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Autographs for Freedom, by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Thirty-five Other Eminent Writers

History

Autographs for Freedom, by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Thirty-five Other Eminent Writers

Antislavery movements -- United States; Slavery -- United States

Are spread to snare the souls of men,
             By foreign tyrants’ bayonets
              Established on his throne again,
             Blesses the swords still reeking red
              With the best blood his country bore,
             And prays for blessings on the head
              Of him who wades through Roman gore.
             The same unholy sacrifice
             Where’ere I turn bursts on mine eyes,
             Of princely pomp, and priestly pride,
              The people trampled in the dust,
             Their dearest, holiest rights denied,
              Their hopes destroyed, their spirit crushed:
             But when I turn the land to view,
              Which claims, par excellence, to be
             The refuge of the brave and true,
              The strongest bulwark of the free,
             The grand asylum for the poor
              And trodden down of every land,
             Where they may rest in peace, secure,
              Nor fear the oppressor’s iron hand,—
             Worse scenes of rapine, lust, and shame,
             Than e’er disgraced the Russian name,
             Worse than the Austrian ever saw,
             Are sanctioned here as righteous law.
             Here might the Austrian butcher[13] make
              Progress in shameful cruelty,
             Where women-whippers proudly take
              The meed and praise of chivalry.
             Here might the cunning Jesuit learn,
              Though skilled in subtle sophistry,
             And trained to persevere in stern
              Unsympathising cruelty,
             And call that good, which, right or wrong,
             Will tend to make his order strong:
             He here might learn from those who stand
              High in the gospel ministry,
             The very magnates of the land
              In evangelic piety,
             That conscience must not only bend
              To everything the church decrees,
             But it must also condescend,
              When drunken politicians please
             To place their own inhuman acts
              Above the “higher law” of God,
             And on the hunted victim’s tracks
              Cheer the malignant fiends of blood,
             To help the man-thief bind the chain
              Upon his Christian brother’s limb,
             And bear to slavery’s hell again
              The bound and suffering child of Him
             Who died upon the cross, to save
             Alike, the master and the slave.
             While all the oppressed from every land
             Are welcomed here with open hand,
             And fulsome praises rend the heaven
             For those who have the fetters riven
             Of European tyranny,
             And bravely struck for liberty;
             And while from thirty thousand fanes
              Mock prayers go up, and hymns are sung,
             Three million drag their clanking chains,

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Autographs for Freedom, by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Thirty-five Other Eminent Writers

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