John Greenleaf Whittier Collection (VMF189), 1889 | MSS Manuscripts

Whittier, John Greenleaf (1807-1892)

John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892) was an influential American Quaker poet, usually included as one of the Fireside Poets, and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. Born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, Whittier received little formal education attending Haverhill Academy from 1827 to 1828 and completing a high school education in only two terms.  His sister sent his first poem, "The Exile's Departure," to the Newburyport Free Press without his permission it was published on June 8, 1826.

Whittier's first two published books were Legends of New England (1831) and the poem Moll Pitcher (1832). In 1833, he published The Song of the Vermonters, 1779, which he had anonymously inserted in The New England Magazine. The poem was erroneously attributed to Ethan Allen for nearly sixty years. Highly regarded in his lifetime and for a period thereafter, he is now largely remembered for his patriotic poem Barbara Frietchie, Snow-Bound, and a number of poems turned into hymns. Of these the best known is Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, taken from his poem The Brewing of Soma.

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. 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.  From 1838 to 1840, he was editor of The Pennsylvania Freeman in Philadelphia, one of the leading antislavery papers in the North. Whittier also continued to write poetry and nearly all of his poems in this period dealt with the problem of slavery.  He went on to become a founding member of the Liberty Party in 1839.

Beginning in 1847, Whittier was editor of Gamaliel Bailey's The National Era, one of the most influential abolitionist newspapers in the North. For the next ten years it featured the best of his writing, both as prose and poetry. Whittier produced two collections of antislavery poetry: Poems Written during the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States, between 1830 and 1838 and Voices of Freedom (1846). The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 ended both slavery and his public cause, so Whittier turned to other forms of poetry for the remainder of his life.