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?