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Its pirate-flag, and southward turn'd its keel.
How much New England's bank account was swell'd
By slavery's profits, is a problem meet
For statisticians, but this much is true:
Its stain'd but shining shekels serv'd to buy
Full many a turkey for Thanksgiving feasts!
Not only was the belfry-tower of Faneuil Hall
Rear'd from its profits, but the busy bay
Of ancient Newport, where our fashion flock'd,
Teem'd with great slavers, till the very air
In serfdom's cause became a sea of flags!
If slavery's blight was on our country's brow,
The sin lay at a nation's door, and God,
Upon a nation's hearth-stones, wreak'd His wrath.
But Dixie's share in the forbidden trade
Was all domestic. She did not impress
The negro into slavery; but she did,

In slavery's school-room, teach him how to toil,
To lisp the accents of King Alfred's tongue,
To lift the prayer a Saviour gave to man
To find a heavenly road to freedom's boon,
And, in a gentler Master's service, bold,
To end his bondage at the gates of gold.

The Israelites-Jehovah's chosen seed-
Were slaves in Egypt, under Pharaoh's yoke.
The civilization of the ancient world,
There flower'd, and the Hebrews came in touch
With sage magicians, vers'd in wisdom's lore,
With architects, who built the pyramids.
But ere they were prepar'd for Canaan's seat,
When freed at last by frowning Rameses,
A weary wandering in the desert lay,
Of forty years' duration. Doom'd to fight,
To thirst, to faint, to famish, and to die,

With bleeding bones to strew the wilderness,
Till, out of all the hosts who left the Nile,
Who saw the Red Sea yawn-at last but two,
Caleb and Joshua, by God's decree,

Were destin'd to enjoy the Promis'd Land.

But when the negro by the North was freed-
Though educated for his master's work,
And in his master's school-behold, at once,
Loos'd from the fetters which enslav'd his limbs,
Without probation, he receiv'd the flower

Of Freedom's boon, the ballot! 'Twas enough
That for a tutor he possess'd the South!
O, crafty men of state, beneath your wiles,
Fate's laughing irony, half-hidden, smiles.
If not the work of demagogues who sought
A lease of power, by negro suffrage bought,
This gift imperial to the black, I deem
An act of homage to the old regime,
An act whose logic-if it spoken be-
To grand old Dixie peals a eulogy,

Louder than when the cannon's belching lead
In tribute thunder booms above the dead.

XVI.

WAS JEFFERSON DAVIS A TRAITOR?

ASSION has ceas'd to reign. The tranquil days
Of even pulse-beats have arriv'd at last

Po

When men and measures can be calmly weigh'd

In scales unshaken; days with sunshine lit,

Of wide horizons and of crystal skies,

From which the smoke has drifted;-in whose blaze

Full many a darling error is dissolv'd,

The beauteous form of Truth at last is seen,

The motives which have animated noble minds

Now nobly recogniz'd, without the doubt

Which questions honor;-days to Justice given
Of sounder judgments and of saner views.
The gospel of the Man of Galilee

Has whisper'd to the waters: "Peace be still!"
Then, from a nation's lexicon of love,

Let "Treason" and "Rebellion" be eras'd.
To hatred, they belong, to bitterness
Of enmity, to rancors of the past,
But not to man's diviner brotherhood.

There's not, in righteousness, a foot of ground
On which such epithets can stand erect.
The men who fought like lions to defend
A nation's holy compact did not lift
Rebellion's flag. Rather a rebel he,

Who to the compact prov'd recalcitrant.

When, from the Union's household, we withdrew,
Beneath our jackets of Confederate gray,
We hugg'd the Constitution to our hearts,
And, on the march, above the battle's roar,
In siren strains, it sang of "Home, Sweet Home".

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UNIV

OF

MICK

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