Chapter 2

Oh, say, shall Prussia's banner be A refuge for the stricken slave? And shall the Russian serf go free By Baikal's lake and Neva's wave? And shall the wintry-bosomed Dane Relax the iron hand of pride, And bid his bondmen cast the chain From fettered soul and limb aside?

Shall every flap of England's flag Proclaim that all around are free, From farthest Ind to each blue crag That 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 clings The damning shade of Slavery's curse?

Go, let us ask of Constantine To loose his grasp on Poland's throat; And beg the lord of Mahmoud's line To spare the struggling Suliote; Will not the scorching answer come From 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 jest And by-word of a mocking Earth? Shall our own glorious land retain That curse which Europe scorns to bear? Shall our own brethren drag the chain Which 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 heart Scatter the living coals of Truth! Up! while ye slumber, deeper yet The shadow of our fame is growing! Up! while ye pause, our sun may set In 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 where The sleeper only wakes in death?

Rise now for Freedom! not in strife Like 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 drink His 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

HYMN.

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 before Our fathers in their weary way, As with Thy chosen moved of yore The 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 Thee May not our humble prayer be given?

Thy children all, though hue and form Are varied in Thine own good will, With Thy own holy breathings warm, And fashioned in Thine image still.

We thank Thee, Father! hill and plain Around 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 love Are 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 word Of light and love is never given; For those whose ears have never heard The 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 time Of Earth's deliverance may be near, When every land and tongue and clime The 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 given The glorious freedom of the just,

THE YANKEE GIRL.

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 seems Breathed 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 play O'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 waves His 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 gem To 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 all Depart 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 gold Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou halt sold; Thy home may be lovely, but round it I hear The 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 be In fetters with them, than in freedom with thee!" 1835.

THE HUNTERS OF MEN.

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 ride In 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 aid Her 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 sin Is the curl of his hair and the hue of his skin! Woe, now, to the hunted who turns him at bay Will our hunters be turned from their purpose and prey? Will their hearts fail within them? their nerves tremble, when All 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 more Have turned from their flight with their backs to the shore What 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 again Will 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.

STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.

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 borne The 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 save The Truth, our Country, and the Slave?

Of human skulls that shrine was made, Round which the priests of Mexico Before 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 wrought Which 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 burst The bands and fetters round them set; By the free Pilgrim spirit nursed Within 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 ears That truth oppression only fears.

What! shall we guard our neighbor still, While woman shrieks beneath his rod, And while he tramples down at will The 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 him The 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 worn Clank 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 stands On 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 well Of 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!

CLERICAL OPPRESSORS.

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 they Who minister at thine altar, God of Right! Men who their hands with prayer and blessing lay On Israel's Ark of light!

What! preach, and kidnap men? Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor? Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then Bolt hard the captive's door?

What! servants of thy own Merciful Son, who came to seek and save The homeless and the outcast, fettering down The tasked and plundered slave!

Pilate and Herod, friends! Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine! Just God and holy! is that church, which lends Strength to the spoiler, thine?

Paid hypocrites, who turn Judgment aside, and rob the Holy Book Of those high words of truth which search and burn In warning and rebuke;

Feed fat, ye locusts, feed! And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank the Lord That, from the toiling bondman's utter need, Ye pile your own full board.

How long, O Lord! how long Shall such a priesthood barter truth away, And in Thy name, for robbery and wrong At Thy own altars pray?

Is not Thy hand stretched forth Visibly 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 grind Their brethren of a common Father down! To all who plunder from the immortal mind Its bright and glorious crown!

Woe to the priesthood! woe To those whose hire is with the price of blood; Perverting, darkening, changing, as they go, The searching truths of God!

Their glory and their might Shall perish; and their very names shall be Vile before all the people, in the light Of a world's liberty.

Oh, speed the moment on When Wrong shall cease, and Liberty and Love And Truth and Right throughout the earth be known As in their home above. 1836.

A SUMMONS

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 spirit Of the true-hearted and the unshackled gone? Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit Their 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 us To 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 favors Rights 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 abettors Make truth a lie?

Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible, To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood? And, in Oppression's hateful service, libel Both 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 stronger Day 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 Ocean Gnaws with his surges; from the fisher's skiff, With white sail swaying to the billows' motion Round 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 forsaken Our land, and left us to an evil choice, Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall waken A People's voice.

Startling and stern! the Northern winds shall bear it Over Potomac's to St. Mary's wave; And buried Freedom shall awake to hear it Within her grave.

Oh, let that voice go forth! The bondman sighing By 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 gazing Sadly upon us from afar shall smile, And unto God devout thanksgiving raising Bless 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 falter With all they left ye perilled and at stake? Ho! once again on Freedom's holy altar The 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 right 1836.

TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS SHIPLEY.

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 blest Of Siloa's waters softly flowing!

Beneath that Tree of Life which gives To all the earth its healing leaves In the white robe of angels clad, And wandering by that sacred river, Whose streams of holiness make glad The city of our God forever!

Gentlest of spirits! not for thee Our tears are shed, our sighs are given; Why mourn to know thou art a free Partaker of the joys of heaven? Finished thy work, and kept thy faith In Christian firmness unto death; And beautiful as sky and earth, When autumn's sun is downward going, The blessed memory of thy worth Around thy place of slumber glowing!

But woe for us! who linger still With feebler strength and hearts less lowly, And minds less steadfast to the will Of Him whose every work is holy. For not like thine, is crucified The spirit of our human pride And 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 way The storm of human hate is sweeping; Hunted and branded, and a prey, Our watch amidst the darkness keeping, Oh, for that hidden strength which can Nerve unto death the inner man Oh, 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 save From scourge and chain the hunted slave; Unwavering in the Truth's defence, Even where the fires of Hate were burning, The unquailing eye of innocence Alone upon the oppressor turning!

O loved of thousands! to thy grave, Sorrowing of heart, thy brethren bore thee. The poor man and the rescued slave Wept 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 thine Recalling 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 given The 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.

THE MORAL WARFARE.

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 tongue To mortal strife as tigers sprung, And every gift on Freedom's shrine Was 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 race Which rises in their honored place; A moral warfare with the crime And folly of an evil time.

So let it be. In God's own might We gird us for the coming fight, And, strong in Him whose cause is ours In conflict with unholy powers, We grasp the weapons He has given,-- The Light, and Truth, and Love of Heaven. 1836.

RITNER.

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 lips Of the forgers of fetters, and wielders of whips! Where "chivalric" honor means really no more Than 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 blood Of 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 Penn Still lingers and breathes over mountain and glen; Will the land where a Benezet's spirit went forth To the peeled and the meted, and outcast of Earth; Where the words of the Charter of Liberty first From 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?