The Long Fellow

      Longfellow sought to refer to slavery as a practice that looked seemingly safe and embedded in the culture, but can still turn into political turmoil that would result in the downfall of an entire nation.  Henry was probably searching for a clever way to say this, so he wittingly pulled the story of Samson off the shelf and used it as an allusion in his poem.  Samson in the poem represents slavery in our nation.  In a nutshell, Samson is feeble, and slavery is seemingly harmless.  But Samson tore down the pillars of the temple killing thousands when people were mocking him for his weakness.  Longfellow was saying that slavery would eventually do this to us.  Though, it may not happen physically, slavery would morally rot out the values of our nation and our government would die from the moral decay.     

“They’re gonna put ya’ll back in chains.”

-Joe Biden