W-Z: Walker through Wright

See below for annotated biographies of Liberty Party leaders and members. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.

WALKER, Amasa, abolitionist leader, political leader, member U.S. House of Representatives, 1862-1863. Economist, temperance activist, co-founder Free Soil Party. Active in the Liberty Party.

(Appleton’s, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 324-325). 1799-1875, Boston, Massachusetts, political economist, abolitionist. Republican U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts. Active and vigorous opponent of slavery. American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) Manager, 1837-1840, 1840-1841, 1843-1844, Counsellor, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1841. Co-founder of Free Soil Party in 1848. Served in Congress December 1862 through March 1863. (Filler, 1960, pp. 60, 254; Mabee, 1970, pp. 258, 340, 403n25; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 324-325; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 10, Pt. 1, p. 338; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 22, p. 485)



WARD, Samuel Ringgold, 1817-1866, New York, American Missionary Association (AMA), African American, abolitionist leader, newspaper editor, author, orator, clergyman. Member of the Liberty Party and the Free Soil Party. Published Liberty Party paper, Impartial Citizen. Vice Presidential candidate for the Liberty Party. Wrote Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro, His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada and England, 1855. Lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society. Member and contributor to the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 330; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 128, 135, 136, 294, 307, 400n19; Sernett, Milton C. North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, pp. 54-55, 62-64, 94, 117, 121, 126, 142, 149, 157-159, 169, 171-172; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 34, 46, 48, 53, 166, 446-447, 454; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 85-89, 96, 104, 132; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 440; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 649; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 380; See Ward's Autobiography; W. J. Wilson, "A Leaf from my Scrap Book ...," Autographs for Freedom, volume II (1854), ed. by Julia Griffiths; Journal of Negro History, October 1925).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 440:

WARD, SAMUEL RINGGOLD (October 17, 1817-1866 ?), negro abolitionist, was born of slave parents on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. His parents ran away to Greenwich, New Jersey, in 1820. Six years later they removed to New York where the boy received an elementary education and became a teacher in colored schools. He was married in 1838 to a Miss Reynolds. His ability as a public speaker attracted the attention of Lewis Tappan [q.v.] and others and led to his appointment in 1839 as an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society from which he was soon transferred to the service of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society. Licensed to preach by the New York Congregational (General) Association in 1839, he subsequently held two pastorates, at South Butler, Wayne County, New York, from 1841 to 1843, where his congregation was entirely white, and at Cortland, New York, from 1846 to 1851. He resigned the earlier pastorate because of throat trouble and subsequently studied medicine for a few months. He resumed his antislavery labors in 1844 with the Liberty Party and spoke in almost every state oi the North. In 1851 he removed to Syracuse where, in October of that year, he took an active part in the rescue of the negro fugitive Jerry. Fearing arrest, he fled to Canada where he became an agent of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. He organized branches of the society, lectured, and le nt assistance to the numerous fugitives in Canada. In April 1853 he was sent to England to secure financial aid for the Canadian effort and with the help of a committee raised the sum of 1,200 [pounds] in ten months.

He spoke at both the 1853 and 1854 meetings of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and delivered numerous other addresses during his stay in Great Britain. He attracted the interest of some of the nobility and met many of the leading philanthropists. His Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro (London, 1855), records that John Candler, of Chelmsford, a Quaker, presented him with fifty acres of land in the parish of St. George, Jamaica, and he apparently accepted the gift, for about 1855 he went to Jamaica and in Kingston became the pastor of a small body of Baptists. He continued in this post until early in 1860 when he left Kingston and settled in St. George Parish. The new venture did not prosper and he died in great poverty in or after 1866. During his pastorate in Kingston he is said to have exercised a powerful influence over the colored population and was the head of a political party which controlled local elections. In 1866 he published in Jamaica his Reflections Upon the Gordon Rebellion. Ward's extraordinary oratorical ability is mentioned by a number of his contemporaries. He was frequently advertised during his lecture tours as "the black Daniel Webster."

[See Ward's Autobiography; W. J. Wilson, "A Leaf from my Scrap Book ...," Autographs for Freedom, volume II (1854), ed. by Julia Griffiths; Journal of Negro History, October 1925; information from Mr. Frank Cundall, of the Institute of Jamaica, and from Lord Olivier.]

F.L.



WEEKS, L. D. L.

(Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)



WHITTIER, John Greenleaf, 1807-1892, Haverhill, Massachusetts, poet, journalist, newspaper publisher and editor, Society of Friends, Quaker, radical abolitionist. Wrote antislavery poetry. Publisher and editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman. Founding member, Manager, and Secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Member of the Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Leader and active with the Liberty Party. Candidate for Congress for Liberty Party in Massachusetts. Member, Free Soil Party. Called for immediate abolition of slavery in the United States.

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 5, 37-64; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 113, 127, 137, 140-142, 158-159, 176, 181, 195; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 167, 245, 286, 301; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 56, 66, 90, 105, 134, 148, 151, 194; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 2, 4, 9, 11-13, 18, 21-22, 25-26, 29-30, 35-36, 48, 51, 65, 194, 211, 309, 326, 329, 359, 368, 373, 378; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 65, 102-104, 123-128; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 161, 433, 641, 723; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 493-494; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 173-176; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 23, p. 350; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume I. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 407).

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 493-494:

WHITTIER, John Greenleaf, poet, born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, 17 December, 1807. His parents were members of the Society of Friends, and to the principles and practices of this sect he always remained faithful, […]

The literary impulse in him must have been strong, for while yet in his nineteenth year he contributed anonymous verse to the poet's corner of the “Free Press,” a journal edited by W. L. Garrison in Newburyport, and enjoyed the furtive bliss of print. Garrison saw signs of promise in these immature experiments, sought out the author, and gave him the precious encouragement of praise and sympathy. This led to a lasting friendship, and, with the traditions of his sect, may have had some influence in preparing Whittier to enlist in the anti-slavery crusade which began with the establishment of the “Liberator” in 1831, and afterward caught so much of its inspiration from his fervid lyrics. The ambition to become a poet was awakened in him appropriately enough by a copy of Robert Burns's poems, which fell into his hands in his fourteenth year.

His father dying, he carried on the farm for the next five years, and in 1835 was sent to the general court from Haverhill. During all these years he had been an industrious writer, seeking an outlet in all directions and contributing poems to John Neal's “Yankee” and to the “New England Magazine,” where the “Autocrat” began his admirable discourses. In 1829 he undertook the editorship of the “American Manufacturer” in Boston, and in 1830 succeeded George D. Prentice as editor of the “Haverhill Gazette” during the first six months of the year, and then of the “New England Weekly Review” in Hartford, Connecticut. This office he resigned in 1832 on account of failing health and returned home. In 1836 he became secretary of the American anti-slavery society, and afterward removed to Philadelphia, where for a year (1838-'9) he edited the “Pennsylvania Freeman.” This he did with such sincerity that its printing-office was sacked and burned by a mob. At that time it required the courage of passionate conviction to maintain principles the noisier profession of which was to become profitable a few years later. Delicate as his organization was, Whittier faced many a brutal mob with unflinching composure. He was never a mere fanatic, but always quick to recognize and celebrate high qualities even in an adversary, as many of his poems show. He refused to follow Garrison in the renunciation of political action as one means of reform. In 1840 he took up his abode in Amesbury, a quiet village near his birthplace, and there (with the exception of six months spent at Lowell as editor of the “Middlesex Standard”), in the simple dignity of a frugal independence, the fruit of his own literary labors, he has lived ever since, and happily still lives, known and loved wherever our tongue is spoken. From 1847 to 1859 he contributed editorially to the “National Era,” an anti-slavery newspaper published at Washington, in which '”Uncle Tom's Cabin” was first printed.

In his seclusion Whittier was never idle, nor did he neglect his duties as a citizen while confirming his quality as a poet. Whenever occasion offered, some burning lyric of his flew across the country, like the fiery cross, to warn and rally. Never mingling in active politics (unless filling the office of presidential elector may be called so), he probably did more than anybody in preparing the material out of which the Republican party was made. When the civil war was impending he would have evaded it if possible by any concession short of surrender, as his “Word for the Hour” (January, 1861) shows. While the war continued he wrote little with direct reference to it, and never anything that showed any bitterness toward the authors of it. After it was over he would have made the terms of settlement liberal and conciliatory. He was too wise and too humane to stir the still living embers of passion and resentment for any political end however dear to him.

Of all American poets, with the single exception of Longfellow, Whittier has been the most popular, and in his case more than in that of any other the popularity has been warmed through with affection. This has been due in part to the nobly simple character of the man, transparent through his verse, in part to the fact that his poetry, concerning itself chiefly with the obvious aspects of life and speculation, has kept close to the highest levels of the average thought and sentiment. His themes have been mainly chosen from his own time and country—from his own neighborhood even—he deals with simple motives and with experiences common to all, and accordingly his scenery (whether of the outward or the inward eye) is domestically welcome to all his countrymen. He is never complex in thought or obscure in expression, and if sometimes his diction might gain in quality by a more deliberate choice, yet the pellucid simplicity of his phrase and the instant aptness of his epithet as often secure a more winning felicity through his frankness of confidence in the vernacular. His provincialisms of word or accent have an endearing property to the native ear, though even that will consent to a few of his more licentious rhymes. One feels that it is a neighbor who is speaking. Nor should the genial piety of his habitual thought and the faith that seeks no securer foothold than the Rock of Ages, on which the fathers stood so firmly, be overlooked among the qualities that give him a privilege of familiar entrance to a multitude of hearts and minds which would be barred against many higher, though not more genuine, forms of poetry. His religion has the sincerity of Cowper's without those insane terrors that made its very sincerity a torture. There are many points of spiritual likeness between the English and the American poet, especially in their unmetaphysicized love of outward natures, their austerity tempered with playful humor, and in that humanity of tone which establishes a tie of affectionate companionship between them and their readers. Whittier has done as much for the scenery of New England as Scott for that of Scotland. Many of his poems (such, for example, as “Telling the Bees”), in which description and sentiment mutually inspire each other, are as fine as any in the language.

Whittier, as many of his poems show, and as, indeed, would be inevitable, has had his moments of doubt and distrust, but never of despair. He has encountered everywhere the moral of his inscription on a sun-dial, convinced that “there's light above me by the shade below.” He, like others, has found it hard to reconcile the creed held by inheritance with the subtle logic of more modern modes of thought. As he himself has said:

“He reconciled as best he could
Old faith and fancies new.”

But his days have been “bound each to each with natural piety”; he has clung fast to what has been the wholesome and instructive kernel of all creeds; he has found consolation in the ever-recurring miracles, whether of soul or sense, that daily confront us, and in the expression of his own delight and wonder and gratitude for them has conveyed that solace to the minds and hearts of all his readers. One quality above all others in Whittier—his innate and unstudied Americanism—has rendered him alike acceptable to his countrymen and to his kindred beyond the sea. His first volume was “Legends of New England,” in prose and verse (Hartford, 1831), which has been followed by “Moll Pitcher” (1832); “Mogg Megone” (Boston, 1836); “Ballads” (1838); “Lays of My Home, and other Poems” (1843); “Miscellaneous Poems” (1844); the first English edition of his poetry, entitled “Ballads, and other Poems,” with an introduction by Elizur Wright (London, 1844); “The Stranger in Lowell” (1845); “Supernaturalism in New England” (New York and London, 1847); “Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal” (Boston, 1849); “Voices of Freedom” (Philadelphia, 1849); a larger English collection of his “Poetical Works” (London, 1850); “Old Portraits and Modern Sketches” (Boston, 1850); “Songs of Labor, and other Poems,” and “The Chapel of the Hermits, and other Poems” (1853); “A Sabbath Scene: a Sketch of Slavery in Verse” (1853); “Literary Recreations and Miscellanies” (1854); “The Panorama, and other Poems” (1856); “Complete Poetical Works” (2 volumes, 1857); “Home Ballads and Poems” (1860); “Snow-Bound” (1862); a new edition of his “Complete Poetical Works” (1863); “In War Time, and other Poems” (1863); “National Lyrics” (1865); a collection of his “Prose Works” (2 volumes, 1866); “The Tent on the Beach” (1867); “Among the Hills” (1868); an illustrated edition of his “Complete Poetical Works” (1868); one corresponding in typography with the “Prose Works” (1869); a volume of his “Ballads of New England” contains sixty illustrations by various artists (1869); “Miriam, and other Poems” (1870); “The Pennsylvania Pilgrim, and other Poems” (1872); “Hazel Blossoms” (1874); “Mabel Martin” (1875); a new collected edition of his “Poetical Works” comprising poems that he had written till the date of publication (1875); “Centennial Hymn” (1876); “The Vision of Echard, and other Poems” (1878); “The King's Missive, and other Poems” (1881); “Bay of Seven Islands, and other Poems” (1883); “Poems of Nature” (1885); and “St. Gregory's Guest, and Recent Poems” (1886). A final edition of his poetical and prose works has been supervised by himself, and includes his sister's poems (7 volumes, 1888-'9). See a “Biography,” by Francis H. Underwood (Boston, 1875; new ed., 1883), and “John G. Whittier: his Life, Genius, and Writings,” by W. Sloane Kennedy (1882). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI. pp. 493-494.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 173-176:

WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF (December 17, 1807-September 7, 1892), poet, abolitionist, was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, the son of Quaker parents. His father, John Whittier, was a stern, prosaic, but generous man, while his mother, Abigail (Hussey) Whittier, was a kindly soul, who to some extent sympathized with her son's literary leanings. Both parents influenced him considerably by their religious doctrines and tales of local history. On his father's side, he was descended from Thomas Whittier who came to Massachusetts from England in 1638. His youngest son, Joseph, married Mary Peasley, a Quakeress, and their youngest son, also named Joseph, marr1ed Sarah Greenleaf, member of a Puritan family believed to be of Huguenot origin. Spending his boyhood and youth on a farm, Whittier came close to nature, and later described the rural scene of his locality more faithfully than had any other writer up to that time. His "Barefoot Boy" has become a classic poem of New England farm life. Overexertion when he was about seventeen resulted in injuries from which he never fully recovered.

His formal education was limited, but what he did not obtain from schools he learned from books. For a brief period he studied under Joshua Coffin, in the unfinished ell of a farmhouse; and at another time, in a school kept by a Newburyport woman. When he was about fourteen he became acquainted with the poems of Burns. He read them studiously and soon began writing poems himself, some of them in Scotch dialect. As time went on his reading came to include books of travel, and history, works on Quaker doctrine and martyrology, Thomas Ellwood's poem Davideis, and the writings of Milton, Chatterton, Coleridge, Byron, and others. He also delved into colonial literature, becoming particularly familiar with Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana.

The sending of one of his poems, "The Exile's Departure," by his older sister Mary to the Newburyport Free Press, edited by William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.], was an important event in young Whittier's life. The poem was published June 8, 1826, and Garrison was sufficiently interested in the unknown author to call upon him. He urged the father to send his son to some school for a further education, but the elder Whittier was averse to such a procedure. Though Garrison continued publishing poems by Whittier, it was Abijah W. Thayer, the editor of the Haverhill Gazette (later called the Esser Gazette), who made Whittier's work widely known, publishing poems by him weekly. Thayer, also, urged the elder Whittier to send his promising son to an academy and this time the father agreed to do so. At the beginning of May 1827, Whittier entered the newly opened Haverhill Academy, where a poem of his was sung at the inauguration ceremonies. He remained here for about six months, taught school during the winter, and then returned to the academy for another term of six months. During this period he poured forth a steady stream of poems, which appeared not only in the Free Press and the Essex Gazette, but for a time in the Boston Statesmen, edited by Nathaniel Greene [q.v.]. Thayer proposed the publication of Whittier's poems in book form by subscription, but the project was not carried out.

Through the help of Garrison, Whittier, in January 1829, became editor of The American Manufacturer (Boston), serving as such for seven months and resigning in large part because he was needed at home. This was the first of the numerous editorial positions he held during his life. In the early part of 1830 he edited the Essex Gazette. After the death of his father in June, he succeeded George D. Prentice [q.v.] as editor of the New England Weekly Review, published in Hartford, Connecticut. To this periodical he contributed many poems, stories, and sketches, most of which have remained uncollected. In February 1831 he published his first book, Legends of New England in Prose and Verse. Relinquishing the editorship of the Review in January 1832 on account of ill health, he issued that same year his Moll Pitcher, and edited The Literary Remains of John G. C. Brainard, With a Sketch of His Life. During these years he suffered a grievous disappointment because of the marriage to another of Mary Emerson Smith, a relative, for whom he had had a deep affection since boyhood. She is doubtless the heroine of many of his early uncollected love poems and of his famous "Memories" and "My Playmate." His pathetic love letter to her, written May 23, 1829, is the only one of those that passed between them which has been published (L. G. Swett, John Riskin's Letters to Francesca and Memoirs of the Alexanders, 1931, 417-21).

A reading of Garrison's Thoughts on Colonization (1832), and a meeting with the author in the spring of 1833 made Whittier an abolitionist. For the next thirty years he devoted himself to the writing of Tyrtaen poems on subjects connected with slavery and its abolition. In December he was a delegate to the anti-slavery convention at Philadelphia, and was one of the signers of its declaration. Prior to the elections of 1834, 1836, and 1838 he secured from Caleb Cushing [q.v.] pledges that he would support the demand of the abolitionists, and Cushing attributed his success in the elections largely to the support of his Quaker friend (Pickard, post, I, 172). He was practically ostracized socially because of his views and activities, but succeeded in being elected a member of the Massachusetts legislature from Haverhill for the year 1835. On September 4, 1835, he and George Thompson, the English lecturer, were mobbed in Concord, New Hampshire. From May to December 1836 he was again in editorial charge of the Essex Gazette. Meanwhile, he sold his farm in Haverhill and moved, in July 1836, to his new home in Amesbury. His activities during the next few years were varied and his labors exacting; he spoke at an antislavery convention in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; he lobbied in Boston in behalf of the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; during the summer of 1837 he was employed in New York under the auspices of the American Anti-Slavery Society. From March 1838 to February 1840 he edited the Pennsylvania Freeman, to which he contributed daring editorials. The office of the paper was in the new Pennsylvania Hall, Philadelphia, when that building was burned to the ground by a mob in May 17, 1838. In November of that year he published a volume of fifty of his poems. Ill health compelled his resignation from the Freeman, and in 1840 he returned to Amesbury.

He was much depressed by the disruption of the American Anti-Slavery Society in that year, but he sympathized with the political-action party, to which Garrison was opposed, and became an aggressive member of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. In the fall of 1842 he ran for Congress on the Liberty party ticket. The following year he published Lays of My Home and Other Poems, which contained some of his best work and placed him among the leading American poets. From July 1844 to March 1845 he edited the Middlesex Standard, a Liberty-party paper published in Lowell, Massachusetts, and in his editorials opposed the annexation of Texas. In this paper appeared serially "The Stranger in Lowell," which was published separately in 1845. He also practically edited the Essex Transcript, an organ of the Liberty party, published in Amesbury. His anti-slavery poems were collected and published under the title Voices of Freedom, in 1846. In January of the following year he became corresponding editor of the National Era, published in Washington, and he contributed most of his poems and articles to it for the next thirteen years. In this periodical appeared his only lengthy work in fiction, "Stray Leaves from Margaret Smith's Diary, in the Colony of Massachusetts" (published in book form, under a slightly different title, in 1849) and most of the material in Old Portraits and Modern Sketches (1850) and Literary Recreations and Miscellanies (1854). Meanwhile, there was no relaxing of his political activities. He gave John P. Hale [q.v.] of New Hampshire much political advice, and thus indirectly helped elect him to the United States Senate; he attacked the administration bitterly for the Mexican War; and in the well known poem, "Ichabod," which appeared in the National Era, 11, May 2, 1850, he castigated Webster for the "Seventh of March speech." He was instrumental in inducing Charles Sumner to run for the United States Senate in 1851 on a coalition ticket of Free-Soilers and Democrats, and he urged him to remain a candidate when he wished to retire during the long and bitter fight that ensued in the Massachusetts legislature before he was elected. He was one of the first to suggest the formation of the Republican party and always considered himself one of its founders. In the mid-fifties, though he wrote campaign songs, and poems on the happenings in Kansas, ill health compelled him to abandon some of his activities. His reputation as a poet had meanwhile greatly increased. With the appearance of Songs of Labor (1850), The Chapel of the Hermits (1853), and The Panorama and Other Poems (1856), which contained his "Maud Muller" and the "Barefoot Boy," he took rank with Longfellow and Bryant among the greatest American poets.

During his middle years he had several romances, two of which almost led to marriage. While living in New York, in the summer of 1837, he met Lucy Hooper, a young poetess residing in Brooklyn, and a warm friendship sprang up between them. In 1841 Lucy died of consumption. Whittier never realized to what extent she was attracted to him. When he learned from her surviving sisters the depth of her affection he wrote to them contritely and defensively: "God forgive me, if with no other than kind feelings I have done wrong. My feelings toward her were those of a Brother. I admired and loved her; yet felt myself compelled to crush every warmer feeling-poverty, protracted illness, and our separate faiths-the pledge that I had made of all the hopes and dreams of my younger years to the cause of freedom-compelled me to steel myself against everything which tended to attract me-the blessing of a woman's love and a home" (Albert Mordell, in New England Quarterly, June 1934). His most serious affair, however, was with Elizabeth Lloyd, the poetess, with whom he formed a friendship in Philadelphia when he was editing the Freeman. In 1853 she married Robert Howell, who died in 1856, and Whittier resumed his friendship with her in 1858. Both were looking forward to marriage when Mrs. Howell irritated the poet by attacking the Quaker creed, of which she herself was an adherent. On August 3, 1859, he wrote her a letter which was tantamount to withdrawing from the semi-engagement that existed between them. Their friendship drifted on for a year or two, and by the end of 1860 it was over.

From the beginning of the Civil War Whittier's life was uneventful. His fame as a poet increased by reason of his many contributions to the Atlantic Monthly, in the founding of which he had a part, and to the Independent. The summit of his poetic career was reached in the decade of the sixties, during which appeared Home Ballads (1860); In War Time and Other Poems (1864), containing "Barbara Frietchie"; Snow-Bound (1866); The Tent on the Beach (1867); and Among the Hills (1869). In the summer of 1876 he moved to Danvers, where he lived with his cousins, the three daughters of Colonel Edmund Johnson. Here he made his place of abode almost to the time of his death, with occasional visits to Amesbury, which always continued to be his legal residence. He received numerous honors in his later days, was surrounded by friends, and had many visitors. Republican politicians still consulted him. The more important poetical works of his later years were: Miriam and Other Poems (1871), Hazel-Blossoms (1875); The Vision of Echard (1878); Saint Gregory's Guest (1886); and At Sundown (1890). A complete edition of his works, revised and corrected, in seven volumes, appeared in 1888-89. He died at Hampton Falls and was buried at Amesbury.

Whittier was a tall man with piercing dark eyes and a swarthy complexion, and was somewhat vain with respect to his appearance. Although a genial person, he would occasionally flash out in anger when people did not agree with him. He resented the reputation he had of being a saint. That he was of heroic spirit is beyond question, for he sacrificed much, endured abuse, and faced physical perils in his devotion to the cause which he espoused. He had a fine sense of humor and was adept at telling amusing tales. Toward other people's beliefs he was in general tolerant, and he sympathized keenly with those who were persecuted on account of their race, color, or creed. His religious spirit as expressed in his poems was such that not a few of them have found a permanent place in the hymnals of various denominations. With respect to industrial questions he was always extremely conservative, but he supported the operatives in the Amesbury-Salisbury strike of 1852 (T. F. Currier, in New England Quarterly, March 1935). As a means of settling the entire economic problem he recommended obedience to the Golden Rule and the saving of money. He tried to justify the existing system by showing that the laborer derived benefits from his poverty. In his poem, "The Problem," published in 1877, the year of the great railroad strikes, he assailed the labor leaders who sought palliative reforms, as "demagogues" proffering their vain and evil counsels. In the late eighties he refused to aid William Dean Howells in endeavoring to obtain clemency for the convicted Chicago anarchists.

Whittier's standing as a poet has somewhat declined since his day. "Snow-Bound" is still usually considered his masterpiece. A few of his ballads, like "Skipper Iresons's Ride" and "Telling the Bees," and religious poems like "The Eternal Goodness" are still much read and quoted. Critical schools differ as to which of his poems are superior-those treating of rural life or those dealing with colonial history. There is an increasing tendency, however; to regard him as a prophet and to emphasize the value of his abolition poems, in spite of the fact that the occasion that gave rise to them has passed, for the spirit that prompted them was the same spirit that inspired Milton and Shelley to battle against oppression and tyranny. "It is as a poet of human freedom that he must live if he is to hold his own with posterity .... He has not a well-defined domain of mastery save perhaps in the verses inspired by the contest over slavery" (W. P. Trent and John Erskine, Great American Writers, pp. 144, 147). While some of the abolition poems are still read and admired, notably "Massachusetts to Virginia," there are others which deserve to be revived.

[The largest collection of manuscript material is to be found in the Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts, which also has photostats and typewritten copies of letters to be found in libraries elsewhere. Whittier letters are preserved in the Library of Congress, the John Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California, the New York Public Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the libraries of Harvard and Yale. The largest collection of printed material by and about Whittier, and some manuscript material is in the Haverhill Public Library, the New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, and the Boston Public Library For other sources, see S. T. Pickard, Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier (2 volumes, 1894; I volume, 1907), and Whittier-Land (1904); W. S. Kennedy, John Greenleaf Whittier-His Life, Genius, and Writings (1882) and John G. Whittier, the Poet of Freedom (1892); F. H. Underwood, John Greenleaf Whittier: A Biog. (1884); T. W. Higginson, John Greenleaf Whittier (1902); G. R. Carpenter, John Greenleaf Whittier (1903); A. J. Woodman, Reminiscences of John Greenleaf Whittier's Life at Oak Knoll, Danvers (1908); John Albree, Whittier Correspondence from Oak Knoll Collections, (1911); M. V. Denervaud, ed., Whittier's Unknown Romance: Letters to Elizabeth Lloyd (1922); F. M. 'Pray, A Study of Whittier's Apprenticeship as Poet: Dealing with Poems Written between 1825 and I835 not available in the Poet's Collected Works (1930); Albert Mordell, Quaker Militant, John Greenleaf Whittier (1933). More complete bibliographies are in the Cambridge History of American Literature, II (1918), 436-51, and in Quaker Militant, pp. 333-43. An exhaustive bibliography by T. F. Currier has been announced for publication.].

A. M.



WILLEY, Austin, born 1806, reformer, abolitionist, clergyman. Congregational minister. Editor of Advocate of Freedom, which was an antislavery newspaper that had been founded in Brunswick, Maine, in 1838. He edited the paper until the end of the Civil War. Published Liberty Party newspaper, Liberty Standard. He wrote The History of the Anti-Slavery Cause in State and Nation.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 518; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 301, 405n12; Willey, Austin, The History of the Anti-Slavery Cause in State and Nation, Portland, Maine, 1886; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York).


Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI. pp. 518:

WILLEY, Austin, reformer, born in Campton, New Hampshire, 24 June, 1806. He was educated at Pembroke academy, studied at Bangor theological seminary, where he was graduated in 1837, and in 1839 became editor of the “Advocate of Freedom,” an anti-slavery paper that had been established in the preceding year at Brunswick, Maine, which he conducted until the abolition of slavery. He was also an early advocate of prohibition, and contributed to the adoption of the Maine law. He has published in book-form a “Family Memorial” (San Francisco, 1865), and “History of the Anti-Slavery Cause in State and Nation” (Portland, 1886). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI. pp. 518.



WOOD, Samuel Newitt, 1825-1891, New York, newspaper publisher, lawyer, politician, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist. His home was a station on the Underground Railroad. Active in the anti-slavery Liberty Party. Served as an officer in the Union Army, attaining the rank of Brigadier General in 1864.

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 125; Moon, William Prairie Earth, 1998)



WOOD, Samuel Newitt, 1825-1891, New York, newspaper publisher, lawyer, politician, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist. His home was a station on the Underground Railroad. Active in the anti-slavery Liberty Party. Member of the Republican Party. Served as an officer in the Union Army, attaining the rank of Brigadier General in 1864.

(Drake, 1950, p. 125; Moon, William Prairie Earth, 1998).



WRIGHT, Elizur Jr., 1804-1885, New York City, reformer, editor, abolitionist leader. Vice president, 1833-1835, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), December 1833. Leader, Liberty Party. Editor of the Massachusetts Abolitionist, founded 1839.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 177, 179, 245, 301; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 61, 63, 74, 132, 135, 156, 193; Goodheart, 1990; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 189, 190, 256, 322, 339, 364; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 6-8, 13-14, 16-17, 20, 44, 46, 67, 72; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 46, 521-522; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 621-622; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 548-549; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 24, p. 11).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 548-549:

WRIGHT, ELIZUR (February 12, 1804-November 21, 1885), reformer, actuary, was born at South Canaan, Connecticut, probably a descend ant of Thomas Wright, an early settler of Wethersfield. His father, also Elizur Wright, mathematician of parts and graduate of Yale, was, like his forebears, a farmer and teacher; and his mother, Clarissa Richards, came from a long line of New England sea-captains. In 1810 the family moved to Tallmadge, Ohio, in the Western Reserve, where the father cleared a farm and founded an academy. Here young Elizur prepared for college. He worked his way through Yale, graduating with distinction in mathematics in 1826. During the following year, as master of Groton Academy, he fell in love with one of his pupils, Susan Clark, whom he married September 13, 1829. A professorship in the newly founded Western Reserve College, then located at Hudson, called him back to Ohio.

In 1832, the genius of anti-slavery evangelism, Theodore Weld [q.v.], visited Hud so n and moved not only Wright but also his colleague, Beriah Green [q.v.], and the president, George Storrs, to agitate immediate abolition in the Western Reserve. Amid rising hostility, Storrs was struck down with tuberculosis, Green accepted the presidency of Oneida Institute, and Wright resigned. Through Weld, he was appointed secretary to the New York Anti-Slavery Society, and, after its organization in December 1833, corresponding secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. In this capacity he edited the Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine (1835-37) and the society's tracts, wrote its reports, and supervised the agents in the field. While his powers were exceeded by others in the movement; his devotion was unsurpassed; and during the crucial years of the agitation, 1834-38, he was indispensable. In 1839, when various controversies began to divide the movement, Wright resigned to become editor of the Massachusetts Abolitionist, organ of the conservative opponents of William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.]. Here he advocated third-party action by abolitionists so vigorously that he was dropped at the end of the year.

For a time, Wright and his growing family approached actual want. With characteristic courage, he published Fables of La Fontaine (2 volumes, 1841), a translation made for his children, and sold the books from door to door at home and then in England. Upon his return in 1846 he started a newspaper in Boston, the Weekly Chronotype, in which he tilted against the protective tariff, slavery, and life insurance companies. Like its editor, the paper was too individualistic to represent organized reform, but its success was such that in 1850 it was purchased by the Weekly Commonwealth, organ of the Free Soil party, with Wright as editor. Unable to conform to party discipline, he was dismissed in 1852, though at the time he was defendant in the Shadrach case, one of the most famous of the fugitive-slave trials.

Meanwhile, several life insurance companies, stirred to self-examination by Wright's strictures upon their methods, employed him to prepare tables which would show total reserves required for safety. These tables enabled life insurance companies for the first time to formulate reserve policies which were exactly adapted to their obligations. Aware, however, that many companies were interested primarily in profits and salaries, in 1853 Wright began lobbying in the Massachusetts legislature for a law to force all companies, doing business in the state to maintain adequate reserves. His lobby was a one-man affair, and it was not until 1858 that his effort was rewarded by legislation (Acts and Resolves ... of Massachusetts, 1858, ch. 177). Its passage forced large companies everywhere to conform their reserve policies to the law in order to do business in Massachusetts and to compete with Massachusetts companies outside the state. Wright, being the only one who understood the intricacies of the new statute, was appointed commissioner of insurance to see to its enforcement. Through his annual reports, in which unsound companies and dishonest practices were pilloried, he secured an extraordinary degree of conformity to sound insurance practice throughout the nation. Though the title often applied to him, "father of life insurance," misstates his censor's function, his efforts probably had more to do with the development of sound standards for life insurance than those of any other man in its history.

In his annual reports, Wright maintained that the reserves of life insurance companies belonged in justice to their policy holders, and in 1861, against the united opposition of the insurance companies, he secured the passage of the famous non-forfeiture law (Acts and Resolves, 1861, ch. 186), by which companies were forbidden to appropriate reserves to their own use. This triumph roused such hostility that Wright was ousted in 1866 by legislation abolishing his office. He was immediately retained as actuary by several companies, at a high salary for his day, and continued his "lobby for the widow and orphan." After thirteen years more of unremitting effort, in 1880 he secured legislation which compelled insurance companies to pay policy holders in cash the full value of lapsed policies (Ibid., 1880, ch. 232). In order to retain their business, companies outside the state promptly conformed their practice to the Massachusetts law. Meanwhile, as a private citizen Wright continued to publish his findings of fraud, theft, perjury, and bribery in insurance company practice, especially in New York; though it was not until 1905, a generation later, that the state of New York was moved to action against these practices. In his last years he worked successfully for a great park for Boston on Middlesex Fells, for conservation in the West, and for other reforms. In the midst of these activities, he died.

Elizur and Susan Wright had eighteen children, of whom six died in infancy. Of their descendants, many have achieved high distinction in various forms of public service.

[P. G. Wright, "Life of Elizur Wright" (MS.), in the possession of Prof. Quincy Wright, University of Chicago; F. P. Stearns, Cambridge Sketches (1905); Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke (2 volumes, 1934) ed. by G. H. Barnes and D. L. Dumond; H. R. Stiles, The History of Ancient Wethersfield (1904), volume 11 (Curtis Wright, Genealogy . . . of Descendants of John Wright (1915); F. B. Dexter, Biography Sketchy roads. Yale, College, volume IV (1907) Ohio Observer, 1832-34; Minutes of the Executive" Committee, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1835-40 (MS.), Boston Public Library; Massachusetts Abolitionist, 1839-40; Weekly Chronotype, 1846-50; B. J. Hendrick, "The Story of Life Insurance," McClure's Magazine, 54 c., June 1906; The "Bible of Life Insurance" (1932), reprinting Massachusetts Reports on Life Insurance 1859-1865 (1865"), together with biographical sketch of Wright; Ellen Wright, Elizur Wright's Appeals for the Middlesex) Fells (1893); Boston Transcript, November 23, 24, 1885; Wright's many pamphlets and books.]

G. H. B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 621-622:

WRIGHT, Elizur, reformer, born in South Canaan, Connecticut, 12 February, 1804; died in Medford, Massachusetts, 21 November, 1885. His father, Elizur (1762-1845), was graduated at Yale in 1781, and became known for his mathematical learning and devotion to the Presbyterian faith. In 1810 the family removed to Tallmadge, Ohio, and the son worked on the farm and attended an academy that was conducted by his father. His home was often the refuge for fugitive slaves, and he early acquired anti-slavery opinions. He was graduated at Yale in 1826, and taught in Groton, Massachusetts. In 1829-'33 he was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy in Western Reserve college, Hudson, Ohio. Mr. Wright attended the convention in Philadelphia in December, 1833, that formed the American anti-slavery society, of which he was chosen secretary, and, removing to New York, he took part in editing the “Emancipator.” He conducted the paper called “Human Rights” in 1834-'5, and the “Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine” in 1835-'8, and through his continued opposition to slavery incurred the enmity of its advocates. His house was once besieged by a mob, and an attempt was made to kidnap him and convey him to North Carolina. He removed to Boston in 1839, and became editor of the “Massachusetts Abolitionist.” For several years he was connected with the press, and in 1846 he established the “Chronotype,” a daily newspaper which he conducted until it was merged in the “Commonwealth” (1850), of which he was for a time the editor. Mr. Wright was twice indicted and tried for libel, in consequence of his severe strictures on the liquor interests while publishing the “Chronotype,” and again in 1851 for aiding the rescue in Boston of Shadrach, a runaway slave. Between 1853 and 1858, besides editing the “Railroad Times,” he gave his attention to invention and mechanics, constructing a spike-making machine, a water-faucet, and an improvement in pipe-coupling. He patented the last two, and manufactured them for a short time. In 1853 he published “Life Insurance Valuation Tables” (2d ed., revised and enlarged, 1871), and in 1858 he secured an act of the Massachusetts legislature to organize an insurance commission, on a basis that required the annual valuation of the policy liabilities of all life-insurance companies in the state. He was appointed insurance commissioner of Massachusetts under this act, which office he held until 1866. He obtained the passage of the Massachusetts non-forfeiture act of 1861, and also its substitute in 1880, which was embodied with some change in the insurance codification bill of 1887. He devised a new formula for finding the values of policies of various terms, now known as the “accumulation formula,” and, in order to facilitate his work, invented and afterward patented (1869) the arithmeter, a mechanical contrivance for multiplication and division, based on the logarithmic principle. Afterward he became consulting actuary for life-insurance companies. He was a delegate to the convention of 1840, which formed the Liberty party and nominated James G. Birney for the presidency, and edited “The Free American” in 1841. He was a promoter of the convention at Philadelphia on 4 July, 1876, which organized the National liberal league to support state secularization, and was the second president of the league, being twice re-elected. He was a member of the Forestry association, was instrumental in obtaining the Massachusetts forestry act of 1882, and labored for a permanent forest preserve. He wrote an introduction to Whittier's “Ballads, and other Poems” (London, 1844); and published a translation in verse of La Fontaine's “Fables” (2 vols., Boston, 1841; 2d ed., New York, 1859); “Savings Bank Life Insurance, with Illustrative Tables” (1872); “The Politics and Mysteries of Life Insurance” (1873); and “Myron Holley, and what he did for Liberty and True Religion,” a contribution to anti-slavery records (1882). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI. pp. 621-622.

Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.