“4. I would have no other interference than what is sanctioned by law.

“5. I believe that where there is a will there is a way. When the whole country sincerely wishes to get rid of Slavery, it will readily find the means.

“6. Let us, therefore, do all we can to bring about this will, in all gentleness and Christian charity.

“And God speed the time!”[61]

Mr. Longfellow was, I think, not quite justly treated by the critics, or even by his latest biographer, Professor Carpenter,[62] for consenting to the omission of the anti-slavery poems from his works, published by Carey and Hart in Philadelphia in November, 1845. This was an illustrated edition which had been for some time in preparation and did not apparently, like the nearly simultaneous edition of Harper, assume to contain his complete works. The Harper edition was published in February, 1846, in cheaper form and double columns, and was the really collective edition, containing the anti-slavery poems and all. As we do not know the circumstances of the case, it cannot positively be asserted why this variation occurred, but inasmuch as the Harpers were at that period, and for many years after, thoroughly conservative on the slavery question and extremely opposed to referring to it in any way, it is pretty certain that it must have been because of the positive demand of Longfellow that these poems were included by them. The criticism of the abolitionists on him was undoubtedly strengthened by the apostrophe to the Union at the close of his poem, “The Building of the Ship,” in 1850, a passage which was described by William Lloyd Garrison in the “Liberator” as “a eulogy dripping with the 167 blood of imbruted humanity,”[63] and was quite as severely viewed by one of the most zealous of the Irish abolitionists, who thus wrote to their friends in Boston:—

Dublin [Ireland], April 28, 1850.

[After speaking about Miss Weston’s displeasure with Whittier and her being unfair to him, etc., the letter adds—]

Is it not a poor thing for Longfellow that he is no abolitionist—that his anti-slavery poetry is perfect dish water beside Whittier’s—and that he has just penned a Pæan on the Union? I can no more comprehend what there is in the Union to make the Yankee nation adore it—than you can understand the attractions of Royalty & Aristocracy which thousands of very good people in England look on as the source & mainstay of all that is great and good in the nation....

Rich D. Webb.[64]

Yet Mr. Whittier himself, though thus contrasted with Longfellow, had written thanking him for his “Poems on Slavery,” which in tract form, he said, “had been of important service to the Liberty movement.” Whittier had also asked whether Longfellow would accept a nomination 168 to Congress from the Liberty Party, and had added, “Our friends think they could throw for thee one thousand more votes than for any other man.”[65] Nor was Whittier himself ever a disunionist, even on anti-slavery grounds.

It is interesting to note that it was apparently the anti-slavery question which laid the foundation for the intimacy between Longfellow and Lowell. Lowell had been invited, on the publication of “A Year’s Life,” to write for an annual which was to appear in Boston and to be edited, in Lowell’s own phrase, “by Longfellow, Felton, Hillard and that set.”[66] Lowell subsequently wrote in the “Pioneer” kindly notices of Longfellow’s “Poems on Slavery,” but there is no immediate evidence of any personal relations between them at that time. In a letter to Poe, dated at Elmwood June 27, 1844, Lowell says of a recent article in the “Foreign Quarterly Review” attributed to John Forster, “Forster is a friend of some of the Longfellow clique here, which perhaps accounts for his putting L. at the top of our Parnassus. These kinds of arrangements do very well, however, for the present.”[67]... It will be noticed that what Lowell had originally called a “set” has now become a “clique.” 169 It is also evident that lie did not regard Longfellow as the assured head of the American Parnassus, and at any rate he suggests some possible rearrangement for the future. Their real friendship seems to have begun with a visit by Longfellow to Lowell’s study on October 29, 1846, when the conversation turned chiefly on the slavery question. Longfellow called to see him again on the publication of his second volume of poems, at the end of the following year, and Lowell spent an evening with Longfellow during March, 1848, while engaged on “The Fable for Critics,” in which the younger poet praised the elder so warmly.

Longfellow’s own state of mind at this period is well summed up in the following letter to his wife’s younger sister, Mrs. Peter Thacher, then recently a mother.

Cambridge, Feb. 15, 1843.

My dear Margaret,—I was very much gratified by your brief epistle, which reached me night before last, and brought me the assurances of your kind remembrance. Believe me, I have often thought of you and your husband; and have felt that your new home, though remote from many of your earlier friends, was nevertheless to you the centre of a world of happiness. With your affection, and your “young Astyanax,” 170 the “yellow house” becomes a golden palace.

For my part, Life seems to be to me “a battle and a march.” I am sometimes well,—sometimes ill, and always restless. My late expedition to Germany did me a vast deal of good; and my health is better than it has been for years. So long as I keep out of doors and take exercise enough, I feel perfectly well. So soon as I shut myself up and begin to study, I feel perfectly ill. Thus the Sphinx’s riddle—the secret of health—is discovered. In Germany I led an out-of-door life; bathing and walking from morning till night. I was at Boppard on the Rhine, in the old convent of Marienberg, now a Bathing establishment. I travelled a little in Germany; then passed through Belgium to England. In London I staid with Dickens; and had a very pleasant visit. His wife is a gentle, lovely character; and he has four children, all beautiful and good. I saw likewise the raven, who is stuffed in the entry—and his successor, who stalks gravely in the garden.

I am very sorry, my dear Margaret, that I cannot grant your request in regard to Mary’s Journal. Just before I sailed for Europe, being in low spirits, and reflecting on the uncertainties of such an expedition as I was then beginning, I burned a great many letters and private papers, 171 and among them this. I now regret it; but alas! too late.

Ah! my dear Margaret! though somewhat wayward and restless, I most affectionately cherish the memory of my wife. You know how happily we lived together; and I know that never again shall I be loved with such devotion, sincerity, and utter forgetfulness of self. Make her your model, and you will make your husband ever happy; and be to him as a household lamp irradiating his darkest hours.

Give my best regards to him. I should like very much to visit you; but know not how I can bring it about. Kiss “young Astyanax” for me, and believe me ever affectionately your brother

Henry W. Longfellow.