Anti-slavery poems : songs of labor and reform / by John Greenleaf Whittier [electronic text]
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- Anti-slavery poems : songs of labor and reform / by John Greenleaf Whittier [electronic text]
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- Whittier, John Greanleaf, 1807-1892
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- [New York, N.Y.]: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
- 1888
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"Anti-slavery poems : songs of labor and reform / by John Greenleaf Whittier [electronic text]." In the digital collection American Verse Project. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/BAE0044.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 8, 2024.
Pages
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TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.
Toussaint L'Ouverture, the black chieftain of Hayti, was a slave on the plantation "de Libertas," belonging to M. Bayou. When the rising of the negroes took place, in 1791, Toussaint refused to join them until he had aided M. Bayou and his family to escape to Baltimore. The white man had discovered in Toussaint many noble qualities, and had instructed him in some of the first branches of education; and the preservation of his life was owing to the negro's gratitude for this kindness.
In 1797, Toussaint L'Ouverturne was appointed, by the French government, General-in-Chief of the armies of St. Domingo, and, as such, signed the Convention with General Maitland for the evacuation of the island by the British. From this period, until 1801, the island, under the government of Toussaint, was happy, tranquil, and prosperous. The miserable attempt of Napoleon to re-establish slavery in St. Domingo, although it failed of its intended object, proved fatal to the negro chieftain. Treacherously seized by Leclerc, he was hurried on board a vessel by night, and conveyed to France, where he was confined in a cold subterranean dungeon, at Besançon, where, in April, 1803, he died. The treatment of Toussaint finds a parallel only in the murder of the Duke D'Enghien. It was the remark of Godwin, in his Lectures, that the West India Islands, since their first discovery by Columbus, could not boast of a single name which deserves comparison with that of Toussaint L'Ouverture.
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THE SLAVE-SHIPS.
"That fatal, that perfidious bark, Built i' the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark."
" The French ship Le Rodeur, with a crew of twenty-two men, and with one hundred and sixty negro slaves, sailed from Bonny, in Africa, April, 1819. On approaching the line, a terrible malady broke out, — an obstinate disease of the eyes, — contagious, and altogether beyond the resources of medicine. It was aggravated by the scarcity of water among the slaves (only half a wineglass per day being allowed to an individual), and by the extreme impurity of the air in which they breathed. By the advice of the physician, they were brought upon deck occasionally; but some of the poor wretches, locking themselves in each other's arms, leaped overboard, in the hope, which so universally prevails among them, of being swiftly transported to their own homes in Africa. To check this, the captain ordered several who were stopped in the attempt to be shot, or hanged, before their companions. The disease extended to the crew; and one after another were smitten with it, until only one remained unaffected. Yet even this dreadful condition did not preclude calculation: to save the expense of supporting slaves rendered unsalable, and to
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obtain grounds for a claim against the underwriters, thirty-six of the negroes, having become blind, were thrown into the sea and drowned! "
In the midst of their dreadful fears lest the solitary individual, whose sight remained unaffected, should also be seized with the malady, a sail was discovered. It was the Spanish slaver, Leon. The same disease had been there; and, horrible to tell, all the crew had become blind! Unable to assist each other, the vessels parted. The Spanish ship has never since been heard of. The Rodeur reached Guadaloupe on the 21st of June; the only man who had escaped the disease, and had thus been enabled to steer the slaver into port, caught it in three days after its arrival.
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FOLLEN.
"The despotism which our fathers could not bear in their native country is expiring, and the sword of justice in her reformed hands has applied its exterminating edge to slavery. Shall the United States — the free United States, which could not bear the
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bonds of a king — cradle the bondage which a king is abolishing? Shall a Republic be less free than a Monarchy? Shall we, in the vigor and buoyancy of our manhood, be less energetic in righteousness than a kingdom in its age?"
"Genius of America — Spirit of our free institutions! — where art thou? How art thou fallen, O Lucifer! son of the morning, — how art thou fallen from Heaven! Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming! The kings of the earth cry out to thee, Aha! Aha! Art thou become like unto us?"
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HYMN.
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THE YANKEE GIRL.
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THE HUNTERS OF MEN.
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STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.
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CLERICAL OPPRESSORS.
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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 postmasters 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."
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TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS SHIPLEY.
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THE MORAL WARFARE.
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RITNER.
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THE PASTORAL LETTER.
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HYMN.
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THE FAREWELL
OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTHERN BONDAGE.
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PENNSYLVANIA HALL.
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THE NEW YEAR.
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THE RELIC.
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THE WORLD'S CONVENTION
OF THE FRIENDS OF EMANCIPATION, HELD IN LONDON IN 1840.
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MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.
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THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE.
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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 words, and you became her victim. The consequence was, that, led on by a desire to serve her, you committed the offence of aiding 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
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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 hours 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
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of the sentiment of abhorrence and disgust that South Carolina yielded to it, and the sentence was commuted to scourging and banishment.
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TEXAS.
VOICE OF NEW ENGLAND.
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TO FANEUIL HALL.
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TO MASSACHUSETTS.
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NEW HAMPSHIRE.
GOD bless New Hampshire! from her granite peaks Once more the voice of Stark and Langdon speaks.Page 102
THE PINE TREE.
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TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN.
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AT WASHINGTON.
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THE BRANDED HAND.
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THE FREED ISLANDS.
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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.
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LINES
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DANIEL NEALL.
Dr. Neall, a worthy disciple of that venerated philanthropist, Warner Mifflin, whom the Girondist statesman, Jean Pierre Brissot, pronounced "an angel of mercy, the best man he ever knew," was one of the noble band of Pennsylvania abolitionists, whose bravery was equalled only by their gentleness and tenderness. He presided at the great anti-slavery meeting in Pennsylvania Hall, May 17, 1838, when the Hall was surrounded by a furious mob. I was standing near him while the glass of the windows broken by missiles showered over him, and a deputation from the rioters forced its way to the platform, and demanded that the meeting should be closed at once. Dr. Neall drew up his tall form to its utmost height.
''I am here," he said, "the president of this meeting, and I will be torn in pieces before I leave my place at your dictation. Go back to those who sent you. I shall do my duty." Some years after, while visiting his relatives in his native State of Delaware, he was dragged from the house of his friends by a mob of slaveholders and brutally maltreated. He bore it like a martyr of the old times; and when released, told his persecutors that he forgave them, for it was not they but Slavery which had done the
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wrong. If they should ever be in Philadelphia and needed hospitality or aid, let them call on him.
I.
II.
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SONG OF SLAVES IN THE DESERT.
"Sebah, Oasis of Fezzan, 10th March, 1846. — This evening the female slaves were unusually excited in singing, and I had the curiosity to ask my negro servant, Said, what they were singing about. As many of them were natives of his own country, he had no difficulty in translating the Mandara or Bornou language. I had often asked the Moors to translate their songs for me, but got no satisfactory account from them. Said at first said,'Oh, they sing of Rubee' (God), 'What do you mean?' I replied, impatiently. 'Oh, don't you know?' he continued, 'they asked God to give them their Atka?' (certificate of freedom). I inquired, 'Is that all?' Said: 'No; they say, "Where are we going? The world is large. O God! Where are we going? O God!" 'I inquired, 'What else?' Said: 'They remember their country, Bornou, and say, "Bornou was a pleasant country, full of all good things; but this is a bad country, and we are miserable!" ' 'Do they say anything else?' Said: 'No; they repeat these words over and over again, and add, "O God! give us our Atka, and let us return again to our dear home." '
"I am not surprised I got little satisfaction when I asked the Moors about the songs of their slaves. Who will say that the above words are not a very appropriate song? What could have been more congenially adapted to their then woful condition? It is not to be wondered at that these poor bondwomen cheer up their hearts, in their long, lonely, and painful wanderings over the desert, with words and sentiments like these; but I have often observed that their fatigue and sufferings were too great for them to strike up this melancholy dirge, and many days their plaintive strains never broke over the silence of the desert." —
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TO DELAWARE.
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YORKTOWN.
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RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE.
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THE LOST STATESMAN.
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THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE.
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THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER-BREAKERS.
The rights and liberties affirmed by Magna Charta were deemed of such importance, in the thirteenth century, that the Bishops, twice a year, with tapers burning, and in their pontifical robes, pronounced, in the presence of the king and the representatives of the estates of England, the greater excommunication against the infringer of that instrument. The imposing ceremony took place in the great Hall of Westminster. A copy of the curse, as pronounced in 1253, declares that, "by the authority of Almighty God, and the blessed Apostles and Martyrs, and all the saints in heaven, all those who violate the English liberties, and secretly or openly, by deed, word, or counsel, do make statutes, or observe them being made, against said liberties, are accursed and sequestered from the company of heaven and the sacraments of the Holy Church."
William Penn, in his admirable political pamphlet, England's Present Interest Considered, alluding to the curse of the Charterbreakers, says: "I am no Roman Catholic, and little value their other curses; yet I declare I would not for the world incur this curse, as every man deservedly doth, who offers violence to the fundamental freedom thereby repeated and confirmed."
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PÆAN.
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THE CRISIS.
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LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER.
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DERNE.
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A SABBATH SCENE.
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IN THE EVIL DAYS.
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MOLOCH IN STATE STREET.
In a foot-note of the Report of the Senate of Massachusetts on the case of the arrest and return to bondage of the fugitive slave Thomas Sims it is stated that —
"It would have been impossible for the U. S. marshal thus successfully to have resisted the law of the State, without the assistance of the municipal authorities of Boston, and the countenance and support of a numerous, wealthy, and powerful body of citizens. It was in evidence that 1500 of the most wealthy and respectable citizens — merchants, bankers, and others — volunteered their services to aid the marshal on this occasion…No watch was kept upon the doings of the marshal, and while the
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State officers slept, after the moon had gone down, in the darkest hour before daybreak, the accused was taken out of our jurisdiction by the armed police of the city of Boston."
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OFFICIAL PIETY.
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THE RENDITION.
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ARISEN AT LAST.
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THE HASCHISH.
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FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE.
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THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS.
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LETTER
FROM A MISSIONARY OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH, IN KANSAS, TO A DISTINGUISHED POLITICIAN.
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BURIAL OF BARBER.
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TO PENNSYLVANIA.
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LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.
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THE PASS OF THE SIERRA.
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A SONG FOR THE TIME.
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WHAT OF THE DAY?
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A SONG,
INSCRIBED TO THE FRÉMONT CLUBS.
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THE PANORAMA.
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ON A PRAYER-BOOK,
WITH ITS FRONTISPIECE, ARY SCHEFFER'S "CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR," AMERICANIZED BY THE OMISSION OF THE BLACK MAN.
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THE SUMMONS.
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TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD.
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IN WAR TIME.
TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL AND HARRIET W. SEWALL,
OF MELROSE.
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THY WILL BE DONE.
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A WORD FOR THE HOUR.
THE firmament breaks up. In black eclipse Light after light goes out. One evil star, Luridly glaring through the smoke of war, As in the dream of the Apocalypse, Drags others down. Let us not weakly weep Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to keep Our faith and patience; wherefore should we leap On one hand into fratricidal fight, Or, on the other, yield eternal right, Frame lies of law, and good and ill confound? What fear we? Safe on freedom's vantage-ground Our feet are planted: let us there remain In unrevengeful calm, no means untried Which truth can sanction, no just claim denied, The sad spectators of a suicide! They break the links of Union: shall we light The fires of hell to weld anew the chain On that red anvil where each blow is pain?Page 219
"EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT."
LUTHER'S HYMN.
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TO JOHN C. FRÉMONT.
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THE WATCHERS.
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TO ENGLISHMEN.
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MITHRIDATES AT CHIOS.
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AT PORT ROYAL.
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ASTRÆA AT THE CAPITOL.
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THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862.
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HYMN,
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THE PROCLAMATION.
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ANNIVERSARY POEM.
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BARBARA FRIETCHIE.
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WHAT THE BIRDS SAID.
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THE MANTLE OF ST. JOHN DE MATHA.
A LEGEND OF "THE RED, WHITE, AND BLUE," A. D. 1154-1864.
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LAUS DEO!
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HYMN
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AFTER THE WAR.
THE PEACE AUTUMN.
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TO THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS.
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THE HIVE AT GETTYSBURG.
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HOWARD AT ATLANTA.
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THE EMANCIPATION GROUP.
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THE JUBILEE SINGERS.
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GARRISON.
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Page [271]
Notes
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1 1.1
Note 1, page 18. The reader may, perhaps, call to mind the beautiful sonnet of William Wordsworth, addressed to Toussaint L'Ouverture, during his confinement in France.
" Toussaint! — thou most unhappy man of men! Whether the whistling rustic tends his plough Within thy hearing, or thou liest now Buried in some deep dungeon's earless den; O miserable chieftain! — where and whenWilt thou find patience? — Yet, die not, do thou Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow; Though fallen thyself, never to rise again, Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies, — There's not a breathing of the common wind That will forget thee; thou hast great allies. Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man's unconquerable mind." -
2 1.2
Note 2, page 67. The Northern author of the Congressional rule against receiving petitions of the people on the subject of Slavery.
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3 1.3
Note 3, page 88. There was at the time when this poem was written an Association in Liberty County, Georgia, for the religious instruction of negroes. One of their annual reports contains an address by the Rev. Josiah Spry Law, in which the following passage occurs: "There is a growing interest in this community in the religious instruction of negroes. There is a conviction that religious instruction promotes the quiet and order of the people, and the pecuniary interest of the owners."
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* 1.5
Note 5, page 118. The senatorial editor of the Belknap Gazette all along manifested a peculiar horror of "niggers" and "nigger parties."
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* 1.6
Note 6, page 118. The justice before whom Elder Storrs was brought for preaching abolition on a writ drawn by Hon. M. N. Jr., of Pittsfield. The sheriff served the writ while the elder was praying.
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* 1.7
Note 7, page 118. The academy at Canaan, N. H., received one or two colored scholars, and was in consequence dragged off into a swamp by Democratic teams.
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* 1.8
Note 8, page 119. "Papers and memorials touching the subject of slavery shall be laid on the table wthout reading, debate or reference." So read the gag-law, as it was called, introduced in the House by Mr. Atherton.
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9 1.9
Note 9, page 120. The Female Anti-Slavery Society, at its first meeting in Concord, was assailed with stones and brickbats.