The Present Crisis
by James Russell Lowell
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Subject(s)Mexican–American War
Publication date1845 (1845)

"The Present Crisis" is an 1845 poem by James Russell Lowell. It was written as a protest against the Mexican–American War. Decades later, it became the inspiration for the title of The Crisis, the magazine published by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Composition and publication history

James Russell Lowell, c. 1844–1845

Lowell wrote the poem at a time when the United States government was considering the annexation of Texas as a state allowing slavery, which Lowell and others opposed because it would increase power in the South.[1] Further, he worried that the precedent would be set to expand slavery into California and the southwest.[2] In 1844, John Greenleaf Whittier, a poet actively working for the antislavery movement, asked Lowell to write a poem to inspire others. In a letter to Lowell, Whittier wrote: "Give me one that shall be to our cause what the song of Rouget de Lisle was to the French Republicans", referring to "La Marseillaise", now the national anthem of France.[3]

The result was Lowell's poem, first published as "Verses Suggested by the Present Crisis" in the Boston Courier for December 11, 1845, before being included in his compilation Poems as "The Present Crisis" in 1848.[4] The poem was immediately successful, both critically and among readers, in part by invoking the country's past as a way to remind people of the present day to strive to be on the right side of history.[5] It rapidly became an anthem of the antislavery movement and was quoted by antislavery leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison and others.[3] Modern scholar Marcus Wood has noted that "if abolition had a single poetic anthem then this was it".[5]

Lowell also expressed the country's anxiety and distrust during the Mexican–American War in his 1848 satire, The Biglow Papers.[6] In the book, which became immediately popular, Lowell used black comedy to depict what the war meant to the United States and proponents of slavery.[2]

Poem

When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe, When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro; At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart, And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart.

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill, Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod, Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod.

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong; Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;— In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand, Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land? Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong, And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.

Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see, That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea; Not an ear in court or market for the low, foreboding cry Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly; Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,— Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,— "They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."

Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood, Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood, Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day, Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey;— Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play?

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes,—they were souls that stood alone, While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone, Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine, By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design.

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track, Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back, And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned.

For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn.

'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves, Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;— Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time? Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that made Plymouth Rock sublime?

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's; But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free, Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea.

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires, Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires; Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay, From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day?

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth; Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be, Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.

Legacy

In the summer of 1910, when members of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People were preparing to create a magazine for the organization, Mary White Ovington mentioned Lowell's poem "The Present Crisis". A board member responded, "There is the name of your magazine." The publication was titled The Crisis, and W. E. B. Du Bois served as its first editor.[7] Martin Luther King Jr. frequently quoted the poem in his speeches and sermons.[8] The poem was also the source of the hymn "Once to Every Man and Nation".[9]

On February 11, 2021, an excerpt from "The Present Crisis" was quoted by Dr. Barry Black as part of the opening prayer at the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.[10]

References

  1. ↑ Painter, F. V. N. Introduction to American Literature. Boston: Sibley & Company, 1916: 571–572.
  2. 1 2 Pierpaoli, Paul G., Jr. The Encyclopedia of the Mexican-American War: A Political, Social, and Military History (volume I), Spencer Tucker (editor). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2013: 372. ISBN 978-1-85109-853-8.
  3. 1 2 Sankovitch, Nina. The Lowells of Massachusetts: An American Family. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2017: 179. ISBN 9781250069207.
  4. ↑ Cooke, George Willis. A Bibliography of James Russell Lowell. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company 1906: 67.
  5. 1 2 Gradert, Kenyon. Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2020: 108. ISBN 978-0-226-69402-3.
  6. ↑ Rrodríguez, J. Javier. "The U.S.–Mexican War in James Russell Lowell's The Biglow Papers", Arizona Quarterly. Volume 63, Number 3 (Autumn 2007): 1–2.
  7. ↑ Smith, Jessie Carney, and Linda T. Wynn. Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience. Canton, MI: Visible Ink Press, 2009: 132. ISBN 978-1-57859-192-3.
  8. ↑ The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr., by Martin Luther King, Clayborne Carson, Peter Holloran, Ralph Luker, Penny A. Russell, vol. 1 at 417 n.2.
  9. ↑ Peterson, William J. and Ardythe Peterson. The Complete Book of Hymns. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2006: 185. ISBN 978-1-4143-0933-0
  10. ↑ "House of Representatives | Senate" (PDF). Congressional Record. 167 (24). February 9, 2021.
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