The Biglow Papers
Biglow Papers, The,two series of satirical verses in Yankee dialect by Lowell, the first written in opposition to the Mexican War and the second in support of the North during the Civil War. The first of the verses appeared in The Boston Courier (1846), and the first series was published in book form in 1848, while the second appeared in the Atlantic Monthly during the Civil War and was collected in 1867. Both are purportedly written by the young New England farmer Hosea Biglow, and edited with a complicated pseudo-critical apparatus by Homer Wilbur, “Pastor of the First Church in Jaalam.”
Of the nine “letters” in the first series, three represent versified epistles from Hosea's friend Birdofredom Sawin, Private in the Massachusetts Regiment, who swallows the propaganda of “manifest destiny” but comes to disappointment and disillusion. (“Nimepunce a day fer killin' folks comes kind o' low fer murder.”) The...
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