Probably there are few country lads to-day who know so little as did the Whittier boys of the common sights and pleasures of city life. The strict Quaker belief regarding children’s amusement barred them from most of the enjoyment familiar to the young people in the great world that lay beyond their home. So little were they acquainted with the forbidden attractions at the circus that one time when President Monroe visited Haverhill, Greenleaf (as the poet was known in his home), looking next day for traces of the presence of the great man, whom he had not been allowed to see, came upon the tracks of an elephant that had been in town with a traveling menagerie, and in his ignorance believed that these were the footsteps of the famous visitor. The theater, so the children were taught, was to be shunned as a place of wickedness. Once when Greenleaf was visiting in Boston he was asked to go to a play by a lady whom he met in the home where he was staying. When he found that the lady was an actress, he became so much afraid of being led into sinful ways that, not daring to remain longer, he started off at once for home.
Though young Whittier was a wide-awake boy and eager to learn, there was only the district school, held for a few weeks each winter, for him to attend. Yet an opportunity was not lacking for bringing to light his poetic gift. One of his schoolmasters, who lived for part of the term in the Whittier home, used to read to the family from various interesting books, and one night chose for their entertainment a volume of Burns’s poems. As the lines of the much-loved Scotch poet fell from the reader’s lips, the young boy listened as he had never before listened in his life. His own power awakened and responded warmly to that of the older poet. From that hour, whether he was at home or at school, he found great pleasure in writing verses, which he often showed to his young friends. Thus it was that his older sister Mary was able, all unknown to him, to send off one of his poems to the Newburyport Free Press. When the paper containing the verses came, the young poet read the lines over and over again, almost too dazed to recognize them as his own. This contribution was followed by another made to the same paper. By this time the editor’s interest had been so much aroused that, learning from the postman of the author’s whereabouts, he traveled to Haverhill to visit him. This editor was no other than William Lloyd Garrison, who later became famous as a leader of the cause of abolition. He urged strongly that the boy’s education be continued. Perhaps his words would have counted for nothing, however, had it not been that somewhat later the editor of the Haverhill Gazette, in which some of young Whittier’s verses had been published, entreated the boy’s parents to send him to the new Haverhill Academy. His father’s consent having been gained, Greenleaf learned from a man who worked on the farm how to make slippers, and thus he became able to pay his own expenses during a term at the Academy. By teaching school in the winter, and by helping to keep the books of a Haverhill merchant, he was able to provide for a second term. Thus was completed his regular schooling.
In the meanwhile his friend Garrison had kept an eye on him, and at the close of 1825 secured for him the editorship of The American Manufacturer, a weekly magazine published in Boston. Young Whittier entered with great interest into the work, contributing articles on politics and temperance as well as numerous poems. Though he received only nine dollars a week, he was able, when called back to Haverhill in 1829, by his father’s illness, to give about one half of what he had earned to help remove the mortgage on the farm.
He remained at home until his father’s death in 1830, editing for a time the Haverhill Gazette and sending to the New England Review, of Hartford, Connecticut, various poems and articles. So much favor did these find with the editor, George D. Prentice, that he invited the young writer to fill his position during a temporary absence. The offer was highly complimentary, for the Review was the principal political journal in Connecticut supporting Henry Clay. However, Whittier was well prepared for the work, for he had become acquainted with the leaders and with the chief interests of the Whig party while editing the Manufacturer, and was himself an enthusiastic follower of Clay. His common sense and shrewd but kindly reading of human nature, united with a high sense of honor and justice, enabled him to fill this responsible position with marked success until his failing health forced him to give it up in January, 1832.
There was much reason for Whittier to look for success in political life, for his editorial work had made him widely known as a man of sane and practical views, and he was so highly regarded in the district where he lived that had he reached the required age of twenty-five, he would in all probability have been made a candidate for Congress in 1832. Thus it was that although he had published more than a hundred favorably received poems between 1828 and 1832, he wrote in the latter year: “My prospects are too good to be sacrificed for any uncertainty. I have done with poetry and literature.”
A far nobler mission, however, and greater usefulness than he could have planned for himself lay before Whittier. It was not political success that was to draw forth the greatness of his nature. The strong and fearless interest with which his friend Garrison had begun to champion the abolition of slavery in the United States appealed to him, he felt with all his heart that the cause was right, and, closing his eyes to the bright promise of political success, he chose to unite himself with the scorned and mistreated upholders of freedom. After thorough consideration and study, he wrote and published in 1833 the pamphlet Justice and Expediency, in which he set forth fully the arguments against slavery. This was the first of his strong and stirring protests against oppression. From that time until the close of the Civil War his fervent, fearless love of liberty voiced itself through ringing verses, in constant appeals to the conscience of the nation. The greatness of this influence, as it worked silently in men’s hearts, who can estimate?
