John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. Although he received little formal education, he was an avid reader who studied his father's six books on Quakerism until their teachings became the foundation of his ideology. He was heavily influenced by the doctrines of his religion, particularly its stress on humanitarianism, compassion, and social responsibility. First introduced to poetry by a teacher, Whittier published his first poem in 1826 in William Lloyd Garrison's Newburyport Free Press. In June of 1833, he published the antislavery pamphlet Justice and Expediency, and from there dedicated the next twenty years of his life to the abolitionist cause. He was editor of The National Era; one of the most influential abolitionist newspapers in the North. For the next ten years it featured the best of his writing, both as prose and poetry.
1807-1892
John Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States.
Although he received little formal education, he was an avid reader who studied his father's six books on Quakerism until their teachings became the foundation of his ideology. Whittier was heavily influenced by the doctrines of his religion, particularly its stress on humanitarianism, compassion, and social responsibility.
Whittier produced two collections of antislavery poetry: Poems Written during the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States, between 1830 and 1838 and Voices of Freedom (1846). He was an elector in the presidential election of 1860 and of 1864, voting for Abraham Lincoln both times.
The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 ended both slavery and his public cause, so Whittier turned to other forms of poetry for the remainder of his life.
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