From rich and rural Worcester, where through the calm repose Of cultured vales and fringing woods the gentle Nashua flows, To where Wachuset's wintry blasts the mountain larches stir, 75 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, And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with in which they were described as pious or as members of the church. In one advertisement a Swelled up to Heaven the thrilling cry of 'God save Latimer!' the salt sea spray; And Bristol sent her answering shout slave was noted as 'a Baptist preacher.' down Narragansett Bay! Along the broad Connecticut old Hamp- Against the burden of that voice what No fetters in the Bay State! No slave upon her land! Look to it well, Virginians! In calmness we have borne, 85 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 slave-hunt in our borders,-no pirate Thou prudent teacher, tell the toiling No fetters in the Bay State,-no slave No dangerous tale of Him who came to upon our land! 1843. save The outcast and the poor. The Sentence of John L. Grown But wisely shut the ray 25 Of God's free Gospel from her simple heart, And to her darkened mind alone impart So shalt thou deftly raise The market price of human flesh 50a; and while 30 On thee, their pampered guest, the Thy church shall praise. While in that vile South Sodom first and Thy poor disciples sell. Oh, shame! the Moslem thrall, While turning to the sacred Kebla feels 315 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 words of appalling blasphemy [of which the following passages give some notion]: '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 35 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! 40 Cheers for the turbaned Bey Their inmates into day : 45 But our poor slave in vain Lifting in prayer to Thee the bloody hand Oh, from the fields of cane, '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 From the low rice-swamp, from the you are. If you had remembered your Creator trader's cell; From the black slave-ship's foul and And coffle's weary chain; 55 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; 60 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 under standing, 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 Still let a mousing priesthood ply 5 And make the lettered scroll deny 46 50 Still let the place-fed, titled knave lips, ΙΟ And tell us that our fathers gave For Freedom's pedestal, a slave, The frieze and moulding, chains and whips! ᎩᎾ 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! 15 But 55 Texas 317 Breathe forth once more those tones sub lime 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 60 TEXAS. VOICE OF NEW ENGLAND. The five poems immediately following indicate the intense feeling of the friends of freedom in view of the annexation of Texas, with its vast To whose soft measures lightly move 65 territory sufficient, as was boasted, for six new slave States. [The first poem seems to have been written at the earnest entreaty of Lowell, who called on Whittier to cry aloud and spare not against the accursed Texas plot.'] With one heart and with one mouth, 'What though Issachar be strong! 'Patience with her cup o'errun, With her weary thread outspun, Murmurs that her work is done. 'Make our Union-bond a chain, Weak as tow in Freedom's strain Link by link shall snap in twain. 'Vainly shall your sand-wrought rope Bind the starry cluster up, Shattered over heaven's blue cope! 'Give us bright though broken rays, Rather than eternal haze, Clouding o'er the full-orbed blaze. 'Take your land of sun and bloom; Only leave to Freedom room For her plough, and forge, and loom; 'Take your slavery-blackened vales; Leave us but our own free gales, Blowing on our thousand sails. 50 TO FANEUIL HALL. 85 Written in 1844, on reading a call by 'a Massachusetts Freeman' for a meeting in Faneuil Hall of the citizens of Massachusetts, without distinction of party, opposed to the annexation of Texas and the aggressions of South Carolina, and in favor of decisive action against slavery. MEN! if manhood still ye claim, If the Northern pulse can thrill, Roused by wrong or stung by shame, Freely, strongly still; Let the sounds of traffic die: Shut the mill-gate, leave the stall, Fling the axe and hammer by; 65 70 |