Elizabeth Barrett Browning first published "A Curse for a Nation" in the 1856 edition of Boston-based abolitionist publication The Liberty Bell. Like "The Runaway Slave of Pilgrim's Point" before it, "A Curse for a Nation" directly addressed and reflected ongoing abolitionist debates in the United States, particularly as the country spiraled closer to the start of the Civil War. EBB would republish "A Curse for a Nation" a few years later in her collection Poems before Congress (1860), and this recontextualization led much of her British readership to interpret the piece as a criticism of the British government for failing to support the Risorgimento, the unification of Italy that lasted from 1848 to 1870.