Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform, Complete

TO ENGLISHMEN.

Written when, in the stress of our terrible war, the English ruling class, with few exceptions, were either coldly indifferent or hostile to the party of freedom. Their attitude was illustrated by caricatures of America, among which was one of a slaveholder and cowhide, with the motto, "Haven't I a right to wallop my nigger?"

     You flung your taunt across the wave
     We bore it as became us,
     Well knowing that the fettered slave
     Left friendly lips no option save
     To pity or to blame us.

     You scoffed our plea. "Mere lack of will,
     Not lack of power," you told us
     We showed our free-state records; still
     You mocked, confounding good and ill,
     Slave-haters and slaveholders.

     We struck at Slavery; to the verge
     Of power and means we checked it;
     Lo!—presto, change! its claims you urge,
     Send greetings to it o'er the surge,
     And comfort and protect it.

     But yesterday you scarce could shake,
     In slave-abhorring rigor,
     Our Northern palms for conscience' sake
     To-day you clasp the hands that ache
     With "walloping the nigger!"

     O Englishmen!—in hope and creed,
     In blood and tongue our brothers!
     We too are heirs of Runnymede;
     And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed
     Are not alone our mother's.

     "Thicker than water," in one rill
     Through centuries of story
     Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still
     We share with you its good and ill,
     The shadow and the glory.

     Joint heirs and kinfolk, leagues of wave
     Nor length of years can part us
     Your right is ours to shrine and grave,
     The common freehold of the brave,
     The gift of saints and martyrs.

     Our very sins and follies teach
     Our kindred frail and human
     We carp at faults with bitter speech,
     The while, for one unshared by each,
     We have a score in common.

     We bowed the heart, if not the knee,
     To England's Queen, God bless her
     We praised you when your slaves went free
     We seek to unchain ours. Will ye
     Join hands with the oppressor?

     And is it Christian England cheers
     The bruiser, not the bruised?
     And must she run, despite the tears
     And prayers of eighteen hundred years,
     Amuck in Slavery's crusade?

     Oh, black disgrace! Oh, shame and loss
     Too deep for tongue to phrase on
     Tear from your flag its holy cross,
     And in your van of battle toss
     The pirate's skull-bone blazon!

     1862.