The Biglow Papers by James Russell Lowell

First published: first series, 1848; second series, 1867

Type of work: Poetry

Principal characters

• Hosea Biglow, the Yankee author of the poems in The Biglow Papers
• Birdofredum Sawin, his correspondent, a Massachusetts militiaman (first series), an adopted Rebel (second series)
• Homer Wilbur, parson of the First Church of Jaalam, author of the editorial comments in The Biglow Papers

The Work:

The Biglow Papers is political satire and, as such, cannot be understood or appreciated until the reader is acquainted, first, with the policies and ideas being satirized and, second, with the conditions of publication. In short, like all satire, it must be seen in historical perspective before it can be evaluated.

There are two series of The Biglow Papers. The first is an attack, from the Whig-Abolitionist point of view, on the Mexican War and the policies of President James Polk and the proslavery forces that authorized it; the second—all but the last paper—is an attack, from the Northern Republican point of view, on the rebellious, slaveholding South, the Democrats, and the interventionist policies of England during the first years of the American Civil War; the last paper is a condemnation of the “retrograde movement” of President Andrew Johnson.

The history of the papers is rather complex. In one sense, it dates back to 1840 and the beginning of James Russell Lowell’s relationship with Maria White, who became his wife in 1844, for it was this visionary and forceful young woman who first converted him to the abolitionist cause. In any case, by the time of the outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846, Lowell had identified himself with the movement by contributions to the National Anti-Slavery Standard, which he edited for a short time. Such a radical position was more in keeping with the spirit of the Emersonians than with that of the aloof Brahmins with whom Lowell was allied by birth, and the strong influence of his wife’s personality and ideals may be inferred from the fact that Lowell grew more and more conservative in the years following her death. By the time of his own death he was once more a conservative, but, in the 1840’s, his radical leanings brought him into the camp of those idealistic New Englanders who preached freedom vociferously (and at times effectively) and those shrewd and stubborn rural Yankees who supported them for more practical reasons. The first series of The Biglow Papers arose from the interaction of these two elements. Abolitionist idealism gave it motivation; Yankee shrewdness gave it form.

The first Biglow paper appeared as a letter to the editor of the Boston Courier, a weekly Whig newspaper, in June of 1846. The letter was signed by one Ezekiel Biglow of Jaalam, Massachusetts, and its ostensible purpose was to introduce a poem by Mr. Biglow’s son, Hosea. The important thing here was the poem, an attack, in the Yankee dialect, on the recruiting of the Massachusetts regiment for service in a war which the abolitionists and their sympathizers claimed was being fought only to extend the borders of slavery.

The response to this first letter prompted Lowell to continue the poetic exertions of young Mr. Biglow. “The success of my experiment,” wrote Lowell later in the introduction to the second series, “soon began not only to astonish me, but to make me feel the responsibility of knowing I had in my hand a weapon instead of the mere fencing stick I had supposed.” Lowell, clad in the rustic armor of Hosea Biglow, entered the fray with this newfound weapon eight more times in the following two years. Five of these dialect poems are direct political attacks on the war party group and their sympathizers, the Democrats and the Cotton-Whigs (as opposed to the Conscience-Whigs, who favored the war and were more or less tolerant of slavery), particularly those to be found in Biglow’s—and Lowell’s—own Bay State. The other three provide a more general satire of the progress of the war, of the ignorance, inefficiency, and immorality of those in command, and of the mistreatment of the Massachusetts enlisted man, both as soldier and as disabled veteran.

This general satire is presented through a new character, Birdofredum Sawin, whom Lowell introduces in his second letter to the Courier. Sawin is a ne’er-do-well Yankee from Jaalam who, succumbing to the blandishments of the recruiting officer, enlists as a private in the Massachusetts regiment. From Mexico, he writes back to Hosea, who turns his letter into the Eastern Massachusetts equivalent of iambic heptameter couplets. Birdofredum’s complaints and caustic observations supply the material for Papers Two, Eight, and Nine. In the second paper, he is engaged in combat. In Papers Eight and Nine, he is released from service minus one eye and one arm; he still has two legs, though by this time one of them is wooden.

The third character of these papers does not come upon the scene until the poems were published in book form late in 1848. This character is the pastor of the First Church of Jaalam, the Reverend Homer Wilbur, who is presented as the editor of the volume. Lowell admitted eighteen years later that he needed a character who would present the more cautious side of the New England character, expressing simple common sense enlivened by conscience.

The pedantry and the long-winded self-centeredness of Wilbur adds much to the book—literally, for the learned churchman’s remarks take up more space in the volume than do the nine original poems. His verbose expatiations do, undoubtedly, allow Lowell to express those more cautious elements of the Yankee character and to extend his satire by poking fun at the excessive and distracting paraphernalia that encumber learned works. Most amusing, perhaps, are the “Notices of an Independent Press” that Biglow admittedly wrote himself and included as the lengthy material at the beginning of the volume. Besides offering amusing material, Wilbur becomes eloquent in his own right in defense of freedom. For the most part, however, Lowell’s imitation of pedantry is too realistic. Rather than acting as ballast, Wilbur almost causes the book to sink. In the end, this character’s main contribution is that of making the poems, when they finally appear, more delightful because of their contrast to his wordy prose.

The addition of Wilbur was a sign of the innate conservative caution in Lowell’s character as artist, critic, and political figure. This caution and conservatism betray themselves still more in the second series of The Biglow Papers. By the time the slavery question reached its climax, Lowell was no longer the outspoken young abolitionist radical of the 1840’s. By then he had been for six years professor of belles-lettres at Harvard (having succeeded his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to that chair in 1855), had founded and was still editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and, perhaps most important of all, had lost his wife, Maria White Lowell, and had remarried. Occasionally he is effective in the second series, especially in the letters from Birdofredum Sawin (who, after having been falsely imprisoned in the South for two years, marries a slaveholding widow and becomes a sympathizer with the Southern cause) and in the last part of the second paper, an attack on England that ends with a piece bearing the title of “Jonathan to John.”

In these he rises to the satirical heights of the original collection, but for the most part, as Lowell admitted, the papers of the second series are more studied, less spontaneous, more cautious, and less biting than those of the first. Even the quaintness of the old Yankee diction is intentionally diminished, excused by the claim that Hosea is being tutored by Parson Wilbur and is learning proper spelling and academic phraseology.

Lowell keeps the Yankee dialect to the last, but in the end his apparent need to defend its use is another indication of the dying out of his earlier satiric fire. The individual numbers of the second series were first printed in the Atlantic Monthly; when, in 1867, they were collected in book form, Lowell wrote a lengthy introduction for them. A brilliant contribution to linguistic knowledge, the preface is made concrete by Lowell’s sensitive ear for dialect, and it is documented by his voluminous reading in English and American literature. Valuable as it is in its own right, however, it is still an apology, and, when satire is apologized for, it loses much of its force, much of its reason for being.

As a whole, however, despite this decreasing force, The Biglow Papers remains an important American literary monument. First, it is important historically as a vivid expression of public opinion in a particular section of the country during an especially critical stage in the health of the United States. Second, it is important in American literary history as one of the earliest examples of dialect writing and as the very earliest example of the Yankee dialect. Most of all, it is intrinsically important as an outspoken example of independent thought, of that Yankee independence, outspokenness, and ironic humor that are a part of national tradition.

Bibliography

Arms, George. The Fields Were Green: A New View of Bryant, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell, and Longfellow, with a Selection of Their Poems. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1948. Places Lowell and his production in the context of the best popular poetry of the times. Downgrades The Biglow Papers in comparison to Lowell’s other poetry.

Broaddus, Dorothy C. Genteel Rhetoric: Writing High Culture in Nineteenth-Century Boston. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999. Lowell and other writers living in Boston in the mid-nineteenth century shared a belief that an American writer should be moral, educated, appreciative of fine art and literature, and conduct himself with genteel bearing and good manners. Broaddus discusses the life and work of these writers and describes how this vision of gentility was altered by the reality of the abolitionist movement and the Civil War.

Butler, Leslie. Critical Americans: Victorian Intellectuals and Transatlantic Liberal Reform. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Recounts how Lowell and three of his friends—writers George William Curtis, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Charles Eliot Norton—worked with British intellectuals to promote progressive and cosmopolitan reform in the decades between the 1850’s and 1890’s.

Duberman, Martin. James Russell Lowell. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966. Largely concerned with the objects of satire in The Biglow Papers: the recruiting of Massachusetts troops for the Mexican War, the institution of slavery, shoddy politicians, and American expansionism. Criticizes the poems for their prose interruptions, tiresome repetitions, and inconsistent tone and point of view.

McGlinchee, Claire. James Russell Lowell. New York: Twayne, 1967. Summarizes The Biglow Papers, stressing the youthful, zestful satire of the first series and the sagacious patriotism, vivified by the profuse use of Yankee dialect, expressed in the second series.

Rodríguez, J. Javier. “The U.S.-Mexican War in James Russell Lowell’s The Biglow Papers.” Arizona Quarterly 63, no. 3 (Autumn, 2007): 1. Examines Lowell’s complex depiction of the Mexican War, which ranges from American jingoism to a “suspicious self-criticality” and finally to a “feverishly self-aware angst that questions the validity of nations, language, knowledge, and truth itself.”

Wagenknecht, Edward. James Russell Lowell: Portrait of a Many-Sided Man. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Relates The Biglow Papers to Lowell the writer and the man, including his love of tobacco, lack of interest in drama, fondness for both Latinate and colloquial diction, vast reading experience, and political beliefs.

Wortham, Thomas. “Introduction.” In James Russell Lowell’s The Biglow Papers, First Series: A Critical Edition. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1977. Details the political background inspiring Lowell to start The Biglow Papers and accounts for the immense popularity of the work. Analyzes Lowell’s skillful handling of characterization, his use of pervasive irony, and the poetic and narrative structure of the poems.