So shalt thou deftly raise The market price of human flesh; and while On thee, their pampered guest, the planters smile, Thy church shall praise. Grave, reverend men shall tell From Northern pulpits how thy work was blest, While in that vile South Sodom first and best, Thy poor disciples sell. Oh, shame! the Moslem thrall, Who, with his master, to the Prophet kneels, While turning to the sacred Kebla feels His fetters break and fall. Cheers for the turbaned Bey Of robber-peopled Tunis! he hath torn The dark slave-dungeons open, and hath borne Their inmates into day: But our poor slave in vain Turns to the Christian shrine his aching eyes; Its rites will only swell his market price, And rivet on his chain. God of all right! how long Shall priestly robbers at Thine altar stand, Lifting in prayer to Thee, the bloody hand And haughty brow of wrong? 1843 THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN Oh, from the fields of cane, From the low rice-swamp, from the trader's cell; From the black slave-ship's foul and loathsome hell, And coffle's weary chain; Hoarse, horrible, and strong, Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry, Filling the arches of the hollow sky, How long, O God, how long? 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 these words of appalling blasphemy: