Poems on Slavery

1842 collection of poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Title page from the first edition, 1842 Part of a series on

Forced labour and slavery

Contemporary

* Child Labour
* Child soldiers
* Conscription
* Debt
* Forced marriage
* Bride buying
* Child marriage
* Wife selling
* Forced prostitution
* Human trafficking
* Peonage
* Penal labour
* Contemporary Africa
* 21st-century jihadism
* Sexual slavery
* Wage slavery

Historical

Antiquity

* Egypt
* Babylonia
* Greece
* Rome

Medieval Europe

* Ancillae
* Black Sea slave trade
* Byzantine Empire
* Kholop
* Prague slave trade
* Serfs
* History
* In Russia
* Emancipation
* Thrall
* Genoese slave trade
* Venetian slave trade
* Balkan slave trade

Muslim world

* Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate
* Slavery in al-Andalus ‎
* Baqt
* Contract of manumission
* Bukhara slave trade
* Crimean slave trade
* Khazar slave trade
* Khivan slave trade
* Ottoman Empire
* Avret Pazarları
* Barbary Coast
* slave trade
* pirates
* Sack of Baltimore
* Slave raid of Suðuroy
* Turkish Abductions
* Concubinage
* history
* Ma malakat aymanukum
* Avret Pazarları
* Harem
* Abbasid harem
* Ottoman Imperial Harem
* Safavid imperial harem
* Qajar harem
* Jarya/Cariye
* Odalisque
* Qiyan
* Umm al-walad
* Circassian slave trade
* Saqaliba
* Slavery in the Rashidun Caliphate
* Slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate
* Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate
* Volga Bulgarian slave trade
* 21st century

Atlantic slave trade

* Bristol
* Brazil
* Database
* Dutch
* Middle Passage
* Nantes
* New France
* Panyarring
* Spanish Empire
* Slave Coast
* Thirteen colonies

Topics and practice

* Conscription
* Ghilman
* Mamluk
* Devshirme
* Blackbirding
* Coolie
* Corvée labour
* Field slaves in the United States
* Treatment
* House slaves
* Saqaliba
* Slave market
* Slave raiding
* Child soldiers
* White slavery

Naval

* Galley slave
* Impressment
* Pirates
* Shanghaiing
* Slave ship

By country or region

Sub-Saharan Africa

* Contemporary Africa
* Trans-Saharan slave trade
* Red Sea slave trade
* Indian Ocean slave trade
* Zanzibar slave trade
* Angola
* Chad
* Comoros
* Ethiopia
* Mali
* Mauritania
* Niger
* Nigeria
* Seychelles
* Somalia
* Somali slave trade
* South Africa
* Sudan
* Zanzibar

North and South America

* Pre-Columbian America
* Aztec
* Americas indigenous
* U.S. Natives
* United States
* Field slaves
* female
* Contemporary
* maps
* partus
* prison labour
* Slave codes
* Treatment
* interregional
* Human trafficking
* The Bahamas
* Canada
* Caribbean
* Barbados
* British Virgin Islands
* Trinidad
* Code Noir
* Latin America
* Brazil
* Lei Áurea
* Colombia
* Cuba
* Haiti
* revolt
* Restavek
* (Encomienda)
* Puerto Rico

East, Southeast, and South Asia

* Human trafficking in Southeast Asia
* Bhutan
* Brunei
* China
* Booi Aha
* Laogai
* penal system
* India
* Debt bondage
* Chukri System
* Indonesia
* Japan
* comfort women
* Korea
* Kwalliso
* Malaysia
* Maldives
* Slavery in the Mongol Empire
* Thailand
* Yankee princess
* Vietnam

Australia and Oceania

* Australia
* Human trafficking
* Blackbirding
* Slave raiding in Easter Island
* Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea
* Blackbirding in Polynesia

Europe and North Asia

* Sex trafficking in Europe
* United Kingdom
* Penal Labour
* Slavery
* Denmark
* Dutch Republic
* Germany in World War II
* Malta
* Norway
* Poland
* Portugal
* Romania
* Russia
* Spain
* Sweden

North Africa and West Asia

* Afghanistan
* Algeria
* Bahrain
* Egypt
* Human trafficking in the Middle East
* Iran
* Iraq
* Jordan
* Kuwait
* Lebanon
* Libya
* Morocco
* Oman
* Palestine
* Saudi Arabia
* Syria
* Tunisia
* Qatar
* Yemen
* United Arab Emirates

Religion

* Bible
* Christianity
* Catholicism
* Mormonism
* Islam
* Judaism
* Baháʼí Faith

Opposition and resistance

* Abolitionism
* U.K.
* U.S.
* Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference 1889–90
* Temporary Slavery Commission
* 1926 Slavery Convention
* Committee of Experts on Slavery
* Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery
* Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery
* Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery
* Abolitionists
* Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention
* Anti-Slavery International
* Blockade of Africa
* U.K.
* U.S.
* Colonization
* Liberia
* Sierra Leone
* Compensated emancipation
* Freedman
* Manumission
* Freedom suit
* Slave Power
* Underground Railroad
* songs
* Slave rebellion
* Slave Trade Acts
* International law
* Third Servile War
* 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution
* Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom
* Abolition of slave trade in Persian gulf [fa]

Related

* Common law
* Indentured servitude
* Forced labour
* Fugitive slaves
* laws
* convention
* Great Dismal Swamp maroons
* List of slaves
* owners
* last survivors of American slavery
* Slave marriages in the United States
* Slave narrative
* films
* songs
* Slave name
* Slave catcher
* Slave patrol
* Slave Route Project
* breeding
* court cases
* Washington
* Jefferson
* J.Q. Adams
* Lincoln
* Emancipation Proclamation
* 40 acres
* Freedmen's Bureau
* Iron bit
* Emancipation Day

* v
* t
* e

Poems on Slavery is a collection of poems by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in support of the United States anti-slavery efforts. With one exception, the collection of poems were written at sea by Longfellow in October 1842.[1] The poems were reprinted as anti-slavery tracts two different times during 1843.[2][3] Longfellow, very conscious of his public persona, published the poems even though he feared it would hurt him commercially. At the time of publication reviews were mixed,[4] but more recently critics (now less bothered by what was earlier done away with as mere sentimentality) have begun to appreciate the collection again, for its political message and for its rhetorical strategies.[5]

## Contents

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* "To William E. Channing"

This poem serve as a dedication to the book and is addressed to William Ellery Channing. It is written in common meter with five stanzas.

* "The Slave's Dream"

This poem speaks about how a slave sees his home land in his memories, where he is a king.

* "The Good Part"

This poem tells of how a woman gives her life and fortune to the abolition of slavery.

* "The Slave in the Dismal Swamp"

A poem about a hunted slave hiding in the Great Dismal Swamp while he hears the hounds baying in the distance. It has six stanzas.

* "The Slave Singing at Midnight"

This poem is about a lonely slave singing from the Psalms of David.

* "The Witnesses"

This poem is representing a sunken ship of slaves on the bottom of the ocean as a witness to the slave trade.

* "The Quadroon Girl"

Poem in twelve stanzas, common meter, about a slave owner who, after raping his maid, sells his own daughter, a quadroon girl, to a slaver who takes her as his sexual slave.

* "The Warning" (written before his trip to Europe)[6]

Longfellow speaks to the United States anticipating the violence to come, and likens the slaves to the Biblical Samson.

## Composition and publication

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Many factors that helped influence Longfellow to compose Poems on Slavery. As a young man he read Benjamin Lundy's Genius of Universal Emancipation in his father's library.[4] He considered writing a drama on the subject of Toussaint l'Ouverture so "that I may do something in my humble way for the great cause of Negro emancipation".[4] Charles Sumner wished Longfellow would devise verses on slavery; Sumner wrote to Longfellow encouraging him to "write some stirring words that shall move the whole land".[7] Longfellow traveled to Europe for six months in 1842 for his health. In October, before he set sail back home from England, he wrote to Charles Sumner from Charles Dickens's study and mentioned that Dickens's new book, American Notes, had a chapter on slavery.[8] Longfellow wrote the poems soon to be collected as Poems on Slavery that month while on the return voyage to the United States, which fulfilled Sumner's request.[9][7] Of the eight poems, seven were written while Longfellow was confined to his cabin during a fifteen-day storm. He envisioned his poems during the sleepless nights and then wrote them in the morning. When Longfellow returned home he added a poem he had written previously, and published the eight poems in a 30-page pamphlet.[6]

The poem "The Good Part" was deemed inappropriate, without any type of explanation,[4] for reprinting in Longfellow's Poems on Slavery, by the New England Anti-slavery Tract Association in 1843.[2] In January 1843, Longfellow corresponded with Rufus Wilmot Griswold about reviewing his Poems on Slavery in Graham's Magazine. Griswold wrote to Longfellow that George Rex Graham objected to publishing the title of Longfellow's work, and the magazine made no mention of the poems.[8] In December 1843, Elihu Burritt requested Longfellow's permission to print some of his Poems on Slavery as tracts.[3] In 1845, Poems on Slavery was omitted from Longfellow's collected Poems due to his worry that they could ruin sales in the Southern and Western states.[2]

### Longfellow's correspondence regarding the poems

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Longfellow sent several letters and copies of the poems to friends and family. In a letter to Henry Russell Cleveland in November 1842, Longfellow told of how he had written the poems on his way home and "shall not dare to send them to you in Cuba, for fear of having you seized as an Abolitionist".[8] In December 1842, Longfellow sent a letter to John Forster with a copy of the poems. Longfellow wanted to see the how society would respond to the poems and wanted to add more later. A letter that Longfellow wrote to William Plumer Jr discussed how he wrote his poems in a kind spirit. Longfellow sent a letter to his father, Stephen Longfellow, in January 1843, discussing how he thought the poems made an impression.[8] He wrote Ferdinand Freiligrath in January 1843 to let him know that he had used one or two of the wild animals from his menagerie for the poem Slaves Dream.[8] Longfellow wrote to George Lunt that he was "sorry you find so much to gainsay in my Poems on Slavery"[8] and spoke about his beliefs by using an article by William Ware from the Christian Examiner. Longfellow received many letters about his poems and some people even regretted that Longfellow had written them. Longfellow said his feelings prompted him to write about such things and that he had no regrets about writing them.[8] Longfellow refused to speak at antislavery rallies, though John Greenleaf Whittier attempted to get him to run as a candidate for an antislavery party for Congress.[10] Longfellow felt the apparent political nature of the Poems on Slavery was not something he wished to do again.[5]

## Reviews

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The book received attention due to it being such a controversial topic and Longfellow's notability.[4] Margaret Fuller, editor of The Dial, reviewed Longfellow's poems in her magazine. She called it "the thinnest of all Mr. Longfellow's thin books; spirited and polished, like its forerunners; but the topic would warrant a deeper tone".[11] In 1843 John Forster wrote a lengthy review of slavery and Longfellow's poems in the English magazine The Examiner. Forster said about Longfellow's poems: "An excellent feeling predominates throughout them, and much graphic power is displayed in the descriptions. Admirable, and most picturesque is this which follows."[12] In May 1843, Longfellow wrote a review of his Poems on Slavery to Isaac Appleton Jewett in a personal letter. Longfellow spoke of how the poems had favorable reception from people, and how he thought that they were "so mild that even a slaveholder might read them without losing his appetite for breakfast".[8]

## Legacy

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Even though Poems on Slavery are considered mild today and lacked widespread recognition, the poems are still in print today along with his other poems. Janet Harris, in 1978, remarked on the courage it must have taken for a man like Longfellow, who took such great interest in the public perception, to publish these controversial poems in 1842, even at the risk of it hurting sales for his other writings.[4] Harriet Beecher Stowe reprinted "The Quadroon Girl" in Chapter IV of A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin.[13] Paul K. Johnston, Professor of English at State University of New York at Plattsburgh, notes that Poems on Slavery, like Uncle Tom's Cabin, is "rehabilitated as a political statement on behalf of its marginalized characters", and has survived a half-century of formalist literacy in the 20th century that considered his and Stowe's work merely sentimental and didactic. Johnston notes also that some of Longfellow's "strategies and images" anticipate Stowe's.[5]

## References

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1. ^ Longfellow, Henry (1883). The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press. p. 41.
2. ^ a b c Gale, Robert (2003). A Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Companion. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 195.
3. ^ a b Curti, Merle E. (November 1935). "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Elihu Burritt". American Literature. 7 (3): 315. JSTOR 2919974.
4. ^ a b c d e f Harris, Janet (June 1978). "Longfellow's Poems on Slavery". Colby Quarterly. 14 (2 Article 5): 84–92.
5. ^ a b c Johnston, Paul (June 21, 2016). "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's stark, unheeded "Warning" on slavery". Library of America. Retrieved April 25, 2017.
6. ^ a b Longfellow, Henry (1886). Voices of the night, Poems on slavery, The belfry of Bruges, etc. Houghton, Mifflin and Company. pp. 83–86.
7. ^ a b Blue, Frederick (1995). "The Poet and the Reformer: Longfellow, Sumner, and the Bonds of Male Friendship, 1837–1874". Journal of the Early Republic. 15 (2): 273–297. JSTOR 3123910.
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Hilen, Andrew (1966). The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. pp. 473–784.
9. ^ Hirsh, Edward (1964). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. University of Minnesota. p. 10.
10. ^ Irmscher, Christoper; Arbour, Robert (2014). Reconsidering Longfellow. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. p. 4.
11. ^ Emerson, Ralph; Fuller, Margaret; Ripley, George (1843). The Dial: A Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, and Religion, Volume 3. Weeks, Jordan. p. 415.
12. ^ Examiner: A Weekly Paper on Politics, Literature, Music and the Fine Arts. England: The Bavarian State Library. 1843. pp. 211–212.
13. ^ "A key to Uncle Tom's cabin; presenting the original facts and documents upon which the story is founded. Together with corroborative statements verifying ..." HathiTrust. pp. 366–367. Retrieved August 25, 2023.

## External links

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Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Poems on Slavery

* Works related to Poems on Slavery at Wikisource
* Online text via Google Books
* "Longfellow, Slavery, and Abolition", from Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site, National Park Service

* v
* t
* e

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Prose|

* Outre-Mer (1830s)
* Hyperion (1839)
* Kavanagh (1849)

Poetry|

* "The Battle of Lovells Pond" (1820)
* "A Psalm of Life" (1838)
* "Excelsior" (1841)
* "The Village Blacksmith" (1841)
* "The Skeleton in Armor" (1841)
* "The Wreck of the Hesperus" (1842)
* Poems on Slavery (collection, 1842)
* Evangeline (1847)
* The Song of Hiawatha (The Death of Minnehaha) (1855)
* "Santa Filomena" (1857)
* The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)
* "The Children's Hour" (1860)
* "Paul Revere's Ride" (1860)
* "The Saga of King Olaf" (1863)
* Tales of a Wayside Inn (collection, 1863)
* "Christmas Bells" (1863)
* "The Sermon of St. Francis" (1875)

Family|

* Alexander S. Wadsworth (uncle)
* Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow Jr. (nephew)
* Alice Mary Longfellow (daughter)
* Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow (son)
* Nathan Appleton (father-in-law)
* Peleg Wadsworth (grandfather)
* Richard Bonython (ancestor)
* Richard Henry Dana III (son-in-law)
* Samuel Longfellow (brother)
* Stephen Longfellow (father)

Historic houses|

* Birthplace (Portland, Maine)
* Wadsworth-Longfellow House (Portland, Maine)
* Longfellow House (Cambridge, Massachusetts)

Memorials|

* Longfellow Square
* Portland, Maine memorial
* Washington, D.C. memorial

Namesakes|

* Longfellow Bridge
* Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site
* Longfellow Mountains

Related|

* Dante Society of America
* "the mills of God grind slowly"
* "Whom the gods would destroy"

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