But thanks be to God! there _is_ some counteracting influence to this feeling, and that it is on the advance. The night has been long and dark,—already the horizon brightens; the day of freedom dawns. Go on, then, my friend; I say, go on! in the good cause thou hast espoused. Labour, and faint not. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.” My kind regards to Frederick Douglass; may he, and all others also, be strengthened and encouraged to labour in the great work of human freedom; that so, by gradual increase, like the mighty surge, they may become strong enough to overpower and drown the oppressor, and be enabled to devise and execute measures of mercy and justice, which may avert the judgments of the Almighty from their guilty land. For surely some signal display of Divine displeasure must await America unless she repent, and undo the heavy burdens of her THREE MILLION SLAVES. Are not the signs of the times calculated to remind us forcibly of this language of Isaiah, “Behold, the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and no more cover her slain.” Do we not hear already— “——the wheels of an avenging God, Groan heavily along the distant road?” Assuredly, he comes to judge the earth. “Who shall abide the day of his coming; who shall stand when he appeareth?” Thy Friend, very truly, [Signature: Wilson Armistead] IMPROMPTU STANZAS, SUGGESTED BY THE WORKING OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT, AS ILLUSTRATED IN THE CASE OF REV. DOCTOR PENNINGTON. BY THE WORKSHOP BARD. Bring out the handcuffs, clank the rusted gyves; Rain down your curses on the doomed race; Hang out a terror that shall haunt their lives, In every place. Unloose the blood-hounds from oppression’s den; Arm every brigand in the name of law, And triple shield of pulpit, press and pen, Around them draw. Ho! politicians, orators, divines! Ho! cotton-mongers of the North and South! Strike now for slavery, or our Union’s shrines Are gone forsooth! Down from their glory into chaos hurled, Your thirty States in shivered fragments go, Like the seared leaves by autumn tempests whirled To depths below. Closed be each ear, let every tongue be dumb; Nor one sad pitying tear o’er man be shed, Though fainting at your threshold he should come, And ask for bread.