A child prodigy, William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) developed a passion for the written word at an early age. As he grew up, Bryant became a successful poet who promoted nature conservation, including advocating for the creation of Central Park in New York City. In his later years, Bryant used his position as a newspaper editor and leader of public opinion to sway the country toward ending slavery.
Bryant was born in 1794 in a log cabin near Cummington, Massachusetts, to physician Peter Bryant and Sarah Snell. Snell’s family had arrived in New England on the Mayflower in 1620.
At a young age, Bryant showed a superior intellectual ability, translating Latin poems when he was 10. When he was 13, Bryant published his first poem, “The Embargo,” a political satire aimed at President Thomas Jefferson. At 16, Bryant attended Williams College where he started as a sophomore.
He wanted to study law at Yale, but he withdrew due to financial constraints and began studying law under a private tutor. He was admitted to the bar in 1815 and soon became a lawyer.
Poetry Wins Out
While he practiced law for nearly a decade, he knew poetry was his true passion and kept writing. During this time, Bryant’s father began submitting some of Bryant’s poems to publishers without his son’s knowledge.“When the young poet left Cummington to begin his law studies, he left the manuscript of this incomparable poem among his papers in the house of his father, who found it after his departure,” wrote American critic and poet R.H. Stoddard in Bryant’s 1880 book “Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant.”
“‘Here are some lines that our William has been writing,’ he said to a lady to whom he showed them. She read them, and, raising her eyes to the face of Dr. Bryant, burst into tears—a tribute to the genius of his son in which he was not ashamed to join.”
In 1817, the North American Review established Bryant’s career as a poet when it published his poem, “Thanatopsis” (named after the Greek word for “meditation on death”), which he'd written when he was 17. Bryant’s poetry touched people of every social class.
Through his interest in geology and nature conservancy, Bryant later became friends with artist Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School of painting. When Cole died in 1848, Bryant wrote a eulogy-poem for his funeral. To thank him for this poem, businessman and art collector Jonathan Sturges commissioned a painting for Bryant.
Bryant married in 1821 and decided to move his family to New York City in 1825 to pursue a literary career. He worked as co-editor of the New York Review and Athenaeum Magazine during his first two years in New York.
Mr. Lincoln
At first, Bryant was a part of the anti-slavery faction of the Democratic Party. He then moved on to help found the Republican Party. Once war became a reality, Bryant was one of the first Republicans who supported Abraham Lincoln as the party’s presidential candidate. In fact, Bryant famously gave a speech that many say secured President Lincoln the Republican nomination for the 1860 presidential election.However, after helping President Lincoln gain office, Bryant grew impatient with President Lincoln’s emancipation policy. His frustration prompted him to become the President of the Emancipation League when it was formed in New York City in the spring of 1862.
“The people, we believe, have still confidence in Mr. Lincoln; they are persuaded of his entire honesty; and they know that he means to do right in respect to the honor as well as the interests of the country,” Bryant wrote in an editorial published in The Evening Post on July 7, 1862, according to “Politics and A Belly-full: The Journalist Career of William Cullen Bryant” by Curtiss Johnson.
Johnson continues: “But they suspect him, at the same time, of a great deal of indecision. He has trusted too much to his subordinates; he has not been sufficiently peremptory with them, either with his generals or his secretaries; and his whole administration had been marked by a certain tone of languor and want of earnestness which has not corresponded with the wishes of the people. He has taken the advice of politicians rather than listen to the beatings of the great heart of the people.”
Despite his disappointment in the Lincoln administration, Bryant mourned President Lincoln’s death in 1865. He wrote an editorial memorializing him and a hymn for the President’s funeral in New York City. Bryant would retain his role as The Evening Post’s editor in chief until his death in 1878. He passed away suddenly, suffering from complications from an accidental fall during a ceremony in New York’s Central Park.
