"Poems on Slavery" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is a collection of poems published in 1842. Written mostly at sea during a storm-tossed voyage from England, these eight poems champion the anti-slavery cause through vivid portraits of enslaved people—from a captive dreaming of his African kingdom to voices rising from a sunken slave ship. Longfellow risked his commercial success and public reputation by publishing this controversial work, fulfilling his friend's request to write "stirring words that shall move the whole land." (This is an automatically generated summary.)