In a publication of L. F. Tasistro—Random Shots and Southern Breezes— is a description of a slave auction at New Orleans, at which the auctioneer recommended the woman on the stand as "A GOOD CHRISTIAN!" It was not uncommon to see advertisements of slaves for sale, in which they were described as pious or as members of the church. In one advertisement a slave was noted as "a Baptist preacher."
A CHRISTIAN! going, gone!Who bids for God's own image? for his grace,Which that poor victim of the market-placeHath in her suffering won?My God! can such things be?Hast Thou not said that whatsoe'er is doneUnto Thy weakest and Thy humblest oneIs even done to Thee?In that sad victim, then,Child of Thy pitying love, I see Thee stand;Once more the jest-word of a mocking band,Bound, sold, and scourged again!A Christian up for sale!Wet with her blood your whips, o'ertask her frame,Make her life loathsome with your wrong and shame,Her patience shall not fail!A heathen hand might dealBack on your heads the gathered wrong of years:But her low, broken prayer and nightly tears,Ye neither heed nor feel.Con well thy lesson o'er,Thou prudent teacher, tell the toiling slaveNo dangerous tale of Him who came to saveThe outcast and the poor.But wisely shut the rayOf God's free Gospel from her simple heart,And to her darkened mind alone impartOne stern command, Obey! (3)So shalt thou deftly raiseThe market price of human flesh; and whileOn thee, their pampered guest, the planters smile,Thy church shall praise.Grave, reverend men shall tellFrom Northern pulpits how thy work was blest,While in that vile South Sodom first and best,Thy poor disciples sell.Oh, shame! the Moslem thrall,Who, with his master, to the Prophet kneels,While turning to the sacred Kebla feelsHis fetters break and fall.Cheers for the turbaned BeyOf robber-peopled Tunis! he hath tornThe dark slave-dungeons open, and hath borneTheir inmates into day:But our poor slave in vainTurns to the Christian shrine his aching eyes;Its rites will only swell his market price,And rivet on his chain.God of all right! how longShall priestly robbers at Thine altar stand,Lifting in prayer to Thee, the bloody handAnd haughty brow of wrong?1843
Oh, from the fields of cane,From the low rice-swamp, from the trader's cell;From the black slave-ship's foul and loathsome hell,And coffle's weary chain;Hoarse, horrible, and strong,Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry,Filling the arches of the hollow sky,How long, O God, how long?
John L. Brown, a young white man of South Carolina, was in 1844 sentenced to death for aiding a young slave woman, whom he loved and had married, to escape from slavery. In pronouncing the sentence Judge O'Neale addressed to the prisoner these words of appalling blasphemy:
You are to die! To die an ignominious death—the death on the gallows! This announcement is, to you, I know, most appalling. Little did you dream of it when you stepped into the bar with an air as if you thought it was a fine frolic. But the consequences of crime are just such as you are realizing. Punishment often comes when it is least expected. Let me entreat you to take the present opportunity to commence the work of reformation. Time will be furnished you to prepare for the great change just before you. Of your past life I know nothing, except what your trial furnished. That told me that the crime for which you are to suffer was the consequence of a want of attention on your part to the duties of life. The strange woman snared you. She flattered you with her word; and you became her victim. The consequence was, that, led on by a desire to serve her, you committed the offence of aid in a slave to run away and depart from her master's service; and now, for it you are to die! You are a young man, and I fear you have been dissolute; and if so, these kindred vices have contributed a full measure to your ruin. Reflect on your past life, and make the only useful devotion of the remnant of your days in preparing for death. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth is the language of inspired wisdom. This comes home appropriately to you in this trying moment. You are young; quite too young to be where you are. If you had remembered your Creator in your past days, you would not now be in a felon's place, to receive a felon's judgment. Still, it is not too late to remember your Creator. He calls early, and He calls late. He stretches out the arms of a Father's love to you—to the vilest sinner—and says: "Come unto me and be saved." You can perhaps read. If so, read the Scriptures; read them without note, and without comment; and pray to God for His assistance; and you will be able to say when you pass from prison to execution, as a poor slave said under similar circumstances: "I am glad my Friday has come." If you cannot read the Scriptures, the ministers of our holy religion will be ready to aid you. They will read and explain to you until you will be able to understand; and understanding, to call upon the only One who can help you and save you—Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world. To Him I commend you. And through Him may you have that opening of the Day-Spring of mercy from on high, which shall bless you here, and crown you as a saint in an everlasting world, forever and ever. The sentence of the law is that you be taken hence to the place from whence you came last; thence to the jail of Fairfield District; and that there you be closely and securely confined until Friday, the 26th day of April next; on which day, between the hours of ten in the forenoon and two in the afternoon, you will be taken to the place of public execution, and there be hanged by the neck till your body be dead. And may God have mercy on your soul!
No event in the history of the anti-slavery struggle so stirred the two hemispheres as did this dreadful sentence. A cry of horror was heard from Europe. In the British House of Lords, Brougham and Denman spoke of it with mingled pathos and indignation. Thirteen hundred clergymen and church officers in Great Britain addressed a memorial to the churches of South Carolina against the atrocity. Indeed, so strong was the pressure of the sentiment of abhorrence and disgust that South Carolina yielded to it, and the sentence was commuted to scourging and banishment.
Ho! thou who seekest late and longA License from the Holy BookFor brutal lust and fiendish wrong,Man of the Pulpit, look!Lift up those cold and atheist eyes,This ripe fruit of thy teaching see;And tell us how to heaven will riseThe incense of this sacrifice—This blossom of the gallows tree!Search out for slavery's hour of needSome fitting text of sacred writ;Give heaven the credit of a deedWhich shames the nether pit.Kneel, smooth blasphemer, unto HimWhose truth is on thy lips a lie;Ask that His bright winged cherubimMay bend around that scaffold grimTo guard and bless and sanctify.O champion of the people's causeSuspend thy loud and vain rebukeOf foreign wrong and Old World's laws,Man of the Senate, look!Was this the promise of the free,The great hope of our early time,That slavery's poison vine should beUpborne by Freedom's prayer-nursed treeO'erclustered with such fruits of crime?Send out the summons East and West,And South and North, let all be thereWhere he who pitied the oppressedSwings out in sun and air.Let not a Democratic handThe grisly hangman's task refuse;There let each loyal patriot stand,Awaiting slavery's command,To twist the rope and draw the noose!But vain is irony—unmeetIts cold rebuke for deeds which startIn fiery and indignant beatThe pulses of the heart.Leave studied wit and guarded phraseFor those who think but do not feel;Let men speak out in words which raiseWhere'er they fall, an answering blazeLike flints which strike the fire from steel.Still let a mousing priesthood plyTheir garbled text and gloss of sin,And make the lettered scroll denyIts living soul within:Still let the place-fed, titled knavePlead robbery's right with purchased lips,And tell us that our fathers gaveFor Freedom's pedestal, a slave,The frieze and moulding, chains and whips!But ye who own that Higher LawWhose tablets in the heart are set,Speak out in words of power and aweThat God is living yet!Breathe forth once more those tones sublimeWhich thrilled the burdened prophet's lyre,And in a dark and evil timeSmote down on Israel's fast of crimeAnd gift of blood, a rain of fire!Oh, not for us the graceful layTo whose soft measures lightly moveThe footsteps of the faun and fay,O'er-locked by mirth and love!But such a stern and startling strainAs Britain's hunted bards flung downFrom Snowden to the conquered plain,Where harshly clanked the Saxon chain,On trampled field and smoking town.By Liberty's dishonored name,By man's lost hope and failing trust,By words and deeds which bow with shameOur foreheads to the dust,By the exulting strangers' sneer,Borne to us from the Old World's thrones,And by their victims' grief who hear,In sunless mines and dungeons drear,How Freedom's land her faith disowns!Speak out in acts. The time for wordsHas passed, and deeds suffice alone;In vain against the clang of swordsThe wailing pipe is blown!Act, act in God's name, while ye may!Smite from the church her leprous limb!Throw open to the light of dayThe bondman's cell, and break awayThe chains the state has bound on him!Ho! every true and living soul,To Freedom's perilled altar bearThe Freeman's and the Christian's wholeTongue, pen, and vote, and prayer!One last, great battle for the right—One short, sharp struggle to be free!To do is to succeed—our fightIs waged in Heaven's approving sight;The smile of God is Victory.1844.
The five poems immediately following indicate the intense feeling of the friends of freedom in view of the annexation of Texas, with its vast territory sufficient, as was boasted, for six new slave States.
Up the hillside, down the glen,Rouse the sleeping citizen;Summon out the might of men!Like a lion growling low,Like a night-storm rising slow,Like the tread of unseen foe;It is coming, it is nigh!Stand your homes and altars by;On your own free thresholds die.Clang the bells in all your spires;On the gray hills of your siresFling to heaven your signal-fires.From Wachuset, lone and bleak,Unto Berkshire's tallest peak,Let the flame-tongued heralds speak.Oh, for God and duty stand,Heart to heart and hand to hand,Round the old graves of the land.Whoso shrinks or falters now,Whoso to the yoke would bow,Brand the craven on his brow!Freedom's soil hath only placeFor a free and fearless race,None for traitors false and base.Perish party, perish clan;Strike together while ye can,Like the arm of one strong man.Like that angel's voice sublime,Heard above a world of crime,Crying of the end of time;With one heart and with one mouth,Let the North unto the SouthSpeak the word befitting both."What though Issachar be strongYe may load his back with wrongOvermuch and over long:"Patience with her cup o'errun,With her weary thread outspun,Murmurs that her work is done."Make our Union-bond a chain,Weak as tow in Freedom's strainLink by link shall snap in twain."Vainly shall your sand-wrought ropeBind the starry cluster up,Shattered over heaven's blue cope!"Give us bright though broken rays,Rather than eternal haze,Clouding o'er the full-orbed blaze."Take your land of sun and bloom;Only leave to Freedom roomFor her plough, and forge, and loom;"Take your slavery-blackened vales;Leave us but our own free gales,Blowing on our thousand sails."Boldly, or with treacherous art,Strike the blood-wrought chain apart;Break the Union's mighty heart;"Work the ruin, if ye will;Pluck upon your heads an illWhich shall grow and deepen still."With your bondman's right arm bare,With his heart of black despair,Stand alone, if stand ye dare!"Onward with your fell design;Dig the gulf and draw the lineFire beneath your feet the mine!"Deeply, when the wide abyssYawns between your land and this,Shall ye feel your helplessness."By the hearth, and in the bed,Shaken by a look or tread,Ye shall own a guilty dread."And the curse of unpaid toil,Downward through your generous soilLike a fire shall burn and spoil."Our bleak hills shall bud and blow,Vines our rocks shall overgrow,Plenty in our valleys flow;—"And when vengeance clouds your skies,Hither shall ye turn your eyes,As the lost on Paradise!"We but ask our rocky strand,Freedom's true and brother band,Freedom's strong and honest hand;"Valleys by the slave untrod,And the Pilgrim's mountain sod,Blessed of our fathers' God!"1844.
Written in 1844, on reading a call by "a Massachusetts Freeman" for a meeting in Faneuil Hall of the citizens of Massachusetts, without distinction of party, opposed to the annexation of Texas, and the aggressions of South Carolina, and in favor of decisive action against slavery.
MEN! if manhood still ye claim,If the Northern pulse can thrill,Roused by wrong or stung by shame,Freely, strongly still;Let the sounds of traffic dieShut the mill-gate, leave the stall,Fling the axe and hammer by;Throng to Faneuil Hall!Wrongs which freemen never brooked,Dangers grim and fierce as they,Which, like couching lions, lookedOn your fathers' way;These your instant zeal demand,Shaking with their earthquake-callEvery rood of Pilgrim land,Ho, to Faneuil Hall!From your capes and sandy bars,From your mountain-ridges cold,Through whose pines the westering starsStoop their crowns of gold;Come, and with your footsteps wakeEchoes from that holy wall;Once again, for Freedom's sake,Rock your fathers' hall!Up, and tread beneath your feetEvery cord by party spun:Let your hearts together beatAs the heart of one.Banks and tariffs, stocks and trade,Let them rise or let them fall:Freedom asks your common aid,—Up, to Faneuil Hall!Up, and let each voice that speaksRing from thence to Southern plains,Sharply as the blow which breaksPrison-bolts and chains!Speak as well becomes the freeDreaded more than steel or ball,Shall your calmest utterance be,Heard from Faneuil Hall!Have they wronged us? Let us thenRender back nor threats nor prayers;Have they chained our free-born men?Let us unchain theirs!Up, your banner leads the van,Blazoned, "Liberty for all!"Finish what your sires began!Up, to Faneuil Hall!
WHAT though around thee blazesNo fiery rallying sign?From all thy own high places,Give heaven the light of thine!What though unthrilled, unmoving,The statesman stand apart,And comes no warm approvingFrom Mammon's crowded mart?Still, let the land be shakenBy a summons of thine own!By all save truth forsaken,Stand fast with that alone!Shrink not from strife unequal!With the best is always hope;And ever in the sequelGod holds the right side up!But when, with thine uniting,Come voices long and loud,And far-off hills are writingThy fire-words on the cloud;When from Penobscot's fountainsA deep response is heard,And across the Western mountainsRolls back thy rallying word;Shall thy line of battle falter,With its allies just in view?Oh, by hearth and holy altar,My fatherland, be true!Fling abroad thy scrolls of FreedomSpeed them onward far and fastOver hill and valley speed them,Like the sibyl's on the blast!Lo! the Empire State is shakingThe shackles from her hand;With the rugged North is wakingThe level sunset land!On they come, the free battalionsEast and West and North they come,And the heart-beat of the millionsIs the beat of Freedom's drum."To the tyrant's plot no favorNo heed to place-fed knaves!Bar and bolt the door foreverAgainst the land of slaves!"Hear it, mother Earth, and hear it,The heavens above us spread!The land is roused,—its spiritWas sleeping, but not dead!1844.
GOD bless New Hampshire! from her granite peaksOnce more the voice of Stark and Langdon speaks.The long-bound vassal of the exulting SouthFor very shame her self-forged chain has broken;Torn the black seal of slavery from her mouth,And in the clear tones of her old time spoken!Oh, all undreamed-of, all unhoped-for changesThe tyrant's ally proves his sternest foe;To all his biddings, from her mountain ranges,New Hampshire thunders an indignant No!Who is it now despairs? Oh, faint of heart,Look upward to those Northern mountains cold,Flouted by Freedom's victor-flag unrolled,And gather strength to bear a manlier partAll is not lost. The angel of God's blessingEncamps with Freedom on the field of fight;Still to her banner, day by day, are pressing,Unlooked-for allies, striking for the rightCourage, then, Northern hearts! Be firm, be true:What one brave State hath done, can ye not also do?1845.
Written on hearing that the Anti-Slavery Resolves of Stephen C. Phillips had been rejected by the Whig Convention in Faneuil Hall, in 1846.
LIFT again the stately emblem on the Bay State'srusted shield,Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner'stattered field.Sons of men who sat in council with their Biblesround the board,Answering England's royal missive with a firm,"Thus saith the Lord!"Rise again for home and freedom! set the battlein array!What the fathers did of old time we their sonsmust do to-day.Tell us not of banks and tariffs, cease your paltrypedler cries;Shall the good State sink her honor that yourgambling stocks may rise?Would ye barter man for cotton? That yourgains may sum up higher,Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass our childrenthrough the fire?Is the dollar only real? God and truth and righta dream?Weighed against your lying ledgers must our manhoodkick the beam?O my God! for that free spirit, which of old inBoston townSmote the Province House with terror, struck thecrest of Andros down!For another strong-voiced Adams in the city'sstreets to cry,"Up for God and Massachusetts! Set your feeton Mammon's lie!Perish banks and perish traffic, spin your cotton'slatest pound,But in Heaven's name keep your honor, keep theheart o' the Bay State sound!"Where's the man for Massachusetts! Where'sthe voice to speak her free?Where's the hand to light up bonfires from hermountains to the sea?Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer? Sits she dumbin her despair?Has she none to break the silence? Has she noneto do and dare?O my God! for one right worthy to lift up herrusted shield,And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her banner'stattered field1840.
John C. Calhoun, who had strongly urged the extension of slave territory by the annexation of Texas, even if it should involve a war with England, was unwilling to promote the acquisition of Oregon, which would enlarge the Northern domain of freedom, and pleaded as an excuse the peril of foreign complications which he had defied when the interests of slavery were involved.
Is this thy voice whose treble notes of fearWail in the wind? And dost thou shake to hear,Actieon-like, the bay of thine own hounds,Spurning the leash, and leaping o'er their bounds?Sore-baffled statesman! when thy eager hand,With game afoot, unslipped the hungry pack,To hunt down Freedom in her chosen land,Hadst thou no fear, that, erelong, doubling back,These dogs of thine might snuff on Slavery's track?Where's now the boast, which even thy guarded tongue,Cold, calm, and proud, in the teeth o' the Senate flung,O'er the fulfilment of thy baleful plan,Like Satan's triumph at the fall of man?How stood'st thou then, thy feet on Freedom planting,And pointing to the lurid heaven afar,Whence all could see, through the south windows slanting,Crimson as blood, the beams of that Lone Star!The Fates are just; they give us but our own;Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown.There is an Eastern story, not unknown,Doubtless, to thee, of one whose magic skillCalled demons up his water-jars to fill;Deftly and silently, they did his will,But, when the task was done, kept pouring still.In vain with spell and charm the wizard wrought,Faster and faster were the buckets brought,Higher and higher rose the flood around,Till the fiends clapped their hands above their master drownedSo, Carolinian, it may prove with thee,For God still overrules man's schemes, and takesCraftiness in its self-set snare, and makesThe wrath of man to praise Him. It may be,That the roused spirits of DemocracyMay leave to freer States the same wide doorThrough which thy slave-cursed Texas entered in,From out the blood and fire, the wrong and sin,Of the stormed-city and the ghastly plain,Beat by hot hail, and wet with bloody rain,The myriad-handed pioneer may pour,And the wild West with the roused North combineAnd heave the engineer of evil with his mine.1846.
Suggested by a visit to the city of Washington, in the 12th month of 1845.
WITH a cold and wintry noon-lightOn its roofs and steeples shed,Shadows weaving with the sunlightFrom the gray sky overhead,Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the half-builttown outspread.Through this broad street, restless ever,Ebbs and flows a human tide,Wave on wave a living river;Wealth and fashion side by side;Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quickcurrent glide.Underneath yon dome, whose copingSprings above them, vast and tall,Grave men in the dust are gropingFor the largess, base and small,Which the hand of Power is scattering, crumbswhich from its table fall.Base of heart! They vilely barterHonor's wealth for party's place;Step by step on Freedom's charterLeaving footprints of disgrace;For to-day's poor pittance turning from the greathope of their race.Yet, where festal lamps are throwingGlory round the dancer's hair,Gold-tressed, like an angel's, flowingBackward on the sunset air;And the low quick pulse of music beats its measuresweet and rare.There to-night shall woman's glances,Star-like, welcome give to them;Fawning fools with shy advancesSeek to touch their garments' hem,With the tongue of flattery glozing deeds whichGod and Truth condemn.From this glittering lie my visionTakes a broader, sadder range,Full before me have arisenOther pictures dark and strange;From the parlor to the prison must the scene andwitness change.Hark! the heavy gate is swingingOn its hinges, harsh and slow;One pale prison lamp is flingingOn a fearful group belowSuch a light as leaves to terror whatsoe'er it doesnot show.Pitying God! Is that a womanOn whose wrist the shackles clash?Is that shriek she utters human,Underneath the stinging lash?Are they men whose eyes of madness from that sadprocession flash?Still the dance goes gayly onwardWhat is it to Wealth and PrideThat without the stars are lookingOn a scene which earth should hide?That the slave-ship lies in waiting, rockingon Potomac's tide!Vainly to that mean AmbitionWhich, upon a rival's fall,Winds above its old condition,With a reptile's slimy crawl,Shall the pleading voice of sorrow, shall the slavein anguish call.Vainly to the child of Fashion,Giving to ideal woeGraceful luxury of compassion,Shall the stricken mourner go;Hateful seems the earnest sorrow, beautiful thehollow show!Nay, my words are all too sweeping:In this crowded human mart,Feeling is not dead, but sleeping;Man's strong will and woman's heart,In the coming strife for Freedom, yet shall beartheir generous part.And from yonder sunny valleys,Southward in the distance lost,Freedom yet shall summon alliesWorthier than the North can boast,With the Evil by their hearth-stones grappling atseverer cost.Now, the soul alone is willingFaint the heart and weak the knee;And as yet no lip is thrillingWith the mighty words, "Be Free!"Tarrieth long the land's Good Angel, but hisadvent is to be!Meanwhile, turning from the revelTo the prison-cell my sight,For intenser hate of evil,For a keener sense of right,Shaking off thy dust, I thank thee, City of theSlaves, to-night!"To thy duty now and ever!Dream no more of rest or stayGive to Freedom's great endeavorAll thou art and hast to-day:"Thus, above the city's murmur, saith a Voice, orseems to say.Ye with heart and vision giftedTo discern and love the right,Whose worn faces have been liftedTo the slowly-growing light,Where from Freedom's sunrise drifted slowlyback the murk of nightYe who through long years of trialStill have held your purpose fast,While a lengthening shade the dialfrom the westering sunshine cast,And of hope each hour's denial seemed an echo ofthe last!O my brothers! O my sistersWould to God that ye were near,Gazing with me down the vistasOf a sorrow strange and drear;Would to God that ye were listeners to the VoiceI seem to hear!With the storm above us driving,With the false earth mined below,Who shall marvel if thus strivingWe have counted friend as foe;Unto one another giving in the darkness blow forblow.Well it may be that our naturesHave grown sterner and more hard,And the freshness of their featuresSomewhat harsh and battle-scarred,And their harmonies of feeling overtasked andrudely jarred.Be it so. It should not swerve usFrom a purpose true and brave;Dearer Freedom's rugged serviceThan the pastime of the slave;Better is the storm above it than the quiet ofthe grave.Let us then, uniting, buryAll our idle feuds in dust,And to future conflicts carryMutual faith and common trust;Always he who most forgiveth in his brother ismost just.From the eternal shadow roundingAll our sun and starlight here,Voices of our lost ones soundingBid us be of heart and cheer,Through the silence, down the spaces, falling onthe inward ear.Know we not our dead are lookingDownward with a sad surprise,All our strife of words rebukingWith their mild and loving eyes?Shall we grieve the holy angels? Shall we cloudtheir blessed skies?Let us draw their mantles o'er usWhich have fallen in our way;Let us do the work before us,Cheerly, bravely, while we may,Ere the long night-silence cometh, and with us it isnot day!
Captain Jonathan Walker, of Harwich, Mass., was solicited by several fugitive slaves at Pensacola, Florida, to carry them in his vessel to the British West Indies. Although well aware of the great hazard of the enterprise he attempted to comply with the request, but was seized at sea by an American vessel, consigned to the authorities at Key West, and thence sent back to Pensacola, where, after a long and rigorous confinement in prison, he was tried and sentenced to be branded on his right hand with the letters "S.S." (slave-stealer) and amerced in a heavy fine.
WELCOME home again, brave seaman! with thythoughtful brow and gray,And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day;With that front of calm endurance, on whosesteady nerve in vainPressed the iron of the prison, smote the fieryshafts of pain.Is the tyrant's brand upon thee? Did the brutalcravens aimTo make God's truth thy falsehood, His holiestwork thy shame?When, all blood-quenched, from the torture theiron was withdrawn,How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools toscorn!They change to wrong the duty which God hathwritten outOn the great heart of humanity, too legible fordoubt!They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched fromfootsole up to crown,Give to shame what God hath given unto honorand renown!Why, that brand is highest honor! than its tracesnever yetUpon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazonset;And thy unborn generations, as they tread ourrocky strand,Shall tell with pride the story of their father'sbranded hand!As the Templar home was welcome, bearing back-from Syrian warsThe scars of Arab lances and of Paynim scimitars,The pallor of the prison, and the shackle's crimson span,So we meet thee, so we greet thee, truest friend ofGod and man.He suffered for the ransom of the dear Redeemer's grave,Thou for His living presence in the bound andbleeding slave;He for a soil no longer by the feet of angels trod,Thou for the true Shechinah, the present home of God.For, while the jurist, sitting with the slave-whipo'er him swung,From the tortured truths of freedom the lie ofslavery wrung,And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each God-deserted shrine,Broke the bondman's heart for bread, poured thebondman's blood for wine;While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviourknelt,And spurned, the while, the temple where a presentSaviour dwelt;Thou beheld'st Him in the task-field, in the prisonshadows dim,And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto Him!In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above andwave below,Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babblingschoolmen know;God's stars and silence taught thee, as His angelsonly can,That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope ofheaven is Man!That he who treads profanely on the scrolls of lawand creed,In the depth of God's great goodness may findmercy in his need;But woe to him who crushes the soul with chainand rod,And herds with lower natures the awful form of God!Then lift that manly right-hand, bold ploughmanof the wave!Its branded palm shall prophesy, "Salvation tothe Slave!"Hold up its fire-wrought language, that whosoreads may feelHis heart swell strong within him, his sinewschange to steel.Hold it up before our sunshine, up against ourNorthern air;Ho! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God,look there!Take it henceforth for your standard, like theBruce's heart of yore,In the dark strife closing round ye, let that handbe seen before!And the masters of the slave-land shall tremble atthat sign,When it points its finger Southward along thePuritan lineCan the craft of State avail them? Can a Christlesschurch withstand,In the van of Freedom's onset, the coming of thatband?1846.
Written for the anniversary celebration of the first of August, at Milton, 7846.
A FEW brief years have passed awaySince Britain drove her million slavesBeneath the tropic's fiery rayGod willed their freedom; and to-dayLife blooms above those island graves!He spoke! across the Carib Sea,We heard the clash of breaking chains,And felt the heart-throb of the free,The first, strong pulse of libertyWhich thrilled along the bondman's veins.Though long delayed, and far, and slow,The Briton's triumph shall be oursWears slavery here a prouder browThan that which twelve short years agoScowled darkly from her island bowers?Mighty alike for good or illWith mother-land, we fully shareThe Saxon strength, the nerve of steel,The tireless energy of will,The power to do, the pride to dare.What she has done can we not do?Our hour and men are both at hand;The blast which Freedom's angel blewO'er her green islands, echoes throughEach valley of our forest land.Hear it, old Europe! we have swornThe death of slavery. When it falls,Look to your vassals in their turn,Your poor dumb millions, crushed and worn,Your prisons and your palace walls!O kingly mockers! scoffing showWhat deeds in Freedom's name we do;Yet know that every taunt ye throwAcross the waters, goads our slowProgression towards the right and true.Not always shall your outraged poor,Appalled by democratic crime,Grind as their fathers ground before;The hour which sees our prison doorSwing wide shall be their triumph time.On then, my brothers! every blowYe deal is felt the wide earth through;Whatever here uplifts the lowOr humbles Freedom's hateful foe,Blesses the Old World through the New.Take heart! The promised hour draws near;I hear the downward beat of wings,And Freedom's trumpet sounding clear"Joy to the people! woe and fearTo new-world tyrants, old-world kings!"
Supposed to be written by the chairman of the "Central Clique" at Concord, N. H., to the Hon. M. N., Jr., at Washington, giving the result of the election. The following verses were published in the Boston Chronotype in 1846. They refer to the contest in New Hampshire, which resulted in the defeat of the pro-slavery Democracy, and in the election of John P. Hale to the United States Senate. Although their authorship was not acknowledged, it was strongly suspected. They furnish a specimen of the way, on the whole rather good-natured, in which the liberty-lovers of half a century ago answered the social and political outlawry and mob violence to which they were subjected.
'T is over, Moses! All is lostI hear the bells a-ringing;Of Pharaoh and his Red Sea hostI hear the Free-Wills singing (4)We're routed, Moses, horse and foot,If there be truth in figures,With Federal Whigs in hot pursuit,And Hale, and all the "niggers."Alack! alas! this month or moreWe've felt a sad foreboding;Our very dreams the burden boreOf central cliques exploding;Before our eyes a furnace shone,Where heads of dough were roasting,And one we took to be your ownThe traitor Hale was toasting!Our Belknap brother (5) heard with aweThe Congo minstrels playing;At Pittsfield Reuben Leavitt (6) sawThe ghost of Storrs a-praying;And Calroll's woods were sad to see,With black-winged crows a-darting;And Black Snout looked on Ossipee,New-glossed with Day and Martin.We thought the "Old Man of the Notch"His face seemed changing wholly—His lips seemed thick; his nose seemed flat;His misty hair looked woolly;And Coos teamsters, shrieking, fledFrom the metamorphosed figure."Look there!" they said, "the Old Stone HeadHimself is turning nigger!"The schoolhouse, out of Canaan hauledSeemed turning on its track again,And like a great swamp-turtle crawledTo Canaan village back again,Shook off the mud and settled flatUpon its underpinning;A nigger on its ridge-pole sat,From ear to ear a-grinning.Gray H——d heard o' nights the soundOf rail-cars onward faring;Right over Democratic groundThe iron horse came tearing.A flag waved o'er that spectral train,As high as Pittsfield steeple;Its emblem was a broken chain;Its motto: "To the people!"I dreamed that Charley took his bed,With Hale for his physician;His daily dose an old "unreadAnd unreferred" petition. (8)There Hayes and Tuck as nurses sat,As near as near could be, man;They leeched him with the "Democrat;"They blistered with the "Freeman."Ah! grisly portents! What availYour terrors of forewarning?We wake to find the nightmare HaleAstride our breasts at morning!From Portsmouth lights to Indian streamOur foes their throats are trying;The very factory-spindles seemTo mock us while they're flying.The hills have bonfires; in our streetsFlags flout us in our faces;The newsboys, peddling off their sheets,Are hoarse with our disgraces.In vain we turn, for gibing witAnd shoutings follow after,As if old Kearsarge had splitHis granite sides with laughter.What boots it that we pelted outThe anti-slavery women, (9)And bravely strewed their hall aboutWith tattered lace and trimming?Was it for such a sad reverseOur mobs became peacemakers,And kept their tar and wooden horseFor Englishmen and Quakers?For this did shifty AthertonMake gag rules for the Great House?Wiped we for this our feet uponPetitions in our State House?Plied we for this our axe of doom,No stubborn traitor sparing,Who scoffed at our opinion loom,And took to homespun wearing?Ah, Moses! hard it is to scanThese crooked providences,Deducing from the wisest planThe saddest consequences!Strange that, in trampling as was meetThe nigger-men's petition,We sprang a mine beneath our feetWhich opened up perdition.How goodly, Moses, was the gameIn which we've long been actors,Supplying freedom with the nameAnd slavery with the practiceOur smooth words fed the people's mouth,Their ears our party rattle;We kept them headed to the South,As drovers do their cattle.But now our game of politicsThe world at large is learning;And men grown gray in all our tricksState's evidence are turning.Votes and preambles subtly spunThey cram with meanings louder,And load the Democratic gunWith abolition powder.The ides of June! Woe worth the dayWhen, turning all things over,The traitor Hale shall make his hayFrom Democratic clover!Who then shall take him in the law,Who punish crime so flagrant?Whose hand shall serve, whose pen shall draw,A writ against that "vagrant"?Alas! no hope is left us here,And one can only pine forThe envied place of overseerOf slaves in Carolina!Pray, Moses, give Calhoun the wink,And see what pay he's giving!We've practised long enough, we think,To know the art of driving.And for the faithful rank and file,Who know their proper stations,Perhaps it may be worth their whileTo try the rice plantations.Let Hale exult, let Wilson scoff,To see us southward scamper;The slaves, we know, are "better offThan laborers in New Hampshire!"