J. G. WHITTIER, “THE QUAKER POET.”
The last name we have to give in this long, but still incomplete, list of illustrious shoemakers is that of John Greenleaf Whittier, who happily is still living to charm and educate the English-speaking people on both sides of the Atlantic with his simple, spirit-stirring poetry. Whittier is frequently spoken of in the States as the Quaker Poet. This designation is sufficiently distinctive, for poets are not very numerous in the Society of Friends. Preachers, patriots, philanthropists, orators, and writers of prose are numerous enough, but poets are very hard to find in this intensely earnest and practical religious community.
Like his coreligionists in every generation since the days of George Fox and William Penn, Whittier is “right on all points” relating to social and religious reform. The assistance his vigorous, thrilling lines have given to every philanthropic movement in the United States is beyond calculation. For many years he was the Hans Sachs or Ebenezer Elliott of the Liberation cause, giving similar help by his songs to the work of emancipation in America to that which the German gave to the cause of Protestantism on the continent of Europe, and the Englishman gave to the labors of the Anti-Corn Law League in Great Britain.
His father was a farmer at Haverhill, Massachusetts, where the poet was born in 1807. He remained on the farm until he was nearly nineteen years of age, and divided his time between field-work and shoemaking. In 1825 he was sent to a college belonging to the Society of Friends. Four years after this he became editor of The American Manufacturer, which office he held for only twelve months, and then resigned in order to take the management of the New England Weekly Review. In 1832 he went back to the old home, worked on the farm, and edited The Haverhill Gazette. Twice he represented Haverhill in the State Legislature. All through life he has been a strong and consistent anti-slavery advocate, and at various times has been made secretary of societies and editor of papers whose aim has been the abolition of slavery. About 1838-39 he became the editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, an ardent anti-slavery paper. It required no small amount of courage to advocate freedom for the slave in those days. On one occasion Whittier’s office was surrounded by a mob, who plundered and set fire to the building. His published works in prose and verse are very numerous, beginning with the “Legends of New England” in 1831, and coming down to volumes of verse like “The King’s Missive, Mabel Martin, and Later Poems,” etc.,[187] published within the last few years. Through all his writings there runs a healthy moral tone, and his poetry is no less distinguished for purity of sentiment than for sweetness of numbers and true poetic fire. No man in New England, nor, indeed, in the States, has earned a better title to the thanks and esteem of his fellow-countrymen than the “Quaker Poet,” who began the hard work of life by blending the duties of the farm with the occupation of a shoemaker. Whittier College at Salem, Iowa, was established and named in his honor.
Whittier has never forgotten his connection with the gentle craft in early life; nor has he been ashamed to own fellowship with its humble but worthy members. What he thinks of the craft itself, and of the spirit of the men who have followed it, may be learned from his lines addressed to shoemakers in the “Songs of Labor,” published in 1850:
TO SHOEMAKERS.
Ho! workers of the old time, styled
The Gentle Craft of Leather!
Young brothers of the ancient guild,
Stand forth once more together!