American Slavery—The Prophecy.
THESE lines copied for Review from the "Christian Press" were written in Europe several years ago by Mrs. Henrietta W. Boate, in answer to a slaveowner's family, who invited the authoress to travel in North America. It is strikingly accurate except where it caters to the popular and delusive hope of a good time coming. You tell of a bright land far over the sea,
But ah! can you call it the land of the free?
Where the image of God, for a handful of gold,
Like a beast of the field, in the market is sold;
Where the child from the mother's fond bosom is torn,
Where the father is chained, leaving orphans forlorn;
Where the maiden is bartered like merchandise ware,
Then doomed to the lash, and the groan of despair. Woe! woe to thee, fair land, far over the main;
For the canker of death, dark slavery's stain,
Shall gnaw to thy vitals, while every sigh
From the victims who writhe, mounts for justice on high,
And He, the great Lord of the universe wide,
Shall smite thee to earth in thy strength and thy pride;
For vengeance must fall, for foul cruelties done
On the beings redeemed by His own beloved Son. The sound of the war drum shall thrill thee at night,
As thy sons and thy brothers are borne to the fight;
The slave and the cotton shall stab thee with pain,
And the North and the South be divided in twain;
And brother 'gainst brother shall strike in the fight,
And battles be fought in the dead of the night,
And the white maid and widow in sorrow shall mourn,
And the flags of thy freedom in tatters be torn. The North in her might like a whirlwind shall rise,
And the notes of the cannon be borne to the skies;
And though the warm blood of her heroes be shed,
The light of her freedom shall never be dead;
The stars and the stripes an Excelsior shall be,
Proud Liberty's banner by land and by sea; [scorn,
And the Union, though spurned by the slaveholder's
Shall be guarded by Northmen for ages unborn.