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Home  »  The Poetical Works In Four Volumes  »  A Letter

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

Anti-Slavery Poems

A Letter

  • Supposed to be written by the chairman of the “Central Clique” at Concord, N. H., to the Hon. M. N., Jr., at Washington, giving the result of the election.
  • The following verses were published in the Boston Chronotype in 1846. They refer to the contest in New Hampshire, which resulted in the defeat of the pro-slavery Democracy, and in the election of John P. Hale to the United States Senate. Although their authorship was not acknowledged, it was strongly suspected. They furnish a specimen of the way, on the whole rather good-natured, in which the liberty-lovers of half a century ago answered the social and political outlawry and mob violence to which they were subjected.


  • ’T IS over, Moses! All is lost!

    I hear the bells a-ringing;

    Of Pharaoh and his Red Sea host

    I hear the Free-Wills singing.

    We ’re routed, Moses, horse and foot,

    If there be truth in figures,

    With Federal Whigs in hot pursuit,

    And Hale, and all the “niggers.”

    Alack! alas! this month or more

    We ’ve felt a sad foreboding;

    Our very dreams the burden bore

    Of central cliques exploding;

    Before our eyes a furnace shone,

    Where heads of dough were roasting,

    And one we took to be your own

    The traitor Hale was toasting!

    Our Belknap brother heard with awe

    The Congo minstrels playing;

    At Pittsfield Reuben Leavitt saw

    The ghost of Storrs a-praying;

    And Carroll’s woods were sad to see,

    With black-winged crows a-darting;

    And Black Snout looked on Ossipee,

    New-glossed with Day and Martin.

    We thought the “Old Man of the Notch”

    His face seemed changing wholly—

    His lips seemed thick; his nose seemed flat;

    His misty hair looked woolly;

    And Coös teamsters, shrieking, fled

    From the metamorphosed figure.

    “Look there!” they said, “the Old Stone Head

    Himself is turning nigger!”

    The schoolhouse, out of Canaan hauled

    Seemed turning on its track again,

    And like a great swamp-turtle crawled

    To Canaan village back again,

    Shook off the mud and settled flat

    Upon its underpinning;

    A nigger on its ridge-pole sat,

    From ear to ear a-grinning.

    Gray H——d heard o’ nights the sound

    Of rail-cars onward faring;

    Right over Democratic ground

    The iron horse came tearing.

    A flag waved o’er that spectral train,

    As high as Pittsfield steeple;

    Its emblem was a broken chain;

    Its motto: “To the people!”

    I dreamed that Charley took his bed,

    With Hale for his physician;

    His daily dose an old “unread

    And unreferred” petition.

    There Hayes and Tuck as nurses sat,

    As near as near could be, man;

    They leeched him with the “Democrat;”

    They blistered with the “Freeman.”

    Ah! grisly portents! What avail

    Your terrors of forewarning?

    We wake to find the nightmare Hale

    Astride our breasts at morning!

    From Portsmouth lights to Indian stream

    Our foes their throats are trying;

    The very factory-spindles seem

    To mock us while they ’re flying.

    The hills have bonfires; in our streets

    Flags flout us in our faces;

    The newsboys, peddling off their sheets,

    Are hoarse with our disgraces.

    In vain we turn, for gibing wit

    And shoutings follow after,

    As if old Kearsarge had split

    His granite sides with laughter!

    What boots it that we pelted out

    The anti-slavery women,

    And bravely strewed their hall about

    With tattered lace and trimming?

    Was it for such a sad reverse

    Our mobs became peacemakers,

    And kept their tar and wooden horse

    For Englishmen and Quakers?

    For this did shifty Atherton

    Make gag rules for the Great House?

    Wiped we for this our feet upon

    Petitions in our State House?

    Plied we for this our axe of doom,

    No stubborn traitor sparing,

    Who scoffed at our opinion loom,

    And took to homespun wearing?

    Ah, Moses! hard it is to scan

    These crooked providences,

    Deducing from the wisest plan

    The saddest consequences!

    Strange that, in trampling as was meet

    The nigger-men’s petition,

    We sprung a mine beneath our feet

    Which opened up perdition.

    How goodly, Moses, was the game

    In which we ’ve long been actors,

    Supplying freedom with the name

    And slavery with the practice!

    Our smooth words fed the people’s mouth,

    Their ears our party rattle;

    We kept them headed to the South,

    As drovers do their cattle.

    But now our game of politics

    The world at large is learning;

    And men grown gray in all our tricks

    State’s evidence are turning.

    Votes and preambles subtly spun

    They cram with meanings louder,

    And load the Democratic gun

    With abolition powder.

    The ides of June! Woe worth the day

    When, turning all things over,

    The traitor Hale shall make his hay

    From Democratic clover!

    Who then shall take him in the law,

    Who punish crime so flagrant?

    Whose hand shall serve, whose pen shall draw,

    A writ against that “vagrant”?

    Alas! no hope is left us here,

    And one can only pine for

    The envied place of overseer

    Of slaves in Carolina!

    Pray, Moses, give Calhoun the wink,

    And see what pay he ’s giving!

    We ’ve practised long enough, we think,

    To know the art of driving.

    And for the faithful rank and file,

    Who know their proper stations,

    Perhaps it may be worth their while

    To try the rice plantations.

    Let Hale exult, let Wilson scoff,

    To see us southward scamper;

    The slaves, we know, are “better off

    Than laborers in New Hampshire!”