 However, as Longfellow himself wrote, the poems were "so mild that even a Slaveholder might read them without losing his appetite for breakfast".A critic for "The Dial" agreed, calling it "the thinnest of all Mr. Longfellow's thin books; spirited and polished like its forerunners; but the topic would warrant a deeper tone".The New England Anti-Slavery Association, however, was satisfied enough with the collection to reprint it for further distribution.