Part 6

LIFT again the stately emblem on the Bay State's rusted shield, Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner's tattered field. Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles round the board, Answering England's royal missive with a firm, "Thus saith the Lord!" Rise again for home and freedom! set the battle in array! What the fathers did of old time we their sons must do to-day.

Tell us not of banks and tariffs, cease your paltry pedler cries; Shall the good State sink her honor that your gambling stocks may rise? Would ye barter man for cotton? That your gains may sum up higher, Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass our children through the fire? Is the dollar only real? God and truth and right a dream? Weighed against your lying ledgers must our manhood kick the beam?

O my God! for that free spirit, which of old in Boston town Smote the Province House with terror, struck the crest of Andros down! For another strong-voiced Adams in the city's streets to cry, "Up for God and Massachusetts! Set your feet on Mammon's lie! Perish banks and perish traffic, spin your cotton's latest pound, But in Heaven's name keep your honor, keep the heart o' the Bay State sound!" Where's the man for Massachusetts! Where's the voice to speak her free? Where's the hand to light up bonfires from her mountains to the sea? Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer? Sits she dumb in her despair? Has she none to break the silence? Has she none to do and dare? O my God! for one right worthy to lift up her rusted shield, And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her banner's tattered field

1840.

TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN.

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 fear Wail 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 skill Called 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 drowned So, Carolinian, it may prove with thee, For God still overrules man's schemes, and takes Craftiness in its self-set snare, and makes The wrath of man to praise Him. It may be, That the roused spirits of Democracy May leave to freer States the same wide door Through 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 combine And heave the engineer of evil with his mine.

1846.

AT WASHINGTON.

Suggested by a visit to the city of Washington, in the 12th month of 1845.

WITH a cold and wintry noon-light On its roofs and steeples shed, Shadows weaving with the sunlight From the gray sky overhead, Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the half-built town 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 quick current glide.

Underneath yon dome, whose coping Springs above them, vast and tall, Grave men in the dust are groping For the largess, base and small, Which the hand of Power is scattering, crumbs which from its table fall.

Base of heart! They vilely barter Honor's wealth for party's place; Step by step on Freedom's charter Leaving footprints of disgrace; For to-day's poor pittance turning from the great hope of their race.

Yet, where festal lamps are throwing Glory round the dancer's hair, Gold-tressed, like an angel's, flowing Backward on the sunset air; And the low quick pulse of music beats its measure sweet and rare.

There to-night shall woman's glances, Star-like, welcome give to them; Fawning fools with shy advances Seek to touch their garments' hem, With the tongue of flattery glozing deeds which God and Truth condemn.

From this glittering lie my vision Takes a broader, sadder range, Full before me have arisen Other pictures dark and strange; From the parlor to the prison must the scene and witness change.

Hark! the heavy gate is swinging On its hinges, harsh and slow; One pale prison lamp is flinging On a fearful group below Such a light as leaves to terror whatsoe'er it does not show.

Pitying God! Is that a woman On whose wrist the shackles clash? Is that shriek she utters human, Underneath the stinging lash? Are they men whose eyes of madness from that sad procession flash?

Still the dance goes gayly onward What is it to Wealth and Pride That without the stars are looking On a scene which earth should hide? That the slave-ship lies in waiting, rocking on Potomac's tide!

Vainly to that mean Ambition Which, upon a rival's fall, Winds above its old condition, With a reptile's slimy crawl, Shall the pleading voice of sorrow, shall the slave in anguish call.

Vainly to the child of Fashion, Giving to ideal woe Graceful luxury of compassion, Shall the stricken mourner go; Hateful seems the earnest sorrow, beautiful the hollow 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 bear their generous part.

And from yonder sunny valleys, Southward in the distance lost, Freedom yet shall summon allies Worthier than the North can boast, With the Evil by their hearth-stones grappling at severer cost.

Now, the soul alone is willing Faint the heart and weak the knee; And as yet no lip is thrilling With the mighty words, "Be Free!" Tarrieth long the land's Good Angel, but his advent is to be!

Meanwhile, turning from the revel To 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 the Slaves, to-night!

"To thy duty now and ever! Dream no more of rest or stay Give to Freedom's great endeavor All thou art and hast to-day:" Thus, above the city's murmur, saith a Voice, or seems to say.

Ye with heart and vision gifted To discern and love the right,

Whose worn faces have been lifted To the slowly-growing light, Where from Freedom's sunrise drifted slowly back the murk of night

Ye who through long years of trial Still have held your purpose fast, While a lengthening shade the dial from the westering sunshine cast, And of hope each hour's denial seemed an echo of the last!

O my brothers! O my sisters Would to God that ye were near, Gazing with me down the vistas Of a sorrow strange and drear; Would to God that ye were listeners to the Voice I seem to hear!

With the storm above us driving, With the false earth mined below, Who shall marvel if thus striving We have counted friend as foe; Unto one another giving in the darkness blow for blow.

Well it may be that our natures Have grown sterner and more hard, And the freshness of their features Somewhat harsh and battle-scarred, And their harmonies of feeling overtasked and rudely jarred.

Be it so. It should not swerve us From a purpose true and brave; Dearer Freedom's rugged service Than the pastime of the slave; Better is the storm above it than the quiet of the grave.

Let us then, uniting, bury All our idle feuds in dust, And to future conflicts carry Mutual faith and common trust; Always he who most forgiveth in his brother is most just.

From the eternal shadow rounding All our sun and starlight here, Voices of our lost ones sounding Bid us be of heart and cheer, Through the silence, down the spaces, falling on the inward ear.

Know we not our dead are looking Downward with a sad surprise, All our strife of words rebuking With their mild and loving eyes? Shall we grieve the holy angels? Shall we cloud their blessed skies?

Let us draw their mantles o'er us Which 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 is not day!

THE BRANDED HAND.

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 thy thoughtful brow and gray, And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day; With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady nerve in vain Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts of pain.

Is the tyrant's brand upon thee? Did the brutal cravens aim To make God's truth thy falsehood, His holiest work thy shame? When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the iron was withdrawn, How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to scorn!

They change to wrong the duty which God hath written out On the great heart of humanity, too legible for doubt! They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched from footsole up to crown, Give to shame what God hath given unto honor and renown!

Why, that brand is highest honor! than its traces never yet Upon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon set; And thy unborn generations, as they tread our rocky strand, Shall tell with pride the story of their father's branded hand!

As the Templar home was welcome, bearing back- from Syrian wars The 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 of God and man.

He suffered for the ransom of the dear Redeemer's grave, Thou for His living presence in the bound and bleeding 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-whip o'er him swung, From the tortured truths of freedom the lie of slavery wrung, And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each God- deserted shrine, Broke the bondman's heart for bread, poured the bondman's blood for wine;

While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviour knelt, And spurned, the while, the temple where a present Saviour dwelt; Thou beheld'st Him in the task-field, in the prison shadows dim, And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto Him!

In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and wave below, Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling schoolmen know; God's stars and silence taught thee, as His angels only can, That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope of heaven is Man!

That he who treads profanely on the scrolls of law and creed, In the depth of God's great goodness may find mercy in his need; But woe to him who crushes the soul with chain and rod, And herds with lower natures the awful form of God!

Then lift that manly right-hand, bold ploughman of the wave! Its branded palm shall prophesy, "Salvation to the Slave!" Hold up its fire-wrought language, that whoso reads may feel His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change to steel.

Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our Northern air; Ho! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God, look there! Take it henceforth for your standard, like the Bruce's heart of yore, In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen before!

And the masters of the slave-land shall tremble at that sign, When it points its finger Southward along the Puritan line Can the craft of State avail them? Can a Christless church withstand, In the van of Freedom's onset, the coming of that band?

1846.

THE FREED ISLANDS.

Written for the anniversary celebration of the first of August, at Milton, 7846.

A FEW brief years have passed away Since Britain drove her million slaves Beneath the tropic's fiery ray God willed their freedom; and to-day Life 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 liberty Which thrilled along the bondman's veins.

Though long delayed, and far, and slow, The Briton's triumph shall be ours Wears slavery here a prouder brow Than that which twelve short years ago Scowled darkly from her island bowers?

Mighty alike for good or ill With mother-land, we fully share The 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 blew O'er her green islands, echoes through Each valley of our forest land.

Hear it, old Europe! we have sworn The 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 show What deeds in Freedom's name we do; Yet know that every taunt ye throw Across the waters, goads our slow Progression 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 door Swing wide shall be their triumph time.

On then, my brothers! every blow Ye deal is felt the wide earth through; Whatever here uplifts the low Or 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 fear To new-world tyrants, old-world kings!"

A LETTER.

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 lost I hear the bells a-ringing; Of Pharaoh and his Red Sea host I 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 more We've felt a sad foreboding; Our very dreams the burden bore Of central cliques exploding; Before our eyes a furnace shone, Where heads of dough were roasting, And one we took to be your own The traitor Hale was toasting!

Our Belknap brother (5) heard with awe The Congo minstrels playing; At Pittsfield Reuben Leavitt (6) saw The 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, fled From the metamorphosed figure. "Look there!" they said, "the Old Stone Head Himself is turning nigger!"

The schoolhouse, out of Canaan hauled Seemed turning on its track again, And like a great swamp-turtle crawled To Canaan village back again, Shook off the mud and settled flat Upon its underpinning; A nigger on its ridge-pole sat, From ear to ear a-grinning.

Gray H----d heard o' nights the sound Of rail-cars onward faring; Right over Democratic ground The 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 "unread And 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 avail Your terrors of forewarning? We wake to find the nightmare Hale Astride our breasts at morning! From Portsmouth lights to Indian stream Our foes their throats are trying; The very factory-spindles seem To mock us while they're flying.

The hills have bonfires; in our streets Flags flout us in our faces; The newsboys, peddling off their sheets, Are hoarse with our disgraces. In vain we turn, for gibing wit And shoutings follow after, As if old Kearsarge had split His granite sides with laughter.

What boots it that we pelted out The anti-slavery women, (9) And bravely strewed their hall about With tattered lace and trimming? Was it for such a sad reverse Our mobs became peacemakers, And kept their tar and wooden horse For Englishmen and Quakers?

For this did shifty Atherton Make gag rules for the Great House? Wiped we for this our feet upon Petitions 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 scan These crooked providences, Deducing from the wisest plan The saddest consequences! Strange that, in trampling as was meet The nigger-men's petition, We sprang a mine beneath our feet Which opened up perdition.

How goodly, Moses, was the game In which we've long been actors, Supplying freedom with the name And slavery with the practice Our 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 politics The world at large is learning; And men grown gray in all our tricks State's evidence are turning. Votes and preambles subtly spun They cram with meanings louder, And load the Democratic gun With abolition powder.

The ides of June! Woe worth the day When, turning all things over, The traitor Hale shall make his hay From 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 for The envied place of overseer Of 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 while To try the rice plantations. Let Hale exult, let Wilson scoff, To see us southward scamper; The slaves, we know, are "better off Than laborers in New Hampshire!"

LINES FROM A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERICAL FRIEND.

A STRENGTH Thy service cannot tire, A faith which doubt can never dim, A heart of love, a lip of fire, O Freedom's God! be Thou to him!

Speak through him words of power and fear, As through Thy prophet bards of old, And let a scornful people hear Once more Thy Sinai-thunders rolled.

For lying lips Thy blessing seek, And hands of blood are raised to Thee, And On Thy children, crushed and weak, The oppressor plants his kneeling knee.

Let then, O God! Thy servant dare Thy truth in all its power to tell, Unmask the priestly thieves, and tear The Bible from the grasp of hell!

From hollow rite and narrow span Of law and sect by Thee released, Oh, teach him that the Christian man Is holier than the Jewish priest.

Chase back the shadows, gray and old, Of the dead ages, from his way, And let his hopeful eyes behold The dawn of Thy millennial day;

That day when fettered limb and mind Shall know the truth which maketh free, And he alone who loves his kind Shall, childlike, claim the love of Thee!

DANIEL NEALL.