These
are called "Biglow Papers" because the chief author is represented to be
Hosea Biglow, a typical New England farmer. The immediate occasion of the
first series of these _Papers_ was the outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846.
Lowell said in after years, "I believed our war with Mexico to be
essentially a war of false pretences, and that it would result in widening
the boundaries and so prolonging the life of slavery." The second series of
these _Papers_, dealing with our Civil War, began to be published in the
_Atlantic Monthly_ in 1862. The poem lives to-day, however, not for its
censure of the war or for its attack on slavery, but for its expression of
the mid-nineteenth century New England ideals, hard common sense, and dry
humor. Where shall we turn for a more incisive statement of the Puritan's
attitude toward pleasure?
"Pleasure doos make us Yankees kind o' winch,
Ez though't wuz sunthin' paid for by the inch;
But yit we du contrive to worry thru,
Ef Dooty tells us thet the thing's to du,
An' kerry a hollerday, ef we set out,
Ez stiddily ez though't wuz a redoubt."
The homely New England common-sense philosophy is in evidence throughout
the _Papers_.
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