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The American Civil War

Longfellow published “Paul Revere’s Ride” on the eve of the Civil War, amidst rising tensions that would soon rend the nation into North and South. Northern states had already outlawed the institution of slavery, and they protested the establishment of new slave states. By contrast, Southern states depended on slave labor, and they worried that any limit placed on slavery portended the end of the institution altogether. The tension over the future of American slavery came to a head in 1860 with the election of President Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the establishment of slave states in the West. At first seven, then eleven slave states declared their secession from the Union and, in 1861, organized under the banner of the Confederate flag. When “Paul Revere’s Ride” appeared in the January 1861 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, North Carolina was on the verge of seceding from the nation. The war thus had not yet begun, but the rift in the Union could already be felt. Longfellow, who was an avowed abolitionist, sought to galvanize readers in the North around what he felt to be the inalienable right of freedom—precisely at a moment when debates over slavery centered the question of who gets to be free.

The Fireside Poets

Literary historians often list Longfellow among a group of nineteenth-century writers from New England, collectively known as the “Fireside Poets.” These poets relied on conventional poetic forms to write verses on themes related to history, domestic life, and morality. From a twenty- first-century perspective, these poets often seem conservative, and the staunch traditionalism of their choices of form and theme went out of fashion long ago. However, the Fireside Poets enjoyed unprecedented popularity during their time. Schoolchildren memorized their poems for recitation, and families regularly gathered around the hearth in the evenings to read their verse aloud—hence the “fireside” reference in the name. In addition to Longfellow, who was the most popular of all, the Fireside Poets included William Cullen Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., James Russell Lowell, and John Greenleaf Whittier. Though these poets often emphasized traditional and nationalist values, some of them were also seen as American inheritors of the European Romantic traditions. Longfellow in particular adopted some key Romantic images, and he was influenced by the Romantics’ fascination with the French and American Revolutions. In “Paul Revere’s Ride,” his nationalism and Romanticism come together in the sweeping vision he presents of Revere’s legendary ride through the New England countryside.

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