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 Some fitting text of sacred writ; Give heaven the credit of a deed Which shames the nether pit.
Kneel, smooth blasphemer, unto Him Whose truth is on thy lips a lie; Ask that His bright winged cherubim May bend around that scaffold grim To guard and bless and sanctify.
O champion of the people's cause Suspend thy loud and vain rebuke Of foreign wrong and Old World's laws, Man of the Senate, look! Was this the promise of the free, The great hope of our early time, That slavery's poison vine should be Upborne by Freedom's prayer-nursed tree O'erclustered with such fruits of crime?
Send out the summons East and West, And South and North, let all be there Where he who pitied the oppressed Swings out in sun and air.
Let not a Democratic hand The grisly hangman's task refuse; There let each loyal patriot stand, Awaiting slavery's command, To twist the rope and draw the noose! But vain is irony--unmeet Its cold rebuke for deeds which start In fiery and indignant beat The pulses of the heart.
Leave studied wit and guarded phrase For those who think but do not feel; Let men speak out in words which raise Where'er they fall, an answering blaze Like flints which strike the fire from steel.
Still let a mousing priesthood ply Their garbled text and gloss of sin, And make the lettered scroll deny Its living soul within: Still let the place-fed, titled knave Plead robbery's right with purchased lips, And tell us that our fathers gave For Freedom's pedestal, a slave, The frieze and moulding, chains and whips! But ye 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! Breathe forth once more those tones sublime 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 To whose soft measures lightly move The footsteps of the faun and fay, O'er-locked by mirth and love! But such a stern and startling strain As Britain's hunted bards flung down From Snowden to the conquered plain, Where harshly clanked the Saxon chain, On trampled field and smoking town.
By Liberty's dishonored name, By man's lost hope and failing trust, By words and deeds which bow with shame Our foreheads to the dust, By the exulting strangers' sneer, Borne to us from the Old World's thrones, And by their victims' grief who hear, In sunless mines and dungeons drear, How Freedom's land her faith disowns! Speak out in acts.

The time for words Has passed, and deeds suffice alone; In vain against the clang of swords The wailing pipe is blown! Act, act in God's name, while ye may! Smite from the church her leprous limb! Throw open to the light of day The bondman's cell, and break away The chains the state has bound on him! Ho! every true and living soul, To Freedom's perilled altar bear The Freeman's and the Christian's whole Tongue, pen, and vote, and prayer! One last, great battle for the right-- One short, sharp struggle to be free! To do is to succeed--our fight Is waged in Heaven's approving sight; The smile of God is Victory.
1844.
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 territory sufficient, as was boasted, for six new slave States.
Up the hillside, down the glen, Rouse the sleeping citizen; Summon out the might of men! Like a lion growling low, Like a night-storm rising slow, Like the tread of unseen foe; It is coming, it is nigh! Stand your homes and altars by; On your own free thresholds die.
Clang the bells in all your spires; On the gray hills of your sires Fling to heaven your signal-fires.
From Wachuset, lone and bleak, Unto Berkshire's tallest peak, Let the flame-tongued heralds speak.
Oh, for God and duty stand, Heart to heart and hand to hand, Round the old graves of the land.
Whoso shrinks or falters now, Whoso to the yoke would bow, Brand the craven on his brow! Freedom's soil hath only place For a free and fearless race, None for traitors false and base.
Perish party, perish clan; Strike together while ye can, Like the arm of one strong man.
Like that angel's voice sublime, Heard above a world of crime, Crying of the end of time; With one heart and with one mouth, Let the North unto the South Speak the word befitting both.
"What though Issachar be strong Ye may load his back with wrong Overmuch and over long: "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.
"Boldly, or with treacherous art, Strike the blood-wrought chain apart; Break the Union's mighty heart; "Work the ruin, if ye will; Pluck upon your heads an ill Which shall grow and deepen still.
"With your bondman's right arm bare, With his heart of black despair, Stand alone, if stand ye dare! "Onward with your fell design; Dig the gulf and draw the line Fire beneath your feet the mine! "Deeply, when the wide abyss Yawns between your land and this, Shall ye feel your helplessness.
"By the hearth, and in the bed, Shaken by a look or tread, Ye shall own a guilty dread.
"And the curse of unpaid toil, Downward through your generous soil Like a fire shall burn and spoil.
"Our bleak hills shall bud and blow, Vines our rocks shall overgrow, Plenty in our valleys flow;-- "And when vengeance clouds your skies, Hither shall ye turn your eyes, As the lost on Paradise! "We but ask our rocky strand, Freedom's true and brother band, Freedom's strong and honest hand; "Valleys by the slave untrod, And the Pilgrim's mountain sod, Blessed of our fathers' God!" 1844.
TO FANEUIL HALL.
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; Throng to Faneuil Hall! Wrongs which freemen never brooked, Dangers grim and fierce as they, Which, like couching lions, looked On your fathers' way; These your instant zeal demand, Shaking with their earthquake-call Every rood of Pilgrim land, Ho, to Faneuil Hall! From your capes and sandy bars, From your mountain-ridges cold, Through whose pines the westering stars Stoop their crowns of gold; Come, and with your footsteps wake Echoes from that holy wall; Once again, for Freedom's sake, Rock your fathers' hall! Up, and tread beneath your feet Every cord by party spun: Let your hearts together beat As the heart of one.
Banks and tariffs, stocks and trade, Let them rise or let them fall: Freedom asks your common aid,-- Up, to Faneuil Hall! Up, and let each voice that speaks Ring from thence to Southern plains, Sharply as the blow which breaks Prison-bolts and chains! Speak as well becomes the free Dreaded more than steel or ball, Shall your calmest utterance be, Heard from Faneuil Hall! Have they wronged us?
Let us then Render back nor threats nor prayers; Have they chained our free-born men?
Let us unchain theirs! Up, your banner leads the van, Blazoned, "Liberty for all!" Finish what your sires began! Up, to Faneuil Hall! TO MASSACHUSETTS.
WHAT though around thee blazes No fiery rallying sign?
From all thy own high places, Give heaven the light of thine! What though unthrilled, unmoving, The statesman stand apart, And comes no warm approving From Mammon's crowded mart?
Still, let the land be shaken By a summons of thine own! By all save truth forsaken, Stand fast with that alone! Shrink not from strife unequal! With the best is always hope; And ever in the sequel God holds the right side up! But when, with thine uniting, Come voices long and loud, And far-off hills are writing Thy fire-words on the cloud; When from Penobscot's fountains A deep response is heard, And across the Western mountains Rolls back thy rallying word; Shall thy line of battle falter, With its allies just in view?
Oh, by hearth and holy altar, My fatherland, be true! Fling abroad thy scrolls of Freedom Speed them onward far and fast Over hill and valley speed them, Like the sibyl's on the blast! Lo! the Empire State is shaking The shackles from her hand; With the rugged North is waking The level sunset land! On they come, the free battalions East and West and North they come, And the heart-beat of the millions Is the beat of Freedom's drum.
"To the tyrant's plot no favor No heed to place-fed knaves! Bar and bolt the door forever Against the land of slaves!" Hear it, mother Earth, and hear it, The heavens above us spread! The land is roused,--its spirit Was sleeping, but not dead! 1844.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.
GOD bless New Hampshire! from her granite peaks Once more the voice of Stark and Langdon speaks.
The long-bound vassal of the exulting South For very shame her self-forged chain has broken; Torn the black seal of slavery from her mouth, And in the clear tones of her old time spoken! Oh, all undreamed-of, all unhoped-for changes The tyrant's ally proves his sternest foe; To all his biddings, from her mountain ranges, New Hampshire thunders an indignant No! Who is it now despairs?
Oh, faint of heart, Look upward to those Northern mountains cold, Flouted by Freedom's victor-flag unrolled, And gather strength to bear a manlier part All is not lost.

The angel of God's blessing Encamps with Freedom on the field of fight; Still to her banner, day by day, are pressing, Unlooked-for allies, striking for the right Courage, then, Northern hearts! Be firm, be true: What one brave State hath done, can ye not also do?
1845.
THE PINE-TREE.
Written on hearing that the Anti-Slavery Resolves of Stephen C.Phillips had been rejected by the Whig Convention in Faneuil Hall, in 1846.
LIFT again the stately emblem on the Bay State's rusted shield, Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner's tattered field.
Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles round the board, Answering England's royal missive with a firm, "Thus saith the Lord!" Rise again for home and freedom! set the battle in array! What the fathers did of old time we their sons must do to-day.
Tell us not of banks and tariffs, cease your paltry pedler cries; Shall the good State sink her honor that your gambling stocks may rise?
Would ye barter man for cotton?
That your gains may sum up higher, Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass our children through the fire?
Is the dollar only real?
God and truth and right a dream?
Weighed against your lying ledgers must our manhood kick the beam?
O my God! for that free spirit, which of old in Boston town Smote the Province House with terror, struck the crest of Andros down! For another strong-voiced Adams in the city's streets to cry, "Up for God and Massachusetts! Set your feet on Mammon's lie! Perish banks and perish traffic, spin your cotton's latest pound, But in Heaven's name keep your honor, keep the heart o' the Bay State sound!" Where's the man for Massachusetts! Where's the voice to speak her free?
Where's the hand to light up bonfires from her mountains to the sea?
Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer?
Sits she dumb in her despair?
Has she none to break the silence?
Has she none to do and dare?
O my God! for one right worthy to lift up her rusted shield, And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her banner's tattered field 1840.
TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN.
John C.Calhoun, who had strongly urged the extension of slave territory by the annexation of Texas, even if it should involve a war with England, was unwilling to promote the acquisition of Oregon, which would enlarge the Northern domain of freedom, and pleaded as an excuse the peril of foreign complications which he had defied when the interests of slavery were involved.
Is this thy voice whose treble notes of fear Wail in the wind?
And dost thou shake to hear, Actieon-like, the bay of thine own hounds, Spurning the leash, and leaping o'er their bounds?
Sore-baffled statesman! when thy eager hand, With game afoot, unslipped the hungry pack, To hunt down Freedom in her chosen land, Hadst thou no fear, that, erelong, doubling back, These dogs of thine might snuff on Slavery's track?
Where's now the boast, which even thy guarded tongue, Cold, calm, and proud, in the teeth o' the Senate flung, O'er the fulfilment of thy baleful plan, Like Satan's triumph at the fall of man?
How stood'st thou then, thy feet on Freedom planting, And pointing to the lurid heaven afar, Whence all could see, through the south windows slanting, Crimson as blood, the beams of that Lone Star! The Fates are just; they give us but our own; Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown.
There is an Eastern story, not unknown, Doubtless, to thee, of one whose magic skill Called demons up his water-jars to fill; Deftly and silently, they did his will, But, when the task was done, kept pouring still.
In vain with spell and charm the wizard wrought, Faster and faster were the buckets brought, Higher and higher rose the flood around, Till the fiends clapped their hands above their master drowned So, Carolinian, it may prove with thee, For God still overrules man's schemes, and takes Craftiness in its self-set snare, and makes The wrath of man to praise Him.

It may be, That the roused spirits of Democracy May leave to freer States the same wide door Through which thy slave-cursed Texas entered in, From out the blood and fire, the wrong and sin, Of the stormed-city and the ghastly plain, Beat by hot hail, and wet with bloody rain, The myriad-handed pioneer may pour, And the wild West with the roused North combine And heave the engineer of evil with his mine.
1846.
AT WASHINGTON.
Suggested by a visit to the city of Washington, in the 12th month of 1845.
WITH a cold and wintry noon-light On its roofs and steeples shed, Shadows weaving with the sunlight From the gray sky overhead, Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the half-built town outspread.
Through this broad street, restless ever, Ebbs and flows a human tide, Wave on wave a living river; Wealth and fashion side by side; Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.
Underneath yon dome, whose coping Springs above them, vast and tall, Grave men in the dust are groping For the largess, base and small, Which the hand of Power is scattering, crumbs which from its table fall.
Base of heart! They vilely barter Honor's wealth for party's place; Step by step on Freedom's charter Leaving footprints of disgrace; For to-day's poor pittance turning from the great hope of their race.
Yet, where festal lamps are throwing Glory round the dancer's hair, Gold-tressed, like an angel's, flowing Backward on the sunset air; And the low quick pulse of music beats its measure sweet and rare.
There to-night shall woman's glances, Star-like, welcome give to them; Fawning fools with shy advances Seek to touch their garments' hem, With the tongue of flattery glozing deeds which God and Truth condemn.
From this glittering lie my vision Takes a broader, sadder range, Full before me have arisen Other pictures dark and strange; From the parlor to the prison must the scene and witness change.
Hark! the heavy gate is swinging On its hinges, harsh and slow; One pale prison lamp is flinging On a fearful group below Such a light as leaves to terror whatsoe'er it does not show.
Pitying God! Is that a woman On whose wrist the shackles clash?
Is that shriek she utters human, Underneath the stinging lash?
Are they men whose eyes of madness from that sad procession flash?
Still the dance goes gayly onward What is it to Wealth and Pride That without the stars are looking On a scene which earth should hide?
That the slave-ship lies in waiting, rocking on Potomac's tide! Vainly to that mean Ambition Which, upon a rival's fall, Winds above its old condition, With a reptile's slimy crawl, Shall the pleading voice of sorrow, shall the slave in anguish call.
Vainly to the child of Fashion, Giving to ideal woe Graceful luxury of compassion, Shall the stricken mourner go; Hateful seems the earnest sorrow, beautiful the hollow show! Nay, my words are all too sweeping: In this crowded human mart, Feeling is not dead, but sleeping; Man's strong will and woman's heart, In the coming strife for Freedom, yet shall bear their generous part.
And from yonder sunny valleys, Southward in the distance lost, Freedom yet shall summon allies Worthier than the North can boast, With the Evil by their hearth-stones grappling at severer cost.
Now, the soul alone is willing Faint the heart and weak the knee; And as yet no lip is thrilling With the mighty words, "Be Free!" Tarrieth long the land's Good Angel, but his advent is to be! Meanwhile, turning from the revel To the prison-cell my sight, For intenser hate of evil, For a keener sense of right, Shaking off thy dust, I thank thee, City of the Slaves, to-night! "To thy duty now and ever! Dream no more of rest or stay Give to Freedom's great endeavor All thou art and hast to-day:" Thus, above the city's murmur, saith a Voice, or seems to say.
Ye with heart and vision gifted To discern and love the right, Whose worn faces have been lifted To the slowly-growing light, Where from Freedom's sunrise drifted slowly back the murk of night Ye who through long years of trial Still have held your purpose fast, While a lengthening shade the dial from the westering sunshine cast, And of hope each hour's denial seemed an echo of the last! O my brothers! O my sisters Would to God that ye were near, Gazing with me down the vistas Of a sorrow strange and drear; Would to God that ye were listeners to the Voice I seem to hear! With the storm above us driving, With the false earth mined below, Who shall marvel if thus striving We have counted friend as foe; Unto one another giving in the darkness blow for blow.
Well it may be that our natures Have grown sterner and more hard, And the freshness of their features Somewhat harsh and battle-scarred, And their harmonies of feeling overtasked and rudely jarred.
Be it so.