselves. While they were at table the landlord said,--
"They've been having a h--l of a time down at Haverhill."
"How is that?"
"Oh, one of them d--d Abolitionists was lecturin' there; he had been
invited to the town by a young fellow named Whittier; but they made
it pretty hot for him, and I guess neither he nor Whittier will be
in a hurry to repeat the thing."
"What kind of a fellow is this Whittier?"
"Oh, he's an ignorant sort of fellow; he don't know much."
"And who is this Thompson they're talking about?"
"Why, he's a man sent over here by the British to make trouble in
our government."
As the two friends were stepping into the buggy, Mr. Whittier, with one
foot on the step, turned and said to the host, who was standing by with
several tavern loafers:--
"You've been talking about Thompson and Whittier. This is Mr.
Thompson, and I am Whittier. Good morning."
"And jumping into the buggy," said the poet, with a twinkle in his eye,
"we whipped up, and stood not on the order of our going." As for the
host he stood with open mouth, being absolutely tongue-tied with
astonishment. "And for all I know," said the narrator, "he's standing
there still with his mouth open."
Mr. Thompson was secreted at the Whittier farm-house in Haverhill for
two weeks after this affair.
* * * * *
Some two months after the disgraceful scenes just described occurred
the mobbing of William Lloyd Garrison in Boston. He had gone in the
evening to deliver a lecture before the Female Anti-Slavery Society. A
furious mob of "gentlemen of property and standing" surrounded the
building. Mr. Garrison took refuge in a carpenter's shop in the rear of
the hall, but was violently seized, let down from a window by a rope,
and dragged by the mob to the City Hall. Mr. Whittier was staying at the
house of Rev. Samuel J. May. His sister had gone to the lecture, and Mr.
Whittier, on hearing of the disturbance, had fears for her safety, and
went out to seek her. He said to the writer that when he reached the
City Hall he saw before him the best dressed mob imaginable. Presently
he heard a cry, "They've got him!" After a short, sharp scuffle Garrison
was got into a carriage by the police, and taken to the Leverett Street
jail, as the only place where he could be safe that night in Boston. Mr.
Whittier and Mr. May immediately went down to the jail to see him.
Garrison said that he could not say, with Paul, that he was dwelling in
his own hired house, and so he could not ask them to stay all night
with him! His coat was not entirely gone, but was pretty badly torn. He
was at first a good deal agitated by the affair, but when they left him
he had become calm and assured. On the same evening, the mob threatened
to make an attack upon Mr. May's house. Mr. Whittier got his sister
Elizabeth safely bestowed for the night in the dwelling of another
friend. He and Mr. May passed a sleepless night, and at one time half
thought that, for safety's sake, they should have stayed in the jail
with Garrison. However, they were not molested.
It is a remarkable testimony to the esteem in which Mr. Whittier must
have been held by the citizens of Haverhill that, notwithstanding their
bitter hatred of Abolitionism, they elected him their representative to
the State Legislature in 1835, and again in 1836. In 1837 he declined
re-election. In the legislative documents for 1835 he figures as a
member of the standing committee on engrossed bills. His name does not
appear in the State records for 1836: it was undoubtedly owing to his
secretarial duties, mentioned below, that he was unable to take his
seat as a member of the Legislature in the second year of his election.
In 1836 Whittier published "Mogg Megone," a poem on an episode in Indian
life. It will be reviewed, with the rest of his poems, in the second
part of this volume. In the same year he was appointed Secretary of the
American Anti-Slavery Society, and removed to Philadelphia. In 1838-39,
while in that city, he edited a paper which he named the _Pennsylvania
Freeman_. It had formerly been edited by Benjamin Lundy, under the title
of the _National Enquirer_. The office of the _Pennsylvania Freeman_ was
in 1838 sacked and burned by a mob. It was about the same time that
Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia was burned to the ground by the
citizens, on the very day after its dedication. Mr. Whittier had read an
original poem on that occasion. The hall had been built at considerable
sacrifice by the lovers of freedom, in order that one place at least
might be open for free discussion. And it was just in order that it
might not be used thus that it was burned by the guilty-thoughted mob.
The keys had been given to the mayor, but neither he nor the police
interfered to prevent the atrocious deed.
In 1837 Mr. Whittier edited, and wrote a preface for, the "Letters of
John Quincy Adams to his Constituents." These stirring letters of Mr.
Adams were called forth by the attacks that had been made on him by
members of Congress for defending the right of negroes to petition the
Government. Mr. Whittier, in his introductory remarks, speaks of the
"Letters" as follows:--
"Their sarcasm is Junius-like, cold, keen, unsparing. In boldness,
directness, and eloquent appeal, they will bear comparison with
O'Connell's celebrated letters to the Reformers of Great
Britain.... It will be seen that, in the great struggle for and
against the Right of Petition, an account of which is given in the
following pages, their author stood in a great measure alone, and
unsupported by his northern colleagues. On 'his gray, discrowned
head' the entire fury of slaveholding arrogance and wrath was
expended. He stood alone,--beating back, with his aged and single
arm, the tide which would have borne down and overwhelmed a less
sturdy and determined spirit."
In the same year (1837) Mr. Whittier edited a pamphlet called "Views of
Slavery and Emancipation," taken from Harriet Martineau's "Society in
America." The whole subject of slavery is canvassed by Miss Martineau in
the most searching and judicial manner.
In closing this account of our author's anti-slavery labors, we may
bestow a word on the attitude assumed toward the Abolition movement by
the Quakers as a sect. Through the labors of John Woolman, Benjamin
Lundy, Anthony Benezet, and others, they had early been brought to see
the wickedness of slaveholding, and in 1780 had succeeded in entirely
ridding their denomination of the wrong. They not only emancipated their
slaves, but remunerated them for their past services. Indeed, their
record in this respect is unique for its fine ideal devotion to exact
justice. They were the first religious body in the world to remove the
pollution of slavery from their midst. But the cautious, acquisitive,
peace-loving Quakers seemed content to rest here, satisfied with having
cleared their own skirts of wrong. They could not see the good side of
the Abolition movement. They were scandalized by the violence and
fanaticism of many Abolitionists. Mr. Whittier felt aggrieved by this
attitude of the Friends, but did not on that account break with the
denomination, or abandon the religion of his fathers. In 1868 he wrote
as follows to the _New Bedford Standard_, which had spoken of him in an
article on Thomas A. Greene: "My object in referring to the article in
the paper was mainly to correct a statement regarding myself, viz.: That
in consequence of the opposition of the Society of Friends to the
anti-slavery movement, I did not for years attend their meetings. This
is not true. From my youth up, whenever my health permitted, I have been
a constant attendant of our meetings for religious worship. _This_ is
true, however, that after our meeting-houses were denied by the yearly
meeting for anti-slavery purposes, I did not feel it in my way, for some
years, to attend the annual meeting at Newport. From a feeling of duty I
protested against that decision when it was made, but was given to
understand pretty distinctly that there was no 'weight' in my words. It
was a hard day for reformers; some stifled their convictions; others,
not adding patience to their faith, allowed themselves to be worried out
of the Society. Abolitionists holding office were very generally
'dropped out,' and the ark of the church staggered on with no profane
anti-slavery hands upon it."