Supposed to be written by the chairman of the "Central Clique" at
Concord, N. H., to the Hon. M. N., Jr., at Washington, giving the result
of the election. The following verses were published in the Boston
Chronotype in 1846. They refer to the contest in New Hampshire, which
resulted in the defeat of the pro-slavery Democracy, and in the election
of John P. Hale to the United States Senate. Although their authorship
was not acknowledged, it was strongly suspected. They furnish a specimen
of the way, on the whole rather good-natured, in which the
liberty-lovers of half a century ago answered the social and political
outlawry and mob violence to which they were subjected.
'T is over, Moses! All is lost
I hear the bells a-ringing;
Of Pharaoh and his Red Sea host
I hear the Free-Wills singing [4]
We're routed, Moses, horse and foot,
If there be truth in figures,
With Federal Whigs in hot pursuit,
And Hale, and all the "niggers."
Alack! alas! this month or more
We've felt a sad foreboding;
Our very dreams the burden bore
Of central cliques exploding;
Before our eyes a furnace shone,
Where heads of dough were roasting,
And one we took to be your own
The traitor Hale was toasting!
Our Belknap brother [5] heard with awe
The Congo minstrels playing;
At Pittsfield Reuben Leavitt [6] saw
The ghost of Storrs a-praying;
And Calroll's woods were sad to see,
With black-winged crows a-darting;
And Black Snout looked on Ossipee,
New-glossed with Day and Martin.
We thought the "Old Man of the Notch"
His face seemed changing wholly--
His lips seemed thick; his nose seemed flat;
His misty hair looked woolly;
And Coos teamsters, shrieking, fled
From the metamorphosed figure.
"Look there!" they said, "the Old Stone Head
Himself is turning nigger!"
The schoolhouse, out of Canaan hauled
Seemed turning on its track again,
And like a great swamp-turtle crawled
To Canaan village back again,
Shook off the mud and settled flat
Upon its underpinning;
A nigger on its ridge-pole sat,
From ear to ear a-grinning.
Gray H----d heard o' nights the sound
Of rail-cars onward faring;
Right over Democratic ground
The iron horse came tearing.
A flag waved o'er that spectral train,
As high as Pittsfield steeple;
Its emblem was a broken chain;
Its motto: "To the people!"
I dreamed that Charley took his bed,
With Hale for his physician;
His daily dose an old "unread
And unreferred" petition. [8]
There Hayes and Tuck as nurses sat,
As near as near could be, man;
They leeched him with the "Democrat;"
They blistered with the "Freeman."
Ah! grisly portents! What avail
Your terrors of forewarning?
We wake to find the nightmare Hale
Astride our breasts at morning!
From Portsmouth lights to Indian stream
Our foes their throats are trying;
The very factory-spindles seem
To mock us while they're flying.
The hills have bonfires; in our streets
Flags flout us in our faces;
The newsboys, peddling off their sheets,
Are hoarse with our disgraces.
In vain we turn, for gibing wit
And shoutings follow after,
As if old Kearsarge had split
His granite sides with laughter.
What boots it that we pelted out
The anti-slavery women, [9]
And bravely strewed their hall about
With tattered lace and trimming?
Was it for such a sad reverse
Our mobs became peacemakers,
And kept their tar and wooden horse
For Englishmen and Quakers?
For this did shifty Atherton
Make gag rules for the Great House?
Wiped we for this our feet upon
Petitions in our State House?
Plied we for this our axe of doom,
No stubborn traitor sparing,
Who scoffed at our opinion loom,
And took to homespun wearing?
Ah, Moses! hard it is to scan
These crooked providences,
Deducing from the wisest plan
The saddest consequences!
Strange that, in trampling as was meet
The nigger-men's petition,
We sprang a mine beneath our feet
Which opened up perdition.
How goodly, Moses, was the game
In which we've long been actors,
Supplying freedom with the name
And slavery with the practice
Our smooth words fed the people's mouth,
Their ears our party rattle;
We kept them headed to the South,
As drovers do their cattle.
But now our game of politics
The world at large is learning;
And men grown gray in all our tricks
State's evidence are turning.
Votes and preambles subtly spun
They cram with meanings louder,
And load the Democratic gun
With abolition powder.
The ides of June! Woe worth the day
When, turning all things over,
The traitor Hale shall make his hay
From Democratic clover!
Who then shall take him in the law,
Who punish crime so flagrant?
Whose hand shall serve, whose pen shall draw,
A writ against that "vagrant"?
Alas! no hope is left us here,
And one can only pine for
The envied place of overseer
Of slaves in Carolina!
Pray, Moses, give Calhoun the wink,
And see what pay he's giving!
We've practised long enough, we think,
To know the art of driving.
And for the faithful rank and file,
Who know their proper stations,
Perhaps it may be worth their while
To try the rice plantations.
Let Hale exult, let Wilson scoff,
To see us southward scamper;
The slaves, we know, are "better off
Than laborers in New Hampshire!"
LINES
FROM A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERICAL FRIEND.
A STRENGTH Thy service cannot tire,
A faith which doubt can never dim,
A heart of love, a lip of fire,
O Freedom's God! be Thou to him!
Speak through him words of power and fear,
As through Thy prophet bards of old,
And let a scornful people hear
Once more Thy Sinai-thunders rolled.
For lying lips Thy blessing seek,
And hands of blood are raised to Thee,
And On Thy children, crushed and weak,
The oppressor plants his kneeling knee.
Let then, O God! Thy servant dare
Thy truth in all its power to tell,
Unmask the priestly thieves, and tear
The Bible from the grasp of hell!
From hollow rite and narrow span
Of law and sect by Thee released,
Oh, teach him that the Christian man
Is holier than the Jewish priest.
Chase back the shadows, gray and old,
Of the dead ages, from his way,
And let his hopeful eyes behold
The dawn of Thy millennial day;
That day when fettered limb and mind
Shall know the truth which maketh free,
And he alone who loves his kind
Shall, childlike, claim the love of Thee!
DANIEL NEALL.
Dr. Neall, a worthy disciple of that venerated philanthropist, Warner
Mifflin, whom the Girondist statesman, Jean Pierre Brissot, pronounced
"an angel of mercy, the best man he ever knew," was one of the noble
band of Pennsylvania abolitionists, whose bravery was equalled only by
their gentleness and tenderness. He presided at the great anti-slavery
meeting in Pennsylvania Hall, May 17, 1838, when the Hall was surrounded
by a furious mob. I was standing near him while the glass of the windows
broken by missiles showered over him, and a deputation from the rioters
forced its way to the platform, and demanded that the meeting should be
closed at once. Dr. Neall drew up his tall form to its utmost height. "I
am here," he said, "the president of this meeting, and I will be torn in
pieces before I leave my place at your dictation. Go back to those who
sent you. I shall do my duty." Some years after, while visiting his
relatives in his native State of Delaware, he was dragged from the house
of his friends by a mob of slave-holders and brutally maltreated. He
bore it like a martyr of the old times; and when released, told his
persecutors that he forgave them, for it was not they but Slavery which
had done the wrong. If they should ever be in Philadelphia and needed
hospitality or aid, let them call on him.
I.
FRIEND of the Slave, and yet the friend of all;
Lover of peace, yet ever foremost when
The need of battling Freedom called for men
To plant the banner on the outer wall;
Gentle and kindly, ever at distress
Melted to more than woman's tenderness,
Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty's post
Fronting the violence of a maddened host,
Like some gray rock from which the waves are
tossed!
Knowing his deeds of love, men questioned not
The faith of one whose walk and word were
right;
Who tranquilly in Life's great task-field wrought,
And, side by side with evil, scarcely caught
A stain upon his pilgrim garb of white
Prompt to redress another's wrong, his own
Leaving to Time and Truth and Penitence alone.
II.
Such was our friend. Formed on the good old plan,
A true and brave and downright honest man
He blew no trumpet in the market-place,
Nor in the church with hypocritic face
Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace;
Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will
What others talked of while their hands were still;
And, while "Lord, Lord!" the pious tyrants cried,
Who, in the poor, their Master crucified,
His daily prayer, far better understood
In acts than words, was simply doing good.
So calm, so constant was his rectitude,
That by his loss alone we know its worth,
And feel how true a man has walked with us on earth.
6th, 6th month, 1846.