The Social Lives of Poems in Nineteenth-Century America. Michael C. Cohen
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be quite the just word…. In fact, nothing quite like them is to be found in eighteenth- or nineteenth-century literature … these versified outbursts of indignation, satire, reproach, scorn, and exhortation, all mingled with specific arguments and supplications for divine aid, reached the ears and hearts of millions … who would never have read prose pamphlets or have been influenced by them.26
Versified outbursts of scorn and supplication reach ears and hearts otherwise beyond the grasp of more formal discourse (prose pamphlets, congressional debates, etc.); in this description, free circulation aligns with freed verse, verse that can move freely because it is conventionally marked. The conventions of the newspaper antislavery poem elicit readings unique to the newspaper, because readers encounter the poem amid articles, editorials, and advertisements pertaining to the events the poem described. For instance, the Liberator printed “Stanzas for the Times” next to an article by Whittier reporting how he had been attacked by a mob in New Hampshire; this place on the page (the front page, no less) provided the poem with evidence to support its urgent tone. The high level of context and recognition between the poem and its readers demonstrates not only that newspaper antislavery poems are a distinct genre but also that the “speaker” of the poem is, in this case, Whittier, and his readers (readers of the Liberator) would know him and would know themselves to be addressed by him. This conclusion seems broadly true for newspaper antislavery poems—they do not have abstract, anonymous speakers but function as direct address between author and reader—they are heard, not overheard, and the space of the newspaper determined that they would be heard (or read) collectively.
We can best understand the political efficacy of antislavery verse by detailing its production, distribution, and consumption: the newspaper, the pamphlet, the broadside, and the oration are not incidental sites for these poems but are instead crucial to their form and meaning. Poems in ephemeral settings must be understood in relation to the mobility of their formats, which differ widely from the anthology or single-authored book (Whittier wrote poems for fifteen years before he published a book of them under his own name). But the combination of topical subjects and ephemeral formats also meant that republication changed poems’ meanings. When Whittier reprinted “Stanzas for the Times” in May 1837 as the conclusion to a pamphlet of Adams’s speeches against the Pinckney resolution, this new setting made the poem a comment on the gag rule and legitimized it by association with Adams (a juxtaposition made possible by the pamphlet format of Letters from John Quincy Adams to His Constituents). Placing the poem in this context gave it a different meaning, without changing any of its original lines.
Another example can highlight the stakes of an antislavery poetics that advocates a politics (both abolition and free speech) in the service of a sectional spirit. “Lines,” Whittier’s response to “the passage of Pinckney’s Resolutions in the House of Representatives, and of Calhoun’s ‘Bill of Abominations’ in the Senate of the United States,” also grounded New England identity in the historical prerogatives of free communication and association.27 Like “Stanzas for the Times,” “Lines” plays with the generic sense of its own portability, which enforces its message of free speech while complicating its coherence as a poem. After publication in June 1836, “Lines” appeared in many formats, under several titles, and in relation to various political and historical contexts, over a period of fifty years.28 The poem internalizes the temporal disjuncture between immediate events and long-term purposes by juxtaposing New England’s “ancient freedom” with contingencies of the moment, “Mammon’s lure or Party’s wile” (273). To the “Sons of old freemen,” Whittier asks, “do we but inherit / Their names alone? // Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched within us … To silence now?”
Now, when our land to ruin’s brink is verging,
In God’s name, let us speak while there is time!
Now, when the padlocks for our lips are forging,
Silence is crime! (Ibid.)
Like “Stanzas for the Times,” “Lines” presents antislavery as a struggle over speech, between people whose identities derive value and meaning from historical associations that must be defended against current exigencies—in order to live up to “the old Pilgrim spirit,” “Our New England” must speak in the face of “Mammon’s lure or Party’s wile.” If one purpose of Calhoun’s act was to assert local control over a national system (the U.S. Post Office), Whittier’s poem draws out a further sectionalist consequence—passage of Calhoun’s act would constitute Southern dominion over ancient New England privileges. In a sign of things to come, a battle over communication and discourse becomes a fight between the irreconcilable prerogatives of different sections. The only alternative to those “padlocks for our lips” is a voice that emerges from the geography of New England—“her wild, green mountains … her rough coast, and isles”—and from “her unbought farmer … her free laborer … From each and all, if God hath not forsaken / Our land” (ibid). Their voice will be borne on Northern winds “Over Potomac’s to St. Mary’s wave,” where “buried Freedom shall awake to hear it.”
Oh, let that voice go forth! The bondman sighing
By Santee’s wave, in Mississippi’s cane,
Shall feel the hope, within his bosom dying,
Revive again.
Let it go forth! The millions who are gazing
Sadly upon us from afar shall smile,
And unto God devout thanksgiving raising,
Bless us the while.
Oh for your ancient freedom, pure and holy
For the deliverance of a groaning earth,
For the wronged captive, bleeding, crushed, and lowly,
Let it go forth! (273–74)
“Men of the North-land” need only speak to assert their freedom; what they say is less important. This expression of New England identity will necessarily cut against Southern tyranny; in its very form, and regardless of its content, the “People’s voice” will transcend sectional lines and revive the spirits of despairing slaves. Even if “A People’s voice” does not free slaves directly, “Lines” comes as close as any of Whittier’s poems to connecting Northern free speech with the liberation of Southern slaves. “A People’s voice” is thus the matrix of agency and freedom, and it is materialized by the poem, which “speaks out” against slavery, in defiance of Pinckney and Calhoun’s proscriptions (never even mentioned in the poem), by virtue of its public existence. It is the fact of a voice going forth, the movement of the poem in itself, more than any particular message, that accomplishes the political work desired in the poem’s lines.
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