John Greenleaf Whittier: His Life, Genius, and WritingsKennedy, William Sloane
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John Greenleaf Whittier: His Life, Genius, and Writings
Kennedy, William Sloane
Abolitionists -- United States -- Biography; Poets, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Whittier, John Greenleaf, 1807-1892
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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