A VOICE FOR FREEDOM

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 24, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 37.

A VOICE FOR FREEDOM.

[At this very hour men—American born—are in jail in the State of Maryland for the simple reason that they served God according to his commandment, no evil or crime having been alleged against them, save that they kept God's law. Tennessee stands with Maryland. In the face of this read the following stanzas by the late James Russell Lowell, one of the true Americans so rapidly passing away. The poem of which they are a part was written "On the Capture of Certain Fugitive Slaves Near Washington." The verses below are as applicable to those who are now in durance vile for conscience' sake.]

Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man; Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up with interest or with ease Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds like these!

I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest; And if my words seem treason to the dullard and the tame, 'Tis but my Bay-State dialect,—our fathers spake the same!

Shame on the costly mockery of piling stone on stone To those who won our liberty, the heroes dead and gone, While we look coldly on, and see law-shielded ruffians slay The men who fain would win their own, the heroes of to-day!

Are we pledged to craven silence? Oh, fling it to the wind, The parchment wall that bars us from the least of human kind,— That makes us cringe and temporize, and dumbly stand at rest, While Pity's burning flood of words is red-hot in the breast!

Though we break our fathers' promise, we have nobler duties first; The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed; Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God!

We owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer, more, To the sympathies that God hath set within our spirit's core;— Our country claims our fealty; we grant it so, but then Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.

He's true to God who's true to man; wherever wrong is done To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath the all-beholding sun, That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race.