“Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea, Jehovah hath triumphed, his people are free.” Cables carried the news across the Atlantic. Crowds thronged the streets of London and Liverpool. Three thousand workmen of Manchester, many of them present sufferers from the cotton famine, adopted by acclamation an address to President Lincoln congratulating him on the Proclamation. George Thompson led a similar meeting in Lancashire, and in Exeter Hall a great demonstration meeting was addressed by John Stuart Mill. But it was from the deep, deep South that the sweetest music came. It was an old song--old as the first man, lifting himself from the mire and slime of some dark river bed and feeling the warm sun upon his face, old as the song they sang crossing the Red Sea, old as the throbbing of drums deep in the jungles, old as the song of all men everywhere who would be free. It was a new song, the loveliest thing born this side of the seas, fresh and verdant and young, full as the promise of this new America--the Delta’s rich, black earth; the tall, thick trees upon a thousand hills; the fairy, jeweled beauty of the bayous; the rolling plains of the Mississippi. Black folks made a song that day. They crouched in their cabins, hushed and still. Old men and women who had prayed so long--broken, close to the end, they waited for this glorious thing. Young men and women, leashed in their strength, twisted in bondage--they waited. Mothers grasped their babies in their arms--waiting. Some of them listened for a clap of thunder that would rend the world apart. Some strained their eyes toward the sky, waiting for God upon a cloud to bring them freedom. Anything was possible, they whispered, waiting. They recognized His shining angels when they came: a tired and dirty soldier, in a torn and tattered uniform; a grizzled old man hobbling out from town; a breathless woman, finding her way through the swamp to tell them; a gaunt, white “cracker” risking his life to let them know; a fleet-footed black boy, running, running down the road. These were the messengers who brought them word. And the song of joy went up. Free! Free! Free! Black men and women lifted their quivering hands and shouted across the fields. The rocks and trees, the rivers and the mountains echoed their voices--the universe was glad the morning freedom’s song rang in the South. Part IV _TOWARD MORNING_ The seeds of the Declaration of Independence are slowly ripening. --JOHN QUINCY ADAMS CHAPTER FIFTEEN _When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed_