A Gift for America's Christmas Poet: Rehabilitation.
Did the scholar and father of Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood own slaves? Probably not. Did he really write “The Night Before Christmas”? Well ...
Moore’s handwritten manuscript from 1862.
Source: Collection of the New-York Historical Society
The reputation of Clement Clarke Moore, of “The Night Before Christmas” fame, has been dimming with each passing holiday season. A rival claimant to authorship of the classic poem, first published anonymously 198 years ago this week as “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” has attracted increasing attention and support. Also attracting increasing attention is the belief that Moore, a lifelong New Yorker, enslaved four people, refused to free them until forced to by state law in 1827, and opposed the abolition of slavery in the South.
There may, however, be something in the stocking for Clement this Christmas. Not confirmation that he wrote the poem, but a debunking of the story that has been told about his ownership of slaves.1