Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again
William Cullen Bryant
Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies among his worshippers.The Battlefield (1839), st. 9
William Cullen Bryant began as a young conservative Federalist lawyer and evolved into the stalwart abolitionist, Free Soil, equal rights, and Abe Lincoln Republican editor of the New York Evening Post, originally founded by Alexander Hamilton and one of the longest running and most influential newspapers in US history. Under his editorship, the Post was the most respected paper in New York City. He is also — with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Ralph Waldo Emerson — recognized as one of the greatest American poets of the first half of the 19th century.
Want to know more about Free Soil and Abe Lincoln Republicanism? Stay tuned. There’s more history coming. It is simply too hard to resist the insertion of some current affairs into the mix. After all, what use is history if it does not inform the present?
There’s a great article focused on Bryant’s poetry here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-cullen-bryant
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Here's another Bryant quote:
"The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the pen, by the press, all political questions, and to examine and animadvert upon all political institutions, is a right so clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact to their existence, that without it we must fall at once into depression or anarchy. To say that he who holds unpopular opinions must hold them at the peril of his life, and that, if he expresses them in public, he has only himself to blame if they who disagree with him should rise and put him to death, is to strike at all rights, all liberties, all protection of the laws, and to justify and extenuate all crimes."
Editorial written in remembrance of Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper editor and abolitionist, who was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois during their attack on his warehouse to destroy his press and abolitionist materials.
Bryant, William Cullen (1994). "The Death of Lovejoy; November 18, 1837". in William Cullen Bryant II. Power For Sanity: Selected Editorials of William Cullen Bryant, 1829–61. Fordham University Press. p. 78. ISBN 0-8232-1543-1. Retrieved on 2012-10-15.