Still in thought as free as ever, What are England’s rights? I ask; Me from delights to sever, Me to torture, me to task? Fleecy locks and dark complexion Cannot forfeit nature’s claim; Skins may differ, but affection Dwells in white and black the same. Why did all-creating nature Make the plant for which we toil? Sighs must fan it—tears must water, Sweat of ours must dress the soil. Hark! Ye masters, iron-hearted, Lolling at your jovial boards— Think how many backs have smarted For the sweets your cane affords! Hark! He answers. Wild tornadoes Strewing yonder seas with wrecks, Wasting towns, plantations, meadows, Are the voice with which he speaks; He, foreseeing what vexations Afric’s sons should undergo, Fixed their tyrant’s habitations Where his whirlwinds answer—No! By our blood in Afric wasted, Ere our necks received the chain, By the miseries we have tasted Crossing in your barks the main; By our sufferings since ye brought us To the man-degrading mart— All, sustained by patience, taught us, Only by a broken heart. Count our nation brutes no longer, Till some reason ye shall find Worthier of regard, and stronger Than the color of the kind; Slaves of gold, whose sordid dealings Tarnish all your boasted powers, Prove that ye have human feelings Ere ye proudly question ours! Time passed on, and Tom and I, and Mr. and Mrs. Sutherland, still continued to occupy the same house. The Lord blessed the entire household, and none of us had ever cause to regret the steps we had taken and carried out with such speed. We enlisted heart and soul in the grand anti-slavery movement, and blew the bellows with all our might to help on the good cause of liberty and perfect freedom. The border ruffians in Kansas had been beaten back into the South, which was the first open fight between the two high contending parties. That put the angry South in no good humor. Like an ungovernable, high-strung virago, her temper was up, and she threatened secession, and dreamed of extending a new slave empire around the Gulf of Mexico. The abolitionists of the North were unyielding, and the two sections were drifting into war.