WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF Amer ica's "Quaker poet," was born in a Merrimack valley farmhouse, Haverhill (Mass.), Dec. 17, 1807. The dwelling was built in the 17th century by his ancestor, the sturdy immigrant, Thomas Whittier, notable through his efforts to secure toleration for the disciples of George Fox in New England. The poet was born in the Quaker faith, and adhered to its liberalized tenets, its garb and speech, throughout his lifetime. His father, John, was a farmer of limited means but independent spirit. His mother, Abigail Hussey, whom the poet strongly resembled, was of good colonial stock. In addition to this nonconformist ancestry there was Hu guenot blood on both sides of the family; the poet thus fairly in herited his conscience, religious exaltation, and spirit of protest.
Whittier's early education was restricted to what he could gain from the primitive district school of the neighbourhood. His call as a poet came when a teacher lent him the poems of Burns. He was then about 14, and his taste for writing, bred thus far upon the quaint journals of Friends, the Bible, and The Pilgrim's Prog ress, was at once stimulated. There was little art or inspiration in his boyish verse, but in his 19th year an older sister thought one poem good enough for submission to the Free Press, a weekly paper which William Lloyd Garrison, the future emancipationist, had started in the town of Newburyport. This initiated Whittier's literary career. The poem was printed with a eulogy and the editor sought out his young contributor; their alliance began and continued until the triumph of the anti-slavery cause 37 years later. Garrison and A. W. Thayer of the Haverhill Gazette urged further schooling for the gifted lad, the latter friend offering the hospitality of his own home. To meet expenses at the Haverhill academy Whittier worked variously. Meanwhile he had writ ten creditable student verse and contributed to newspapers, thus gaining friends and obtaining a decided if provincial reputa tion. He soon essayed journalism, editing in Boston the American Manufacturer, an organ of the Clay protectionists, and contrib uting to the Philanthropist, devoted to humane reform. After a year and a half his father's last illness recalled him to the home stead, where both farm and family became his charge. For six months in 1830 he edited the Haverhill Gazette, contributing also to the New England Review in Hartford (Conn.), the editorship
of which George D. Prentice transferred to him. Called home to aid in the settlement of his father's estate, he fell ill, conducted his periodical from home, and then returned for a brief time to Hart ford. After his resignation at the end of 1831, he worked on the farm with his brother, doing his writing at night. Poverty, bodily exhaustion, disappointed love, and ambition caused this to be one of the most unhappy periods of his life. The sale of the farm in 1836 and removal to the pleasant cottage at Amesbury lightened his physical burdens, however, and the crusade against slavery provided him with an ennobling object for his passionate and selfless devotion. He was a delegate to the Philadelphia conven tion in 1833 that formed the Anti-Slavery Society, and was ap pointed one of the committee that drafted the famous Declaration of Sentiments. Although a Quaker, he had a polemical spirit ; men seeing Whittier only in his saintly age knew little of the fire where with, setting aside ambition and even love, he maintained his war fare against the "national crime," employing action, argument, and lyric scorn. In 1833 he issued at his own cost a pamphlet, Justice and Expediency; or, Slavery Considered with a View to its Rightful and Effectual Remedy, Abolition, that provoked vehe ment discussion north and south.
In spite of the fact that illness prevented his serving his second term in the State legislature, of which he had been a member in 1835, his record throughout the 1830's is one of constant labour for the cause of abolition—at home, in Harrisburg (Pa.), in Boston, in New York, and in Philadelphia. After 1840 serious heart trouble necessitated his retiring to Amesbury, but the estab lishment in Washington of the National Era under Dr. Gamaliel Bailey gave him a new outlet for his labours. To this famous abolition paper, of which he was corresponding editor, he contrib uted for more than a decade the reviews, editorials, and the stirring verse which made him the poet-seer of the emancipation struggle. His sister Elizabeth, who became his life companion, and whose verse is preserved with his own, was president of the Woman's Anti-Slavery Society in Amesbury. The first collection of Whittier's lyrics was the Poems written during the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States, issued in 1837, though the first authorized edition was the Poems of 1838.