James Madison Bell

Poet and activist

• Born: April 3, 1826
• Birthplace: Gallipolis, Ohio
• Died: 1902
• Place of death: Toledo, Ohio

Bell was one of the earliest known oral poets in the United States. He actively supported the abolition of slavery before and during the Civil War through public readings of his poetry and his own oratory. After the war, he sought to encourage African Americans to take their full place in American society.

Early Life

James Madison Bell was born in the Maumee River area of northern Ohio on April 3, 1826, and later came to be called “The Bard of the Maumee.” His family moved to Cincinnati in 1842 and lived there until 1853.

Bell went to work with his brother-in-law, George Knight, and both men became skilled plasterers. In 1847, he married Louisiana Sanderline, by whom he had seven children. Bell moved his family to Chatham, Ontario, Canada, in 1854. The town was an important stop on the Underground Railroad for escaping slaves, and Bell found himself involved in the emancipation movement. He particularly admired John Brown, whose raid on the government arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) led to his public execution in 1859. Bell sought to raise funds and enlist men to help Brown’s radical cause.

Life’s Work

Bell moved to San Francisco in 1860, leaving his family in Canada. He stayed there during the Civil War. During that period, he made his living as a plasterer but devoted himself to the cause of abolition. He made a name for himself at various public meetings and rallies by declaiming his long poems. These were in the rhetorical tradition of such mid-nineteenth century writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Cullen Bryant, and John Greenleaf Whittier. They typically ran some ninety lines and were written mainly in rhymed couplets of iambic tetrameter.

The first of Bell’s declamation poems that has been preserved was delivered on August 1, 1862, the anniversary of the emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies. The poem later was printed as a pamphlet. Next came Bell’s most famous poem, “The Day and the War,” which also was printed. Delivered as part of an oration on January 1, 1864, celebrating President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the poem was dedicated to Brown, “The Hero, Saint and Martyr of Harpers Ferry.” It covers the period of slavery, the Civil War, and emancipation. Bell appealed to the North to keep fighting and attacked European powers that failed to give the North their full support. The poem also includes a section devoted to the black soldiers fighting in the Union Army, especially the Massachusetts 54th Regiment. These soldiers were significant to Bell because they disproved the myth that African Americans could not fight bravely. The poem likens them to the Light Brigade, immortalized in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Bell also looks to the future and concludes by affirming Lincoln’s importance in bringing about future unity and prosperity. The pamphlet was printed with an introduction by the editor of the Pacific Appeal.

Bell moved back to Ohio in 1866 and settled in Toledo. The same year, his third long poem was printed. Delivered on the third anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, it was titled “The Progress of Liberty” and addressed similar themes as his previous work. This poem, however, ended with the wish that President Andrew Johnson would take up Lincoln’s policies. Before leaving California, Bell had become involved in the Republican Party, and this involvement continued after he returned to Ohio. He became one of a number of important African American activists to support the Republicans at the time. Bell was elected as a county delegate to the national convention, and then a delegate at large to the 1872 convention.

During this period, Bell traveled around the country speaking to freed African Americans and giving readings of his poetry. He also became actively involved in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, especially in the Sunday school system. This continued until 1890.

In 1868, Bell wrote “Modern Moses, or My Policy Man,” which satirically attacks Johnson as a coarse amd hypocritical politician. In 1870, he wrote “The Triumph of Liberty,” which he delivered at the Detroit Opera House. One of Bell’s friends, Bishop Benjamin W. Arnett, persuaded him to publish his collected works—thirty-two poems in all. The shorter poems mostly were religious. Bell’s collected works were published in 1901. He died one year later in Toledo, Ohio.

Significance

Bell’s main significance was as a black activist whose activism took a literary form, especially an oral form, rather than a written one. He was one of a group of black activists who emerged during the Civil War who later adhered to the Republican Party as the party Lincoln had reformulated and which supported further black emancipation. His activism also took on forms of educational self-help, and was of an idealistic rather than practical form.

Bibliography

Bell, James Madison. The Poetical Works of James Madison Bell. 1901. La Vergne, Tenn.: Kessinger, 2009. This collection of Bell’s works includes a biographical sketch of the poet written by Benjamin W. Arnett.

Logan, Rayford W., and Michael R. Winston, eds. Dictionary of American Negro Biography. New York: W. W. Norton, 1982. This source contains a useful reference essay on Bell.

Sherman, Joan R. Invisible Poets: Afro-Americans of the Nineteenth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1974. Puts Bell in a wider context of black writers.