Between 1831 and 1833 Whittier had become intelligently interested in politics; indeed, had he been a few months older in the autumn of 1832 it is possible that he might have been elected to Congress as a compromise candidate when Caleb Cushing was unable to secure the seat for himself, though strong enough to prevent the choice of an opponent. The young poet had thus learned a good deal about the value of public opinion and about the power of publicity in molding and wielding it. When the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed he had at his hand a great megaphone that could project his voice to the far districts of the country. As a writer of propagandist verse he was endowed with what in an orator would be a "natural speaking voice." His convictions were deep and sincere, he had an easy command of simple rhythms, and he was used to thinking and speaking in the language of the people. He was in no danger of falling into academic subtlety or erudition. So, like his greatest American predecessor in this field--Freneau (see pp. 72-77)--he spoke again and again and always with telling effect. As a good journalist and rhetorician he made his issues plain and simple--much simpler in fact than they really were, avoiding embarrassing qualifications. He appealed to the Northerners as a people unanimously opposed to human bondage and not as a half-hearted and divided group. In a generation when the sense of statehood was infinitely stronger than it is now he assumed a high level of altruism in Massachusetts, while he stimulated a sense of state resentment against Virginia or South Carolina. With the memories of the Revolution refreshed by a series of recent semicentennials, he employed the conventional language of protest against tyranny; the antislavery verses resound with vituperative allusions to chains, fetters, yokes, rods, manacles, and gyves, with Scriptural idiom and with scorn for the repudiation of Revolutionary principles of freedom. In the opening lines of "The Crisis" he was skillfully suggestive by his paraphrase of the missionary hymn "From Greenland's Icy Mountains," and in the "Letter from a Missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Kansas to a Distinguished Politician" he turned to contempt the perversion of the Scriptures in defense of slavery. "Go it, old hoss!" they cried, and cursed the niggers-- Fulfilling thus the word of prophecy, "Cursed be Canaan."