WHITTIER 



6279 



WHITTIER 



and visited him. With Garrison's encourage- 

 ment Whittier determined to have a better 

 education, and by making slippers and teach- 

 ing school he paid for two terms at Havcrhill 

 Academy, which ended his schooling. At 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



twenty-one, however, he had read widely, ob- 

 served closely, felt deeply, and was by no 

 means unfitted for the brilliant future that was 

 before him. 



The Poet of Abolition. After editing several 

 papers and gaining some distinction in politics, 

 Whittier was made a delegate to the Whig con- 

 vention at Baltimore which nominated Clay 

 for the Presidency, but was compelled by ill- 

 ness to resign, and in 1833 was forced to give 

 up his editorship, also. From 1832 to the end 

 of the war Whittier was the great poet of the 

 abolition movement; he dedicated to freedom 

 all his gifts as a leader and a singer. He issued 

 at his own expense his pamphlet Justice and 

 Expediency (1833), and during the next fi\< 

 W, it is said, produced a poem on freedom 

 weekly. Meantime, he took up a work much 

 more difficult to his nervous temperament 

 that of an active politician. In 1833 he n 

 as secretary of the Philadelphia national con- 

 vention, and later served one trim m the 

 Massachusetts legislature ; but on his reelection 

 declined further service because of continued 

 ill health. Unlike Garrison, he wished to fight 

 slavery with the ballot. 



In 1836 he moved to Amesbury, the home of 

 his lutor life. Hi' served as a secretary of th, 

 American Anti-Slavery Society and accom- 



panied George Thompson on a lecture tour, 

 during which they were mobbed at Concord, 

 N. H. Whittier then became editor of tlu> 

 Pennsylvania Frujnan; and though Pennsyl- 

 vania Hall, in which he hud his office, was 

 burned by a mob, he kept on at his work for 

 two years, until ill health finally forced him to 

 retire. From early manhood he was subject to 

 a painful and dangerous heart trouble, was tor- 

 tured incessantly by sleeplessness and suffered 

 from severe headaches whenever he worked. 

 For this reason he became practically a recluse 

 and saved his strength for short periods of writ- 

 ing. 



Variety of His Poetry. His poems on free- 

 dom continued to appear, but he wrote other 

 poems as well. A volume of ballads, collected 

 in 1843, was the first publication that paid him 

 financially. After several times appearing as 

 the Liberal candidate for Congress, he refused 

 to stand in 1843, when his election seemed 

 likely. His verses and editorials appeared in 

 the National Era, the New England Magazine 

 and the Atlantic Monthly. To the period end- 

 ing in 1865 belong his Songs of Labor, Ichabod, 

 Maud Muller and Barbara F 



After the war, literature became his chief 

 occupation. Snow-Bound, in 1865, made him 

 well-to-do, but his mother and sister, for whose 

 sake he desired success, were dead, and \\\< 

 wealth went to charity. The Tent on the 

 Beach appeared in 1867; Among the Hills in 

 1869, and other works of high qual 



His niece, who kept house for him after his 

 sister's death, married in 1876, and he was 

 again left alone. Deafness also came upon 



mi-: WHITTII:I: H...MI: AT A.MKSHI 



him, but he kept up his correspondence with 

 his friends and visited each year his relatives 

 at Oak Knoll, Danvers, Ma.^ II. .lir.l whi li- 

 on a visit to Hampton Falls, N. H., September 

 7, 1892. 



