Learning to Read

"Do Not Cheer, Men are Dying" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1898)

The biography section touched upon Watkins Harper’s other areas of activism. “Do Not Cheer, Men are Dying” expresses Watkins Harper’s often overlooked anti-war sentiments. Written in response to the Spanish-American War, the poem showcases war’s human cost. The Spanish-American War only lasted from April into early December 1898 but cemented the US’ control over the Caribbean. Ironically, one reason the US allegedly entered the conflict was to support Cuba and the Philippines’ vie for independence from Spanish colonial rule. By the war’s end, the US expanded its colonial rule to the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam.

The Richmond Planet published “Do Not Cheer, Men are Dying” on December 3, 1898, seven days before the war’s conclusion, although records point that the Christian Recorder may have run it previously.

The poem’s title and epigraph came from US naval captain and Spanish-American War veteran Captain John Woodward Philip, who allegedly said the quote when he saw his men cheering at a burning enemy ship.

Watkins Harper therefore frames the poem’s mourners as not just Americans. “The widowed wife,” the “aged fathers,” and “once joyous maidens” could be citizens of Spain or any country the US might find itself fighting (Lines 10, 13, and 21).