Page:Poems written during the progress of the abolition question in the United States.djvu/43



On the appearance of these Stanzas in the Liberator, it was predicted by Garrison, that 'they would ring from Maine to the Rocky Mountains,' and the prophecy has been fulfilled. They have been circulated in periodicals, quoted in addresses and orations, and scattered broad-cast, over the land, beneath the kneeling slave and motto, 'Am I not a man and a brother?'—the device of Cowper and the English Abolitionists.

In this last form, they have roused the consciences of slaveholders in New-Orleans—have been held up to a Boston audience by the sophist Gurley, after a fruitless endeavor to create a tumult by one of his strong appeals to prejudice and selfishness—and have been displayed by the noble-souled May before a Massachusetts Legislature, as a refutation of the charge of incendiarism cast on the Abolitionists by the Legislatures of the South. In witnessing the effect of poetic talent thus applied, we cease to wonder that the words of Fletcher of Saltoun—'Give me to make the ballads of a nation, and let who will make the laws,' have passed into a proverb.

'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 it exterminating edge to slavery. Shall the United States—the free United States, which could not bear the 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?"—Dr. Follen's Address.