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Against the burden of that voice what tyrant power shall stand?

No fetters in the Bay State! No slave upon her land!

Look to it well, Virginians! In calmness we have borne, In answer to our faith and trust, your insult and your scorn; You've spurned our kindest counsels; you've hunted for our lives; And shaken round our hearths and homes your manacles and gyves!

We wage no war, we lift no arm, we fling no torch within The fire-clamps of the quaking mine beneath your soil of sin; We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, while ye can, With the strong upward tendencies and godlike soul of man!

But for us and for our children, the vow which we have given For freedom and humanity is registered in heaven; No slave-hunt in our borders,--no pirate on our strand!

No fetters in the Bay State,--no slave upon our land!

1843.

THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE.

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-place Hath in her suffering won?

My God! can such things be?

Hast Thou not said that whatsoe'er is done Unto Thy weakest and Thy humblest one Is 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 deal Back 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 slave No dangerous tale of Him who came to save The outcast and the poor.

But wisely shut the ray Of God's free Gospel from her simple heart, And to her darkened mind alone impart One stern command, Obey! (3)

So shalt thou deftly raise The market price of human flesh; and while On thee, their pampered guest, the planters smile, Thy church shall praise.

Grave, reverend men shall tell From 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 feels His fetters break and fall.

Cheers for the turbaned Bey Of robber-peopled Tunis! he hath torn The dark slave-dungeons open, and hath borne Their inmates into day:

But our poor slave in vain Turns 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 long Shall priestly robbers at Thine altar stand, Lifting in prayer to Thee, the bloody hand And haughty brow of wrong?

1843

THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN

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?

THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN.

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 long A License from the Holy Book For 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 rise The incense of this sacrifice-- This blossom of the gallows tree!

Search out for slavery's hour of need Some fitting text of sacred writ; Give heaven the credit of a deed Which shames the nether pit.

Kneel, smooth blasphemer, unto Him Whose truth is on thy lips a lie; Ask that His bright winged cherubim May bend around that scaffold grim To guard and bless and sanctify.

O champion of the people's cause Suspend thy loud and vain rebuke Of 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 be Upborne by Freedom's prayer-nursed tree O'erclustered with such fruits of crime?

Send out the summons East and West, And South and North, let all be there Where he who pitied the oppressed Swings out in sun and air.

Let not a Democratic hand The 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--unmeet Its cold rebuke for deeds which start In fiery and indignant beat The pulses of the heart.

Leave studied wit and guarded phrase For those who think but do not feel; Let men speak out in words which raise Where'er they fall, an answering blaze Like flints which strike the fire from steel.

Still let a mousing priesthood ply Their garbled text and gloss of sin, And make the lettered scroll deny Its living soul within: Still let the place-fed, titled knave Plead robbery's right with purchased lips, And tell us that our fathers gave For Freedom's pedestal, a slave, The frieze and moulding, chains and whips!

But ye who own that Higher Law Whose tablets in the heart are set, Speak out in words of power and awe That God is living yet!

Breathe forth once more those tones sublime Which thrilled the burdened prophet's lyre, And in a dark and evil time Smote down on Israel's fast of crime And gift of blood, a rain of fire!

Oh, not for us the graceful lay To whose soft measures lightly move The footsteps of the faun and fay, O'er-locked by mirth and love!

But such a stern and startling strain As Britain's hunted bards flung down From 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 shame Our 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 words Has passed, and deeds suffice alone; In vain against the clang of swords The wailing pipe is blown!

Act, act in God's name, while ye may!

Smite from the church her leprous limb!

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