Down came the stranger vessel,Unheeding on her way,So near that on the slaver's deckFell off her driven spray."Ho! for the love of mercy,We're perishing and blind!"A wail of utter agonyCame back upon the wind."Help us! for we are strickenWith blindness every one;Ten days we've floated fearfully,Unnoting star or sun.Our ship 's the slaver Leon,—We've but a score on board;Our slaves are all gone over,—Help, for the love of God!"On livid brows of agonyThe broad red lightning shone;But the roar of wind and thunderStifled the answering groan;Wailed from the broken watersA last despairing cry,As, kindling in the stormy' light,The stranger ship went by.. . . . . . . . .In the sunny GuadaloupeA dark-hulled vessel lay,With a crew who noted neverThe nightfall or the day.The blossom of the orangeWas white by every stream,And tropic leaf, and flower, and birdWere in the warns sunbeam.And the sky was bright as ever,And the moonlight slept as well,On the palm-trees by the hillside,And the streamlet of the dell:And the glances of the CreoleWere still as archly deep,And her smiles as full as everOf passion and of sleep.But vain were bird and blossom,The green earth and the sky,And the smile of human faces,To the slaver's darkened eye;At the breaking of the morning,At the star-lit evening time,O'er a world of light and beautyFell the blackness of his crime.1834.
Dr. Charles Follen, a German patriot, who had come to America for the freedom which was denied him in his native land, allied himself with the abolitionists, and at a convention of delegates from all the anti- slavery organizations in New England, held at Boston in May, 1834, was chairman of a committee to prepare an address to the people of New England. Toward the close of the address occurred the passage which suggested these lines. "The despotism which our fathers could not bear in their native country is expiring, and the sword of justice in her reformed hands has applied its exterminating edge to slavery. Shall the United States—the free United States, which could not bear the bonds of a king—cradle the bondage which a king is abolishing? Shall a Republic be less free than a Monarchy? Shall we, in the vigor and buoyancy of our manhood, be less energetic in righteousness than a kingdom in its age?" —Dr. Follen's Address.
"Genius of America!—Spirit of our free institutions!—where art thou? How art thou fallen, O Lucifer! son of the morning,—how art thou fallen from Heaven! Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming! The kings of the earth cry out to thee, Aha! Aha! Art thou become like unto us?"—Speech of Samuel J. May.
OUR fellow-countrymen in chains!Slaves, in a land of light and law!Slaves, crouching on the very plainsWhere rolled the storm of Freedom's war!A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood,A. wail where Camden's martyrs fell,By every shrine of patriot blood,From Moultrie's wall and Jasper's well!By storied hill and hallowed grot,By mossy wood and marshy glen,Whence rang of old the rifle-shot,And hurrying shout of Marion's men!The groan of breaking hearts is there,The falling lash, the fetter's clank!Slaves, slaves are breathing in that airWhich old De Kalb and Sumter drank!What, ho! our countrymen in chains!The whip on woman's shrinking flesh!Our soil yet reddening with the stainsCaught from her scourging, warm and fresh!What! mothers from their children riven!What! God's own image bought and sold!Americans to market driven,And bartered as the brute for gold!Speak! shall their agony of prayerCome thrilling to our hearts in vain?To us whose fathers scorned to bearThe paltry menace of a chain;To us, whose boast is loud and longOf holy Liberty and Light;Say, shall these writhing slaves of WrongPlead vainly for their plundered Right?What! shall we send, with lavish breath,Our sympathies across the wave,Where Manhood, on the field of death,Strikes for his freedom or a grave?Shall prayers go up, and hymns be sungFor Greece, the Moslem fetter spurning,And millions hail with pen and tongueOur light on all her altars burning?Shall Belgium feel, and gallant France,By Vendome's pile and Schoenbrun's wall,And Poland, gasping on her lance,The impulse of our cheering call?And shall the slave, beneath our eye,Clank o'er our fields his hateful chain?And toss his fettered arms on high,And groan for Freedom's gift, in vain?Oh, say, shall Prussia's banner beA refuge for the stricken slave?And shall the Russian serf go freeBy Baikal's lake and Neva's wave?And shall the wintry-bosomed DaneRelax the iron hand of pride,And bid his bondmen cast the chainFrom fettered soul and limb aside?Shall every flap of England's flagProclaim that all around are free,From farthest Ind to each blue cragThat beetles o'er the Western Sea?And shall we scoff at Europe's kings,When Freedom's fire is dim with us,And round our country's altar clingsThe damning shade of Slavery's curse?Go, let us ask of ConstantineTo loose his grasp on Poland's throat;And beg the lord of Mahmoud's lineTo spare the struggling Suliote;Will not the scorching answer comeFrom turbaned Turk, and scornful Russ"Go, loose your fettered slaves at home,Then turn, and ask the like of us!"Just God! and shall we calmly rest,The Christian's scorn, the heathen's mirth,Content to live the lingering jestAnd by-word of a mocking Earth?Shall our own glorious land retainThat curse which Europe scorns to bear?Shall our own brethren drag the chainWhich not even Russia's menials wear?Up, then, in Freedom's manly part,From graybeard eld to fiery youth,And on the nation's naked heartScatter the living coals of Truth!Up! while ye slumber, deeper yetThe shadow of our fame is growing!Up! while ye pause, our sun may setIn blood, around our altars flowing!Oh! rouse ye, ere the storm comes forth,The gathered wrath of God and man,Like that which wasted Egypt's earth,When hail and fire above it ran.Hear ye no warnings in the air?Feel ye no earthquake underneath?Up, up! why will ye slumber whereThe sleeper only wakes in death?Rise now for Freedom! not in strifeLike that your sterner fathers saw,The awful waste of human life,The glory and the guilt of war:'But break the chain, the yoke remove,And smite to earth Oppression's rod,With those mild arms of Truth and Love,Made mighty through the living God!Down let the shrine of Moloch sink,And leave no traces where it stood;Nor longer let its idol drinkHis daily cup of human blood;But rear another altar there,To Truth and Love and Mercy given,And Freedom's gift, and Freedom's prayer,Shall call an answer down from Heaven!1834
Written for the meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, at Chatham Street Chapel, New York, held on the 4th of the seventh month, 1834.
O THOU, whose presence went beforeOur fathers in their weary way,As with Thy chosen moved of yoreThe fire by night, the cloud by day!When from each temple of the free,A nation's song ascends to Heaven,Most Holy Father! unto TheeMay not our humble prayer be given?Thy children all, though hue and formAre varied in Thine own good will,With Thy own holy breathings warm,And fashioned in Thine image still.We thank Thee, Father! hill and plainAround us wave their fruits once more,And clustered vine, and blossomed grain,Are bending round each cottage door.And peace is here; and hope and loveAre round us as a mantle thrown,And unto Thee, supreme above,The knee of prayer is bowed alone.But oh, for those this day can bring,As unto us, no joyful thrill;For those who, under Freedom's wing,Are bound in Slavery's fetters still:For those to whom Thy written wordOf light and love is never given;For those whose ears have never heardThe promise and the hope of heaven!For broken heart, and clouded mind,Whereon no human mercies fall;Oh, be Thy gracious love inclined,Who, as a Father, pitiest all!And grant, O Father! that the timeOf Earth's deliverance may be near,When every land and tongue and climeThe message of Thy love shall hear;When, smitten as with fire from heaven,The captive's chain shall sink in dust,And to his fettered soul be givenThe glorious freedom of the just,
SHE sings by her wheel at that low cottage-door,Which the long evening shadow is stretching before,With a music as sweet as the music which seemsBreathed softly and faint in the ear of our dreams!How brilliant and mirthful the light of her eye,Like a star glancing out from the blue of the sky!And lightly and freely her dark tresses playO'er a brow and a bosom as lovely as they!Who comes in his pride to that low cottage-door,The haughty and rich to the humble and poor?'T is the great Southern planter, the master who wavesHis whip of dominion o'er hundreds of slaves."Nay, Ellen, for shame! Let those Yankee fools spin,Who would pass for our slaves with a change of their skin;Let them toil as they will at the loom or the wheel,Too stupid for shame, and too vulgar to feel!"But thou art too lovely and precious a gemTo be bound to their burdens and sullied by them;For shame, Ellen, shame, cast thy bondage aside,And away to the South, as my blessing and pride."Oh, come where no winter thy footsteps can wrong,But where flowers are blossoming all the year long,Where the shade of the palm-tree is over my home,And the lemon and orange are white in their bloom!"Oh, come to my home, where my servants shall allDepart at thy bidding and come at thy call;They shall heed thee as mistress with trembling and awe,And each wish of thy heart shall be felt as a law.""Oh, could ye have seen her—that pride of our girls—Arise and cast back the dark wealth of her curls,With a scorn in her eye which the gazer could feel,And a glance like the sunshine that flashes on steel!"Go back, haughty Southron! thy treasures of goldAre dim with the blood of the hearts thou halt sold;Thy home may be lovely, but round it I hearThe crack of the whip and the footsteps of fear!"And the sky of thy South may be brighter than ours,And greener thy landscapes, and fairer thy' flowers;But dearer the blast round our mountains which raves,Than the sweet summer zephyr which breathes over slaves!"Full low at thy bidding thy negroes may kneel,With the iron of bondage on spirit and heel;Yet know that the Yankee girl sooner would beIn fetters with them, than in freedom with thee!"1835.
These lines were written when the orators of the American Colonization Society were demanding that the free blacks should be sent to Africa, and opposing Emancipation unless expatriation followed. See the report of the proceedings of the society at its annual meeting in 1834.
HAVE ye heard of our hunting, o'er mountain and glen,Through cane-brake and forest,—the hunting of men?The lords of our land to this hunting have gone,As the fox-hunter follows the sound of the horn;Hark! the cheer and the hallo! the crack of the whip,And the yell of the hound as he fastens his grip!All blithe are our hunters, and noble their match,Though hundreds are caught, there are millions to catch.So speed to their hunting, o'er mountain and glen,Through cane-brake and forest,—the hunting of men!Gay luck to our hunters! how nobly they rideIn the glow of their zeal, and the strength of their pride!The priest with his cassock flung back on the wind,Just screening the politic statesman behind;The saint and the sinner, with cursing and prayer,The drunk and the sober, ride merrily there.And woman, kind woman, wife, widow, and maid,For the good of the hunted, is lending her aidHer foot's in the stirrup, her hand on the rein,How blithely she rides to the hunting of men!Oh, goodly and grand is our hunting to see,In this "land of the brave and this home of the free."Priest, warrior, and statesman, from Georgia to Maine,All mounting the saddle, all grasping the rein;Right merrily hunting the black man, whose sinIs the curl of his hair and the hue of his skin!Woe, now, to the hunted who turns him at bayWill our hunters be turned from their purpose and prey?Will their hearts fail within them? their nerves tremble, whenAll roughly they ride to the hunting of men?Ho! alms for our hunters! all weary and faint,Wax the curse of the sinner and prayer of the saint.The horn is wound faintly, the echoes are still,Over cane-brake and river, and forest and hill.Haste, alms for our hunters! the hunted once moreHave turned from their flight with their backs to the shoreWhat right have they here in the home of the white,Shadowed o'er by our banner of Freedom and Right?Ho! alms for the hunters! or never againWill they ride in their pomp to the hunting of men!Alms, alms for our hunters! why will ye delay,When their pride and their glory are melting away?The parson has turned; for, on charge of his own,Who goeth a warfare, or hunting, alone?The politic statesman looks back with a sigh,There is doubt in his heart, there is fear in his eye.Oh, haste, lest that doubting and fear shall prevail,And the head of his steed take the place of the tail.Oh, haste, ere he leave us! for who will ride then,For pleasure or gain, to the hunting of men?1835.
The "Times" referred to were those evil times of the pro-slavery meeting in Faneuil Hall, August 21, 1835, in which a demand was made for the suppression of free speech, lest it should endanger the foundation of commercial society.
Is this the land our fathers loved,The freedom which they toiled to win?Is this the soil whereon they moved?Are these the graves they slumber in?Are we the sons by whom are borneThe mantles which the dead have worn?And shall we crouch above these graves,With craven soul and fettered lip?Yoke in with marked and branded slaves,And tremble at the driver's whip?Bend to the earth our pliant knees,And speak but as our masters please.Shall outraged Nature cease to feel?Shall Mercy's tears no longer flow?Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel,The dungeon's gloom, the assassin's blow,Turn back the spirit roused to saveThe Truth, our Country, and the Slave?Of human skulls that shrine was made,Round which the priests of MexicoBefore their loathsome idol prayed;Is Freedom's altar fashioned so?And must we yield to Freedom's God,As offering meet, the negro's blood?Shall tongues be mute, when deeds are wroughtWhich well might shame extremest hell?Shall freemen lock the indignant thought?Shall Pity's bosom cease to swell?Shall Honor bleed?—shall Truth succumb?Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb?No; by each spot of haunted ground,Where Freedom weeps her children's fall;By Plymouth's rock, and Bunker's mound;By Griswold's stained and shattered wall;By Warren's ghost, by Langdon's shade;By all the memories of our dead.By their enlarging souls, which burstThe bands and fetters round them set;By the free Pilgrim spirit nursedWithin our inmost bosoms, yet,By all above, around, below,Be ours the indignant answer,—No!No; guided by our country's laws,For truth, and right, and suffering man,Be ours to strive in Freedom's cause,As Christians may, as freemen can!Still pouring on unwilling earsThat truth oppression only fears.What! shall we guard our neighbor still,While woman shrieks beneath his rod,And while he tramples down at willThe image of a common God?Shall watch and ward be round him set,Of Northern nerve and bayonet?And shall we know and share with himThe danger and the growing shame?And see our Freedom's light grow dim,Which should have filled the world with flame?And, writhing, feel, where'er we turn,A world's reproach around us burn?Is 't not enough that this is borne?And asks our haughty neighbor more?Must fetters which his slaves have wornClank round the Yankee farmer's door?Must he be told, beside his plough,What he must speak, and when, and how?Must he be told his freedom standsOn Slavery's dark foundations strong;On breaking hearts and fettered hands,On robbery, and crime, and wrong?That all his fathers taught is vain,—That Freedom's emblem is the chain?Its life, its soul, from slavery drawn!False, foul, profane! Go, teach as wellOf holy Truth from Falsehood born!Of Heaven refreshed by airs from Hell!Of Virtue in the arms of Vice!Of Demons planting Paradise!Rail on, then, brethren of the South,Ye shall not hear the truth the less;No seal is on the Yankee's mouth,No fetter on the Yankee's press!From our Green Mountains to the sea,One voice shall thunder, We are free!
In the report of the celebrated pro-slavery meeting in Charleston, S.C., on the 4th of the ninth month, 1835, published in the Courier of that city, it is stated: "The clergy of all denominations attended in a body, lending their sanction to the proceedings, and adding by their presence to the impressive character of the scene!"
JUST God! and these are theyWho minister at thine altar, God of Right!Men who their hands with prayer and blessing layOn Israel's Ark of light!What! preach, and kidnap men?Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor?Talk of thy glorious liberty, and thenBolt hard the captive's door?What! servants of thy ownMerciful Son, who came to seek and saveThe homeless and the outcast, fettering downThe tasked and plundered slave!Pilate and Herod, friends!Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine!Just God and holy! is that church, which lendsStrength to the spoiler, thine?Paid hypocrites, who turnJudgment aside, and rob the Holy BookOf those high words of truth which search and burnIn warning and rebuke;Feed fat, ye locusts, feed!And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank the LordThat, from the toiling bondman's utter need,Ye pile your own full board.How long, O Lord! how longShall such a priesthood barter truth away,And in Thy name, for robbery and wrongAt Thy own altars pray?Is not Thy hand stretched forthVisibly in the heavens, to awe and smite?Shall not the living God of all the earth,And heaven above, do right?Woe, then, to all who grindTheir brethren of a common Father down!To all who plunder from the immortal mindIts bright and glorious crown!Woe to the priesthood! woeTo those whose hire is with the price of blood;Perverting, darkening, changing, as they go,The searching truths of God!Their glory and their mightShall perish; and their very names shall beVile before all the people, in the lightOf a world's liberty.Oh, speed the moment onWhen Wrong shall cease, and Liberty and LoveAnd Truth and Right throughout the earth be knownAs in their home above.1836.
Written on the adoption of Pinckney's Resolutions in the House of Representatives, and the passage of Calhoun's "Bill for excluding Papers written or printed, touching the subject of Slavery, from the U. S. Post-office," in the Senate of the United States. Mr. Pinckney's resolutions were in brief that Congress had no authority to interfere in any way with slavery in the States; that it ought not to interfere with it in the District of Columbia, and that all resolutions to that end should be laid on the table without printing. Mr. Calhoun's bill made it a penal offence for post-masters in any State, District, or Territory "knowingly to deliver, to any person whatever, any pamphlet, newspaper, handbill, or other printed paper or pictorial representation, touching the subject of slavery, where, by the laws of the said State, District, or Territory, their circulation was prohibited."
MEN of the North-land! where's the manly spiritOf the true-hearted and the unshackled gone?Sons of old freemen, do we but inheritTheir names alone?Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched within us,Stoops the strong manhood of our souls so low,That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win usTo silence now?Now, when our land to ruin's brink is verging,In God's name, let us speak while there is time!Now, when the padlocks for our lips are forging,Silence is crime!What! shall we henceforth humbly ask as favorsRights all our own? In madness shall we barter,For treacherous peace, the freedom Nature gave us,God and our charter?Here shall the statesman forge his human fetters,Here the false jurist human rights deny,And in the church, their proud and skilled abettorsMake truth a lie?Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible,To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood?And, in Oppression's hateful service, libelBoth man and God?Shall our New England stand erect no longer,But stoop in chains upon her downward way,Thicker to gather on her limbs and strongerDay after day?Oh no; methinks from all her wild, green mountains;From valleys where her slumbering fathers lie;From her blue rivers and her welling fountains,And clear, cold sky;From her rough coast, and isles, which hungry OceanGnaws with his surges; from the fisher's skiff,With white sail swaying to the billows' motionRound rock and cliff;From the free fireside of her untought farmer;From her free laborer at his loom and wheel;From the brown smith-shop, where, beneath the hammer,Rings the red steel;From each and all, if God hath not forsakenOur land, and left us to an evil choice,Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall wakenA People's voice.Startling and stern! the Northern winds shall bear itOver Potomac's to St. Mary's wave;And buried Freedom shall awake to hear itWithin her grave.Oh, let that voice go forth! The bondman sighingBy Santee's wave, in Mississippi's cane,Shall feel the hope, within his bosom dying,Revive again.Let it go forth! The millions who are gazingSadly upon us from afar shall smile,And unto God devout thanksgiving raisingBless us the while.Oh for your ancient freedom, pure and holy,For the deliverance of a groaning earth,For the wronged captive, bleeding, crushed, and lowly,Let it go forth!Sons of the best of fathers! will ye falterWith all they left ye perilled and at stake?Ho! once again on Freedom's holy altarThe fire awake.Prayer-strenthened for the trial, come together,Put on the harness for the moral fight,And, with the blessing of your Heavenly Father,Maintain the right1836.
Thomas Shipley of Philadelphia was a lifelong Christian philanthropist, and advocate of emancipation. At his funeral thousands of colored people came to take their last look at their friend and protector. He died September 17, 1836.
GONE to thy Heavenly Father's rest!The flowers of Eden round thee blowing,And on thine ear the murmurs blestOf Siloa's waters softly flowing!Beneath that Tree of Life which givesTo all the earth its healing leavesIn the white robe of angels clad,And wandering by that sacred river,Whose streams of holiness make gladThe city of our God forever!Gentlest of spirits! not for theeOur tears are shed, our sighs are given;Why mourn to know thou art a freePartaker of the joys of heaven?Finished thy work, and kept thy faithIn Christian firmness unto death;And beautiful as sky and earth,When autumn's sun is downward going,The blessed memory of thy worthAround thy place of slumber glowing!But woe for us! who linger stillWith feebler strength and hearts less lowly,And minds less steadfast to the willOf Him whose every work is holy.For not like thine, is crucifiedThe spirit of our human prideAnd at the bondman's tale of woe,And for the outcast and forsaken,Not warm like thine, but cold and slow,Our weaker sympathies awaken.Darkly upon our struggling wayThe storm of human hate is sweeping;Hunted and branded, and a prey,Our watch amidst the darkness keeping,Oh, for that hidden strength which canNerve unto death the inner manOh, for thy spirit, tried and true,And constant in the hour of trial,Prepared to suffer, or to do,In meekness and in self-denial.Oh, for that spirit, meek and mild,Derided, spurned, yet uncomplaining;By man deserted and reviled,Yet faithful to its trust remaining.Still prompt and resolute to saveFrom scourge and chain the hunted slave;Unwavering in the Truth's defence,Even where the fires of Hate were burning,The unquailing eye of innocenceAlone upon the oppressor turning!O loved of thousands! to thy grave,Sorrowing of heart, thy brethren bore thee.The poor man and the rescued slaveWept as the broken earth closed o'er thee;And grateful tears, like summer rain,Quickened its dying grass again!And there, as to some pilgrim-shrine,Shall cone the outcast and the lowly,Of gentle deeds and words of thineRecalling memories sweet and holy!Oh, for the death the righteous die!An end, like autumn's day declining,On human hearts, as on the sky,With holier, tenderer beauty shining;As to the parting soul were givenThe radiance of an opening heaven!As if that pure and blessed light,From off the Eternal altar flowing,Were bathing, in its upward flight,The spirit to its worship going!1836.
WHEN Freedom, on her natal day,Within her war-rocked cradle lay,An iron race around her stood,Baptized her infant brow in blood;And, through the storm which round her swept,Their constant ward and watching kept.Then, where our quiet herds repose,The roar of baleful battle rose,And brethren of a common tongueTo mortal strife as tigers sprung,And every gift on Freedom's shrineWas man for beast, and blood for wine!Our fathers to their graves have gone;Their strife is past, their triumph won;But sterner trials wait the raceWhich rises in their honored place;A moral warfare with the crimeAnd folly of an evil time.So let it be. In God's own mightWe gird us for the coming fight,And, strong in Him whose cause is oursIn conflict with unholy powers,We grasp the weapons He has given,—The Light, and Truth, and Love of Heaven.1836.
Written on reading the Message of Governor Ritner, of Pennsylvania, 1836. The fact redounds to the credit and serves to perpetuate the memory of the independent farmer and high-souled statesman, that he alone of all the Governors of the Union in 1836 met the insulting demands and menaces of the South in a manner becoming a freeman and hater of Slavery, in his message to the Legislature of Pennsylvania.
THANK God for the token! one lip is still free,One spirit untrammelled, unbending one knee!Like the oak of the mountain, deep-rooted and firm,Erect, when the multitude bends to the storm;When traitors to Freedom, and Honor, and God,Are bowed at an Idol polluted with blood;When the recreant North has forgotten her trust,And the lip of her honor is low in the dust,—Thank God, that one arm from the shackle has broken!Thank God, that one man as a freeman has spoken!O'er thy crags, Alleghany, a blast has been blown!Down thy tide, Susquehanna, the murmur has gone!To the land of the South, of the charter and chain,Of Liberty sweetened with Slavery's pain;Where the cant of Democracy dwells on the lipsOf the forgers of fetters, and wielders of whips!Where "chivalric" honor means really no moreThan scourging of women, and robbing the poor!Where the Moloch of Slavery sitteth on high,And the words which he utters, are—Worship, or die!Right onward, oh, speed it! Wherever the bloodOf the wronged and the guiltless is crying to God;Wherever a slave in his fetters is pining;Wherever the lash of the driver is twining;Wherever from kindred, torn rudely apart,Comes the sorrowful wail of the broken of heart;Wherever the shackles of tyranny bind,In silence and darkness, the God-given mind;There, God speed it onward! its truth will be felt,The bonds shall be loosened, the iron shall melt.And oh, will the land where the free soul of PennStill lingers and breathes over mountain and glen;Will the land where a Benezet's spirit went forthTo the peeled and the meted, and outcast of Earth;Where the words of the Charter of Liberty firstFrom the soul of the sage and the patriot burst;Where first for the wronged and the weak of their kind,The Christian and statesman their efforts combined;Will that land of the free and the good wear a chain?Will the call to the rescue of Freedom be vain?No, Ritner! her "Friends" at thy warning shall standErect for the truth, like their ancestral band;Forgetting the feuds and the strife of past time,Counting coldness injustice, and silence a crime;Turning back front the cavil of creeds, to uniteOnce again for the poor in defence of the Right;Breasting calmly, but firmly, the full tide of Wrong,Overwhelmed, but not borne on its surges along;Unappalled by the danger, the shame, and the pain,And counting each trial for Truth as their gain!And that bold-hearted yeomanry, honest and true,Who, haters of fraud, give to labor its due;Whose fathers, of old, sang in concert with thine,On the banks of Swetara, the songs of the Rhine,—The German-born pilgrims, who first dared to braveThe scorn of the proud in the cause of the slave;Will the sons of such men yield the lords of the SouthOne brow for the brand, for the padlock one mouth?They cater to tyrants? They rivet the chain,Which their fathers smote off, on the negro again?No, never! one voice, like the sound in the cloud,When the roar of the storm waxes loud and more loud,Wherever the foot of the freeman hath pressedFrom the Delaware's marge to the Lake of the West,On the South-going breezes shall deepen and growTill the land it sweeps over shall tremble below!The voice of a people, uprisen, awake,Pennsylvania's watchword, with Freedom at stake,Thrilling up from each valley, flung down from each height,"Our Country and Liberty! God for the Right!"
The General Association of Congregational ministers in Massachusetts met at Brookfield, June 27, 1837, and issued a Pastoral Letter to the churches under its care. The immediate occasion of it was the profound sensation produced by the recent public lecture in Massachusetts by Angelina and Sarah Grimke, two noble women from South Carolina, who bore their testimony against slavery. The Letter demanded that "the perplexed and agitating subjects which are now common amongst us... should not be forced upon any church as matters for debate, at the hazard of alienation and division," and called attention to the dangers now seeming "to threaten the female character with widespread and permanent injury."
So, this is all,—the utmost reachOf priestly power the mind to fetter!When laymen think, when women preach,A war of words, a "Pastoral Letter!"Now, shame upon ye, parish Popes!Was it thus with those, your predecessors,Who sealed with racks, and fire, and ropesTheir loving-kindness to transgressors?A "Pastoral Letter," grave and dull;Alas! in hoof and horns and features,How different is your Brookfield bullFrom him who bellows from St. Peter'sYour pastoral rights and powers from harm,Think ye, can words alone preserve them?Your wiser fathers taught the armAnd sword of temporal power to serve them.Oh, glorious days, when Church and StateWere wedded by your spiritual fathers!And on submissive shoulders satYour Wilsons and your Cotton Mathers.No vile "itinerant" then could marThe beauty of your tranquil Zion,But at his peril of the scarOf hangman's whip and branding-iron.Then, wholesome laws relieved the ChurchOf heretic and mischief-maker,And priest and bailiff joined in search,By turns, of Papist, witch, and QuakerThe stocks were at each church's door,The gallows stood on Boston Common,A Papist's ears the pillory bore,—The gallows-rope, a Quaker woman!Your fathers dealt not as ye dealWith "non-professing" frantic teachers;They bored the tongue with red-hot steel,And flayed the backs of "female preachers."Old Hampton, had her fields a tongue,And Salem's streets could tell their story,Of fainting woman dragged along,Gashed by the whip accursed and gory!And will ye ask me, why this tauntOf memories sacred from the scorner?And why with reckless hand I plantA nettle on the graves ye honor?Not to reproach New England's deadThis record from the past I summon,Of manhood to the scaffold led,And suffering and heroic woman.No, for yourselves alone, I turnThe pages of intolerance over,That, in their spirit, dark and stern,Ye haply may your own discover!For, if ye claim the "pastoral right"To silence Freedom's voice of warning,And from your precincts shut the lightOf Freedom's day around ye dawning;If when an earthquake voice of powerAnd signs in earth and heaven are showingThat forth, in its appointed hour,The Spirit of the Lord is goingAnd, with that Spirit, Freedom's lightOn kindred, tongue, and people breaking,Whose slumbering millions, at the sight,In glory and in strength are waking!When for the sighing of the poor,And for the needy, God bath risen,And chains are breaking, and a doorIs opening for the souls in prison!If then ye would, with puny hands,Arrest the very work of Heaven,And bind anew the evil bandsWhich God's right arm of power hath riven;What marvel that, in many a mind,Those darker deeds of bigot madnessAre closely with your own combined,Yet "less in anger than in sadness"?What marvel, if the people learnTo claim the right of free opinion?What marvel, if at times they spurnThe ancient yoke of your dominion?A glorious remnant linger yet,Whose lips are wet at Freedom's fountains,The coming of whose welcome feetIs beautiful upon our mountains!Men, who the gospel tidings bringOf Liberty and Love forever,Whose joy is an abiding spring,Whose peace is as a gentle river!But ye, who scorn the thrilling taleOf Carolina's high-souled daughters,Which echoes here the mournful wailOf sorrow from Edisto's waters,Close while ye may the public ear,With malice vex, with slander wound them,The pure and good shall throng to hear,And tried and manly hearts surround them.Oh, ever may the power which ledTheir way to such a fiery trial,And strengthened womanhood to treadThe wine-press of such self-denial,Be round them in an evil land,With wisdom and with strength from Heaven,With Miriam's voice, and Judith's hand,And Deborah's song, for triumph given!And what are ye who strive with GodAgainst the ark of His salvation,Moved by the breath of prayer abroad,With blessings for a dying nation?What, but the stubble and the hayTo perish, even as flax consuming,With all that bars His glorious way,Before the brightness of His coming?And thou, sad Angel, who so longHast waited for the glorious token,That Earth from all her bonds of wrongTo liberty and light has broken,—Angel of Freedom! soon to theeThe sounding trumpet shall be given,And over Earth's full jubileeShall deeper joy be felt in Heaven!1837.