James Russell Lowell and His Friends

by Edward Everett Hale

In an earlier chapter I have already referred to the “Anti-Slavery Standard,” so long a brilliant exception to the dullness, almost proverbial, of what are called the “organs” of causes or of societies. Lowell’s connection with the “Standard” for many years brought him into close connection with a man after his own heart, Sydney Howard Gay, well known among all journalists, historians, and men of letters in America. He will be remembered for the untold services which he rendered to the country in and after the civil war, and to good letters, good history, and good journalism before the war, in the war, after the war, and, indeed, as long as he lived.

In 1840 it would have been difficult, even for a person inside the sacred circle of the abolitionists, to explain, in a manner satisfactory to every one, the difference between “old organization,” “new organization,” and the shades of feeling and thought in either, or among “come-outers” or “come-outer” societies, which were neither of the new nor old. For an outsider it would have been impossible to make such explanations then. And, fortunately, any such discrimination is now as unnecessary as it is impossible. They were all free lances, who obeyed any leader when they chose, and, if they did not like his direction, told him so and refused to follow. A sufficient section of anti-slavery people, however, to carry out their purposes, established the “Anti-Slavery Standard.”

At a meeting quite celebrated in those times, in which the original Anti-Slavery Society divided itself between what was called the “old organization” and the “new organization,” the old organization, sometimes called the “Garrisonians,” determined to establish this paper. This was in the year 1840, and the first editor was a gentleman named Nathaniel P. Rogers, a brilliant and vigorous writer from New Hampshire. He died in 1846. His essays have been published, with a Life by John Pierpont.

The motto of the new journal was “Without concealment and without compromise.” It was under the general superintendence of what is spoken of afterwards as the “executive committee;” and, if I understand it rightly, this executive committee was chosen annually at the meetings of the “old organization.” An outsider, perhaps, would have said that Garrison’s “Liberator” would answer the purpose of an organ; and, so far as devotion to the main cause went, of course it would. But Garrison, on his part, would never have ground the crank of anybody’s organ. And, on the other side, the Anti-Slavery Society did not want, as such, to accompany him on such side-crusades as he might wish to undertake in the course of the great enterprise. For an instance, most, if not all, of the people who united to establish the “Standard” would choose to vote, if they wanted to do so, and frequently did vote. But he whom in those days men called an abolitionist pure and simple, whom one could underwrite as A 1, would have abominated any vote at any election.

This was the explanation given me by the person best qualified to answer my question when I asked, “Why the ’National Anti-Slavery Standard’ and the ‘Liberator’?”

In 1844 Mr. Gay became the editor of the “Standard.” He was an abolitionist through and through. He even gave up the study of law, because he felt that he could not swear to sustain the Constitution of the United States, and so could not enter at the bar. He had very rare gifts of editorial promptness and sagacity; and, as the “Standard” itself shows, had the unselfishness and the knowledge of men which enabled him to engage as fellow-workmen men and women of remarkable ability. Henry Wilson speaks of him as the man who deserved well of his country because he kept the “Tribune” a war paper in spite of Greeley.

Lowell had written before 1846 for the anti-slavery papers, as the reader knows. Mrs. Chapman, a lady distinguished among the abolitionists, had suggested to Gay that Lowell would give strength to the “Standard.” How droll it seems now that anybody should be advising anybody to engage his services! All the same, Mrs. Chapman did, and he was retained to write once a week for the “Standard.” In an early letter of his to Gay, as early as June of 1846, he says that he is “totally unfitted” for the position of an “editorial contributor.” He was sure that Garrison and Mrs. Chapman overrated his popularity. “In the next place,”—this is edifying now,—“if I have any vocation, it is the making of verse. When I take my pen for that, the world opens itself ungrudgingly before me, everything seems clear and easy, as it seems sinking to the bottom would be as one leans over the edge of his boat in one of those dear coves at Fresh Pond. But when I do prose, it is invitâ Minervâ. My true place is to serve the cause as a poet.”

In the same letter he suggests what we now call a “funny column.” He calls it a “Weekly Pasquil.” “I am sure I come across enough comical thoughts in a week to make up a good share of such a corner, and Briggs and yourself [Gay] and Quincy could help.”

Edmund Quincy began in the “Standard” that series of letters signed “Byles,” which with infinite fun and spirit revealed Boston to the decorous senses of those people who had supposed that they were the “upper four hundred.” The letters were afterward carried on in the “Tribune” for many years. In this instance, as in the transfer of Mr. Gay’s services to the “Tribune,” the “Standard” led the way for some of the signal achievements in the interesting history of that paper.

Lowell’s correspondence with Gay is excellent reading for young men who have fallen in love with their own picture of journalism, and are fascinated by the charm of that picture. To us, reading after fifty years, it is edifying, not to say amusing, to find that, after rather more than a year, the “Executive Committee” of the “Standard” feared that they were flinging their money away in paying this young poet four dollars and eighty cents a week for his contributions. Think of that, gentlemen who manage the treasuries of weekly or monthly journals now! James Lowell, in the very prime of his life, is writing for you. He is just beginning on the “Biglow Papers.” And you find that the work is not worth five dollars a week, and notify your working editor that he must be dropped!