Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.

Anti-Slavery Poems

In War Time
To John C. Frémont

On the 31st of August, 1861, General Frémont, then in charge of the Western Department, issued a proclamation which contained a clause, famous as the first announcement of emancipation: “The property,” it declared, “real and personal, of all persons in the State of Missouri, who shall take up arms against the United States, or who shall be directly proven to have taken active part with their enemies in the field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use; and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free men.” Mr. Lincoln regarded the proclamation as premature and countermanded it, after vainly endeavoring to persuade Frémont of his own motion to revoke it.

THY error, Frémont, simply was to act

A brave man’s part, without the statesman’s tact,

And, taking counsel but of common sense,

To strike at cause as well as consequence.

Oh, never yet since Roland wound his horn

At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown

Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine own,

Heard from the van of freedom’s hope forlorn!

It had been safer, doubtless, for the time,

To flatter treason, and avoid offence

To that Dark Power whose underlying crime

Heaves upward its perpetual turbulence.

But if thine be the fate of all who break

The ground for truth’s seed, or forerun their years

Till lost in distance, or with stout hearts make

A lane for freedom through the level spears,

Still take thou courage! God has spoken through thee,

Irrevocable, the mighty words, Be free!

The land shakes with them, and the slave’s dull ear

Turns from the rice-swamp stealthily to hear.

Who would recall them now must first arrest

The winds that blow down from the free North-west,

Ruffling the Gulf; or like a scroll roll back

The Mississippi to its upper springs.

Such words fulfil their prophecy, and lack

But the full time to harden into things.

1861.