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What is the message in the poem "The Warning"?

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet whose life spanned most of the nineteenth century, and his poem “The Warning” is exactly what its title implies: a warning against the practice of slavery in the United States at the time. Longfellow was an abolitionist and wrote a number of poems to aid in the anti-slavery movement. In “The Warning,” he draws a comparison between African-American slaves and Samson, the famous judge from Hebrew scripture, who became enslaved by the Philistines before regaining his superhuman strength, and tearing their temple to the ground, killing himself and a number of his captors in the process.
Longfellow’s poem is arguing that both the American slaves and Samson were people(s) in a fallen state of grace, “Shorn of his noble strength and forced to grind in prison.” (The source of the Biblical Samson’s power was his long hair, and he lost his strength when it was cut.) The power of Longfellow’s poem comes from casting white America as the Biblically villainous Philistines, while suggesting that the slaves were more akin to the heroic, and wronged, judge from scripture. He is also suggesting that this sort of dehumanizing behavior can only lead to violence and pain for both sides. As Samson destroyed the temple of the Philistines, Longfellow warns that the effect of slavery will eventually be to “shake the pillars of this Commonweal”—meaning the very foundations of America—to the ground.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What is the message in the poem "The Warning"?

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