Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/230

208 I see also the patriarchal solicitude of the kindly-hearted owners of men, in whose breast not even iniquitous system could sour the milk of human kindness. I hear the groans, the sorrows, the sighings, the soul striving of these benighted creatures of God, rising up from the low grounds of sorrow and reaching the ear of Him Who regardeth man of the lowliest estate. I strain my ear to supernal sound, and I hear in the secret chambers of the Almighty the order to the Captain of Host to break his bond and set him free. I see Abraham Lincoln, himself a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, arise to execute the high decree. I see two hundred thousand black boys in blue baring their breasts to the bayonets of the enemy, that their race might have some slight part in its own deliverance. I see the great Proclamation delivered in the year of my birth of which I became the first fruit and beneficiary. I see the assassin striking down the great Emancipator; and the house of mirth is transformed into the Golgotha of the nation. I watch the Congress as it adds to the Constitution new words, which make the document a charter of liberty indeed. I see the new-made citizen running to and fro in the first fruit of his new-found freedom. I see him rioting in the flush of privilege which the nation had vouchsafed, but destined, alas, not long to last. I see him thrust down from the high seat of political