Slavery Allusions

 Henry Longfellow uses this poem to describe the effects of slavery on our nation. In the poem, our liberties are represented by the temple, and slavery is represented by Samson. In a nutshell, Longfellow was trying to communicate that slavery would crumble our liberties to nothing more than "a shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies". This poem was written in 1842, and the civil war started in 1861. Longfellow predicted that either the moral aspect of slavery would divide the country, or slaves would rebel, 20 years before it actually happened.