John Greenleaf Whittier

Personal Background:

• I was born in a rural homestead on December 17, 1807 near Haverhill, Massachusetts.
  
• My formal education was limited, but what I did not obtain from schools I learned from books.
• I enjoyed reading my father's six books on Quakerism.
  
• For a brief period I studied under Joshua Coffin, in the unfinished ell of a farmhouse, and at another time, in a school kept by a Newburyport woman.
• I attended the recently-opened Haverhill Academy, and one of the ways in which I paid for the tuition was by teaching at a schoolhouse in what is now Merrimac, Massachusetts.
• A few of my notable achievements involve becoming an influential American Quaker poet, as well as an advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States.
• I gained the job of editor of the National Philanthropist, a Boston-based temperance weekly.
• I am an out-spoken critic of President Andrew Jackson.
  
• By 1830 , I was assigned the duty of being editor of the prominent New England Weekly Review in Hartford, Connecticut, he most influential Whig journal in New England.
• in 1833, I published the antislavery pamphlet Justice and Expediency, and after that dedicated the rest of my life to the abolitionist cause.
  
• I am a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
• I signed the Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833.

Issues:

• The teachings of Quakerism are the foundations of my ideology.
  
• I was heavily influenced by the doctrines of the Quaker religion, particularly its stress on humanitarianism, compassion, and social responsibility.
• The year 1833 was a turning point for me because that is when the passionate abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, began to encourage me to join his cause.
• I was against the use of alcohol and I gained the job of editor of the National Philanthropist, a Boston-based temperance weekly.

Solutions:

• Nearly all of my poems dealt with the problem of slavery, and I have published countless poems and essays about slavery.
• I have traveled widely in the North, attending conventions, securing votes, speaking to the public, and lobbying politicians in an effort to promote anti-slavery.
• I believe that moral action apart from political effort is useless in the abolition of slavery. I know that success required legislative change, not merely moral effort.
  
• I am a member of the Liberty party and believe that liberty is something that is needed: "Liberty party is no longer an experiment. It is vigorous reality, exerting... a powerful influence."

Relationship to Others

• William Lloyd Garrison was highly influential to me. Although we did bitterly split because of my views on how the abolition of slavery would be achieved, Garrison did in fact publish my first poem, "The Exile's Departure," to the Newburyport Free Press on June 8th, 1826. Garrison also encouraged me to go to school and to join the anti-slavery cause to begin with.

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