 During the 1860s , Longfellow supported abolitionism and especially hoped for reconciliation between the northern and southern states after the American Civil War . When his son was injured during the war , he wrote the poem " Christmas Bells " , later the basis of the carol I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day . He wrote in his journal in 1878 : " I have only one desire ; and that is for harmony , and a frank and honest understanding between North and South " . Longfellow , despite his aversion to public speaking , accepted an offer from Joshua Chamberlain to speak at his fiftieth reunion at Bowdoin College ; he read the poem " Morituri <unk> " so quietly that few could hear him . The next year , 1876 , he declined an offer to be nominated for the Board of Overseers at Harvard " for reasons very conclusive to my own mind " . 
