John Greenleaf Whittier

He published "The Song of the Vermonters, 1779" anonymously in The New-England Magazine in 1838.

The poem was mistakenly attributed to Ethan Allen for nearly sixty years.

John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892) was an American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States.

Frequently listed as one of the fireside poets, he was influenced by the Scottish poet Robert Burns.

Whittier was born to John and Abigail ( Hussey) Whittier at their rural homestead in Haverhill, Massachusetts, on December 17, 1807.

His middle name is thought to mean feuillevert, after his Huguenot forebears.

He grew up on the farm in a household with his parents, a brother and two sisters, a maternal aunt and paternal uncle, and a constant flow of visitors and hired hands for the farm.

As a boy, it was discovered that Whittier was color-blind when he was unable to see a difference between ripe and unripe strawberries.

The farm was not very profitable, and there was only enough money to get by.

Whittier himself was not cut out for hard farm labor and suffered from bad health and physical frailty his whole life.

Although he received little formal education, he was an avid reader who studied his father's six books on Quakerism until their teachings became the foundation of his ideology.

Whittier was heavily influenced by the doctrines of his religion, particularly its stress on humanitarianism, compassion, and social responsibility.

Whittier was first introduced to poetry by a teacher.

His sister Mary Whittier sent his first poem, "The Deity", to the Newburyport Free Press without his permission, and its editor, William Lloyd Garrison, published it on June 8, 1826.

Garrison as well as another local editor encouraged Whittier to attend the recently opened Haverhill Academy.

To raise money to attend the school, Whittier became a shoemaker for a time, and a deal was made to pay part of his tuition with food from the family farm.

Before his second term, he earned money to cover tuition by serving as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in what is now Merrimac, Massachusetts.

He attended Haverhill Academy from 1827 to 1828 and completed a high school education in only two terms.

Whittier received the first substantial public praise for his work from critic John Neal via Neal's magazine The Yankee in 1828.

Whittier valued the opinion of the older and more established writer, pledging that if Neal did not like his writing, "I will quit poetry, and everything also of a literary nature, for I am sick at heart of the business."

Reading Neal's 1828 novel Rachel Dyer inspired Whittier to weave New England witchcraft lore into his own stories and poems.

Garrison gave Whittier the job of editor of the National Philanthropist, a Boston-based temperance weekly.

Shortly after a change in management, Garrison reassigned him as editor of the weekly American Manufacturer in Boston.

In an 1829 letter, Neal told Whittier to "Persevere, and I am sure you will have your reward in every way."

Whittier became an outspoken critic of President Andrew Jackson, and by 1830 was editor of the prominent New England Weekly Review in Hartford, Connecticut, the most influential Whig journal in New England.

During the 1830s, Whittier became interested in politics, but after losing a congressional election at age 25, he suffered a nervous breakdown and returned home.

The year 1833 was a turning point for Whittier; he resurrected his correspondence with Garrison, and the passionate abolitionist began to encourage the young Quaker to join his cause.

In 1833, Whittier published the antislavery pamphlet Justice and Expediency, and from there dedicated the next twenty years of his life to the abolitionist cause.

The controversial pamphlet destroyed all of his political hopes, as his demand for immediate emancipation alienated both Northern businessmen and Southern slaveholders, but it also sealed his commitment to a cause that he deemed morally correct and socially necessary.

He was a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society and signed the Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833, which he often considered the most significant action of his life.

Whittier's political skill made him useful as a lobbyist, and his willingness to badger anti-slavery congressional leaders into joining the abolitionist cause was invaluable.

From 1835 to 1838, he traveled widely in the North, attending conventions, securing votes, speaking to the public, and lobbying politicians.

As he did so, Whittier received his fair share of violent responses, being several times mobbed, stoned, and run out of town.

From 1838 to 1840, he was editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman in Philadelphia, one of the leading antislavery papers in the North, formerly known as the National Enquirer.

In May 1838, the publication moved its offices to the newly opened Pennsylvania Hall on North Sixth Street, which was shortly after burned by a pro-slavery mob.

Whittier continued to write poetry, and nearly all of his poems then dealt with the problem of slavery.

In 1838, Charles G. Atherton of New Hampshire presented five resolutions that were adopted and created a new resolution that barred Congress from discussing petitions that mentioned bringing slavery to an end.

Congress approved them on December 12, 1838, which became known as the "Atherton Gag"; Whittier referred to Atherton in one of his many abolition poems as "vile" by having allied himself so closely with his fellow Democrats from pro-slavery South.

Whittier acknowledged his authorship in 1858.

Whittier is remembered particularly for his anti-slavery writings, as well as his 1866 book Snow-Bound.