IV
To Whittier, a Friend, a man of peace, the Civil War with its sufferings, its horrors, its changing fortunes, and for those days its vast sacrifice of life was a continual torture. Yet he realized its significance. From the firing of the first gun at Sumter he perceived that the war was destined to sweep from the land the crime of slavery. His inspired poem, “Laus Deo,” declares what that meant to him.
Being a Quaker, the poet was, of course, never present at war meetings.
But when during the war contributions were sent from Amesbury, as from other towns, to the front, Whittier was always greatly interested. He knew when boxes went to the soldiers, and he was often well posted as to the contents of these boxes.
And upon one occasion, at least, he was memorably on hand—to some regretfully so—when the townspeople were raising subscriptions for the Sanitary Commission and for the soldiers. Patriotism was at a low ebb that day, for the subscriptions lagged persistently, so that when it came time for the meeting to break up, the needed amount had not been raised, and things looked as if it would not be forthcoming.
Then the authority which the poet as a man of affairs never failed to put forth at need came to the front.
Whittier rose.
He wasted no strength in appeal to a patriotism overswept by avarice; but made his demands upon that avarice itself.
“If this sum needed,” he said, naming it, “is not raised by this meeting, I shall write to Salmon Chase [Secretary of the Treasury] to have your exemption money on the next draft of men put up to seven hundred dollars instead of three hundred, as it is now.”
That was all.
But it was enough. His audience looked at the speaker’s tall, erect figure, his flashing eyes, his resolute mouth—and decided not to take the risk. The required amount was immediately forthcoming.
All the world knows how in the poet’s early days he put aside the ambitions of youth and genius—ambitions which the early call of the world to him proved would have been richly fulfilled—and fought the hard battle for the slave, and endured its contumely.
His own words tell the story. In his poem, “Lines Written in the Book of a Friend,” he sings of himself:
Here was that self-denial, that experience of longings unfulfilled—through the fulfillment of higher longings—which gave him his depth and power of sympathy in every loss and suffering of others, and courage in the sufferings of his own life, and which ripened and sweetened his nature.
Whittier’s prominence in the anti-slavery conflict is, of course, matter of history. His influence in politics was great; for he had the keenness of insight, the broad vision of the statesman, and the politician’s skill in manipulation which never deteriorated into political trickery in a heart that loved his fellowmen and a soul that abhorred self-seeking. One day in a package of books that went from his home to the doctor’s house, there was slipped in by accident a bit of paper on which were the two following lines in the poet’s handwriting, but unsigned:
The identical lines are not found in any of his poems and were probably altered. But their spirit is ever with him. Mrs. Claflin in her interesting sketch of the poet says:
“Mr. Whittier was a keen observer of all public affairs and the trusted adviser of many of the most eminent men of the Old Bay State. He seemed to have prophetic vision and was one of the most sagacious counselors in the State then famous for its able men.”