Most of the names are very long and hard to pronounce. How would the name of the great Sachem, or Chief, on the Merrimac River and whose father owned the whole valley, do for the place? It is a pleasant, well-sounding name and wouldn’t be inappropriate; for the Sachem who bore it doubtless had wandered through the woods and fished in the lakes between which the house stands--Wolanset. He was the son of Passaconaway, the mightiest Indian chief in the Northern section of New England and who always made his home on the banks of the Merrimac. Both were friends of the whites and all the associations of their names are pleasant.” IV To Whittier, a Friend, a man of peace, the Civil War with its sufferings, its horrors, its changing fortunes, and for those days its vast sacrifice of life was a continual torture. Yet he realized its significance. From the firing of the first gun at Sumter he perceived that the war was destined to sweep from the land the crime of slavery. His inspired poem, “Laus Deo,” declares what that meant to him. * * * * * Being a Quaker, the poet was, of course, never present at war meetings. But when during the war contributions were sent from Amesbury, as from other towns, to the front, Whittier was always greatly interested. He knew when boxes went to the soldiers, and he was often well posted as to the contents of these boxes. And upon one occasion, at least, he was memorably on hand--to some regretfully so--when the townspeople were raising subscriptions for the Sanitary Commission and for the soldiers. Patriotism was at a low ebb that day, for the subscriptions lagged persistently, so that when it came time for the meeting to break up, the needed amount had not been raised, and things looked as if it would not be forthcoming. Then the authority which the poet as a man of affairs never failed to put forth at need came to the front. Whittier rose. He wasted no strength in appeal to a patriotism overswept by avarice; but made his demands upon that avarice itself. “If this sum needed,” he said, naming it, “is not raised by this meeting, I shall write to Salmon Chase [Secretary of the Treasury] to have your exemption money on the next draft of men put up to seven hundred dollars instead of three hundred, as it is now.” That was all. But it was enough. His audience looked at the speaker’s tall, erect figure, his flashing eyes, his resolute mouth--and decided not to take the risk. The required amount was immediately forthcoming. * * * * * All the world knows how in the poet’s early days he put aside the ambitions of youth and genius--ambitions which the early call of the world to him proved would have been richly fulfilled--and fought the hard battle for the slave, and endured its contumely. His own words tell the story. In his poem, “Lines Written in the Book of a Friend,” he sings of himself: