Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.

Anti-Slavery Poems

A Summons

Written on the adoption of Pinckney’s Resolutions in the House of Representatives, and the debate on 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 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.”

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?

Shall our New England stand erect no longer,

But stoop in chains upon her downward way,

Thicker to gather on her limbs and stronger

Day after day?

Oh no; methinks from all her wild, green mountains;

From valleys where her slumbering fathers lie;

From her blue rivers and her welling fountains,

And clear, cold sky;

From her rough coast, and isles, which hungry Ocean

Gnaws with his surges; from the fisher’s skiff,

With white sail swaying to the billows’ motion

Round rock and cliff;

From the free fireside of her unbought farmer;

From her free laborer at his loom and wheel;

From the brown smith-shop, where, beneath the hammer,

Rings the red steel;

From each and all, if God hath not forsaken

Our land, and left us to an evil choice,

Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall waken

A People’s voice.

Startling and stern! the Northern winds shall bear it

Over Potomac’s to St. Mary’s wave;

And buried Freedom shall awake to hear it

Within her grave.

Oh, let that voice go forth! The bondman sighing

By Santee’s wave, in Mississippi’s cane,

Shall feel the hope, within his bosom dying,

Revive again.

Let it go forth! The millions who are gazing

Sadly upon us from afar shall smile,

And unto God devout thanksgiving raising,

Bless us the while.

Oh for your ancient freedom, pure and holy,

For the deliverance of a groaning earth,

For the wronged captive, bleeding, crushed, and lowly,

Let it go forth!

Sons of the best of fathers! will ye falter

With all they left ye perilled and at stake?

Ho! once again on Freedom’s holy altar

The fire awake!

Prayer-strengthened for the trial, come together,

Put on the harness for the moral fight,

And, with the blessing of your Heavenly Father,

Maintain the right!

1836.