 |
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
| FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER, 765 Back where brutal men may trample, On her honor and her fame; And unto her lipa so dusky, Preaa the cup of woe and shame. There is blood upon your city, Dark and dismal is the etain ; And your hands would fail to cleanse it, Though Lake Erie ye should drain. There's a curse upon your Union, Fearful sounds are in the air; As if thunderbolts were framing, Answers to tha bondsman's prayer; Ye may offer human victims, Like the heathen priests of old; And may barter manly honor For the Union and for gold. But ye can not stay the whirlwind, When the storm begins to break; And our God doth rise in judgment, For the poor and needy'a sake. And, your sin-cnrscd, guilty Union, Shall be shaken to its base, Till ye learn that simple justice, Is the right of every race. Mrs. Harper took the deepest interest in the war, and looked with extreme anxiety for the results; and she never lost an opportunity to write, speak, or serve the cause ia any way that she thought would best promote the freedom of the slave. On the proclamation of General Fremont, the passages from her pen are worthy to be long remembered: " Well, what think you of the war? To me one of the most interesting features is Fre-mont's Proclamation freeing the slaves of the rebels. Is there no ray of hope in that? I should not wonder if Edward M. Davia breathed that into his ear. His proclamation looks like real earnestness; no mincing the matter with the rebels. Death to the traitors and confiscation of their slaves is no child's play. I hopo that the boldness of his Bland will inspire others to look the real cause of the war in the face and inspire the government with uncompromising earnestness to remove the festering curse. And yet I am not un- ' easy about the result of this war. We may look upon it as God's controversy with the nation; His arising to plead by fire and blood the can?* of His poor and needy people. Some time since Breckinridge, in writing to Suraner, asks, if I rightly remember, What is the fate of s few negroes to me or mine? Bound up in one great bundle of humanity our fates seem linked together, our destiny entwined with theirs, and our rights are interwoven together." Finally when the long-looked-for Emancipation Proclamation came, although Mrs. Harper was not at that time very well, she accepted an invita- |