Introduction: John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

John Greenleaf Whittier contributed to the continuing and growing call for a national literature through his works on New England folklore and history. He set his most accomplished poem, “Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyll” (1866), in his childhood home, a farm in the Merrimack Valley. His American voice was sentimental and moralistic; it was also sharp, detailed, and simple.

The simplicity may have been influenced by his Quaker faith; this faith certainly influenced his sense of public duty. Beginning in 1828, Whittier wrote for such important newspapers and journals as The American Manufacturer, New England Weekly Review, and The National Era; he also helped found the Atlantic Monthly. Over the course of his public life, Whittier published hundreds of journal articles, pamphlets, essays, and poems on such important social issues as labor conditions and Abolition. In 1833, he served as a delegate to the National Anti-Slavery Convention in Philadelphia. He also was elected to the Massachusetts legislature, founded the Liberty party, and ran for Congress. In 1835, while on a lecture tour, he and the British abolitionist George Thompson were attacked by an armed mob. Though shot at, they escaped unharmed.

In addition to these political activities, Whittier devoted a good part of his writing to the Abolitionist cause with such influential works as Justice and Expediency (1833), “The Slave Ships” (1834), and “Ichabod” (1850). This last poem attacked Daniel Webster, who sought to compromise with those who supported slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law.

After the Civil War and Emancipation, Whittier turned his attention again to New England life and land. “The Barefoot Boy” (1855), a popular poem set to music, gave voice to his love of nature and the country life. Home Ballads and Other Poems (1860) memorialized his family, especially his sister Mary who had recently died. The success of his Poetical Works (1869) contributed to his growing fame and prosperity. Both of these were marked at the dinner celebration of his seventieth birthday given by the Atlantic Monthly and attended by seventy guests, including such important American writers as Emerson, Longfellow, and Mark Twain.

Poems

The Hunters of Men (1835)

Have ye heard of our hunting, o’er mountain and glen,
Through cane-brake and forest,—the hunting of men?
The lords of our land to this hunting have gone,
As the fox-hunter follows the sound of the horn;
Hark! the cheer and the hallo! the crack of the whip,
And the yell of the hound as he fastens his grip!
All blithe are our hunters, and noble their match,
Though hundreds are caught, there are millions to catch.
So speed to their hunting, o’er mountain and glen,
Through cane-brake and forest,—the hunting of men!

Gay luck to our hunters! how nobly they ride
In the glow of their zeal, and the strength of their pride!
The priest with his cassock flung back on the wind,
Just screening the politic statesman behind;
The saint and the sinner, with cursing and prayer,
The drunk and the sober, ride merrily there.
And woman, kind woman, wife, widow, and maid,
For the good of the hunted, is lending her aid
Her foot’s in the stirrup, her hand on the rein,
How blithely she rides to the hunting of men!

Oh, goodly and grand is our hunting to see,
In this “land of the brave and this home of the free.”
Priest, warrior, and statesman, from Georgia to Maine,
All mounting the saddle, all grasping the rein;
Right merrily hunting the black man, whose sin
Is the curl of his hair and the hue of his skin!
Woe, now, to the hunted who turns him at bay
Will our hunters be turned from their purpose and prey?
Will their hearts fail within them? their nerves tremble, when
All roughly they ride to the hunting of men?

Ho! alms for our hunters! all weary and faint,
Wax the curse of the sinner and prayer of the saint.
The horn is wound faintly, the echoes are still,
Over cane-brake and river, and forest and hill.
Haste, alms for our hunters! the hunted once more
Have turned from their flight with their backs to the shore
What right have they here in the home of the white,
Shadowed o’er by our banner of Freedom and Right?
Ho! alms for the hunters! or never again
Will they ride in their pomp to the hunting of men!

Alms, alms for our hunters! why will ye delay,
When their pride and their glory are melting away?
The parson has turned; for, on charge of his own,
Who goeth a warfare, or hunting, alone?
The politic statesman looks back with a sigh,
There is doubt in his heart, there is fear in his eye.
Oh, haste, lest that doubting and fear shall prevail,
And the head of his steed take the place of the tail.
Oh, haste, ere he leave us! for who will ride then,
For pleasure or gain, to the hunting of men?

The Farewell (1838)

Of A Virginia Slave Mother To Her Daughters Sold Into Southern Bondage

Gone, gone,—sold and gone
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings
Where the noisome insect stings
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air;
Gone, gone,—sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia’s hills and waters;
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone
To the rice-swamp dank and lone
There no mother’s eye is near them,
There no mother’s ear can hear them;
Never, when the torturing lash
Seams their back with many a gash
Shall a mother’s kindness bless them
Or a mother’s arms caress them.
Gone, gone,—sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia’s hills and waters;
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
Oh, when weary, sad, and slow,
From the fields at night they go
Faint with toil, and racked with pain
To their cheerless homes again,
There no brother’s voice shall greet them
There no father’s welcome meet them.
Gone, gone,—sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia’s hills and waters;
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone
From the tree whose shadow lay
On their childhood’s place of play;
From the cool sprmg where they drank;
Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank;
From the solemn house of prayer,
And the holy counsels there;
Gone, gone,—sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia’s hills and waters;
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
Toiling through the weary day,
And at night the spoiler’s prey.
Oh, that they had earlier died,
Sleeping calmly, side by side,
Where the tyrant’s power is o’er
And the fetter galls no more!
Gone, gone,—sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
From Virginia’s hills and waters
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
By the holy love He beareth;
By the bruised reed He spareth;
Oh, may He, to whom alone
All their cruel wrongs are known,
Still their hope and refuge prove,
With a more than mother’s love.
Gone, gone,—sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia’s hills and waters;
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Massachusetts to Virginia (1843)

Written on reading an account of the proceedings of the citizens of Norfolk, Va., in reference to George Latimer, the alleged fugitive slave, who was seized in Boston without warrant at the request of James B. Grey, of Norfolk, claiming to be his master. The case caused great excitement North and South, and led to the presentation of a petition to Congress, signed by more than fifty thousand citizens of Massachusetts, calling for such laws and proposed amendments to the Constitution as should relieve the Commonwealth from all further participation in the crime of oppression. George Latimer himself was finally given free papers for the sum of four hundred dollars.

     THE blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon its Southern way,
     Bears greeting to Virginia from Massachusetts Bay.
     No word of haughty challenging, nor battle bugle's peal,
     Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of horsemen's steel.

     No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along our highways go;
     Around our silent arsenals untrodden lies the snow;
     And to the land-breeze of our ports, upon their errands far,
     A thousand sails of commerce swell, but none are spread for war.

     We hear thy threats, Virginia! thy stormy words and high,
     Swell harshly on the Southern winds which melt along our sky;
     Yet, not one brown, hard hand foregoes its honest labor here,
     No hewer of our mountain oaks suspends his axe in fear.

     Wild are the waves which lash the reefs along St. George's bank;
     Cold on the shore of Labrador the fog lies white and dank;
     Through storm, and wave, and blinding mist, stout
     are the hearts which man
     The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the sea-boats of Cape Ann.

     The cold north light and wintry sun glare on their icy forms,
     Bent grimly o'er their straining lines or wrestling with the storms;
     Free as the winds they drive before, rough as the waves they roam,
     They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat against their rocky home.

     What means the Old Dominion? Hath she forgot the day
     When o'er her conquered valleys swept the Briton's steel array?
     How side by side, with sons of hers, the Massachusetts men
     Encountered Tarleton's charge of fire, and stout Cornwallis, then?

     Forgets she how the Bay State, in answer to the call
     Of her old House of Burgesses, spoke out from Faneuil Hall?
     When, echoing back her Henry's cry, came pulsing on each breath
     Of Northern winds, the thrilling sounds of "Liberty or Death!"

     What asks the Old Dominion? If now her sons have proved
     False to their fathers' memory, false to the faith they loved;
     If she can scoff at Freedom, and its great charter spurn,
     Must we of Massachusetts from truth and duty turn?

     We hunt your bondmen, flying from Slavery's hateful hell;
     Our voices, at your bidding, take up the bloodhound's yell;
     We gather, at your summons, above our fathers' graves,
     From Freedom's holy altar-horns to tear your wretched slaves!

     Thank God! not yet so vilely can Massachusetts bow;
     The spirit of her early time is with her even now;
     Dream not because her Pilgrim blood moves slow and calm and cool,
     She thus can stoop her chainless neck, a sister's slave and tool!

     All that a sister State should do, all that a free State may,
     Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in our early day;
     But that one dark loathsome burden ye must stagger with alone,
     And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown!

     Hold, while ye may, your struggling slaves, and burden God's free air
     With woman's shriek beneath the lash, and manhood's wild despair;
     Cling closer to the "cleaving curse" that writes upon your plains
     The blasting of Almighty wrath against a land of chains.

     Still shame your gallant ancestry, the cavaliers of old,
     By watching round the shambles where human flesh is sold;
     Gloat o'er the new-born child, and count his market value, when
     The maddened mother's cry of woe shall pierce the slaver's den!

     Lower than plummet soundeth, sink the Virginia name;
     Plant, if ye will, your fathers' graves with rankest weeds of shame;
     Be, if ye will, the scandal of God's fair universe;
     We wash our hands forever of your sin and shame and curse.

     A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom's shrine hath been,
     Thrilled, as but yesterday, the hearts of Berkshire's mountain men:
     The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly lingering still
     In all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill.

     And when the prowling man-thief came hunting for his prey
     Beneath the very shadow of Bunker's shaft of gray,
     How, through the free lips of the son, the father's warning spoke;
     How, from its bonds of trade and sect, the Pilgrim city broke!

     A hundred thousand right arms were lifted up on high,
     A hundred thousand voices sent back their loud reply;
     Through the thronged towns of Essex the startling summons rang,
     And up from bench and loom and wheel her young mechanics sprang!

     The voice of free, broad Middlesex, of thousands as of one,
     The shaft of Bunker calling to that of Lexington;
     From Norfolk's ancient villages, from Plymouth's rocky bound
     To where Nantucket feels the arms of ocean close her round;

     From rich and rural Worcester, where through the calm repose
     Of cultured vales and fringing woods the gentle Nashua flows,
     To where Wachuset's wintry blasts the mountain  larches stir,
     Swelled up to Heaven the thrilling cry of "God save Latimer!"

     And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea spray;
     And Bristol sent her answering shout down Narragansett Bay
     Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden felt the thrill,
     And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen swept down from Holyoke Hill.

     The voice of Massachusetts! Of her free sons and daughters,
     Deep calling unto deep aloud, the sound of many waters!
     Against the burden of that voice what tyrant power shall stand?
     No fetters in the Bay State! No slave upon her land!

     Look to it well, Virginians! In calmness we have borne,
     In answer to our faith and trust, your insult and your scorn;
     You've spurned our kindest counsels; you've hunted for our lives;
     And shaken round our hearths and homes your manacles and gyves!

     We wage no war, we lift no arm, we fling no torch within
     The fire-clamps of the quaking mine beneath your soil of sin;
     We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, while ye can,
     With the strong upward tendencies and godlike soul of man!

     But for us and for our children, the vow which we have given
     For freedom and humanity is registered in heaven;
     No slave-hunt in our borders,—no pirate on our strand!
     No fetters in the Bay State,—no slave upon our land!