longfellow and slavery

1

Christoph Irmscher

(Indiana University)

cirmsche@indiana.edu

“Half-Battles”: Abolitionism and Popular

Poetry

2

Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry

Wadsworth Longfellow, ca. 1851 (LNHS)

3E. W. Clay, “America,” ca.

1841

4

Well done! Thy words are great and bold;At times they seem to me,

Like Luther’s, in the days of old,Half-battles for the free.

Go on, until this land revokesThe old and chartered Lie,

The feudal curse, whose whips and yokesInsult humanity.

Longfellow, “To William E. Channing” (1842)

5

In that hour, when the night is calmest,Sang he from the Hebrew Psalmist,In a voice so sweet and clearThat I could not choose but hear,

Longfellow, “The Slave Singing at Midnight” (1842)

6

There is a poor, blind Samson in this land,Shorn of his strength and bound in bonds of steel,

Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand,And shake the pillars of this Commonweal,

Till the vast Temple of our libertiesA shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies.

Longfellow, “The Warning” (1842)

7Longfellow, Poems on Slavery, New England Anti-

Slavery Tract Association, 1843

8

Longfellow, Personal Account Book, 1855-1856, Houghton Library

9

Josiah Henson and his Wife, North American Black Historical Museum,

Inc., Amherstburg, Ontario

10Iron Mask, Leg Shackles, Spurs Used to Restrain Slaves. From Branagan, The Penitential Tyrant, 1807.

11

Whitman, from “The Sleepers” (1855) Now Lucifer was not dead . . . . or if he was I am his sorrowful

terrible heir;     I have been wronged . . . . I am oppressed . . . . I hate him that          oppresses me,     I will either destroy him, or he shall release me.

     Damn him! how he does defile me,     How he informs against my brother and sister and takes pay for

their blood,     How he laughs when I look down the bend after the steamboat

that carries away my woman.

     Now the vast dusk bulk that is the whale's bulk . . . . it seems mine,

     Warily, sportsman! though I lie so sleepy and sluggish, my tap is          death.

12

The sufferance of her race is shown, And retrospect of life,

Which now too late deliverance dawns upon; Yet is she not at strife. 

Her children’s children they shall know The good withheld from her;

And so her reverie takes prophetic cheer— In spirit she sees the stir. 

Far down the depth of thousand years, And marks the revel shine;

Her dusky face is lit with sober light, Sibylline, yet benign.  

Herman Melville, “Formerly a Slave”An Idealized Portrait, by E. Vedder, in the Spring

Exhibition of the National Academy, 1865

13

Alexander Gardner, “The Politics and Poetry of New England,”

CDV, ca. 1863

14Louis Agassiz (1809-1873)

15

J. T. Zealy, Columbia, SC, “Jack,” daguerreotype, 1850

16

Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876)

17

Louis Agassiz to Samuel Gridley Howe, 9 August 1863 (Houghton Library)

There is no ^such restraint upon the first ^

early passions as exists everywhere in those communities where ^

in which both sexes are legally upon a footing of equality. The first gratification under the pressure of so great a stimulus as the advantages accruing to the family negress, from the connection with young masters, already blunts his better instincts in that direction and leads him gradually to seek more ^ “spicy partners,^” as I have heard the full blacks called by fast young men. Moreover it is not difficult physiologically to understand why mulattoes with their peculiar constitution should be particularly attractive physically, even though that intercourse should be abhorrent to a refined moral sensibility. Again whatever be the merit of this explanation, one thing is certain that there is no elevating element whatever conceivable in the connection of individuals of different races; there is neither love, nor desire for improvement of any kind.

18Timothy O’Sullivan, Large Group of Slaves,

Smith’s Plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina, ca. 1861

19

20

George Moses Horton, Letter to David Swain, 3 September 1844. University of

North Carolina at Chapel Hill

21

'Twas like the evening of a nuptial pair,When love pervades the hour of sad despair--'Twas like fair Helen's sweet return to Troy,When every Grecian bosom swell'd with joy.

The silent harp which on the osiers hung,Was then attuned, and manumission sung;Away by hope the clouds of fear were driven,And music breathed my gratitude to Heaven.

George Moses Horton,“On Hearing of the Intention of a Gentleman to

Purchase the Poet's Freedom”

22Slave Coffle, Washington, D.C., ca. 1819

23

Jane Benham, illustration for Evangeline, wood engraving, 1850

24

“In the death of Longfellow the Nation, and we might say the world, loses one of its most genial spirits. … A genuine son of Massachusetts, his influence was always given on the side of Liberty.”

The Christian Recorder, 30 March 1882

25Photogravure, after Julia Margaret

Cameron, Longfellow