IX
When after Whittier’s morning writing at the desk by the French window in the garden room, the desk on which were written “Snow-Bound,” “The Tent on the Beach,” and other well-loved poems, the poet rested, did he go to the woods, to the fields, to the streams he loved so well? Undoubtedly, he did sometimes. But his walks afield were more frequently afternoon strolls. He lived before the days of the postman. His morning mail was waiting for him at the office, and although sometimes he sent for it, he more frequently went himself, and rested from his poems by neighborly chats. On poetry? Hardly—in the post office, or the grocery store!
He liked the local news of the day; he liked social intercourse—especially when he could jump up from his chair, or his sugar barrel, or wherever he might have been seated and take his departure when he felt so disposed.
But there was more than this. He also had a purpose.
Three years previous to the moving of Whittier’s family to Amesbury had been held the Anti-Slavery Convention in Philadelphia, in which Garrison, Whittier, Wright, Samuel J. May,and so many others whose names are familiar in the cause of freedom for the slave, had taken part.
But Whittier’s hopes of more active co-operation had been ended by his delicate health, his want of power to endure the fatigues of such a life as that to which scenes like the Boston mob, the Philadelphia mob, and convention work would have subjected him. Yet he still had work in abundance as Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, as an earnest and most important advocate of that political party which some of the anti-slavery reformers had determined to build up, the principle of which was inserted in the Albany Anti-Slavery Convention of 1839.
Whittier was one of the business committee of this National Convention of Abolitionists in which the formation of a political anti-slavery party was inaugurated. The opinion of the abolitionist, Abraham L. Pennock of Pennsylvania, made in the January of 1840, six months after the Convention, Whittier publicly endorsed the following year as his own opinion also.
“What an absurdity is moral action apart from political,” declared both these men who with others determined to use the legitimate weapon of their vote in the cause of freedom—notas a right only, but a duty, since it was in their hands.
Together with Sumner, Henry Wilson, and many others at the East, Whittier was working toward the growth of a political party, eventually to become one with the great party at the West where Abraham Lincoln’s “Lincoln-Stone protest” against the encroachment of the Slave Power had developed into his famous debates with Douglas upon slavery, under the guise of the Kansas-Nebraska bill and other measures. There had arisen in the country many forces which in different ways and places, but with the same object, had come to stand for opposition to the spread of slavery, and were assimilating. Forces moral, spiritual, political were uniting—unconsciously at first—for the great conflict under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln.
To Whittier’s insight political measures were to be the salvation of the country he loved and eventual destruction to the slavery he hated. To him therefore each man’s vote counted.
While he was in the grocery store, or the post-office, or in some shop, that especial place became by power of the poet’s character and purpose the rendezvous of a political force that had for its object the turning of politicsfrom chicanery and bribery into the might that dwells in an honest man’s vote wisely given.
If the poet accepted men as he found them, it was because in them he found good. He never accepted evil in men or passed it by with indifference, but strove in some way to speak the word, or do the act which should turn the man to good. Politics led by Whittier in Amesbury was under that same leadership which by personal counsel as well as by published poem and word was so helpful in organizing the Republican party. None recognized more quickly than did Whittier that men all over the country were like men in Amesbury, no more intelligent, no more honest, no more progressive. And his poems to
“Rouse the sleeping citizen;Summon out the might of men!”
“Rouse the sleeping citizen;Summon out the might of men!”
“Rouse the sleeping citizen;Summon out the might of men!”
“Rouse the sleeping citizen;
Summon out the might of men!”
his written pleas for the right and appeals against oppression were made to just such men as those he daily met and talked with.
None knew better than he did that suggestions and inspirations are in the air and hit one in the way of them. Whittier had a quality also accredited to Roosevelt—he went where things were. How he always managed to get there in his life of a recluse it is difficult toexplain, except upon the principle that electricity travels a thousand miles as readily as one, and the poet’s perceptions were charged with spiritual electricity.
Therefore these men whom he was daily meeting had something to say to him also, although often unconsciously; and his knowledge of their powers and possibilities, of how they looked at things, and how to reach their hearts gave to his “Songs of Freedom” a note of power that sent them ringing over the land.
As leader and inspirer he stood—not autocrat. He cared to know all men’s opinions, and his weapons were argument and persuasion, and that keen rapier of retort which pierced many a false theory.
Yet, as it has been said, in these morning hours politics were not all. The poet had been writing; he needed recreation. Everything that was going on around him was of interest to him; the local story, the fun, the jest, the laugh were not wanting; nor was any situation with the possibility of humor in it lost upon this politician and poet. He appreciated broadcloth, he delighted in cultured phrase; both he could find in his own town. But where these were lacking,
“A man’s a man for a’ that.”
“A man’s a man for a’ that.”
“A man’s a man for a’ that.”
“A man’s a man for a’ that.”
For Whittier lived so much in the realities that he held men as they stood in the ranks of character, and in reading them he was wonderfully keen.
So, he talked and listened and joked and laughed with his fellow-townsmen, and reckoned among them many a true friend.
In a letter to Mrs. F—— written in the November of 1876, he says:
“What does the Colonel think of the election? I staid to vote in Amesbury and have been here for ten days or more. The dismal and misty weather seems to correspond with the doubtful and wearisome political condition of the country. For myself, I would prefer to see Tilden president than to elect Hayes by fraud. Yet there seems a possibility of his fair election.”
After giving some Amesbury news to a correspondent, he adds:
“Do thee ever think of our sojourn at the Bearcamp House? I always recall it with pleasure. H—— C—— [a young friend of whom Whittier was fond] is now in Amesbury. He is still, I hope, improving.”