He always preferred to win his cause from an enemy
peacefully. When he was charged with hating the people of the South, he
wrote:--
"I was never an enemy to the South or the holders of slaves. I inherited
from my Quaker ancestry hatred of slavery, but not of slaveholders. To
every call of suffering or distress in the South, I have promptly
responded to the extent of my ability. I was one of the very first to
recognize the rare gift of the Carolinian poet Timrod, and I was the
intimate friend of the lamented Paul H. Hayne, though both wrote fiery
lyrics against the North."
With a few striking exceptions, his most popular poems were written after
the close of the Civil War. His greatest poem, _Snow-Bound_, was published
in the year after the cessation of hostilities (1866). His last thirty
years were a time of comparative calm. He wrote poetry as the spirit moved
him. He had grown to be loved everywhere at the North, and his birthday,
like Longfellow's, was the occasion for frequent celebrations. For years
before the close of the war, in fact until _Snow-Bound_ appeared, he was
very poor, but the first edition of that poem brought him in ten thousand
dollars, and after that he was never again troubled by poverty.
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