Whittier was first introduced to poetry by a teacher. His sister Mary Whittier sent his first poem, "The Deity", to the
Newburyport Free Press without his permission, and its editor,
William Lloyd Garrison, published it on June 8, 1826. Garrison, as well as another local editor, encouraged Whittier to attend the recently opened Haverhill Academy. To raise money to attend the school, Whittier became a shoemaker for a time, and a deal was made to pay part of his tuition with food from the family farm. Before his second term, he earned money to cover tuition by serving as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in what is now
Merrimac, Massachusetts. He attended Haverhill Academy from 1827 to 1828 and completed a high school education in only two terms. Whittier received the first substantial public praise for his work from critic
John Neal via Neal's magazine
The Yankee in 1828. Whittier valued the opinion of the older and more established writer, pledging that if Neal did not like his writing, "
I will quit poetry, and everything also of a literary nature, for I am sick at heart of the business." In an 1829 letter, Neal told Whittier to "Persevere, and I am sure you will have your reward in every way." Reading Neal's 1828 novel
Rachel Dyer inspired Whittier to weave New England witchcraft lore into his own stories and poems. Garrison gave Whittier the job of editor of the
National Philanthropist, a Boston-based
temperance weekly. Shortly after a change in management, Garrison reassigned him as editor of the weekly
American Manufacturer in Boston. Whittier became an outspoken critic of President
Andrew Jackson, and by 1830 was editor of the prominent
New England Weekly Review in
Hartford, Connecticut, the most influential
Whig journal in
New England. He published "
The Song of the Vermonters, 1779" anonymously in
The New-England Magazine in 1838. The poem was mistakenly attributed to
Ethan Allen for nearly sixty years. Whittier acknowledged his authorship in 1858. (1833). Housed at the
John Greenleaf Whittier House.
Abolitionist activity During the 1830s, Whittier became interested in politics, but after losing a congressional election at age 25, he suffered a nervous breakdown and returned home. The year 1833 was a turning point for Whittier; he resurrected his correspondence with Garrison, and the passionate abolitionist began to encourage the young Quaker to join his cause. In 1833, Whittier published the antislavery pamphlet
Justice and Expediency, and from there dedicated the next twenty years of his life to the abolitionist cause. The controversial pamphlet destroyed all of his political hopes, as his demand for immediate emancipation alienated both Northern businessmen and Southern slaveholders, but it also sealed his commitment to a cause that he deemed morally correct and socially necessary. He was a founding member of the
American Anti-Slavery Society and signed the Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833, which he often considered the most significant action of his life. Whittier's political skill made him useful as a lobbyist, and his willingness to badger anti-slavery congressional leaders into joining the abolitionist cause was invaluable. From 1835 to 1838, he traveled widely in the North, attending conventions, securing votes, speaking to the public, and lobbying politicians. As he did so, Whittier received his fair share of violent responses, being several times mobbed, stoned, and run out of town. From 1838 to 1840, he was editor of the
Pennsylvania Freeman in
Philadelphia, one of the leading antislavery papers in the North, formerly known as the
National Enquirer. In May 1838, the publication moved its offices to the newly opened
Pennsylvania Hall on North Sixth Street, which was shortly after burned by a pro-slavery mob. Whittier continued to write poetry, and nearly all of his poems then dealt with the problem of slavery. In 1838,
Charles G. Atherton of New Hampshire presented five resolutions that were adopted and created a new resolution that barred Congress from discussing petitions that mentioned bringing slavery to an end. Congress approved them on December 12, 1838, which became known as the "Atherton Gag"; Whittier referred to Atherton in one of his many abolition poems as "vile" by having allied himself so closely with his fellow Democrats from pro-slavery South. It was not until 1844 the House rescinded that gag rule on a motion made by
John Quincy Adams. By the end of the 1830s, the unity of the abolitionist movement had begun to fracture. Whittier stuck to his belief that moral action apart from political effort was futile. He knew that success required legislative change, not merely moral suasion. That opinion alone engendered a bitter split from Garrison, and Whittier went on to become a founding member of the
Liberty Party in 1839. By 1843, he was announcing the triumph of the fledgling party: "Liberty party is no longer an experiment. It is vigorous reality, exerting... a powerful influence." Whittier unsuccessfully encouraged
Ralph Waldo Emerson and
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to join the party. He took editing jobs with the
Middlesex Standard in
Lowell, Massachusetts, and the
Essex Transcript in
Amesbury until 1844. In 1845, he began writing his essay "The Black Man" which included an anecdote about John Fountain, a free black who was jailed in
Virginia for helping slaves to escape. After his release, Fountain went on a speaking tour and thanked Whittier for writing his story. Around then, the stresses of editorial duties, worsening health, and dangerous mob violence caused Whittier to have a physical breakdown. He went home to Amesbury and remained there for the rest of his life, ending his active participation in abolition. Even so, he continued to believe that the best way to gain abolitionist support was to broaden the Liberty Party's political appeal, and Whittier persisted in advocating the addition of other issues to its platform. He eventually participated in the evolution of the Liberty Party into the
Free Soil Party, and some say his greatest political feat was convincing
Charles Sumner to run on the Free-Soil ticket for the U.S. Senate in 1850. Beginning in 1847, Whittier was the editor of
Gamaliel Bailey's
The National Era, In the months leading up to the
American Civil War, Whittier built a strong national audience. In January 1861,
The Atlantic Monthly, which had previous spurned his poetry, praised him for his "keen and discriminating love of right" and his "love of freedom". In 1864, the
North American Review responded to Whittier's collection
In War Time, and Other Poems, by calling him "on the whole, the most American of all our poets, and there is a fire of warlike patriotism in him that burns all the more intensely that is smothered by his [Quaker] creed". In 1867, Whittier asked
James T. Fields to get him a ticket to a reading by
Charles Dickens during the British author's visit to the United States. After the event, Whittier wrote a letter describing his experience: He was elected to the
American Philosophical Society in 1870. Whittier spent the last winters of his life, from 1876 to 1892, at Oak Knoll, the home of his cousins in
Danvers, Massachusetts. Whittier spent the summer of 1892 at the home of a cousin in
Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, where he wrote his last poem (a tribute to
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.) and where he was captured in a final photograph. He died at this home on September 7, 1892, and was buried in
Amesbury, Massachusetts. ==Poetry==