richardmurray

Where is Farmer Ted now? https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/1223573348 Audio https://www.tumblr.com/richardmurrayhumblr/791612681299869696/where-are-they-now-farmer-ted-sixteen-candles CRliterature challenge https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/journal/Where-Are-They-Now-Farmer-Ted-Sixteen-Candles-1216942649 forum post https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/11753-where-are-they-now-farmer-ted-sixteen-candles-deviantart-august-birthday-literature-challenge-winners-will-get-prizes/ https://www.tumblr.com/richardmurrayhumblr/791612681299869696/where-are-they-now-farmer-ted-sixteen-candles

August Birthday Writing Challenge Example https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/1223660370 audio https://www.tumblr.com/richardmurrayhumblr/791603876662001664/written-by-richard-murray-hddeviant-biround pdf https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Biround-Mornings-1229347827 Crliterature challenge https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/journal/August-Birthday-Writing-Challenge-1222529726 forum post https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/11753-where-are-they-now-farmer-ted-sixteen-candles-deviantart-august-birthday-literature-challenge-winners-will-get-prizes/ https://www.tumblr.com/richardmurrayhumblr/791603876662001664/written-by-richard-murray-hddeviant-biround

Hi Badass Superhero, Tia Jackson's First Episode is LIVE! Click here for EPISODE ONE: https://aliciamccalla.com/blogs/serial-fiction-event

“A bewitching, thrilling and vibrant novel that had me enthralled with every twist and turn.”—Jennifer Saint, New York Times bestselling author Buy Now Masquerade is an “immersive, one-of-a-kind story” (People Magazine) set in a reimagined 15th-century West Africa that explores the true cost of one woman’s fight for freedom and self-discovery, and the lengths she’ll go to secure her future. Loosely based on the myth of Persephone, O.O. Sangoyomi’s Masquerade takes you on a journey of epic power struggles and political intrigue which turn an entire region on its head. This paperback edition includes an unpublished, previously cut scene with author commentary and a reading group discussion guide. BUY THE BOOK OR LEARN MORE https://aalbc.com/books/9781250904317

ALICE MY THOUGHTS to Alice 2022 First to history, Mae Louise Walls Miller is the name of the Black woman whose life, in my opinion, was a prime source to the research from Antoinette Harrell, who spanned many Black individuals in slavery or criminal bondage. I must say that first as the authors or content creators to many, most I viewed or read, articles/videos about the alice 2022 film didn't seem able to mention the Black woman in question, whose real life story inspired the video fable or the black woman who researched her. The story of Miller, in the articles below in more detail, displays one of the large problems when we assess usa history. Most problems in the USA are publicly known, but financial profit or fear blockade any action. The White community profited from black enslavement before or after the 13th amendment, and thus white individuals or groups were against opposed in any form, including merely speaking, to stand against abuses to blacks from the white community. Second to the law Like mandates, proclamations are not laws in the usa legal system. Proclamations are public announcements by the government. Mandates are public orders by the government. Proclamations or mandates by default are contestable in a court of law as they are not laws. The 13th amendment is a law, and it ended slavery throughout the entirety of the usa but the penal system. I quote: "Section 1 Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2 Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." Sequentially, the emanicpation proclamation has to stop being referred to as the moment slavery ended. From a legal standpoint, slavery has never ended, so black people saying it has is not being honest to the situation of the black community in the usa. Third to the video fable, I keep hearing Donny Hathaway's to be young gifted and black in my head, when I see Common. Am I wrong? Many of the articles seem focused on suggesting this as a faux history, when I see more of a Black film fiction circa 2000. For me the story of this film of a black women who thinks she is in the 1800s but is in truth, 1960s is clearly modern Black horror in the space of Get Out or US. The poster and the words of the director clearly show this is a movie worthy of the roles Pam Grier played in the 1970s. A good revenge romp for fans of that genre or those with a penchant for black heroes in film. ALice 2022 written and directed by Krystin Ver Linden Keke Palmer as Alice Jonny Lee Miller as Paul Bennet Common as Frank Gaius Charles as Joseph Alicia Witt as Rachel ARTICLES TITLE: Black People in the US Were Enslaved Well into the 1960s AUTHOR(S):Antoinette Harrell , at told to Justin Fornal TIME OF PUBLISH: February 28, 2018, 12:00am CONTENT: More than 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, there were black people in the Deep South who had no idea they were free. These people were forced to work, violently tortured, and raped. Historian and genealogist Antoinette Harrell has uncovered cases of African Americans still living as slaves 100 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. The 57-year-old Louisiana native has dedicated more than 20 years to peonage research. Through her work, she's unearthed painful stories in Southern states like Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Florida. Over a series of interviews, she told Justin Fornal about how she became an expert of modern slavery in the United States. My mother always talked to me about our family history and the family members who had passed on. She only knew so many stories, so oftentimes she would tell the same ones over and over again. Each time she repeated a story, I felt like she was trying to give me a message. It was like she was trying to tell me that if I wanted to know more about who we were, I would have to dig deeper. We knew our family had once been slaves in Louisiana. In 1994, I started to look into historical records and public records. I found my ancestors in the 1853 inventory belonging to Benjamin and Celia Bankston Richardson. Written down alongside other personal belongings that included spoons, forks, hogs, cows, and a sofa were my great great grandparents, Thomas and Carrie Richardson. Carrie and her child Thomas had been appraised at $1,100. Seeing my ancestor’s perceived value written on a piece of paper changed me. It also set forth the direction of my life. It was terribly painful, but I needed to know more. What did they do after Emancipation in 1863? Where did they go? I tracked down Freedmen contracts of the Harrell side of my family that proved that they were sharecroppers. Word started spreading around New Orleans about how I was using genealogy to connect the dots of a lost history. Soon enough people started requesting that I come and speak about how I was uncovering my family’s story so they could do the same for themselves. It became a chance to find out who we were and where we came from as descendants of enslaved people. This was a chance to learn a history we were never taught in school. The only fact that seemed certain was that slavery ended with the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. But even that turned out to be less than true. One day a woman familiar with my work approached me and said, “Antoinette, I know a group of people who didn’t receive their freedom until the 1950s.” She had me over to her house where I met about 20 people, all who had worked on the Waterford Plantation in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. They told me they had worked the fields for most of their lives. One way or another, they had become indebted to the plantation’s owner and were not allowed to leave the property. This situation had them living their lives as 20th-century slaves. At the end of the harvest, when they tried to settle up with the owner, they were always told they didn't make it into the black and to try again next year. Every passing year, the workers fell deeper and deeper in debt. Some of those folks were tied to that land into the 1960s. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Most shocking of all was their fear. I saw time and time again, people were afraid to share their stories. They were afraid to give this information to me, even behind closed doors decades later. They believed that they might somehow get sent back to a plantation that wasn’t even operating anymore. As I would realize, people are afraid to share their stories, because in the South so many of the same white families who owned these plantations are still running local government and big businesses. They still hold the power. So the poor and disenfranchised really don’t have anywhere to share these injustices without fearing major repercussions. To most folks, it just isn’t worth the risk. So, sadly, most situations of this sort go unreported. Six months after that meeting, I was giving a lecture on genealogy and reparations in Amite, Louisiana, when I met Mae Louise Walls Miller. Mae walked in after the lecture was over, demanding to speak with me. She walked up, looked me in the eye, and stated, “I didn’t get my freedom until 1963.” Mae's father, Cain Wall, lost his land by signing a contract he couldn’t read that had sealed his entire family’s fate. As a young girl, Mae didn’t know that her family’s situation was different from anyone else’s. The family didn’t have TV, so Mae just assumed everyone lived the same way her brothers and sisters did. They were not permitted to leave the land and were subject to regular beatings from the land owners. When Mae got a bit older, she would be told to come up to work in the main house with her mother. Here she would be raped by whatever men were present. Most times she and her mother were raped simultaneously alongside each other. Her father, Cain, couldn’t take the suffering anymore and tried to flee the property by himself in the middle of the night. His plan was to register for the army and get stationed far away. But he was picked up by some folks claiming they would help him. Instead, they took him right back to the farm, where he was brutally beaten in front of his family. When Mae was about 14, she decided she would no longer go up to the house. Her family pleaded with her as the punishment would come down on all of them. Mae refused and sassed the farm owner’s wife when she told her to work. Worrying that Mae would be killed by the owners, Cain beat his own daughter bloody in hopes of saving her. That evening still covered in blood, Mae ran away through the woods. She was hiding in the bushes by the road when a family rode by with their mule cart. The lady on the cart saw the bush moving. She got off to find Mae crying, bloodied and terrified. That white family took her in and rescued the rest of the Wall’s later that night. These stories are more common than you think. There were also Polish, Hungarian, and Italian immigrants, as well other nationalities, who got caught up in these situations in the American South. But the vast majority of 20th-century slaves were of African descent. When I met Mae, her father Cain was still alive. He was 107 years old, but his mind was still incredibly sharp. A few times we sat together with Mae and the other siblings. It was a brutal catharsis for them to speak about what happened on that farm. I’ll never forget the look in their eyes when one would speak about a horror they endured. It was clear they had never shared their individual stories with one another. It was something that was in the past so there was never a reason to bring it up. One day Cain was watching the television, and there was a Caucasian man with stark white hair on the program. The way he looked must have reminded Cain of someone from the farm. Cain believed that because he had told me what happened on the farm that the man on the TV was going to come to his house and drag him back. Opening the suppressed memories upset him so much he ended up in the hospital. The family kept me away for a while after that. But Mae and I became good friends and would lecture together. There were unusual ticks she had from her upbringing. Sometimes, when we would be at an event where there was free food, she couldn’t stop eating. She told me this was from years of not knowing when she would eat again. There were other times she would need to take her shoes off. She had grown up not wearing shoes and said sometimes her feet felt uncomfortable when she wore them. The nuances of Mae’s PTSD from growing up as a slave gave me a look into what life must have been like for many of our ancestors who were held under such inhumane conditions. Mae died in 2014. She was a fearless beautiful spirit and has left a gigantic void. I am glad her brother Arthur is continuing to tell the Wall’s family story. People who hear these stories will often say, “You should have gone to the police.” “You should have run sooner.” But the land down here goes on forever. These plantations are a country unto themselves. The property goes from can't see to to can't see. Even if you could run, where would you go? Who would you go to? Do I believe Mae’s family was the last to be freed? No. Slavery will continue to redefine itself for African Americans for years to come. The school to prison pipeline and private penitentiaries are just a few of the new ways to guarantee that black people provide free labor for the system at large. However, I also believe there are still African families who are tied to Southern farms in the most antebellum sense of speaking. If we don’t investigate and bring to light how slavery quietly continued, it could happen again. There were several times when I returned to the property where Mae and her family were held. There isn’t much there anymore in terms of the farm. One day I walked with Mae deep into the woods to see the old green creek she always spoke about. That filthy patch of water where the cows pissed and shit was the same water that Mae and her family drank and bathed in. As we stood together looking into the water Mae’s words were forever seared into my soul. “I told you my story because I have no fear in my heart. What can any living person do to me? There is nothing that can be done to me that hasn’t already been done.” U.R.L.: https://www.vice.com/en/article/437573/blacks-were-enslaved-well-into-the-1960s TITLE: The enslaved black people of the 1960s who did not know slavery had ended AUTHOR: ISMAIL AKWEI CONTENT: The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 which changed the status of over 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the South from slave to free, did not emancipate some hundreds who were slaves through to the 1960s. This was revealed by historian and genealogist Antoinette Harrell who unearthed shocking stories of slaves in Southern states like Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Florida over hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation. She told Justin Fornal that her 1994 journey of historical truth revealed the stories of many 20th century slaves who came forth in New Orleans when they heard that she was using genealogy to connect the dots of a lost history. She said a woman introduced her to about 20 people who had worked on the Waterford Plantation in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, as slaves until the 1960s. “One way or another, they had become indebted to the plantation’s owner and were not allowed to leave the property … At the end of the harvest, when they tried to settle up with the owner, they were always told they didn’t make it into the black and to try again next year. Every passing year, the workers fell deeper and deeper in debt,” she said. Many of them were afraid to share their stories as they believed they will be sent back to the plantation which isn’t even in operation. “People are afraid to share their stories, because in the South so many of the same white families who owned these plantations are still running local government and big businesses. They still hold the power. “So the poor and disenfranchised really don’t have anywhere to share these injustices without fearing major repercussions. To most folks, it just isn’t worth the risk. So, sadly, most situations of this sort go unreported,” she told Justin Fornal and was published in art and culture magazine website Vice. One of the 20th-century slaves was Mae Louise Walls Miller and she didn’t get her freedom until 1963. Her father, Cain Wall, lost his land by signing a contract he couldn’t read that enslaved his entire family. They were not permitted to leave the land and the owners subjected them to beatings and rape. Mae and her mother were most times raped simultaneously alongside each other by white men when they go to the main house to work. According to Harrell’s narration, Mae and her family did not know what was happening outside the land as they had no TV. Her father tried to flee the property, but was caught by other landowners who returned him to the farm where he was brutally beaten in front of his family. When Harrell met Mae, her father was alive and he was 107 years old with a sharp memory. He beat Mae when she was 14 for attempting to flee the farm, an action whose consequence was beating of the entire family. Mae, covered in blood, still run into the woods in the evening and hid in the bushes where a white family took her in and rescued the rest of her family later that night. Harrell said the family suffered from PTSD as a result of their experiences. Mae died in 2014. “I told you my story because I have no fear in my heart. What can any living person do to me? There is nothing that can be done to me that hasn’t already been done,” Mae told Harrell when they visited the property she and her family were held. Antoinette Harrell believes “there are still African families who are tied to Southern farms in the most antebellum sense of speaking. If we don’t investigate and bring to light how slavery quietly continued, it could happen again.” < https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/vice-the-slavery-detective-of-the-south/5a947b9cf1cdb3764f3eee86?jwsource=cl > URL: https://face2faceafrica.com/article/the-enslaved-black-people-of-the-1960s-who-did-not-know-slavery-had-ended TITLE: Made in Frame: Inside Krystin Ver Linden’s Fiery Sundance Debut, “Alice” AUTHOR: Lisa McNamara CONTENT: Utilize the link for the content, but the videos are placed immediately below < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHqrOSTIovU > < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OibZx09HYAA> U.R.L. : https://blog.frame.io/2022/02/14/sundance-alice-krystin-ver-linden/ TITLE: Keke Palmer to Star in True-Story Thriller ‘Alice’ AUTHOR: Chris Gardner CONTENT: Utilize the url below to read but I placed an image of Keke palmer U.R.L. : https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/keke-palmer-star-true-story-thriller-alice-1298009/ TITLE: ALICE (2022) Movie Trailer: Keke Palmer Escapes from Jonny Lee Miller’s Plantation in Krystin Ver Linden’s Film AUTHOR: ROllo Tomasi CONTENT: Utilize the url below to read the article, I placed the trailer and movie poster beneath. < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5CHq89MPnE > U.R.L. : https://film-book.com/alice-2022-movie-trailer-keke-palmer-escapes-from-jonny-lee-millers-plantation-in-krystin-ver-lindens-film/ Referral URL https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1830&type=status I amended the story, what do you think? https://www.deviantart.com/stash/03dgosc922t forum https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/8655-what-are-your-thoughts-to-the-film-alice-2022/

Before and after Coloring pages and examples of them colored. The bottom illustration is one of the coloring pages. If you like my work, I wouldn't mind a tip https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/subscriptions?tier=82-902770076 My Gallery of Inks https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/gallery/47013691/comic-coloring-pages

Nichelle Nichols is known as the original Nyota Uhura, which translate to Star Freedom in Swahili. While my favorite episode is Mirror Mirror in the same way I love Michael Burnham in the Terran world. .... look at the attitude on Black women in terran world:) I love it Best action scene for Uhura in the original show But musically she had her best outing with the Vulcan Lute. My favorite is the following... BEYOND ANTARES [originally performed in the Star Trek original series episode The Conscious of the King] Audio Download link - https://1drv.ms/v/c/ea9004809c2729bb/Eb4Y_egv3kBGmRGcOSC2rEUBcFxSEbcMtYlt54vEVRTxUg?e=00rWpl Video From the episode The skies are green and glowing, Where my heart is, where my heart is, Where the scented lunar flower is blooming: Somewhere, beyond the stars... Beyond Antares. I'll be back, though it takes forever. Forever is just a day. Forever is just another journey. Tomorrow a stop along the way. Then let the years go fading, Where my heart is, where my heart is, Where my love eternally is waiting Somewhere, beyond the stars... Beyond Antares. A more glitzy version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKclVJm9pSY COMPLETE VERSION https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnPHs6uacbw The skies are green and glowing, Where my heart is, where my heart is, Where the scented lunar flower is blooming: Somewhere, beyond the stars... Beyond Antares. There waits my lover sleeping Where my heart is, where my heart is Where the great blue ring whose watch is keeping Somewhere, beyond the stars... Beyond Antares. I'll be back, though it takes forever. Forever is just a day. Forever is just another journey. Tomorrow a stop along the way. Then let the years go fading, Where my heart is, where my heart is, Where my love eternally is waiting Somewhere, beyond the stars... Beyond Antares. NOTES The music was written by Wilbur Hatch with lyrics by either Barry Trivers or Gene L. Coon. On screen, the song featured a backing track that included piano, played by Marl Young, harp, played by Catherine Gotthoffer, and guitar, played by Laurindo Almeida. Beyond Antares https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Beyond_Antares Vulcan Lute https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Vulcan_lute The Conscious of the King https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Conscience_of_the_King_(episode) Rest In The Stars Nichelle Nichols if anyone wants me to draw Uhura in the black and gold, just ask:) Love Nina Simone like most Black folks and so did Nichelle Nichols love the title to the cover:) down to earth

Terminus 3 from MVMedia @Milton initially published August 17th 2025 The ATLiens are back! Twenty-two speculative fiction stories from some of Metro Atlanta's best Black Speculative Fiction authors. You'll never see the ATL the same way again! https://www.mvmediaatl.com/product-page/terminus-3

Check it out in audiobook/ebook with other styles of items https://aliciamccalla.com/collections/the-sentinel-superhero-vigilante-collection alternative LINK Why Fiction Authors Hate Marketing (And How Storyselling Fixes It) by Alicia McCalla How to connect with readers authentically without feeling like a used car salesman Read on Substack good post alicia, you are rocking it, and I will only add, when an author reaches a certain level of popularity, they have enough fans and e energy arund those fans that they can be more sporadic, more blunt because they have so many followers, it builds on itself enough, your correct.

Clotel + La Mulatra are 1800s black fiction, have you read and what are your thoughts? https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/11740-have-you-ever-read-an-1800-black-work-of-fiction/ While Clotel + La Mulatra do well for Germanic[based on the german: english, Dutch] + Latin[languages based on latin: french/spanish/portuguese] America. I want to know of a similar work by a Habshi for India. I have more research to do. LA MULATRA (english version is at the bottom of the linked post) https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/414-le-mulâtre-from-victor-séjour-two-versions-split-by-an-essay/ CLOTEL https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/413-clotel-or-the-presidents-daughter-a-narrative-of-slave-life-in-the-united-states-by-william-well-brown/

Architecture- Sans Souci + Citadelle LaFerriere+ Renaissance Theater of Harlem+ Works of Vertner Woodson Tandy As some know I love architecture and the Sans Souci Palace+ Citadelle LAferriere in Haiti was built by the last King of the Haitians, Henri CHristophe. Both were designed by a scottish engineer to my knowledge, but the name escapes me. Both were financed by the Kingdom of Haiti which is circa to the north half of Haiti today. You have to comprehend the reasons why Haitians couldn't design it themselves. Lack of experience. Architecture truly demands experience to slowly build up the styles or qualities. Every single human community does this. But, Haiti wanted these things now and couldn't wait so they needed an outside designer. In defense, after built haitians under Henri Christophe kept it up and knew how to, it was after the King died that many things fell apart. Sans Souci + CItadelle Laferriere part 1 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/474-architecture-sans-souci-palace-citadelle-la-ferriere/ part 2 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/488-architecture-sans-souci-palace-citadelle-la-ferriere-part-2/ part 3 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/489-architecture-sans-souci-palace-citadelle-la-ferriere-part-3/ part 4 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/490-architecture-sans-souci-palace-citadelle-la-ferriere-part-4/ The Renaissance Theater of Harlem is one of the few, secular [meaning of the larger world not areligious or absent spirtuality, not solely holy or solely personal , sometimes the word sacred is used but that is a misnomer] buildings and the only one I know of in NYC, financed/designed/operated by black people originally. I rephrase, no other building for the masses,a non private residence I can think of in New York City was originally financed[who paid to make it]/designed[architecture plans]/operated[who used it when completed] by Black people. The Renaissance Ballroom is that. I have searched for years to get the plans , I will one day. Renaissance Theater part 1 (when I get the plans a part 2 is coming) https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/491-architecture-renaissance-theater/ Vertner Woodson Tandy made two residences and one church in New York State of note all were financed by Black people. The two residenced by Madame CJ Walker. The church by its flock. Vertner Woodson Tandy part 1(St Phillips CHurch+Villa Lewaro+Madame CJ Walker Townhouse; when i get the plans to each, a part 2 is coming) https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/492-architecture-vertner-woodson-tandy/

From Mel Hopkins In 2004, when social networking sites were still pure at heart, there was the website Africanfrontdotcom - and one of the pages listed African history dating back to 40,000,000 BCE. My calling is to gather information, and I immediately copied this timeline from the website because of my preference. Now, of course, due to the colonization of many African nations, other cultures appropriated much of African history. So I use this info is a reference point for fact-checking and inclusion. This morning, I thought about the chronological timeline I possessed when a famous writer in The Atlantic attributed "Know Thy Self" to the Greeks and not African philosophy. Anyway, my writing is Afrocentric, including my first novel steeped in Ancient African history due to this timeline I found on the Africandotcom website way back in 2004. I hope you will find this information helpful too. post https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/383-from-africanfrontdotcom/

While in Ghana in May 1964, Malcolm decided to form the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). Malcolm returned to New York the following month to create the OAAU and on June 28 gave his first public address on behalf of the new organization at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. TEXT https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/359-malcolm-x-inaugural-organization-of-afro-american-unity-speech/ OR Salaam Alaikum, Mr. Moderator, our distinguished guests, brothers and sisters, our friends and our enemies, everybody who’s here. As many of you know, last March when it was announced that I was no longer in the Black Muslim movement, it was pointed out that it was my intention to work among the 22 million non-Muslim Afro-Americans and to try and form some type of organization, or create a situation where the young people – our young people, the students and others – could study the problems of our people for a period of time and then come up with a new analysis and give us some new ideas and some new suggestions as to how to approach a problem that too many other people have been playing around with for too long. And that we would have some kind of meeting and determine at a later date whether to form a black nationalist party or a black nationalist army. There have been many of our people across the country from all walks of life who have taken it upon themselves to try and pool their ideas and to come up with some kind of solution to the problem that confronts all of our people. And tonight we are here to try and get an understanding of what it is they’ve come up with. Also, recently when I was blessed to make a religious pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca where I met many people from all over the world, plus spent many weeks in Africa trying to broaden my own scope and get more of an open mind to look at the problem as it actually is, one of the things that I realized, and I realized this even before going over there, was that our African brothers have gained their independence faster than you and I here in America have. They’ve also gained recognition and respect as human beings much faster than you and I. Just ten years ago on the African continent, our people were colonized. They were suffering all forms of colonization, oppression, exploitation, degradation, humiliation, discrimination, and every other kind of -ation. And in a short time, they have gained more independence, more recognition, more respect as human beings than you and I have. And you and I live in a country which is supposed to be the citadel of education, freedom, justice, democracy, and all of those other pretty-sounding words. So it was our intention to try and find out what it was our African brothers were doing to get results, so that you and I could study what they had done and perhaps gain from that study or benefit from their experiences. And my traveling over there was designed to help to find out how. One of the first things that the independent African nations did was to form an organization called the Organization of African Unity. This organization consists of all independent African states who have reached the agreement to submerge all differences and combine their efforts toward eliminating from the continent of Africa colonialism and all vestiges of oppression and exploitation being suffered by African people. Those who formed the organization of African states have differences. They represent probably every segment, every type of thinking. You have some leaders that are considered Uncle Toms, some leaders who are considered very militant. But even the militant African leaders were able to sit down at the same table with African leaders whom they considered to be Toms, or Tshombes, or that type of character. They forgot their differences for the sole purpose of bringing benefits to the whole. And whenever you find people who can’t forget their differences, then they’re more interested in their personal aims and objectives than they are in the conditions of the whole. Well, the African leaders showed their maturity by doing what the American white man said couldn’t be done. Because if you recall when it was mentioned that these African states were going to meet in Addis Ababa, all of the Western press began to spread the propaganda that they didn’t have enough in common to come together and to sit down together. Why, they had Nkrumah there, one of the most militant of the African leaders, and they had Adoula from the Congo. They had Nyerere there, they had Ben Bella there, they had Nasser there, they had Sekou Toure, they had Obote; they had Kenyatta I guess Kenyatta was there, I can’t remember whether Kenya was independent at that time, but I think he was there. Everyone was there and despite their differences, they were able to sit down and form what was known as the Organization of African Unity, which has formed a coalition and is working in conjunction with each other to fight a common enemy. Once we saw what they were able to do, we determined to try and do the same thing here in America among Afro Americans who have been divided by our enemies. So we have formed an organization known as the Organization of Afro American Unity which has the same aim and objective – to fight whoever gets in our way, to bring about the complete independence of people of African descent here in the Western Hemisphere, and first here in the United States, and bring about the freedom of these people by any means necessary. That’s our motto. We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary. We don’t feel that in 1964, living in a country that is supposedly based upon freedom, and supposedly the leader of the free world, we don’t think that we should have to sit around and wait for some segregationist congressmen and senators and a President from Texas in Washington, D. C., to make up their minds that our people are due now some degree of civil rights. No, we want it now or we don’t think anybody should have it. The purpose of our organization is to start right here in Harlem, which has the largest concentration of people of African descent that exists anywhere on this earth. There are more Africans in Harlem than exist in any city on the African continent. Because that’s what you and I are Africans. You catch any white man off guard in here right now, you catch him off guard and ask him what he is, he doesn’t say he’s an American. He either tells you he’s Irish, or he’s Italian, or he’s German, if you catch him off guard and he doesn’t know what you’re up to. And even though he was born here, he’ll tell you he’s Italian. Well, if he’s Italian, you and I are African even though we were born here. So we start in New York City first. We start in Harlem– and by Harlem we mean Bedford – Stuyvesant, any place in this area where you and I live, that’s Harlem with the intention of spreading throughout the state, and from the state throughout the country, and from the country throughout the Western Hemisphere. Because when we say Afro American, we include everyone in the Western Hemisphere of African descent. South America is America. Central America is America. South America has many people in it of African descent. And everyone in South America of African descent is an Afro-American. Everyone in the Caribbean, whether it’s the West Indies or Cuba or Mexico, if they have African blood, they are Afro Americans. If they’re in Canada and they have African blood, they’re Afro Americans. If they’re in Alaska, though they might call themselves Eskimos, if they have African blood, they’re Afro Americans. So the purpose of the Organization of Afro American Unity is to unite everyone in the Western Hemisphere of African descent into one united force. And then, once we are united among ourselves in the Western Hemisphere, we will unite with our brothers on the motherland, on the continent of Africa. So to get right with it, I would like to read you the “Basic Aims and Objectives of the Organization of Afro American Unity;” started here in New York, June, 1964. “The Organization of Afro American Unity, organized and structured by a cross section of the Afro American people living in the United States of America, has been patterned after the letter and spirit of the Organization of African Unity which was established at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in May of 1963. “We, the members of the Organization of Afro American Unity, gathered together in Harlem, New York: “Convinced that it is the inalienable right of all our people to control our own destiny; “Conscious of the fact that freedom, equality, justice and dignity are central objectives for the achievement of the legitimate aspirations of the people of African descent here in the Western Hemisphere, we will endeavor to build a bridge of understanding and create the basis for Afro American unity; “Conscious of our responsibility to harness the natural and human resources of our people for their total advancement in all spheres of human endeavor; “Inspired by our common determination to promote understanding among our people and cooperation in all matters pertaining to their survival and advancement, we will support the aspirations of our people for brotherhood and solidarity in a larger unity transcending all organizational differences; “Convinced that, in order to translate this determination into a dynamic force in the cause of human progress conditions of peace and security must be established and maintained;” – And by “conditions of peace and security,” [we mean] we have to eliminate the barking of the police dogs, we have to eliminate the police clubs, we have to eliminate the water hoses, we have to eliminate all of these things that have become so characteristic of the American so called dream. These have to be eliminated. Then we will be living in a condition of peace and security. We can never have peace and security as long as one black man in this country is being bitten by a police dog. No one in the country has peace and security. “Dedicated to the unification of all people of African descent in this hemisphere and to the utilization of that unity to bring into being the organizational structure that will project the black people’s contributions to the world; “Persuaded that the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights are the principles in which we believe and that these documents if put into practice represent the essence of mankind’s hopes and good intentions; “Desirous that all Afro American people and organi¬zations should henceforth unite so that the welfare and well being of our people will be assured; “We are resolved to reinforce the common bond of purpose between our people by submerging all of our differences and establishing a nonsectarian, constructive program for human rights; “We hereby present this charter. “I–Establishment. “The Organization of Afro American Unity shall include all people of African descent in the Western Hemisphere, as well as our brothers and sisters on the African continent.” Which means anyone of African descent, with African blood, can become a member of the Organization of Afro American Unity, and also any one of our brothers and sisters from the African continent. Because not only it is an organization of Afro American unity meaning that we are trying to unite our people in the West, but it’s an organization of Afro American unity in the sense that we want to unite all of our people who are in North America, South America, and Central America with our people on the African continent. We must unite together in order to go forward together. Africa will not go forward any faster than we will and we will not go forward any faster than Africa will. We have one destiny and we’ve had one past. In essence, what it is saying is instead of you and me running around here seeking allies in our struggle for freedom in the Irish neighborhood or the Jewish neighborhood or the Italian neighborhood, we need to seek some allies among people who look something like we do. It’s time now for you and me to stop running away from the wolf right into the arms of the fox, looking for some kind of help. That’s a drag. “II–Self Defense. “Since self preservation is the first law of nature, we assert the Afro American’s right to self defense. “The Constitution of the United States of America clearly affirms the right of every American citizen to bear arms. And as Americans, we will not give up a single right guaranteed under the Constitution. The history of unpunished violence against our people clearly indicates that we must be prepared to defend ourselves or we will continue to be a defenseless people at the mercy of a ruthless and violent racist mob. “We assert that in those areas where the government is either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of our people, that our people are within our rights to protect themselves by whatever means necessary.”I repeat, because to me this is the most important thing you need to know. I already know it. “We assert that in those areas where the government is either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of our people, that our people are within our rights to protect themselves by whatever means necessary.” This is the thing you need to spread the word about among our people wherever you go. Never let them be brainwashed into thinking that whenever they take steps to see that they’re in a position to defend themselves that they’re being unlawful. The only time you’re being unlawful is when you break the law. It’s lawful to have something to defend yourself. Why, I heard President Johnson either today or yesterday, I guess it was today, talking about how quick this country would go to war to defend itself. Why, what kind of a fool do you look like, living in a country that will go to war at the drop of a hat to defend itself, and here you’ve got to stand up in the face of vicious police dogs and blue eyed crackers waiting for somebody to tell you what to do to defend yourself! Those days are over, they’re gone, that’s yesterday. The time for you and me to allow ourselves to be brutalized nonviolently is passé. Be nonviolent only with those who are nonviolent to you. And when you can bring me a nonviolent racist, bring me a nonviolent segregationist, then I’ll get nonviolent. But don’t teach me to be nonviolent until you teach some of those crackers to be nonviolent. You’ve never seen a nonviolent cracker. It’s hard for a racist to be nonviolent. It’s hard for anyone intelligent to be nonviolent. Everything in the universe does something when you start playing with his life, except the American Negro. He lays down and says, ” Beat me, daddy.” So it says here: “A man with a rifle or a club can only be stopped by a person who defends himself with a rifle or a club.” That’s equality. If you have a dog, I must have a dog. If you have a rifle, I must have a rifle. If you have a club, I must have a club. This is equality. If the United States government doesn’t want you and me to get rifles, then take the rifles away from those racists. If they don’t want you and me to use clubs, take the clubs away from the racists. If they don’t want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don’t teach us nonviolence while those crackers are violent. Those days are over. “Tactics based solely on morality can only succeed when you are dealing with people who are moral or a system that is moral. A man or system which oppresses a man because of his color is not moral. It is the duty of every Afro-American person and every Afro-American community throughout this country to protect its people against mass murderers, against bombers, against lynchers, against floggers, against brutalizers and against exploiters. “I might say right here that instead of the various black groups declaring war on each other, showing how militant they can be cracking each other’s heads, let them go down South and crack some of those crackers’ heads. Any group of people in this country that has a record of having been attacked by racists – and there’s no record where they have ever given the signal to take the heads of some of those racists – why, they are insane giving the signal to take the heads of some of their ex-brothers. Or brother X’s, I don’t know how you put that. III– Education “Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and our people rediscover their identity and thereby increase their self respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.” And I must point out right there, when I was in Africa I met no African who wasn’t standing with open arms to embrace any Afro-American who returned to the African continent. But one of the things that all of them have said is that every one of our people in this country should take advantage of every type of educational opportunity available before you even think about talking about the future. If you’re surrounded by schools, go to that school. “Our children are being criminally shortchanged in the public school system of America. The Afro-American schools are the poorest run schools in the city of New York. Principals and teachers fail to understand the nature of the problems with which they work and as a result they cannot do the job of teaching our children.” They don’t understand us, nor do they understand our problems; they don’t. “The textbooks tell our children nothing about the great contributions of Afro-Americans to the growth and development of this country.” And they don’t. When we send our children to school in this country they learn nothing about us other than that we used to be cotton pickers. Every little child going to school thinks his grandfather was a cotton picker. Why, your grandfather was Nat Turner; your grandfather was Toussaint L’Ouverture; your grandfather was Hannibal. Your grandfather was some of the greatest black people who walked on this earth. It was your grandfather’s hands who forged civilization and it was your grandmother’s hands who rocked the cradle of civilization. But the textbooks tell our children nothing about the great contributions of Afro Americans to the growth and development of this country. “The Board of Education’s integration plan is expensive and unworkable; and the organization of principals and supervisors in New York City’s school system has refused to support the Board’s plan to integrate the schools, thus dooming it to failure before it even starts.”The Board of Education of this city has said that even with its plan there are 10 percent of the schools in Harlem and the Bedford Stuyvesant community in Brooklyn that they cannot improve.” So what are we to do? “This means that the Organization of Afro American Unity must make the Afro American community a more potent force for educational self improvement. “A first step in the program to end the existing system of racist education is to demand that the 10 percent of the schools the Board of Education will not include in its plan be turned over to and run by the Afro-American community itself.” Since they say that they can’t improve these schools, why should you and I who live in the community, let these fools continue to run and produce this low standard of education? No, let them turn those schools over to us. Since they say they can’t handle them, nor can they correct them, let us take a whack at it. What do we want? “We want Afro-American principals to head these schools. We want Afro-American teachers in these schools.” Meaning we want black principals and black teachers with some textbooks about black people. ” We want textbooks written by Afro-Americans that are acceptable to our people before they can be used in these schools. “The Organization of Afro-American Unity will select and recommend people to serve on local school boards where school policy is made and passed on to the Board of Education.” And this is very important. “Through these steps we will make the 10 percent of the schools that we take over educational showplaces that will attract the attention of people from ail over the nation.” Instead of them being schools turning out pupils whose academic diet is not complete, we can turn them into examples of what we can do ourselves once given an opportunity. “If these proposals are not met, we will ask Afro-American parents to keep their children out of the present inferior schools they attend. And when these schools in our neighborhood are controlled by Afro Americans, we will then return our children to them. “The Organization of Afro American Unity recognizes the tremendous importance of the complete involvement of Afro-American parents in every phase of school life. The Afro American parent must be willing and able to go into the schools and see that the job of educating our children is done properly.” This whole thing about putting all of the blame on the teacher is out the window. The parent at home has just as much responsibility to see that what’s going on in that school is up to par as the teacher in their schools. So it is our intention not only to devise an education program for the children, but one also for the parents to make them aware of their responsibility where education is concerned in regard to their children. “We call on all Afro-Americans around the nation to be aware that the conditions that exist in the New York City public school system are as deplorable in their does as they are here. We must unite our efforts and spread our program of self improvement through education to every Afro American community in America. “We must establish all over the country schools of our own to train our own children to become scientists, to become mathematicians. We must realize the need for adult education and for job retraining programs that will emphasize a changing society in which automation plays the key role. We intend to use the tools of education to help raise our people to an unprecedented level of excellence and self respect through their own efforts. “IV – Politics and Economics.” And the two are almost inseparable, because the politician is depending on some money; yes, that’s what he’s depending on. “Basically, there are two kinds of power that count in America: economic power and political power, with social power being derived from those two. In order for the Afro-Americans to control their destiny, they must be able to control and affect the decisions which control their destiny: economic, political, and social. This can only be done through organization. “The Organization of Afro-American Unity will organize the Afro American community block by block to make the community aware of its power and its potential; we will start immediately a voter registration drive to make every unregistered voter in the Afro-American community an independent voter.” We won’t organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them have sold us out. Both of them have sold us out; both parties have sold us out. Both parties are racist, and the Democratic Party is more racist than the Republican Party. I can prove it. All you’ve got to do is name everybody who’s running the government in Washington, D. C., right now. He’s a Democrat and he’s from either Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, from one of those cracker states. And they’ve got more power than any white man in the North has. In fact, the President is from a cracker state. What’s he talking about? Texas is a cracker state, in fact, they’ll hang you quicker in Texas than they will in Mississippi. Don’t you ever think that just because a cracker becomes president he ceases being a cracker. He was a cracker before he became president and he’s a cracker while he’s president. I’m going to tell it like it is. I hope you can take it like it is. “We propose to support and organize political clubs, to run independent candidates for office, and to support any Afro-American already in office who answers to and is responsible to the Afro-American community.” We don’t support any black man who is controlled by the white power structure. We will start not only a voter registration drive, but a voter education drive to let our people have an understanding of the science of politics so they will be able to see what part the politician plays in the scheme of things; so they will be able to understand when the politician is doing his job and when he is not doing his job. And any time the politician is not doing his job, we remove him whether he’s white, black, green, blue, yellow or whatever other color they might invent. “The economic exploitation in the Afro-American community is the most vicious form practiced on any people in America.” In fact, it is the most vicious practiced on any people on this earth. No one is exploited economically as thoroughly as you and I, because in most countries where people are exploited they know it. You and I are in this country being exploited and sometimes we don’t know it. “Twice as much rent is paid for rat-infested, roach crawling, rotting tenements.” This is true. It costs us more to live in Harlem than it costs them to live on Park Avenue. Do you know that the rent is higher on Park Avenue in Harlem than it is on Park Avenue downtown? And in Harlem you have everything else in that apartment with you roaches, rats, cats, dogs, and some other outsiders disguised as landlords. “The Afro-American pays more for food, pays more for clothing, pays more for insurance than anybody else.” And we do. It costs you and me more for insurance than it does the white man in the Bronx or somewhere else. It costs you and me more for food than it does them. It costs you and me more to live in America than it does anybody else and yet we make the greatest contribution. You tell me what kind of country this is. Why should we do the dirtiest jobs for the lowest pay? Why should we do the hardest work for the lowest pay? Why should we pay the most money for the worst kind of food and the most money for the worst kind of place to live in? I’m telling you we do it because we live in one of the rottenest countries that has ever existed on this earth. It’s the system that is rotten; we have a rotten system. It’s a system of exploitation, a political and economic system of exploitation, of outright humiliation, degradation, discrimination – all of the negative things that you can run into, you have run into under this system that disguises itself as a democracy, disguises itself as a democracy. And the things that they practice against you and me are worse than some of the things that they practiced in Germany against the Jews. Worse than some of the things that the Jews ran into. And you run around here getting ready to get drafted and go someplace and defend it. Someone needs to crack you up ‘side your head. “The Organization of Afro American Unity will wage an unrelenting struggle against these evils in our community. There shall be organizers to work with our people to solve these problems, and start a housing self-improvement program.” Instead of waiting for the white man to come and straighten out our neighborhood, we’ll straighten it out ourselves. This is where you make your mistake. An outsider can’t clean up your house as well as you can. An outsider can’t take care of your children as well as you can. An outsider can’t look after your needs as well as you can. And an outsider can’t under¬stand your problems as well as you can. Yet you’re looking for an outsider to do it. We will do it or it will never get done. “We propose to support rent strikes.” Yes, not little, small rent strikes in one block. We’ll make Harlem a rent strike. We’ll get every black man in this city; the Organization of Afro-American Unity won’t stop until there’s not a black man in the city not on strike. Nobody will pay any rent. The whole city will come to a halt. And they can’t put all of us in jail because they’ve already got the jails full of us. Concerning our social needs I hope I’m not frightening anyone. I should stop right here and tell you if you’re the type of person who frights, who gets scared, you should never come around us. Because we’ll scare you to death. And. you don’t have far to go because you’re half dead already. Economically you’re dead- dead broke. Just got paid yesterday and dead broke right now. “V Social. “This organization is responsible only to the Afro-American people and the Afro-American community.” This organization is not responsible to anybody but us. We don’t have to ask the man downtown can we demonstrate. We don’t have to ask the man downtown what tactics we can use to demonstrate our resentment against his criminal abuse. We don’t have to ask his consent; we don’t have to ask his endorsement; we don’t have to ask his permission. Anytime we know that an unjust condition exists and it is illegal and unjust, we will strike at it by any means necessary. And strike also at whatever and whoever gets in the way. “This organization is responsible only to the Afro-American people and community and will function only with their support, both financially and numerically. We believe that our communities must be the sources of their own strength politically, economically, intellectually, and culturally in the struggle for human rights and human dignity. “The community must reinforce its moral responsibility to rid itself of the effects of years of exploitation, neglect, and apathy, and wage an unrelenting struggle against police brutality.” Yes. There are some good policemen and some bad policemen. Usually we get the bad ones. With all the police in Harlem, there is too much crime, too much drug addiction, too much alcoholism, too much prostitution, too much gambling. So it makes us suspicious about the motives of Commissioner Murphy when he sends all these policemen up here. We begin to think that they are just his errand boys, whose job it is to pick up the graft and take it back downtown to Murphy. Anytime there’s a police commissioner who finds it necessary to increase the strength numerically of the policemen in Harlem and, at the same time, we don’t see any sign of a decrease in crime, why, I think we’re justified in suspecting his mo¬tives. He can’t be sending them up here to fight crime, because crime is on the increase. The more cops we have, the more crime we have. We begin to think that they bring some of the crime with them. So our purpose is to organize the community so that we ourselves since the police can’t eliminate the drug traffic, we have to eliminate it. Since the police can’t eliminate organized gambling, we have to eliminate it. Since the police can’t eliminate organized prostitution and all of these evils that are destroying the moral fiber of our community, it is up to you and me to eliminate these evils ourselves. But in many instances, when you unite in this country or in this city to fight organized crime, you’ll find yourselves fighting the police department itself because they are involved in the organized crime. Wherever you have organized crime, that type of crime cannot exist other than with the consent of the police, the knowledge of the police and the cooperation of the police. You’ll agree that you can’t run a number in your neighborhood without the police knowing it. A prostitute can’t turn a trick on the block without the police knowing it. A man can’t push drugs anywhere along the avenue without the police knowing it. And they pay the police off so that they will not get arrested. I know what I’m talking about I used to be out there. And I know you can’t hustle out there without police setting you up. You have to pay them off. The police are all right. I say there’s some good ones and some bad ones. But they usually send the bad ones to Harlem. Since these bad police have come to Harlem and have not decreased the high rate of crime, I tell you brothers and sisters it is time for you and me to organize and eliminate these evils ourselves, or we’ll be out of the world backwards before we even know where the world was. Drug addiction turns your little sister into a prostitute before she gets into her teens; makes a criminal out of your little brother before he gets in his teens drug addiction and alcoholism. And if you and I aren’t men enough to get at the root of these things, then we don’t even have the right to walk around here complaining about it in any form whatsoever. The police will not eliminate it. “Our community must reinforce its moral responsibility to rid itself of the effects of years of exploitation, neglect, and apathy, and wage an unrelenting struggle against police brutality.” Where this police brutality also comes in the new law that they just passed, the no knock law, the stop and-frisk law, that’s an anti Negro law. That’s a law that was passed and signed by Rockefeller. Rockefeller with his old smile, always he has a greasy smile on his face and he’s shaking hands with Negroes, like he’s the Negro’s pappy or granddaddy or great uncle. Yet when it comes to passing a law that is worse than any law that they had in Nazi Germany, why, Rockefeller couldn’t wait till he got his signature on it. And the only thing this law is designed to do is make legal what they’ve been doing all the time. They’ve passed a law that gives them the right to knock down your door without even knocking on it. Knock it down and come on in and bust your head and frame you up under the disguise that they suspect you of something. Why, brothers, they didn’t have laws that bad in Nazi Germany. And it was passed for you and me, it’s an anti Negro law, because you’ve got an anti-Negro governor sitting up there in Albany – I started to say Albany, Georgia – in Albany, New York. Not too much difference. Not too much difference between Albany, New York, and Albany, Georgia. And there’s not too much difference between the government that’s in Albany, New York, and the government in Albany, Georgia. “The Afro-American community must accept the responsibility for regaining our people who have lost their place in society. We must declare an all out war on organized crime in our community; a vice that is controlled by policemen who accept bribes and graft must be exposed. We must establish a clinic, whereby one can get aid and cure for drug addiction.” This is absolutely necessary. When a person is a drug addict, he’s not the criminal; he’s a victim of the criminal. The criminal is the man downtown who brings drug into the country. Negroes can’t bring drugs into this country. You don’t have any boats. You don’t have any airplanes. You don’t have any diplomatic immunity. It is not you who is responsible for bringing in drugs. You’re just a little tool that is used by the man downtown. The man that controls the drug traffic sits in city hall or he sits in the state house. Big shots who are respected, who function in high circles those are the ones who control these things. And you and I will never strike at the root of it until we strike at the man downtown. “We must create meaningful, creative, useful activities for those who were led astray down the avenues of vice.”The people of the Afro- American community must be prepared to help each other in all ways possible; we must establish a place where unwed mothers can get help and advice.” This is a problem, this is one of the worst problems in our. . . [A short passage is lost here as the tape is turned.] “We must set up a guardian system that will help our youth who get into trouble.” Too many of our children get into trouble accidentally. And once they get into trouble, because they have no one to look out for them, they’re put in some of these homes where others who are experienced at getting in trouble are. And immediately it’s a bad influence on them and they never have a chance to straighten out their lives. Too many of our children have their entire lives destroyed in this manner. It is up to you and me right now to form the type of organizations wherein we can look out for the needs of all of these young people who get into trouble, especially those who get into trouble for the first time, so that we can do something to steer them back on the right path before they go too far astray. “And we must provide constructive activities for our own children. We must set a good example for our children and must teach them to always be ready to accept the responsibilities that are necessary for building good communities and nations. We must teach them that their greatest responsibilities are to themselves, to their families and to their communities. “The Organization of Afro-American Unity believes that the Afro American community must endeavor to do the major part of all charity work from within the community. Charity, however, does not mean that to which we are legally entitled in the form of government benefits. The Afro-American veteran must be made aware of all the benefits due to him and the procedure for obtaining them.” Many of our people have sacrificed their lives on the battlefront for this country. There are many government benefits that our people don’t even know about. Many of them are qualified to receive aid in all forms, but they don’t even know it. But we know this, so it is our duty, those of us who know it, to set up a system where¬ in our people who are not informed of what is coming to them, we inform them, we let them know how they can lay claim to everything that they’ve got coming to them from this government. And I mean you’ve got much coming to you. “The veterans must be encouraged to go into business together, using GI loans,” and all other items that we have access to or have available to us. “Afro Americans must unite and work together. We must take pride in the Afro American community, for it is our home and it is our power,” the base of our power. “What we do here in regaining our self respect, our manhood, our dignity and freedom helps all people everywhere who are also fighting against oppression.” Lastly, concerning culture and the cultural aspect of the Organization of Afro American Unity. ” ‘A race of people is like an individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.’ ” “Our history and our culture were completely destroyed when we were forcibly brought to America in chains. And now it is important for us to know that our history did not begin with slavery. We came from Africa, a great continent, wherein live a proud and varied people, a land which is the new world and was the cradle of civilization. Our culture and our history are as old as man himself and yet we know almost nothing about it.” This is no accident. It is no accident that such a high state of culture existed in Africa and you and I know nothing about it. Why, the man knew that as long as you and I thought we were somebody, he could never treat us like we were nobody. So he had to invent a system that would strip us of everything about us that we could use to prove we were somebody. And once he had stripped us of all human chacteristics stripped us of our language, stripped us of our history, stripped us of all cultural knowledge, and brought us down to the level of an animal – he then began to treat us like an animal, selling us from one plantation to another, selling us from one owner to another, breeding us like you breed cattle. Why, brothers and sisters, when you wake up and find out what this man here has done to you and me, you won’t even wait for somebody to give the word. I’m not saying all of them are bad. There might be some good ones. But we don’t have time to look for them. Not nowadays. “We must recapture our heritage and our identity if we are ever to liberate ourselves from the bonds of white supremacy. We must launch a cultural revolution to unbrainwash an entire people.” A cultural revolution. Why, brothers, that’s a crazy revolution. When you tell this black man in America who he is, where he came from, what he had when he was there, he’ll look around and ask himself, “Well, what happened to it, who took it away from us and how did they do it?” Why, brothers, you’ll have some action just like that. When you let the black man in America know where he once was and what he once had, why, he only needs to look at himself now to realize something criminal was done to him to bring him down to the low condition that he’s in today. Once he realizes what was done, how it was done, where it was done, when it was done, and who did it, that knowledge in itself will usher in your action program. And it will be by any means necessary. A man doesn’t know how to act until he realizes what he’s acting against. And you don’t realize what you’re acting against until you realize what they did to you. Too many of you don’t know what they did to you, and this is what makes you so quick to want to forget and forgive. No, brothers, when you see what has happened to you, you will never forget and you’ll never forgive. And, as I say, all of them might not be guilty. But most of them are. Most of them are. “Our cultural revolution must be the means of bringing us closer to our African brothers and sisters. It must begin in the community and be based on community participation. Afro-Americans will be free to create only when they can depend on the Afro-American community for support, and Afro-American artists must realize that they depend on the Afro-American community for inspiration.” Our artists we have artists who are geniuses; they don’t have to act the Stepin Fetchit role. But as long as they’re looking for white support instead of black support, they’ve got to act like the old white supporter wants them to. When you and I begin to support the black artists, then the black artists can play that black role. As long as the black artist has to sing and dance to please the white man, he’ll be a clown, he’ll be clowning, just another clown. But when he can sing and dance to please black men, he sings a different song and he dances a different step. When we get together, we’ve got a step all our own. We have a step that nobody can do but us, because we have a reason for doing it that nobody can understand but us. “We must work toward the establishment of a cultural center in Harlem, which will include people of all ages and will conduct workshops in all of the arts, such as film, creative writing, painting, theater, music, and the entire spectrum of Afro American history. “This cultural revolution will be the journey to our rediscovery of ourselves. History is a people’s memory, and without a memory man is demoted to the level of the lower animals.” When you have no knowledge of your history, you’re just another animal; in fact, you’re a Negro; something that’s nothing. The only black man on earth who is called a Negro is one who has no knowl¬edge of his history. The only black man on earth who is called a Negro is one who doesn’t know where he came from. That’s the one in America. They don’t call Africans Negroes. Why, I had a white man tell me the other day, “He’s not a Negro.” Here the man was black as night, and the white man told me, “He’s not a Negro, he’s an African.” I said, “Well, listen to him.” I knew he wasn’t, but I wanted to pull old whitey out, you know. But it shows you that they know this. You are Negro because you don’t know who you are, you don’t know what you are, you don’t know where you are, and you don’t know how you got here. But as soon as you wake up and find out the positive answer to all these things, you cease being a Negro. You become somebody. “Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past.” And to quote a passage from Then We Heard the Thunder by John Killens, it says: “He was a dedicated patriot: Dignity was his country, Manhood was his gov¬ernment, and Freedom was his land.'” Old John Killens. This is our aim. It’s rough, we have to smooth it up some. But we’re not trying to put something together that’s smooth. We don’t care how rough it is. We don’t care how tough it is. We don’t care how backward it may sound. In essence it only means we want one thing. We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary. I’m sorry I took so long. But before we go farther to tell you how you can join this organization, what your duties and responsibilities are, I want to turn you back into the hands of our master of ceremonies, Brother Les Edmonds. [A collection is taken. Malcolm resumes.] One of the first steps we are going to become involved in as an Organization of Afro-American Unity will be to work with every leader and other organization in this country interested in a program designed to bring your and my problem before the United Nations. This is our first point of business. We feel that the problem of the black man in this country is beyond the ability of Uncle Sam to solve it. It’s beyond the ability of the United States government to solve it. The government itself isn’t capable of even hearing our problem, much less solving it. It’s not morally equipped to solve it. So we must take it out of the hands of the United States government. And the only way we can do this is by internationalizing it and taking advantage of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Charter on Human Rights, and on that ground bring it into the UN before a world body where¬ in we can indict Uncle Sam for the continued criminal injustices that our people experience in this government. To do this, we will have to work with many organizations and many people. We’ve already gotten promises of support from many different organizations in this country and from many different leaders in this country and from many different independent nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. So this is our first objective and all we need is your support. Can we get your support for this project? For the past four weeks since my return from Africa, several persons from all walks of life in the Afro-American community have been meeting together, pooling knowledge and ideas and suggestions, forming a sort of a brain trust, for the purpose of getting a cross section of thinking, hopes, aspirations, likes and dislikes, to see what kind of organization we could put together that would in some way or other get the grass roots support, and what type of support it would need in order to be independent enough to take the type of action necessary to get results. No organization that is financed by white support can ever be independent enough to fight the power structure with the type of tactics necessary to get real results. The only way we can fight the power structure, and it’s the power structure that we’re fighting we’re not even fighting the Southern segregationists, we’re fighting a system that is run in Washington, D. C. That’s the seat of the system that we’re fighting. And in order to fight it, we have to be independent of it. And the only way we can be independent of it is to be independent of all support from the white community. It’s a battle that we have to wage ourselves. Now, if white people want to help, they can help. But they can’t join. They can help in the white community, but they can’t join. We accept their help. They can form the White Friends of the Organization of Afro-American Unity and work in the white community on white people and change their attitude toward us. They don’t ever need to come among us and change our attitude. We’ve had enough of them working around us trying to change our attitude. That’s what got us all messed up. So we don’t question their sincerity, we don’t question their motives, we don’t question their integrity. We just encourage them to use it somewhere else in the white community. If they can use all of this sincerity in the white community to make the white community act better toward us, then we’ll say, “Those are good white folks.” But they don’t have to come around us, smiling at us and showing us all their teeth like white Uncle Toms, to try and make themselves acceptable to us. The White Friends of the Organization of Afro American Unity, let them work in the white community. The only way that this organization can be independent is if it is financed by you. It must be financed by you. Last week I told you that it would cost a dollar to join it. We sat down and thought about it all week long and said that charging you a dollar to join it would not make it an organization. We have set a membership joining fee, if that’s the way you express it, at $2.00. It costs more than that, I think, to join the NAACP. By the way, you know I attended the NAACP convention Friday in Washington, D. C., which was very enlightening. And I found the people very friendly. They’ve got the same kind of ideas you have. They act a little different, but they’ve got the same kind of ideas, because they’re catching the same hell we’re catching. I didn’t find any hostility at that convention at all. In fact, I sat and listened to them go through their business and learned a lot from it. And one of the things I learned is they only charge, I think, $2.50 a year for membership, and that’s it. Well, this is one of the reasons that they have problems. Because any time you have an organization that costs $2.50 a year to belong to, it means that that organization has to turn in another direction for funds. And this is what castrates it. Because as soon as the white liberals begin to support it, they tell it what to do and what not to do. This is why Garvey was able to be more militant. Garvey didn’t ask them for help. He asked our people for help. And this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to try and follow his books. So we’re going to have a $2.00 joining fee and ask every member to contribute a dollar a week. Now, the NAACP gets $2.50 a year, that’s it. And it can’t ever go anywhere like that because it’s always got to be putting on some kind of drive for help and will always get its help from the wrong source. And then when they get that help, they’ll have to end up condemning all the enemies of their enemy in order to get some more help. No, we condemn our enemies, not the enemies of our enemies. We condemn our enemies. So what we are going to ask you to do is, if you want to become a member of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, it will cost you $2.00. We are going to ask you to pay a dues of a dollar a week. We will have an accountant, a bookkeeping system, which will keep the members up to date as to what has come in, what has been spent, and for what. Because the secret to success in any kind of business venture – and anything that you do that you mean business, you’d better do in a businesslike way – the secret to your success is keeping good records, good organized records. Since today will be the first time that we are opening the books for membership, our next meeting will be next Sunday here. And we will then have a membership. And we’ll be able to announce at that time the officers of the Organization of Afro-American Unity. I’ll tell you the top officer is the chairman, and that’s the office I’m holding. I’m taking the responsibility of the chairman, which means I’m responsible for any mistakes that take place; anything that goes wrong, any failures, you can rest them right upon my shoulders. So next week the officers will be announced. And this week I wanted to tell you the departments in this organization that, when you take out your membership, you can apply to work in. We have the department of education. The department of political action. For all of you who are interested in political action, we will have a department set up by brothers and sisters who are students of political science, whose function it will be to give us a breakdown of the community of New York City. First, how many assemblymen there are and how many of those assemblymen are black, how many congressmen there are and how many of those congressmen are black. In fact, let me just read something real quick and I’ll show you why it’s so necessary. Just to give you an example. There are 270,000 eligible voters in the twenty first senatorial district. The twenty first senatorial district is broken down into the eleventh, seventh, and thirteenth assembly districts. Each assembly district contains 90,000 eligible voters. In the eleventh assembly district, only 29,000 out of 90,000 eligible voters exercise their voting rights. In the seventh assembly district, only 36,000 out of the 90,000 eligible voters vote. Now, in a white assembly district with 90,000 eligible voters, 65,000 exercise their voting rights, showing you that in the white assembly districts more whites vote than blacks vote in the black assembly districts. There’s a reason for this. It is because our people aren’t politically aware of what we can get by becoming politically active. So what we have to have is a program of political education to show them what they can get if they take political action that’s intelligently directed. Less than 25 percent of the eligible voters in Harlem vote in the primary election. Therefore, they have not the right to place the candidate of their choice in office, as only those who were in the primary can run in the general election. The following number of signatures are required to place a candidate to vote in the primaries: for assemblyman it must be 350 signatures; state senator, 750; countywide judgeship, 1,000; borough president, 2,250; mayor, 7,500. People registered with the Republican or Democratic parties do not have to vote with their party. There are fifty eight senators in the New York state legislature. Four are from Manhattan; one is black. In the New York state assembly, there are 150 assemblymen. I think three are black; maybe more than that. According to calculation, if the Negro were proportionately represented in the state senate and state assembly, we would have several representatives in the state senate and several in the state assembly. There are 435 members in the United States House of Representatives. According to the census, there are 22 million Afro Americans in the United States. If they were represented proportionately in this body, there would be 30 to 40 members of our race sitting in that body. How many are there? Five. There are 100 senators in the United States Senate. Hawaii, with a population of only 600 thousand, has two senators representing it. The black man, with a population of in excess of 20 million, is not represented in the Senate at all. Worse than this, many of the congressmen and representatives in the Congress of the United States come from states where black people are killed if they attempt to exercise the right to vote. What you and I want to do in this political department is have our brothers and sisters who are experts in the science of politics acquaint our people in our community with what we should have, and who should be doing it, and how we can go about getting what we should have. This will be their job and we want you to play this role so we can get some action without having to wait on Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. Texas Johnson. Also, our economics department. We have an economics department. For any of you who are interested in business or a program that will bring about a situation where the black man in Harlem can gain control over his own economy and develop business expansion for our people in this community so we can create some employment opportunities for our people in this community, we will have this department. We will also have a speakers bureau because many of our people want to speak, want to be speakers, they want to preach, they want to tell somebody what they know, they want to let off some steam. We will have a department that will train young men and young women how to go forth with our philosophy and our program and project it throughout the country; not only throughout this city but throughout the country. We will have a youth group. The youth group will be designed to work with youth. Not only will it consist of youth, but it will also consist of adults. But it will be designed to work out a program for the youth in this country, one in which the youth can play an active part. We also are going to have our own newspaper. You need a newspaper. We believe in the power of the press. A newspaper is not a difficult thing to run. A newspaper is very simple if you have the right motives. In fact, anything is simple if you have the right motives. The Muhammad Speaks newspaper, I and another person started it myself in my basement. And I’ve never gone past the eighth grade. Those of you who have gone to all these colleges and studied all kinds of journalism, yellow and black journalism, all you have to do is contribute some of your journalistic talent to our newspaper department along with our research department, and we can turn out a newspaper that will feed our people with so much information that we can bring about a real live revolution right here before you know it. We will also have a cultural department. The task or duty of the cultural department will be to do research into the culture, into the ancient and current culture of our people, the cultural contributions and achievements of our people. And also all of the entertainment groups that exist on the African continent that can come here and ours who are here that can go there. Set up some kind of cultural program that will really emphasize the dormant talent of black people. When I was in Ghana I was speaking with, I think his name is Nana Nketsia, I think he’s the minister of culture or he’s head of the culture institute. I went to his house, he had a – he had a nice, beautiful place; I started to say he had a sharp pad. He had a fine place in Accra. He had gone to Oxford, and one of the things that he said impressed me no end. He said that as an African his concept of freedom is a situation or a condition in which he, as an African, feels completely free to give vent to his own likes and dislikes and thereby develop his own African personality. Not a condition in which he is copying some European cultural pattern or some European cultural standard, but an atmosphere of complete freedom where he has the right, the leeway, to bring out of himself all of that dormant, hidden talent that has been there for so long. And in that atmosphere, brothers and sisters, you’d be surprised what will come out of the bosom of this black man. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen black musicians when they’d be jamming at a jam session with white musicians – a whole lot of difference. The white musician can jam if he’s got some sheet music in front of him. He can jam on something that he’s heard jammed before. If he’s heard it, then he can duplicate it or he can imitate it or he can read it But that black musician, he picks up his horn and starts blowing some sounds that he never thought of before. He improvises, he creates, it comes from within. It’s his soul, it’s that soul music. It’s the only area on the American scene where the black man has been free to create. And he his mastered it. He has shown that he can come up with something that nobody ever thought of on his horn. Well, likewise he can do the same thing if given intellectual independence. He can come up with a new philosophy. He can come up with a philosophy that nobody has heard of yet. He can invent a society, a social system, an economic system, a political system, that is different from anything that exists or has ever existed anywhere on this earth. He will improvise; he’ll bring it from within himself. And this is what you and I want. You and I want to create an organization that will give us so much power we can sit down and do as we please. Once we can sit down and think as we please, speak as we please, and do as we please, we will show people what pleases us. And what pleases us won’t always please them. So you’ve got to get some power before you can be yourself. Do you understand that? You’ve got to get some power before you can be yourself. Once you get power and you be yourself, why, you’re gone, you’ve got it and gone. You create a new society and make some heaven right here on this earth. And we’re going to start right here tonight when we open up our membership books into the Organization of Afro-American Unity. I’m going to buy the first memberships myself – one for me, my wife, Attillah, Qubilah, these are my daughters, Ilyasah, and something else I expect to get either this week or next week. As I told you before, if it’s a boy I’m going to name him Lumumba, the greatest black man who ever walked the African continent. He didn’t fear anybody. He had those people so scared they had to kill him. They couldn’t buy him, they couldn’t frighten him, they couldn’t reach him. Why, he told the king of Belgium, “Man, you may let us free, you may have given us our independence, but we can never forget these scars.” The greatest speech – you should take that speech and tack it up over your door. This is what Lumumba said: “You aren’t giving us anything. Why, can you take back these scars that you put on our bodies? Can you give us back the limbs that you cut off while you were here?” No, you should never forget what that man did to you. And you bear the scars of the same kind of colonization and oppression not on your body, but in your brain, in your heart, in your soul, right now. So, if it’s a boy, Lumumba. If it’s a girl, Lumumbah. [Malcolm introduces several people from the platform and from the audience, then continues:] If I passed over some of the rest of you, it’s because my eyes aren’t too good, my glasses aren’t too good. But everybody here are people who are from the street who want some kind of action. We hope that we will be able to give you all the action you need. And more than likely we’ll be able to give you more than you want. We just hope that you stay with us. Our meeting will be next Sunday night right here. We want you to bring all of your friends and we’ll be able to go forward. Up until now, these meetings have been sponsored by the Muslim Mosque, Inc. They’ve been sponsored and paid for by the Muslim Mosque, Inc. Beginning next Sunday, they will be sponsored and paid for by the Organization of Afro American Unity. I don’t know if I’m right in saying this, but for a period of time, let’s you and me not be too hard on other Afro-American leaders. Because you would be surprised how many of them. have expressed sympathy and support in our efforts to bring this situation confronting our people before the United Nations. You’d be surprised how many of them, some of the last ones you would expect, they’re coming around. So let’s give them a little time to straighten up. If they straighten up, good. They’re our brothers and we’re responsible for our brothers. But if they don’t straighten up, then that’s another point. And one thing that we are going to do, we’re going to dispatch a wire, a telegram that is, in the name of the Organization of Afro-American Unity to Martin Luther King in St. Augustine, Florida, and to Jim Forman in Mississippi, worded in essence to tell them that if the federal government doesn’t come to their aid, call on us. And we will take the responsibility of slipping some brothers into that area who know what to do by any means necessary. I can tell you right now that my purpose is not to become involved in a fight with Black Muslims, who are my brothers still. I do everything I can to avoid that because there’s no benefit in it. It actually makes our enemy happy. But I do believe that the time has come for you and me to take the responsibility of forming whatever nucleus or defense group is necessary in places like Mississippi. Why, they shouldn’t have to call on the federal government – that’s a drag. No, when you and I know that our people are the victims of brutality, and all times the police in those states are the ones who are responsible, then it is incumbent upon you and me, if we are men, if we are to be respected and recognized, it is our duty. . . [A passage is lost here through a defect in the tape.] Johnson knew that when he sent [Allen] Dulles down there. Johnson has found this out. You don’t disappear. How are you going to disappear? Why, this man can find a missing person in China. They send the CIA all the way to China and find somebody. They send the FBI anywhere and find somebody. But they can’t find them whenever the criminal is white and the victim is black, then they can’t find them. Let’s don’t wait on any more FBI to look for criminals who are shooting and brutalizing our people. Let’s you and me find them. And I say that it’s easy to do it. One of the best organized groups of black people in America was the Black Muslims. They’ve got all the machinery, don’t think they haven’t; and the experience where they know how to ease out in broad daylight or in dark and do whatever is necessary by any means necessary. They know how to do that. Well, I don’t blame anybody for being taught how to do that. You’re living in a society where you’re the constant victim of brutality. You must know how to strike back. So instead of them and us wasting our shots, I should say our time and energy, on each other, what we need to do is band together and go to Mississippi. That’s my closing message to Elijah Muhammad: If he is the leader of the Muslims and the leader of our people, then lead us against our enemies, don’t lead us against each other. I thank you for your patience here tonight, and we want each and every one of you to put your name on the roll of the Organization of Afro- American Unity. The reason we have to rely upon you to let the public know where we are is because the press doesn’t help us; they never announce in advance that we’re going to have a meeting. So you have to spread the word over the grapevine. Thank you. Salaam Alaikum. REFERRAL https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/speeches-african-american-history/1964-malcolm-x-s-speech-founding-rally-organization-afro-american-unity/

TEXT https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/357-frederick-douglass-our-composite-nation/ OR As nations are among the largest and the most complete divisions into which society is formed, the grandest aggregations of organized human power; as they raise to observation and distinction the world’s greatest men, and call into requisition the highest order of talent and ability for their guidance, preservation and success, they are ever among the most attractive, instructive and useful subjects of thought, to those just entering upon the duties and activities of life. The simple organization of a people into a National body, composite or otherwise, is of itself and impressive fact. As an original proceeding, it marks the point of departure of a people, from the darkness and chaos of unbridled barbarism, to the wholesome restraints of public law and society. It implies a willing surrender and subjection of individual aims and ends, often narrow and selfish, to the broader and better ones that arise out of society as a whole. It is both a sign and a result of civilization. A knowledge of the character, resources and proceedings of other nations, affords us the means of comparison and criticism, without which progress would be feeble, tardy, and perhaps, impossible. It is by comparing one nation with another, and one learning from another, each competing with all, and all competing with each, that hurtful errors are exposed, great social truths discovered, and the wheels of civilization whirled onward. I am especially to speak to you of the character and mission of the United States, with special reference to the question whether we are the better or the worse for being composed of different races of men. I propose to consider first, what we are, second, what we are likely to be, and, thirdly, what we ought to be. Without undue vanity or unjust depreciation of others, we may claim to be, in many respects, the most fortunate of nations. We stand in relation to all others, as youth to age. Other nations have had their day of greatness and glory; we are yet to have our day, and that day is coming. The dawn is already upon us. It is bright and full of promise. Other nations have reached their culminating point. We are at the beginning of our ascent. They have apparently exhausted the conditions essential to their further growth and extension, while we are abundant in all the material essential to further national growth and greatness. The resources of European statesmanship are now sorely taxed to maintain their nationalities at their ancient height of greatness and power. American statesmanship, worthy of the name, is now taxing its energies to frame measures to meet the demands of constantly increasing expansion of power, responsibility and duty. Without fault or merit on either side, theirs or ours, the balance is largely in our favor. Like the grand old forests, renewed and enriched from decaying trunks once full of life and beauty, but now moss-covered, oozy and crumbling, we are destined to grow and flourish while they decline and fade. This is one view of American position and destiny. It is proper to notice that it is not the only view. Different opinions and conflicting judgments meet us here, as elsewhere. It is thought by many, and said by some, that this Republic has already seen its best days; that the historian may now write the story of its decline and fall. Two classes of men are just now especially afflicted with such forebodings. The first are those who are croakers by nature—the men who have a taste for funerals, and especially National funerals. They never see the bright side of anything and probably never will. Like the raven in the lines of Edgar A. Poe they have learned two words, and these are “never more.” They usually begin by telling us what we never shall see. Their little speeches are about as follows: You will never see such Statesmen in the councils of the nation as Clay, Calhoun and Webster. You will never see the South morally reconstructed and our once happy people again united. You will never see the Government harmonious and successful while in the hands of different races. You will never make the negro work without a master, or make him an intelligent voter, or a good and useful citizen. The last never is generally the parent of all the other little nevers that follow. During the late contest for the Union, the air was full of nevers, every one of which was contradicted and put to shame by the result, and I doubt not that most of those we now hear in our troubled air, will meet the same fate. It is probably well for us that some of our gloomy prophets are limited in their powers, to prediction. Could they command the destructive bolt, as readily as they command the destructive world, it is hard to say what might happen to the country. They might fulfill their own gloomy prophesies. Of course it is easy to see why certain other classes on men speak hopelessly concerning us. A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, that nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves. To those who doubt and deny the preponderance of good over evil in human nature; who think the few are made to rule, and many to serve; who put rank above brotherhood, and race above humanity; who attach more importance to ancient forms than to the living realities of the present; who worship power in whatever hands it may be lodged and by whatever means it may have been obtained; our Government is a mountain of sin, and, what is worse, its [sic] seems confirmed in its transgressions. One of the latest and most potent European prophets, one who has felt himself called upon for a special deliverance concerning us and our destiny as a nation, was the late Thomas Carlyle. He described us as rushing to ruin, not only with determined purpose, but with desperate velocity. How long we have been on this high road to ruin, and when we may expect to reach the terrible end our gloomy prophet, enveloped in the fogs of London, has not been pleased to tell us. Warnings and advice are not to be despised, from any quarter, and especially not from one so eminent as Mr. Carlyle; and yet Americans will find it hard to heed even men like him, if there be any in the world like him, while the animus is so apparent, bitter and perverse. A man to whom despotism is Savior and Liberty the destroyer of society,—who, during the last twenty years of his life, in every contest between liberty and oppression, uniformly and promptly took sides with the oppressor; who regarded every extension of the right of suffrage, even to white men in his own country, as shooting Niagara; who gloats over deeds of cruelty, and talked of applying to the backs of men the beneficent whip, to the great delight of many, the slave drivers of America in particular, could have little sympathy with our Emancipated and progressive Republic, or with the triumphs of liberty anywhere. But the American people can easily stand the utterances of such a man. They however have a right to be impatient and indignant at those among ourselves who turn the most hopeful portents into omens of disaster, and make themselves the ministers of despair when they should be those of hope, and help cheer on the country in the new and grand career of justice upon which it has now so nobly and bravely entered. Of errors and defects we certainly have not less than our full share, enough to keep the reformer awake, the statesman busy, and the country in a pretty lively state of agitation for some time to come. Perfection is an object to be aimed at by all, but it is not an attribute of any form of Government. Neutrality is the law for all. Something different, something better, or something worse may come, but so far as respects our present system and form of Government, and the altitude we occupy, we need not shrink from comparison with any nation of our times. We are today the best fed, the best clothed, the best sheltered and the best instructed people in t he world. There was a time when even brave men might look fearfully at the destiny of the Republic. When our country was involved in a tangled network of contradictions; when vast and irreconcilable social forces fiercely disputed for ascendancy and control; when a heavy curse rested upon our very soil, defying alike the wisdom and the virtue of the people to remove it; when our professions were loudly mocked by our practice and our name was a reproach and a by word to a mocking earth; when our good ship of state, freighted with the best hopes of the oppressed of all nations, was furiously hurled against the hard and flinty rocks of derision, and every cord, bolt, beam and bend in her body quivered beneath the shock, there was some apology for doubt and despair. But that day has happily passed away. The storm has been weathered, and portents are nearly all in our favor. There are clouds, wind, smoke and dust and noise, over head and around, and there always will be; but no genuine thunder, with destructive bolt, menaces from any quarter of the sky. The real trouble with us was never our system or form of Government, or the principles underlying it; but the peculiar composition of our people, the relations existing between them and the compromising spirit which controlled the ruling power of the country. We have for along time hesitated to adopt and may yet refuse to adopt, and carry out, the only principle which can solve that difficulty and give peace, strength and security to the Republic, and that is the principle of absolute equality. We are a country of all extremes—, ends and opposites; the most conspicuous example of composite nationality in the world. Our people defy all the ethnological and logical classifications. In races we range all the way from black to white, with intermediate shades which, as in the apocalyptic vision, no man can name a number. In regard to creeds and faiths, the condition is no better, and no worse. Differences both as to race and to religion are evidently more likely to increase than to diminish. We stand between the populous shores of two great oceans. Our land is capable of supporting one fifth of all the globe. Here, labor is abundant and here labor is better remunerated than any where else. All moral, social and geographical causes, conspire to bring to us the peoples of all other over populated countries. Europe and Africa are already here, and the Indian was here before either. He stands today between the two extremes of black and white, too proud to claim fraternity with either, and yet too weak to withstand the power of either. Heretofore the policy of our government has been governed by race pride, rather than by wisdom. Until recently, neither the Indian nor the negro has been treated as a part of the body politic. No attempt has been made to inspire either with a sentiment of patriotism, but the hearts of both races have been diligently sown with the dangerous seeds of discontent and hatred. The policy of keeping the Indians to themselves, has kept the tomahawk and scalping knife busy upon our borders, and has cost us largely in blood and treasure. Our treatment of the negro has slacked humanity, and filled the country with agitation and ill-feeling and brought the nation to the verge of ruin. Before the relations of these two races are satisfactorily settled, and in spite of all opposition, a new race is making its appearance within our borders, and claiming attention. It is estimated that not less than one hundred thousand Chinamen, are now within the limits of the United States. Several years ago every vessel, large or small, of steam or sail, bound to our Pacific coast and hailing from the Flowery kingdom, added to the number and strength of this new element of our population. Men differ widely as to the magnitude of this potential Chinese immigration. The fact that by the late treaty with China, we bind ourselves to receive immigrants from that country only as the subjects of the Emperor, and by the construction, at least, are bound not to [naturalize] them, and the further fact that Chinamen themselves have a superstitious devotion to their country and an aversion to permanent location in any other, contracting even to have their bones carried back, should they die abroad, and from the fact that many have returned to China, and the still more stubborn [fact] that resistance to their coming has increased rather than diminished, it is inferred that we shall never have a large Chinese population in America. This however is not my opinion. It may be admitted that these reasons, and others, may check and moderate the tide of immigration; but it is absurd to think that they will do more than this. Counting their number now, by the thousands, the time is not remote when they will count them by the millions. The Emperor’s hold upon the Chinamen may be strong, but the Chinaman’s hold upon himself is stronger. Treaties against naturalization, like all other treaties, are limited by circumstances. As to the superstitious attachment of the Chinese to China, that, like all other superstitions, will dissolve in the light and heat of truth and experience. The Chinaman may be a bigot, but it does not follow that he will continue to be one, tomorrow. He is a man, and will be very likely to act like a man. He will not be long in finding out that a country which is good enough to live in, is good enough to die in; and that a soil that was good enough to hold his body while alive, will be good enough to hold his bones when he is dead. Those who doubt a large immigration, should remember that the past furnishes no criterion as a basis of calculation. We live under new and improved conditions of migration, and these conditions are constantly improving. America is no longer an obscure and inaccessible country. Our ships are in every sea, our commerce in every port, our language is heard all around the globe, steam and lightning have revolutionized the whole domain of human thought. Changed all geographical relations, make a day of the present seem equal to a thousand years of the past, and the continent that Columbus only conjectured four centuries ago is now the centre of the world. I believe that Chinese immigration on a large scale will yet be our irrepressible fact. The spirit of race pride will not always prevail. The reasons for this opinion are obvious; China is a vastly overcrowded country. Her people press against each other like cattle in a rail car. Many live upon the water, and have laid out streets upon the waves. Men, like bees, want elbow room. When the hive is overcrowded, the bees will swarm, and will be likely to take up their abode where they find the best prospect for honey. In matters of this sort, men are very much like bees. Hunger will not be quietly endured, even in the celestial empire, when it is once generally known that there is bread enough and to spare in America. What Satan said of Job is true of the Chinaman, as well as of other men, “All that a man hath will he give for his life.” They will come here to live where they know the means of living are in abundance. The same mighty forces which have swept our shores the overflowing populations of Europe; which have reduced the people of Ireland three millions below its normal standard; will operate in a similar manner upon the hungry population of China and other parts of Asia. Home has its charms, and native land has its charms, but hunger, oppression, and destitution, will desolve these charms and send men in search of new countries and new homes. Not only is there a Chinese motive behind this probable immigration, but there is also an American motive which will play its part, one which will be all the more active and energetic because there is in it an element of pride, of bitterness, and revenge. Southern gentlemen who led in the late rebellion, have not parted with their convictions at this point, any more than at others. They want to be independent of the negro. They believed in slavery and they believe in it still. They believed in an aristocratic class and they believe in it still, and though they have lost slavery, one element essential to such a class, they still have two important conditions to the reconstruction of that class. They have intelligence and they have land. Of these, the land is the more important. They cling to it with all the tenacity of a cherished superstition. They will neither sell to the negro, nor let the carpet baggers have it in peace, but are determined to hold it for themselves and their children forever. They have not yet learned that when a principle is gone, the incident must go also; that what was wise and proper under slavery, is foolish and mischievous in a state of general liberty; that the old bottles are worthless when the new wine has come; but they have found that land is a doubtful benefit where there are no hands to it. Hence these gentlemen have turned their attention to the Celestial Empire. They would rather have laborers who will work for nothing; but as they cannot get the negroes on these terms, they want Chinamen who, they hope, will work for next to nothing. Companies and associations may be formed to promote this Mongolian invasion. The loss of the negro is to gain them, the Chinese; and if the thing works well, abolition, in their opinion, will have proved itself to be another blessing in disguise. To the statesman it will mean Southern independence. To the pulpit it will be the hand of Providence, and bring about the time of the universal dominion of the Christian religion. To all but the Chinaman and the negro, it will mean wealth, ease and luxury. But alas, for all the selfish inventions and dreams of men! The Chinaman will not long be willing to wear the cast off shoes of the negro, and if he refuses, there will be trouble again. The negro worked and took his pay in religion and the lash. The Chinaman is a different article and will want the cash. He may, like the negro, accept Christianity, but unlike the negro he will not care to pay for it in labor under the lash. He had the golden rule in substance, five hundred years before the coming of Christ, and has notions of justice that are not to be confused or bewildered by any of our “Cursed be Canaan” religion. Nevertheless, the experiment will be tried. So far as getting the Chinese into our country is concerned, it will yet be a success. This elephant will be drawn by our Southern brethren, though they will hardly know in the end what to do with him. Appreciation of the value of Chinamen as laborers will, I apprehend, become general in this country. The North was never indifferent to Southern influence and example, and it will not be so in this instance. The Chinese in themselves have first rate recommendations. They are industrious, docile, cleanly, frugal; they are dexterious of hand, patient of toil, marvelously gifted in the power of imitation, and have but few wants. Those who have carefully observed their habits in California, say they can subsist upon what would be almost starvation to others. The conclusion of the whole will be that they will want to come to us, and as we become more liberal, we shall want them to come, and what we want will normally be done. They will no longer halt upon the shores of California. They will borrow no longer in her exhausted and deserted gold mines where they have gathered wealth from bareness, taking what others left. They will turn their backs not only upon the Celestial Empire, but upon the golden shores of the Pacific, and the wide waste of waters whose majestic waves spoke to them of home and country. They will withdraw their eyes from the glowing west and fix them upon the rising sun. They will cross the mountains, cross the plains, descend our rivers, penetrate to the heart of the country and fix their homes with us forever. Assuming then that this immigration already has a foothold and will continue for many years to come, we have a new element in our national composition which is likely to exercise a large influence upon the thought and the action of the whole nation. The old question as to what shall be done with [the] negro will have to give place to the greater question, “what shall be done with the Mongolian” and perhaps we shall see raised one even still greater question, namely, what will the Mongolian do with both the negro and the whites? Already has the matter taken this shape in California and on the Pacific Coast generally. Already has California assumed a bitterly unfriendly attitude toward the Chinamen. Already has she driven them from her altars of justice. Already has she stamped them as outcasts and handed them over to popular contempt and vulgar jest. Already are they the constant victims of cruel harshness and brutal violence. Already have our Celtic brothers, never slow to execute the behests of popular prejudice against the weak and defenseless, recognized in the heads of these people, fit targets for their shilalahs. Already, too, are their associations formed in avowed hostility to the Chinese. In all this there is, of course, nothing strange. Repugnance to the presence and influence of foreigners is an ancient feeling among men. It is peculiar to no particularly race or nation. It is met with not only in the conduct of one nation toward another, but in the conduct of the inhabitants of different parts of the same country, some times of the same city, and even of the same village. “Lands intersected by a narrow frith, abhor each other. Mountains interposed, make enemies of nations.” To the Hindoo, every man not twice born, is Mleeka. To the Greek, every man not speaking Greek, is a barbarian. To the Jew, every one not circumcised, is a gentile. To the Mahometan, every man not believing in the prophet, is a kaffe. I need not repeat here the multitude of reproachful epithets expressive of the same sentiment among ourselves. All who are not to the manor born, have been made to feel the lash and sting of these reproachful names. For this feeling there are many apologies, for there was never yet an error, however flagrant and hurtful, for which some plausible defense could not be framed. Chattel slavery, king craft, priest craft, pious frauds, intolerance, persecution, suicide, assassination, repudiation, and a thousand other errors and crimes, have all had their defenses and apologies. Prejudice of race and color has been equally upheld. The two best arguments in its defense are, first, the worthlessness of the class against which it was directed; and, second; that he feeling itself is entirely natural. The way to overcome the first argument is, to work for the elevation of those deemed worthless, and thus make them worthy of regard and they will soon become worthy and not worthless. As to the natural argument it may be said, that nature has many sides. Many things are in a certain sense natural, which are neither wise nor best. It is natural to walk, but shall men therefore refuse to ride? It is natural to ride on horseback, shall men therefore refuse steam and rail? Civilization is itself a constant war upon some forces in nature; shall we therefore abandon civilization and go back to savage life? Nature has two voices, the one is high, the other low; one is in sweet accord with reason and justice, and the other apparently at war with both. The more men really know of the essential nature of things, and on of the true relation of mankind, the freer they are from prejudices of every kind. The child is afraid of the giant form of his own shadow. This is natural, but he will part with his fears when he is older and wiser. So ignorance is full of prejudice, but it will disappear with enlightenment. But I pass on. I have said that the Chinese will come, and have given some reasons why we may expect them in very large numbers in no very distant future. Do you ask, if I favor such immigration, I answer I would. Would you have them naturalized, and have them invested with all the rights of American citizenship? I would. Would you allow them to vote? I would. Would you allow them to hold office? I would. But are there not reasons against all this? Is there not such a law or principle as that of self-preservation? Does not every race owe something to itself? Should it not attend to the dictates of common sense? Should not a superior race protect itself from contact with inferior ones? Are not the white people the owners of this continent? Have they not the right to say, what kind of people shall be allowed to come here and settle? Is there not such a thing as being more generous than wise? In the effort to promote civilization may we not corrupt and destroy what we have? Is it best to take on board more passengers than the ship will carry? To all of this and more I have one among many answers, together satisfactory to me, though I cannot promise that it will be so to you. I submit that this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency. There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are external, universal, and indestructible. Among these, is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go to the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue eyed and light haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world they need have no fear. They have no need to doubt that they will get their full share. But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men. I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races; but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours. Right wrongs no man. If respect is had to majorities, the fact that only one fifth of the population of the globe is white, the other four fifths are colored, ought to have some weight and influence in disposing of this and similar questions. It would be a sad reflection upon the laws of nature and upon the idea of justice, to say nothing of a common Creator, if four fifths of mankind were deprived of the rights of migration to make room for the one fifth. If the white race may exclude all other races from this continent, it may rightfully do the same in respect to all other lands, islands, capes and continents, and thus have all the world to itself. Thus what would seem to belong to the whole, would become the property only of a part. So much for what is right, now let us see what is wise. And here I hold that a liberal and brotherly welcome to all who are likely to come to the United states, is the only wise policy which this nation can adopt. It has been thoughtfully observed, that every nation, owing to its peculiar character and composition, has a definite mission in the world. What that mission is, and what policy is best adapted to assist in its fulfillment, is the business of its people and its statesmen to know, and knowing, to make a noble use of said knowledge. I need to stop here to name or describe the missions of other and more ancient nationalities. Ours seems plain and unmistakable. Our geographical position, our relation to the outside world, our fundamental principles of Government, world embracing in their scope and character, our vast resources, requiring all manner of labor to develop them, and our already existing composite population, all conspire to one grand end, and that is to make us the make perfect national illustration of the unit and dignity of the human family, that the world has ever seen. In whatever else other nations may have been great and grand, our greatness and grandeur will be found in the faithful application of the principle of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds, and to men of no creeds. We are not only bound to this position by our organic structure and by our revolutionary antecedents, but by the genius of our people. Gathered here, from all quarters of the globe by a common aspiration for rational liberty as against caste, divine right Governments and privileged classes, it would be unwise to be found fighting against ourselves and among ourselves; it would be madness to set up any one race above another, or one religion above another, or proscribe any on account of race color or creed. The apprehension that we shall be swamped or swallowed up by Mongolian civilization; that the Caucasian race may not be able to hold their own against that vast incoming population, does not seem entitled to much respect. Though they come as the waves come, we shall be stronger if we receive them as friends and give them a reason for loving our country and our institutions. They will find here a deeply rooted, indigenous, growing civilization, augmented by an ever increasing stream of immigration from Europe; and possession is nine points of the law in this case, as well as in others. They will come as strangers, we are at home. They will come to us, not we to them. They will come in their weakness, we shall meet them in our strength. They will come as individuals, we will meet them in multitudes, and with all the advantages of organization. Chinese children are in American schools in San Francisco, none of our children are in Chinese schools, and probably never will be, though in some things they might well teach us valuable lessons. Contact with these yellow children of The Celestial Empire would convince us that the points of human difference, great as they, upon first sight, seem, are as nothing compared with the points of human agreement. Such contact would remove mountains of prejudice. It is said that it is not good for man to be alone. This is true not only in the sense in which our woman’s rights friends so zealously and wisely teach, but it is true as to nations. The voice of civilization speaks an unmistakable language against the isolation of families, nations and races, and pleads for composite nationality as essential to her triumphs. Those races of men which have maintained the most separate and distinct existence for the longest periods of time; which have had the least intercourse with other races of men, are a standing confirmation of the folly of isolation. The very soil of the national mind becomes, in such cases, barren, and can only be resuscitated by assistance from without. Look at England, whose mighty power is now felt, and for centuries has been felt, all around the world. It is worthy of special remark, that precisely those parts of that proud Island which have received the largest and most diverse populations, are today, the parts most distinguished for industry, enterprise, invention and general enlightenment. In Wales, and in the Highlands of Scotland, the boast is made of their pure blood and that they were never conquered, but no man can contemplate them without wishing they had been conquered. They are far in the rear of every other part of the English realm in all the comforts and conveniences of life, as well as in mental and physical development. Neither law nor learning descends to us from the mountains of Wales or from the Highlands of Scotland. The ancient Briton whom Julius Caesar would not have a slave, is not to be compared with the round, burly, a[m]plitudinous Englishman in many of the qualities of desirable manhood. The theory that each race of men has come special faculty, some peculiar gift or quality of mind or heart, needed to the perfection and happiness of the whole is a broad and beneficent theory, and besides its beneficence, has in its support, the voice of experience. Nobody doubts this theory when applied to animals and plants, and no one can show that it is not equally true when applied to races. All great qualities are never found in any one man or in any one race. The whole of humanity, like the whole of everything else, is ever greater than a part. Men only know themselves by knowing others, and contact is essential to this knowledge. In one race we perceive the predominance of imagination; in another, like Chinese, we remark its total absence. In one people, we have the reasoning faculty, in another, for music; in another, exists courage; in another, great physical vigor; and so on through the whole list of human qualities. All are needed to temper, modify, round and complete. Not the least among the arguments whose consideration should dispose to welcome among us the peoples of all countries, nationalities and color, is the fact that all races and varieties of men are improvable. This is the grand distinguishing attribute of humanity and separates man from all other animals. If it could be shown that any particular race of men are literally incapable of improvement, we might hesitate to welcome them here. But no such men are anywhere to be found, and if there were, it is not likely that they would ever trouble us with their presence. The fact that the Chinese and other nations desire to come and do come, is a proof of their capacity for improvement and of their fitness to come. We should take council of both nature and art in the consideration of this question. When the architect intends a grand structure, he makes the foundation broad and strong. We should imitate this prudence in laying the foundation of the future Republic. There is a law of harmony in departments of nature. The oak is in the acorn. The career and destiny of individual men are enfolded in the elements of which they are composed. The same is true of a nation. It will be something or it will be nothing. It will be great, or it will be small, according to its own essential qualities. As these are rich and varied, or poor and simple, slender and feeble, broad and strong, so will be the life and destiny of the nation itself. The stream cannot rise higher than its source. The ship cannot sail faster than the wind. The flight of the arrow depends upon the strength and elasticity of the bow; and as with these, so with a nation. If we would reach a degree of civilization higher and grander than any yet attained, we should welcome to our ample continent all nations, kindreds [sic] tongues and peoples; and as fast as they learn our language and comprehend the duties of citizenship, we should incorporate them into the American body politic. The outspread wings of the American eagle are broad enough to shelter all who are likely to come. As a matter of selfish policy, leaving right and humanity out of the question, we cannot wisely pursue any other course. Other Governments mainly depend for security upon the sword; our depends mainly upon the friendship of its people. In all matters,—in time of peace, in time of war, and at all times,—it makes its appeal to all the people, and to all classes of the people. Its strength lies in their friendship and cheerful support in every time of need, and that policy is a mad one which would reduce the number of its friends by excluding those who would come, or by alienating those who are already here. Our Republic is itself a strong argument in favor of composite nationality. It is no disparagement to Americans of English descent, to affirm that much of the wealth, leisure, culture, refinement and civilization of the country are due to the arm of the negro and the muscle of the Irishman. Without these and the wealth created by their sturdy toil, English civilization had still lingered this side of the Alleghanies [sic], and the wolf still be howling on their summits. To no class of our population are we more indebted to valuable qualities of head, heart and hand than the German. Say what we will of their lager, their smoke and their metaphysics they have brought to us a fresh, vigorous and child-like nature; a boundless facility in the acquisition of knowledge; a subtle and far reaching intellect, and a fearless love of truth. Though remarkable for patient and laborious thought the true German is a joyous child of freedom, fond of manly sports, a lover of music, and a happy man generally. Though he never forgets that he is a German, he never fails to remember that he is an American. A Frenchman comes here to make money, and that is about all that need be said of him. He is only a Frenchman. He neither learns our language nor loves our country. His hand is on our pocket and his eye on Paris. He gets what he wants and like a sensible Frenchman, returns to France to spend it. Now let me answer briefly some objections to the general scope of my arguments. I am told that science is against me; that races are not all of one origin, and that the unity theory of human origin has been exploded. I admit that this is a question that has two sides. It is impossible to trace the threads of human history sufficiently near their starting point to know much about the origin of races. In disposing of this question whether we shall welcome or repel immigration from China, Japan, or elsewhere, we may leave the differences among the theological doctors to be settled by themselves. Whether man originated at one time and one or another place; whether there was one Adam or five, or five hundred, does not affect the question. The grand right of migration and the great wisdom of incorporating foreign elements into our body politic, are founded not upon any genealogical or archeological theory, however learned, but upon the broad fact of a common human nature. Man is man, the world over. This fact is affirmed and admitted in any effort to deny it. The sentiments we exhibit, whether love or hate, confidence or fear, respect or contempt, will always imply a like humanity. A smile or a tear has not nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above all the confusion of tongues, proclaim the brotherhood of man. It is objected to the Chinaman that he is secretive and treacherous, and will not tell the truth when he thinks it for his interest to tell a lie. There may be truth in all this; it sounds very much like the account of man’s heart given in the creeds. If he will not tell the truth except when it is for his interest to do so, let us make it for this interest to tell the truth We can do it by applying to him the same principle of justice that we apply ourselves. But I doubt if the Chinese are more untruthful than other people. At this point I have one certain test,—mankind are not held together by lies. Trust is the foundation of society. Where there is no truth, there can be no trust, and where there is no trust there can be no society. Where there is society, there is trust, and where there is trust, there is something upon which it is supported. Now a people who have confided in each other for five thousand years; who have extended their empire in all direction till it embraces on e fifth of the population of the glove; who hold important commercial relations with all nations; who are now entering into treaty stipulations with ourselves, and with all the great European powers, cannot be a nation of cheats and liars, but must have some respect for veracity. The very existence of China for so long a period, and her progress in civilization, are proofs of her truthfulness. But it is said that the Chinese is a heathen, and that he will introduce his heathen rights and superstitions here. This is the last objection which should come from those who profess the all conquering power of the Christian religion. If that religion cannot stand contact with the Chinese, religion or no religion, so much the worse for those who have adopted it. It is the Chinaman, not the Christian, who should be alarmed for his faith. He exposes that faith to great dangers by exposing it to the freer air of America. But shall we send missionaries to the heathen and yet deny the heathen the right to come to us? I think that a few honest believers in the teachings of Confucius would be well employed in expounding his doctrines among us. The next objection to the Chinese is that he cannot be induced to swear by the Bible. This is to me one of his best recommendations. The American people will swear by anything in the heavens above or in the earth beneath. We are a nation of swearers. We swear by a book whose most authoritative command is to swear not at all. It is not of so much importance what a man swears by, as what he swears to, and if the Chinaman is so true to his convictions that he cannot be tempted or even coerced into so popular a custom as swearing by the Bible, he gives good evidence of his integrity and his veracity. Let the Chinaman come; he will help to augment the national wealth. He will help to develop our boundless resources; he will help to pay off our national debt. He will help to lighten the burden of national taxation. He will give us the benefit of his skill as a manufacturer and tiller of the soil, in which he is unsurpassed. Even the matter of religious liberty, which has cost the world more tears, more blood and more agony, than any other interest, will be helped by his presence. I know of no church, however tolerant; of no priesthood, however enlightened, which could be safely trusted with the tremendous power which universal conformity would confer. We should welcome all men of every shade of religious opinion, as among the best means of checking the arrogance and intolerance which are the almost inevitable concomitants of general conformity. Religious liberty always flourishes best amid the clash and competition of rival religious creeds. To the minds of superficial men, the fusion of different races has already brought disaster and ruin upon the country. The poor negro has been charged with all our woes. In the haste of these men they forgot that our trouble was not ethnographical, but moral; that it was not a difference of complexion, but a difference of conviction. It was not the Ethiopian as a man, but the Ethiopian as a slave and a covetted [sic] article of merchandise, that gave us trouble. I close these remarks as I began. If our action shall be in accordance with the principles of justice, liberty, and perfect human equality, no eloquence can adequately portray the greatness and grandeur of the future of the Republic. We shall spread the network of our science and civilization over all who seek their shelter whether from Asia, Africa, or the Isles of the sea. We shall mold them all, each after his kind, into Americans; Indian and Celt; negro and Saxon; Latin and Teuton; Mongolian and Caucasian; Jew and Gentile; all shall here bow to the same law, speak the same language, support the same Government, enjoy the same liberty, vibrate with the same national enthusiasm, and seek the same national ends. Referral https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1867-frederick-douglass-describes-composite-nation/ PDF images of original speech https://nyhs-prod.cdn.prismic.io/nyhs-prod/071a94b5-388a-4546-b798-7439b35e2061_Composite+Nation_Composite+Nation+Speech.docx.pdf

TEXT https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/356-mlk-jr-free-at-last-speech/ OR Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds. But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: for whites only. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring. And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last. REFERRAL https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety

Published according to Act of Parliament, Sept.r 1. 1773 by Arch.d Bell Bookseller No.8 near the Saracens Head Aldgate. TEXT https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/349-poems-on-various-subjects-religious-and-moral-from-phillis-wheatley/ OR The Project Gutenberg EBook of Religious and Moral Poems, by Phillis Wheatley This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Religious and Moral Poems Author: Phillis Wheatley Release Date: January, 1996 [EBook #409] Last Updated: February 24, 2019 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELIGIOUS AND MORAL POEMS *** Etext produced by Judith Boss HTML file produced by David Widger POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. By Phillis Wheatley (Negro Servant To Mr. John Wheatley, Of Boston, In New-England) 1771 CONTENTS PREFACE. TO THE PUBLIC. P O E M S TO M AE C E N A S. O N V I R T U E. TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, IN NEW-ENGLAND. TO THE KING’S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY. 1768. ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA. ON THE DEATH OF THE REV. DR. SEWELL, 1769. ON THE DEATH OF THE REV. MR. GEORGE WHITEFIELD. 1770. ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG LADY OF FIVE YEARS OF AGE. ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN. TO A LADY ON THE DEATH OF HER HUSBAND. G O L I A T H O F G A T H. THOUGHTS ON THE WORKS OF PROVIDENCE. TO A LADY ON THE DEATH OF THREE RELATIONS. TO A CLERGYMAN ON THE DEATH OF HIS LADY. AN HYMN TO THE MORNING AN HYMN TO THE EVENING. ISAIAH lxiii. 1-8. ON RECOLLECTION. ON IMAGINATION. A FUNERAL POEM ON THE DEATH OF C. E. AN INFANT OF TWELVE MONTHS. TO CAPTAIN H———D, OF THE 65TH REGIMENT. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM, EARL OF DARTMOUTH O D E T O N E P T U N E. TO A LADY ON HER COMING TO NORTH-AMERICA WITH HER SON, FOR THE RECOVERY OF HER HEALTH. TO A LADY ON HER REMARKABLE PRESERVATION IN AN HURRICANE IN NORTH-CAROLINA. TO A LADY AND HER CHILDREN, ON THE DEATH OF HER SON AND THEIR BROTHER. TO A GENTLEMAN AND LADY ON THE DEATH OF THE LADY’S BROTHER AND SISTER, AND A CHILD OF THE NAME OF AVIS, AGED ONE YEAR. ON THE DEATH OF DR. SAMUEL MARSHALL. 1771. TO A GENTLEMAN ON HIS VOYAGE TO GREAT-BRITAIN FOR THE RECOVERY OF HIS HEALTH. TO THE REV. DR. THOMAS AMORY, ON READING HIS SERMONS ON DAILY DEVOTION, IN WHICH THAT DUTY IS RECOMMENDED AND ASSISTED. ON THE DEATH OF J. C. AN INFANT. AN H Y M N TO H U M A N I T Y. TO S. P. G. ESQ; TO THE HONOURABLE T. H. ESQ; ON THE DEATH OF HIS DAUGHTER. NIOBE IN DISTRESS FOR HER CHILDREN SLAIN BY APOLLO, FROM OVID’S METAMORPHOSES, BOOK VI. AND FROM A VIEW OF THE PAINTING OF MR. RICHARD WILSON. TO S. M. A YOUNG AFRICAN PAINTER, ON SEEING HIS WORKS. TO HIS HONOUR THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR, ON THE DEATH OF HIS LADY. MARCH 24, 1773. A FAREWEL TO AMERICA. TO MRS. S. W. A REBUS, BY I. B. AN ANSWER TO THE REBUS, BY THE AUTHOR OF THESE POEMS. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON, THE FOLLOWING P O E M S ARE MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED. BY HER MUCH OBLIGED, VERY HUMBLE AND DEVOTED SERVANT. PHILLIS WHEATLEY. Boston, June 12, 1771. PREFACE. THE following POEMS were written originally for the Amusement of the Author, as they were the Products of her leisure Moments. She had no Intention ever to have published them; nor would they now have made their Appearance, but at the Importunity of many of her best, and most generous Friends; to whom she considers herself, as under the greatest Obligations. As her Attempts in Poetry are now sent into the World, it is hoped the Critic will not severely censure their Defects; and we presume they have too much Merit to be cast aside with Contempt, as worthless and trifling Effusions. As to the Disadvantages she has laboured under, with Regard to Learning, nothing needs to be offered, as her Master’s Letter in the following Page will sufficiently show the Difficulties in this Respect she had to encounter. With all their Imperfections, the Poems are now humbly submitted to the Perusal of the Public. The following is a Copy of a LETTER sent by the Author’s Master to the Publisher. PHILLIS was brought from Africa to America, in the Year 1761, between seven and eight Years of Age. Without any Assistance from School Education, and by only what she was taught in the Family, she, in sixteen Months Time from her Arrival, attained the English language, to which she was an utter Stranger before, to such a degree, as to read any, the most difficult Parts of the Sacred Writings, to the great Astonishment of all who heard her. As to her WRITING, her own Curiosity led her to it; and this she learnt in so short a Time, that in the Year 1765, she wrote a Letter to the Rev. Mr. OCCOM, the Indian Minister, while in England. She has a great Inclination to learn the Latin Tongue, and has made some Progress in it. This Relation is given by her Master who bought her, and with whom she now lives. JOHN WHEATLEY. Boston, Nov. 14, 1772. TO THE PUBLIC. AS it has been repeatedly suggested to the Publisher, by Persons, who have seen the Manuscript, that Numbers would be ready to suspect they were not really the Writings of PHILLIS, he has procured the following Attestation, from the most respectable Characters in Boston, that none might have the least Ground for disputing their Original. WE whose Names are under-written, do assure the World, that the POEMS specified in the following Page,* were (as we verily believe) written by Phillis, a young Negro Girl, who was but a few Years since, brought an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa, and has ever since been, and now is, under the Disadvantage of serving as a Slave in a Family in this Town. She has been examined by some of the best Judges, and is thought qualified to write them. His Excellency THOMAS HUTCHINSON, Governor. The Hon. ANDREW OLIVER, Lieutenant-Governor. The Hon. Thomas Hubbard, | The Rev. Charles Chauncey, D. D. The Hon. John Erving, | The Rev. Mather Byles, D. D. The Hon. James Pitts, | The Rev. Ed. Pemberton, D. D. The Hon. Harrison Gray, | The Rev. Andrew Elliot, D. D. The Hon. James Bowdoin, | The Rev. Samuel Cooper, D. D. John Hancock, Esq; | The Rev. Mr. Saumel Mather, Joseph Green, Esq; | The Rev. Mr. John Moorhead, Richard Carey, Esq; | Mr. John Wheat ey, her Master. N. B. The original Attestation, signed by the above Gentlemen, may be seen by applying to Archibald Bell, Bookseller, No. 8, Aldgate-Street. _________________________________________________________ *The Words “following Page,” allude to the Contents of the Manuscript Copy, which are wrote at the Back of the above Attestation. P O E M S O N V A R I O U S S U B J E C T S. TO M AE C E N A S. MAECENAS, you, beneath the myrtle shade, Read o’er what poets sung, and shepherds play’d. What felt those poets but you feel the same? Does not your soul possess the sacred flame? Their noble strains your equal genius shares In softer language, and diviner airs. While Homer paints, lo! circumfus’d in air, Celestial Gods in mortal forms appear; Swift as they move hear each recess rebound, Heav’n quakes, earth trembles, and the shores resound. Great Sire of verse, before my mortal eyes, The lightnings blaze across the vaulted skies, And, as the thunder shakes the heav’nly plains, A deep felt horror thrills through all my veins. When gentler strains demand thy graceful song, The length’ning line moves languishing along. When great Patroclus courts Achilles’ aid, The grateful tribute of my tears is paid; Prone on the shore he feels the pangs of love, And stern Pelides tend’rest passions move. Great Maro’s strain in heav’nly numbers flows, The Nine inspire, and all the bosom glows. O could I rival thine and Virgil’s page, Or claim the Muses with the Mantuan Sage; Soon the same beauties should my mind adorn, And the same ardors in my soul should burn: Then should my song in bolder notes arise, And all my numbers pleasingly surprise; But here I sit, and mourn a grov’ling mind, That fain would mount, and ride upon the wind. Not you, my friend, these plaintive strains become, Not you, whose bosom is the Muses home; When they from tow’ring Helicon retire, They fan in you the bright immortal fire, But I less happy, cannot raise the song, The fault’ring music dies upon my tongue. The happier Terence* all the choir inspir’d, His soul replenish’d, and his bosom fir’d; But say, ye Muses, why this partial grace, To one alone of Afric’s sable race; From age to age transmitting thus his name With the finest glory in the rolls of fame? Thy virtues, great Maecenas! shall be sung In praise of him, from whom those virtues sprung: While blooming wreaths around thy temples spread, I’ll snatch a laurel from thine honour’d head, While you indulgent smile upon the deed. *He was an African by birth. As long as Thames in streams majestic flows, Or Naiads in their oozy beds repose While Phoebus reigns above the starry train While bright Aurora purples o’er the main, So long, great Sir, the muse thy praise shall sing, So long thy praise shal’ make Parnassus ring: Then grant, Maecenas, thy paternal rays, Hear me propitious, and defend my lays. O N V I R T U E. O Thou bright jewel in my aim I strive To comprehend thee. Thine own words declare Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach. I cease to wonder, and no more attempt Thine height t’ explore, or fathom thy profound. But, O my soul, sink not into despair, Virtue is near thee, and with gentle hand Would now embrace thee, hovers o’er thine head. Fain would the heav’n-born soul with her converse, Then seek, then court her for her promis’d bliss. Auspicious queen, thine heav’nly pinions spread, And lead celestial Chastity along; Lo! now her sacred retinue descends, Array’d in glory from the orbs above. Attend me, Virtue, thro’ my youthful years! O leave me not to the false joys of time! But guide my steps to endless life and bliss. Greatness, or Goodness, say what I shall call thee, To give me an higher appellation still, Teach me a better strain, a nobler lay, O thou, enthron’d with Cherubs in the realms of day. TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, IN NEW-ENGLAND. WHILE an intrinsic ardor prompts to write, The muses promise to assist my pen; ’Twas not long since I left my native shore The land of errors, and Egyptian gloom: Father of mercy, ’twas thy gracious hand Brought me in safety from those dark abodes. Students, to you ’tis giv’n to scan the heights Above, to traverse the ethereal space, And mark the systems of revolving worlds. Still more, ye sons of science ye receive The blissful news by messengers from heav’n, How Jesus’ blood for your redemption flows. See him with hands out-stretcht upon the cross; Immense compassion in his bosom glows; He hears revilers, nor resents their scorn: What matchless mercy in the Son of God! When the whole human race by sin had fall’n, He deign’d to die that they might rise again, And share with him in the sublimest skies, Life without death, and glory without end. Improve your privileges while they stay, Ye pupils, and each hour redeem, that bears Or good or bad report of you to heav’n. Let sin, that baneful evil to the soul, By you be shun’d, nor once remit your guard; Suppress the deadly serpent in its egg. Ye blooming plants of human race divine, An Ethiop tells you ’tis your greatest foe; Its transient sweetness turns to endless pain, And in immense perdition sinks the soul. TO THE KING’S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY. 1768. YOUR subjects hope, dread Sire— The crown upon your brows may flourish long, And that your arm may in your God be strong! O may your sceptre num’rous nations sway, And all with love and readiness obey! But how shall we the British king reward! Rule thou in peace, our father, and our lord! Midst the remembrance of thy favours past, The meanest peasants most admire the last* May George, beloved by all the nations round, Live with heav’ns choicest constant blessings crown’d! Great God, direct, and guard him from on high, And from his head let ev’ry evil fly! And may each clime with equal gladness see A monarch’s smile can set his subjects free! * The Repeal of the Stamp Act. ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA. ’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew, Some view our sable race with scornful eye, “Their colour is a diabolic die.” Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train. ON THE DEATH OF THE REV. DR. SEWELL, 1769. ERE yet the morn its lovely blushes spread, See Sewell number’d with the happy dead. Hail, holy man, arriv’d th’ immortal shore, Though we shall hear thy warning voice no more. Come, let us all behold with wishful eyes The saint ascending to his native skies; From hence the prophet wing’d his rapt’rous way To the blest mansions in eternal day. Then begging for the Spirit of our God, And panting eager for the same abode, Come, let us all with the same vigour rise, And take a prospect of the blissful skies; While on our minds Christ’s image is imprest, And the dear Saviour glows in ev’ry breast. Thrice happy saint! to find thy heav’n at last, What compensation for the evils past! Great God, incomprehensible, unknown By sense, we bow at thine exalted throne. O, while we beg thine excellence to feel, Thy sacred Spirit to our hearts reveal, And give us of that mercy to partake, Which thou hast promis’d for the Saviour’s sake! “Sewell is dead.” Swift-pinion’d Fame thus cry’d. “Is Sewell dead,” my trembling tongue reply’d, O what a blessing in his flight deny’d! How oft for us the holy prophet pray’d! How oft to us the Word of Life convey’d! By duty urg’d my mournful verse to close, I for his tomb this epitaph compose. “Lo, here a man, redeem’d by Jesus’s blood, “A sinner once, but now a saint with God; “Behold ye rich, ye poor, ye fools, ye wise, “Not let his monument your heart surprise; “Twill tell you what this holy man has done, “Which gives him brighter lustre than the sun. “Listen, ye happy, from your seats above. “I speak sincerely, while I speak and love, “He sought the paths of piety and truth, “By these made happy from his early youth; “In blooming years that grace divine he felt, “Which rescues sinners from the chains of guilt. “Mourn him, ye indigent, whom he has fed, “And henceforth seek, like him, for living bread; “Ev’n Christ, the bread descending from above, “And ask an int’rest in his saving love. “Mourn him, ye youth, to whom he oft has told “God’s gracious wonders from the times of old. “I too have cause this mighty loss to mourn, “For he my monitor will not return. “O when shall we to his blest state arrive? “When the same graces in our bosoms thrive.” ON THE DEATH OF THE REV. MR. GEORGE WHITEFIELD. 1770. HAIL, happy saint, on thine immortal throne, Possest of glory, life, and bliss unknown; We hear no more the music of thy tongue, Thy wonted auditories cease to throng. Thy sermons in unequall’d accents flow’d, And ev’ry bosom with devotion glow’d; Thou didst in strains of eloquence refin’d Inflame the heart, and captivate the mind. Unhappy we the setting sun deplore, So glorious once, but ah! it shines no more. Behold the prophet in his tow’ring flight! He leaves the earth for heav’n’s unmeasur’d height, And worlds unknown receive him from our sight. There Whitefield wings with rapid course his way, And sails to Zion through vast seas of day. Thy pray’rs, great saint, and thine incessant cries Have pierc’d the bosom of thy native skies. Thou moon hast seen, and all the stars of light, How he has wrestled with his God by night. He pray’d that grace in ev’ry heart might dwell, He long’d to see America excell; He charg’d its youth that ev’ry grace divine Should with full lustre in their conduct shine; That Saviour, which his soul did first receive, The greatest gift that ev’n a God can give, He freely offer’d to the num’rous throng, That on his lips with list’ning pleasure hung. “Take him, ye wretched, for your only good, “Take him ye starving sinners, for your food; “Ye thirsty, come to this life-giving stream, “Ye preachers, take him for your joyful theme; “Take him my dear Americans, he said, “Be your complaints on his kind bosom laid: “Take him, ye Africans, he longs for you, “Impartial Saviour is his title due: “Wash’d in the fountain of redeeming blood, “You shall be sons, and kings, and priests to God.” Great Countess,* we Americans revere Thy name, and mingle in thy grief sincere; New England deeply feels, the Orphans mourn, Their more than father will no more return. But, though arrested by the hand of death, Whitefield no more exerts his lab’ring breath, Yet let us view him in th’ eternal skies, Let ev’ry heart to this bright vision rise; While the tomb safe retains its sacred trust, Till life divine re-animates his dust. *The Countess of Huntingdon, to whom Mr. Whitefield was Chaplain. ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG LADY OF FIVE YEARS OF AGE. FROM dark abodes to fair etherial light Th’ enraptur’d innocent has wing’d her flight; On the kind bosom of eternal love She finds unknown beatitude above. This known, ye parents, nor her loss deplore, She feels the iron hand of pain no more; The dispensations of unerring grace, Should turn your sorrows into grateful praise; Let then no tears for her henceforward flow, No more distress’d in our dark vale below, Her morning sun, which rose divinely bright, Was quickly mantled with the gloom of night; But hear in heav’n’s blest bow’rs your Nancy fair, And learn to imitate her language there. “Thou, Lord, whom I behold with glory crown’d, “By what sweet name, and in what tuneful sound “Wilt thou be prais’d? Seraphic pow’rs are faint “Infinite love and majesty to paint. “To thee let all their graceful voices raise, “And saints and angels join their songs of praise.” Perfect in bliss she from her heav’nly home Looks down, and smiling beckons you to come; Why then, fond parents, why these fruitless groans? Restrain your tears, and cease your plaintive moans. Freed from a world of sin, and snares, and pain, Why would you wish your daughter back again? No—bow resign’d. Let hope your grief control, And check the rising tumult of the soul. Calm in the prosperous, and adverse day, Adore the God who gives and takes away; Eye him in all, his holy name revere, Upright your actions, and your hearts sincere, Till having sail’d through life’s tempestuous sea, And from its rocks, and boist’rous billows free, Yourselves, safe landed on the blissful shore, Shall join your happy babe to part no more. ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN. WHO taught thee conflict with the pow’rs of night, To vanquish satan in the fields of light? Who strung thy feeble arms with might unknown, How great thy conquest, and how bright thy crown! War with each princedom, throne, and pow’r is o’er, The scene is ended to return no more. O could my muse thy seat on high behold, How deckt with laurel, how enrich’d with gold! O could she hear what praise thine harp employs, How sweet thine anthems, how divine thy joys! What heav’nly grandeur should exalt her strain! What holy raptures in her numbers reign! To sooth the troubles of the mind to peace, To still the tumult of life’s tossing seas, To ease the anguish of the parents heart, What shall my sympathizing verse impart? Where is the balm to heal so deep a wound? Where shall a sov’reign remedy be found? Look, gracious Spirit, from thine heav’nly bow’r, And thy full joys into their bosoms pour; The raging tempest of their grief control, And spread the dawn of glory through the soul, To eye the path the saint departed trod, And trace him to the bosom of his God. TO A LADY ON THE DEATH OF HER HUSBAND. GRIM monarch! see, depriv’d of vital breath, A young physician in the dust of death: Dost thou go on incessant to destroy, Our griefs to double, and lay waste our joy? Enough thou never yet wast known to say, Though millions die, the vassals of thy sway: Nor youth, nor science, not the ties of love, Nor ought on earth thy flinty heart can move. The friend, the spouse from his dire dart to save, In vain we ask the sovereign of the grave. Fair mourner, there see thy lov’d Leonard laid, And o’er him spread the deep impervious shade. Clos’d are his eyes, and heavy fetters keep His senses bound in never-waking sleep, Till time shall cease, till many a starry world Shall fall from heav’n, in dire confusion hurl’d Till nature in her final wreck shall lie, And her last groan shall rend the azure sky: Not, not till then his active soul shall claim His body, a divine immortal frame. But see the softly-stealing tears apace Pursue each other down the mourner’s face; But cease thy tears, bid ev’ry sigh depart, And cast the load of anguish from thine heart: From the cold shell of his great soul arise, And look beyond, thou native of the skies; There fix thy view, where fleeter than the wind Thy Leonard mounts, and leaves the earth behind. Thyself prepare to pass the vale of night To join for ever on the hills of light: To thine embrace this joyful spirit moves To thee, the partner of his earthly loves; He welcomes thee to pleasures more refin’d, And better suited to th’ immortal mind. G O L I A T H O F G A T H. 1 SAMUEL, Chap. xvii. YE martial pow’rs, and all ye tuneful nine, Inspire my song, and aid my high design. The dreadful scenes and toils of war I write, The ardent warriors, and the fields of fight: You best remember, and you best can sing The acts of heroes to the vocal string: Resume the lays with which your sacred lyre, Did then the poet and the sage inspire. Now front to front the armies were display’d, Here Israel rang’d, and there the foes array’d; The hosts on two opposing mountains stood, Thick as the foliage of the waving wood; Between them an extensive valley lay, O’er which the gleaming armour pour’d the day, When from the camp of the Philistine foes, Dreadful to view, a mighty warrior rose; In the dire deeds of bleeding battle skill’d, The monster stalks the terror of the field. From Gath he sprung, Goliath was his name, Of fierce deportment, and gigantic frame: A brazen helmet on his head was plac’d, A coat of mail his form terrific grac’d, The greaves his legs, the targe his shoulders prest: Dreadful in arms high-tow’ring o’er the rest A spear he proudly wav’d, whose iron head, Strange to relate, six hundred shekels weigh’d; He strode along, and shook the ample field, While Phoebus blaz’d refulgent on his shield: Through Jacob’s race a chilling horror ran, When thus the huge, enormous chief began: “Say, what the cause that in this proud array “You set your battle in the face of day? “One hero find in all your vaunting train, “Then see who loses, and who wins the plain; “For he who wins, in triumph may demand “Perpetual service from the vanquish’d land: “Your armies I defy, your force despise, “By far inferior in Philistia’s eyes: “Produce a man, and let us try the fight, “Decide the contest, and the victor’s right.” Thus challeng’d he: all Israel stood amaz’d, And ev’ry chief in consternation gaz’d; But Jesse’s son in youthful bloom appears, And warlike courage far beyond his years: He left the folds, he left the flow’ry meads, And soft recesses of the sylvan shades. Now Israel’s monarch, and his troops arise, With peals of shouts ascending to the skies; In Elah’s vale the scene of combat lies. When the fair morning blush’d with orient red, What David’s fire enjoin’d the son obey’d, And swift of foot towards the trench he came, Where glow’d each bosom with the martial flame. He leaves his carriage to another’s care, And runs to greet his brethren of the war. While yet they spake the giant-chief arose, Repeats the challenge, and insults his foes: Struck with the sound, and trembling at the view, Affrighted Israel from its post withdrew. “Observe ye this tremendous foe, they cry’d, “Who in proud vaunts our armies hath defy’d: “Whoever lays him prostrate on the plain, “Freedom in Israel for his house shall gain; “And on him wealth unknown the king will pour, “And give his royal daughter for his dow’r.” Then Jesse’s youngest hope: “My brethren say, “What shall be done for him who takes away “Reproach from Jacob, who destroys the chief. “And puts a period to his country’s grief. “He vaunts the honours of his arms abroad, “And scorns the armies of the living God.” Thus spoke the youth, th’ attentive people ey’d The wond’rous hero, and again reply’d: “Such the rewards our monarch will bestow, “On him who conquers, and destroys his foe.” Eliab heard, and kindled into ire To hear his shepherd brother thus inquire, And thus begun: “What errand brought thee? say “Who keeps thy flock? or does it go astray? “I know the base ambition of thine heart, “But back in safety from the field depart.” Eliab thus to Jesse’s youngest heir, Express’d his wrath in accents most severe. When to his brother mildly he reply’d. “What have I done? or what the cause to chide? The words were told before the king, who sent For the young hero to his royal tent: Before the monarch dauntless he began, “For this Philistine fail no heart of man: “I’ll take the vale, and with the giant fight: “I dread not all his boasts, nor all his might.” When thus the king: “Dar’st thou a stripling go, “And venture combat with so great a foe? “Who all his days has been inur’d to fight, “And made its deeds his study and delight: “Battles and bloodshed brought the monster forth, “And clouds and whirlwinds usher’d in his birth.” When David thus: “I kept the fleecy care, “And out there rush’d a lion and a bear; “A tender lamb the hungry lion took, “And with no other weapon than my crook “Bold I pursu’d, and chas d him o’er the field, “The prey deliver’d, and the felon kill’d: “As thus the lion and the bear I slew, “So shall Goliath fall, and all his crew: “The God, who sav’d me from these beasts of prey, “By me this monster in the dust shall lay.” So David spoke. The wond’ring king reply’d; “Go thou with heav’n and victory on thy side: “This coat of mail, this sword gird on,” he said, And plac’d a mighty helmet on his head: The coat, the sword, the helm he laid aside, Nor chose to venture with those arms untry’d, Then took his staff, and to the neighb’ring brook Instant he ran, and thence five pebbles took. Mean time descended to Philistia’s son A radiant cherub, and he thus begun: “Goliath, well thou know’st thou hast defy’d “Yon Hebrew armies, and their God deny’d: “Rebellious wretch! audacious worm! forbear, “Nor tempt the vengeance of their God too far: “Them, who with his Omnipotence contend, “No eye shall pity, and no arm defend: “Proud as thou art, in short liv’d glory great, “I come to tell thee thine approaching fate. “Regard my words. The Judge of all the gods, “Beneath whose steps the tow’ring mountain nods, “Will give thine armies to the savage brood, “That cut the liquid air, or range the wood. “Thee too a well-aim’d pebble shall destroy, “And thou shalt perish by a beardless boy: “Such is the mandate from the realms above, “And should I try the vengeance to remove, “Myself a rebel to my king would prove. “Goliath say, shall grace to him be shown, “Who dares heav’ns Monarch, and insults his throne?” “Your words are lost on me,” the giant cries, While fear and wrath contended in his eyes, When thus the messenger from heav’n replies: “Provoke no more Jehovah’s awful hand “To hurl its vengeance on thy guilty land: “He grasps the thunder, and, he wings the storm, “Servants their sov’reign’s orders to perform.” The angel spoke, and turn’d his eyes away, Adding new radiance to the rising day. Now David comes: the fatal stones demand His left, the staff engag’d his better hand: The giant mov’d, and from his tow’ring height Survey’d the stripling, and disdain’d the fight, And thus began: “Am I a dog with thee? “Bring’st thou no armour, but a staff to me? “The gods on thee their vollied curses pour, “And beasts and birds of prey thy flesh devour.” David undaunted thus, “Thy spear and shield “Shall no protection to thy body yield: “Jehovah’s name———no other arms I bear, “I ask no other in this glorious war. “To-day the Lord of Hosts to me will give “Vict’ry, to-day thy doom thou shalt receive; “The fate you threaten shall your own become, “And beasts shall be your animated tomb, “That all the earth’s inhabitants may know “That there’s a God, who governs all below: “This great assembly too shall witness stand, “That needs nor sword, nor spear, th’ Almighty’s hand: “The battle his, the conquest he bestows, “And to our pow’r consigns our hated foes.” Thus David spoke; Goliath heard and came To meet the hero in the field of fame. Ah! fatal meeting to thy troops and thee, But thou wast deaf to the divine decree; Young David meets thee, meets thee not in vain; ’Tis thine to perish on th’ ensanguin’d plain. And now the youth the forceful pebble slung Philistia trembled as it whizz’d along: In his dread forehead, where the helmet ends, Just o’er the brows the well-aim’d stone descends, It pierc’d the skull, and shatter’d all the brain, Prone on his face he tumbled to the plain: Goliath’s fall no smaller terror yields Than riving thunders in aerial fields: The soul still ling’red in its lov’d abode, Till conq’ring David o’er the giant strode: Goliath’s sword then laid its master dead, And from the body hew’d the ghastly head; The blood in gushing torrents drench’d the plains, The soul found passage through the spouting veins. And now aloud th’ illustrious victor said, “Where are your boastings now your champion’s “dead?” Scarce had he spoke, when the Philistines fled: But fled in vain; the conqu’ror swift pursu’d: What scenes of slaughter! and what seas of blood! There Saul thy thousands grasp’d th’ impurpled sand In pangs of death the conquest of thine hand; And David there were thy ten thousands laid: Thus Israel’s damsels musically play’d. Near Gath and Edron many an hero lay, Breath’d out their souls, and curs’d the light of day: Their fury, quench’d by death, no longer burns, And David with Goliath’s head returns, To Salem brought, but in his tent he plac’d The load of armour which the giant grac’d. His monarch saw him coming from the war, And thus demanded of the son of Ner. “Say, who is this amazing youth?” he cry’d, When thus the leader of the host reply’d; “As lives thy soul I know not whence he sprung, “So great in prowess though in years so young:” “Inquire whose son is he,” the sov’reign said, “Before whose conq’ring arm Philistia fled.” Before the king behold the stripling stand, Goliath’s head depending from his hand: To him the king: “Say of what martial line “Art thou, young hero, and what sire was thine?” He humbly thus; “The son of Jesse I: “I came the glories of the field to try. “Small is my tribe, but valiant in the fight; “Small is my city, but thy royal right.” “Then take the promis’d gifts,” the monarch cry’d, Conferring riches and the royal bride: “Knit to my soul for ever thou remain “With me, nor quit my regal roof again.” THOUGHTS ON THE WORKS OF PROVIDENCE. A R I S E, my soul, on wings enraptur’d, rise To praise the monarch of the earth and skies, Whose goodness and benificence appear As round its centre moves the rolling year, Or when the morning glows with rosy charms, Or the sun slumbers in the ocean’s arms: Of light divine be a rich portion lent To guide my soul, and favour my intend. Celestial muse, my arduous flight sustain And raise my mind to a seraphic strain! Ador’d for ever be the God unseen, Which round the sun revolves this vast machine, Though to his eye its mass a point appears: Ador’d the God that whirls surrounding spheres, Which first ordain’d that mighty Sol should reign The peerless monarch of th’ ethereal train: Of miles twice forty millions is his height, And yet his radiance dazzles mortal sight So far beneath—from him th’ extended earth Vigour derives, and ev’ry flow’ry birth: Vast through her orb she moves with easy grace Around her Phoebus in unbounded space; True to her course th’ impetuous storm derides, Triumphant o’er the winds, and surging tides. Almighty, in these wond’rous works of thine, What Pow’r, what Wisdom, and what Goodness shine! And are thy wonders, Lord, by men explor’d, And yet creating glory unador’d! Creation smiles in various beauty gay, While day to night, and night succeeds to day: That Wisdom, which attends Jehovah’s ways, Shines most conspicuous in the solar rays: Without them, destitute of heat and light, This world would be the reign of endless night: In their excess how would our race complain, Abhorring life! how hate its length’ned chain! From air adust what num’rous ills would rise? What dire contagion taint the burning skies? What pestilential vapours, fraught with death, Would rise, and overspread the lands beneath? Hail, smiling morn, that from the orient main Ascending dost adorn the heav’nly plain! So rich, so various are thy beauteous dies, That spread through all the circuit of the skies, That, full of thee, my soul in rapture soars, And thy great God, the cause of all adores. O’er beings infinite his love extends, His Wisdom rules them, and his Pow’r defends. When tasks diurnal tire the human frame, The spirits faint, and dim the vital flame, Then too that ever active bounty shines, Which not infinity of space confines. The sable veil, that Night in silence draws, Conceals effects, but shows th’ Almighty Cause, Night seals in sleep the wide creation fair, And all is peaceful but the brow of care. Again, gay Phoebus, as the day before, Wakes ev’ry eye, but what shall wake no more; Again the face of nature is renew’d, Which still appears harmonious, fair, and good. May grateful strains salute the smiling morn, Before its beams the eastern hills adorn! Shall day to day, and night to night conspire To show the goodness of the Almighty Sire? This mental voice shall man regardless hear, And never, never raise the filial pray’r? To-day, O hearken, nor your folly mourn For time mispent, that never will return. But see the sons of vegetation rise, And spread their leafy banners to the skies. All-wise Almighty Providence we trace In trees, and plants, and all the flow’ry race; As clear as in the nobler frame of man, All lovely copies of the Maker’s plan. The pow’r the same that forms a ray of light, That call d creation from eternal night. “Let there be light,” he said: from his profound Old Chaos heard, and trembled at the sound: Swift as the word, inspir’d by pow’r divine, Behold the light around its Maker shine, The first fair product of th’ omnific God, And now through all his works diffus’d abroad. As reason’s pow’rs by day our God disclose, So we may trace him in the night’s repose: Say what is sleep? and dreams how passing strange! When action ceases, and ideas range Licentious and unbounded o’er the plains, Where Fancy’s queen in giddy triumph reigns. Hear in soft strains the dreaming lover sigh To a kind fair, or rave in jealousy; On pleasure now, and now on vengeance bent, The lab’ring passions struggle for a vent. What pow’r, O man! thy reason then restores, So long suspended in nocturnal hours? What secret hand returns the mental train, And gives improv’d thine active pow’rs again? From thee, O man, what gratitude should rise! And, when from balmy sleep thou op’st thine eyes, Let thy first thoughts be praises to the skies. How merciful our God who thus imparts O’erflowing tides of joy to human hearts, When wants and woes might be our righteous lot, Our God forgetting, by our God forgot! Among the mental pow’rs a question rose, “What most the image of th’ Eternal shows?” When thus to Reason (so let Fancy rove) Her great companion spoke immortal Love. “Say, mighty pow’r, how long shall strife prevail, “And with its murmurs load the whisp’ring gale? “Refer the cause to Recollection’s shrine, “Who loud proclaims my origin divine, “The cause whence heav’n and earth began to be, “And is not man immortaliz’d by me? “Reason let this most causeless strife subside.” Thus Love pronounc’d, and Reason thus reply’d. “Thy birth, coelestial queen! ’tis mine to own, “In thee resplendent is the Godhead shown; “Thy words persuade, my soul enraptur’d feels “Resistless beauty which thy smile reveals.” Ardent she spoke, and, kindling at her charms, She clasp’d the blooming goddess in her arms. Infinite Love where’er we turn our eyes Appears: this ev’ry creature’s wants supplies; This most is heard in Nature’s constant voice, This makes the morn, and this the eve rejoice; This bids the fost’ring rains and dews descend To nourish all, to serve one gen’ral end, The good of man: yet man ungrateful pays But little homage, and but little praise. To him, whose works arry’d with mercy shine, What songs should rise, how constant, how divine! TO A LADY ON THE DEATH OF THREE RELATIONS. WE trace the pow’r of Death from tomb to tomb, And his are all the ages yet to come. ’Tis his to call the planets from on high, To blacken Phoebus, and dissolve the sky; His too, when all in his dark realms are hurl’d, From its firm base to shake the solid world; His fatal sceptre rules the spacious whole, And trembling nature rocks from pole to pole. Awful he moves, and wide his wings are spread: Behold thy brother number’d with the dead! From bondage freed, the exulting spirit flies Beyond Olympus, and these starry skies. Lost in our woe for thee, blest shade, we mourn In vain; to earth thou never must return. Thy sisters too, fair mourner, feel the dart Of Death, and with fresh torture rend thine heart. Weep not for them, and leave the world behind. As a young plant by hurricanes up torn, So near its parent lies the newly born— But ‘midst the bright ehtereal train behold It shines superior on a throne of gold: Then, mourner, cease; let hope thy tears restrain, Smile on the tomb, and sooth the raging pain. On yon blest regions fix thy longing view, Mindless of sublunary scenes below; Ascend the sacred mount, in thought arise, And seek substantial and immortal joys; Where hope receives, where faith to vision springs, And raptur’d seraphs tune th’ immortal strings To strains extatic. Thou the chorus join, And to thy father tune the praise divine. TO A CLERGYMAN ON THE DEATH OF HIS LADY. WHERE contemplation finds her sacred spring, Where heav’nly music makes the arches ring, Where virtue reigns unsully’d and divine, Where wisdom thron’d, and all the graces shine, There sits thy spouse amidst the radiant throng, While praise eternal warbles from her tongue; There choirs angelic shout her welcome round, With perfect bliss, and peerless glory crown’d. While thy dear mate, to flesh no more confin’d, Exults a blest, an heav’n-ascended mind, Say in thy breast shall floods of sorrow rise? Say shall its torrents overwhelm thine eyes? Amid the seats of heav’n a place is free, And angels open their bright ranks for thee; For thee they wait, and with expectant eye Thy spouse leans downward from th’ empyreal sky: “O come away,” her longing spirit cries, “And share with me the raptures of the skies. “Our bliss divine to mortals is unknown; “Immortal life and glory are our own. “There too may the dear pledges of our love “Arrive, and taste with us the joys above; “Attune the harp to more than mortal lays, “And join with us the tribute of their praise “To him, who dy’d stern justice to stone, “And make eternal glory all our own. “He in his death slew ours, and, as he rose, “He crush’d the dire dominion of our foes; “Vain were their hopes to put the God to flight, “Chain us to hell, and bar the gates of light.” She spoke, and turn’d from mortal scenes her eyes, Which beam’d celestial radiance o’er the skies. Then thou dear man, no more with grief retire, Let grief no longer damp devotion’s fire, But rise sublime, to equal bliss aspire, Thy sighs no more be wafted by the wind, No more complain, but be to heav’n resign’d ’Twas thine t’ unfold the oracles divine, To sooth our woes the task was also thine; Now sorrow is incumbent on thy heart, Permit the muse a cordial to impart; Who can to thee their tend’rest aid refuse? To dry thy tears how longs the heav’nly muse! AN HYMN TO THE MORNING ATTEND my lays, ye ever honour’d nine, Assist my labours, and my strains refine; In smoothest numbers pour the notes along, For bright Aurora now demands my song. Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies, Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies: The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays, On ev’ry leaf the gentle zephyr plays; Harmonious lays the feather’d race resume, Dart the bright eye, and shake the painted plume. Ye shady groves, your verdant gloom display To shield your poet from the burning day: Calliope awake the sacred lyre, While thy fair sisters fan the pleasing fire: The bow’rs, the gales, the variegated skies In all their pleasures in my bosom rise. See in the east th’ illustrious king of day! His rising radiance drives the shades away— But Oh! I feel his fervid beams too strong, And scarce begun, concludes th’ abortive song. AN HYMN TO THE EVENING. SOON as the sun forsook the eastern main The pealing thunder shook the heav’nly plain; Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr’s wing, Exhales the incense of the blooming spring. Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes, And through the air their mingled music floats. Through all the heav’ns what beauteous dies are spread! But the west glories in the deepest red: So may our breasts with ev’ry virtue glow, The living temples of our God below! Fill’d with the praise of him who gives the light, And draws the sable curtains of the night, Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind, At morn to wake more heav’nly, more refin’d; So shall the labours of the day begin More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin. Night’s leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes, Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise. ISAIAH lxiii. 1-8. SAY, heav’nly muse, what king or mighty God, That moves sublime from Idumea’s road? In Bosrah’s dies, with martial glories join’d, His purple vesture waves upon the wind. Why thus enrob’d delights he to appear In the dread image of the Pow’r of war? Compres’d in wrath the swelling wine-press groan’d, It bled, and pour’d the gushing purple round. “Mine was the act,” th’ Almighty Saviour said, And shook the dazzling glories of his head, “When all forsook I trod the press alone, “And conquer’d by omnipotence my own; “For man’s release sustain’d the pond’rous load, “For man the wrath of an immortal God: “To execute th’ Eternal’s dread command “My soul I sacrific’d with willing hand; “Sinless I stood before the avenging frown, “Atoning thus for vices not my own.” His eye the ample field of battle round Survey’d, but no created succours found; His own omnipotence sustain’d the right, His vengeance sunk the haughty foes in night; Beneath his feet the prostrate troops were spread, And round him lay the dying, and the dead. Great God, what light’ning flashes from thine eyes? What pow’r withstands if thou indignant rise? Against thy Zion though her foes may rage, And all their cunning, all their strength engage, Yet she serenely on thy bosom lies, Smiles at their arts, and all their force defies. ON RECOLLECTION. MNEME begin. Inspire, ye sacred nine, Your vent’rous Afric in her great design. Mneme, immortal pow’r, I trace thy spring: Assist my strains, while I thy glories sing: The acts of long departed years, by thee Recover’d, in due order rang’d we see: Thy pow’r the long-forgotten calls from night, That sweetly plays before the fancy’s sight. Mneme in our nocturnal visions pours The ample treasure of her secret stores; Swift from above the wings her silent flight Through Phoebe’s realms, fair regent of the night; And, in her pomp of images display’d, To the high-raptur’d poet gives her aid, Through the unbounded regions of the mind, Diffusing light celestial and refin’d. The heav’nly phantom paints the actions done By ev’ry tribe beneath the rolling sun. Mneme, enthron’d within the human breast, Has vice condemn’d, and ev’ry virtue blest. How sweet the sound when we her plaudit hear? Sweeter than music to the ravish’d ear, Sweeter than Maro’s entertaining strains Resounding through the groves, and hills, and plains. But how is Mneme dreaded by the race, Who scorn her warnings and despise her grace? By her unveil’d each horrid crime appears, Her awful hand a cup of wormwood bears. Days, years mispent, O what a hell of woe! Hers the worst tortures that our souls can know. Now eighteen years their destin’d course have run, In fast succession round the central sun. How did the follies of that period pass Unnotic’d, but behold them writ in brass! In Recollection see them fresh return, And sure ’tis mine to be asham’d, and mourn. O Virtue, smiling in immortal green, Do thou exert thy pow’r, and change the scene; Be thine employ to guide my future days, And mine to pay the tribute of my praise. Of Recollection such the pow’r enthron’d In ev’ry breast, and thus her pow’r is own’d. The wretch, who dar’d the vengeance of the skies, At last awakes in horror and surprise, By her alarm’d, he sees impending fate, He howls in anguish, and repents too late. But O! what peace, what joys are hers t’ impart To ev’ry holy, ev’ry upright heart! Thrice blest the man, who, in her sacred shrine, Feels himself shelter’d from the wrath divine! ON IMAGINATION. THY various works, imperial queen, we see, How bright their forms! how deck’d with pomp by thee! Thy wond’rous acts in beauteous order stand, And all attest how potent is thine hand. From Helicon’s refulgent heights attend, Ye sacred choir, and my attempts befriend: To tell her glories with a faithful tongue, Ye blooming graces, triumph in my song. Now here, now there, the roving Fancy flies, Till some lov’d object strikes her wand’ring eyes, Whose silken fetters all the senses bind, And soft captivity involves the mind. Imagination! who can sing thy force? Or who describe the swiftness of thy course? Soaring through air to find the bright abode, Th’ empyreal palace of the thund’ring God, We on thy pinions can surpass the wind, And leave the rolling universe behind: From star to star the mental optics rove, Measure the skies, and range the realms above. There in one view we grasp the mighty whole, Or with new worlds amaze th’ unbounded soul. Though Winter frowns to Fancy’s raptur’d eyes The fields may flourish, and gay scenes arise; The frozen deeps may break their iron bands, And bid their waters murmur o’er the sands. Fair Flora may resume her fragrant reign, And with her flow’ry riches deck the plain; Sylvanus may diffuse his honours round, And all the forest may with leaves be crown’d: Show’rs may descend, and dews their gems disclose, And nectar sparkle on the blooming rose. Such is thy pow’r, nor are thine orders vain, O thou the leader of the mental train: In full perfection all thy works are wrought, And thine the sceptre o’er the realms of thought. Before thy throne the subject-passions bow, Of subject-passions sov’reign ruler thou; At thy command joy rushes on the heart, And through the glowing veins the spirits dart. Fancy might now her silken pinions try To rise from earth, and sweep th’ expanse on high: From Tithon’s bed now might Aurora rise, Her cheeks all glowing with celestial dies, While a pure stream of light o’erflows the skies. The monarch of the day I might behold, And all the mountains tipt with radiant gold, But I reluctant leave the pleasing views, Which Fancy dresses to delight the Muse; Winter austere forbids me to aspire, And northern tempests damp the rising fire; They chill the tides of Fancy’s flowing sea, Cease then, my song, cease the unequal lay. A FUNERAL POEM ON THE DEATH OF C. E. AN INFANT OF TWELVE MONTHS. THROUGH airy roads he wings his instant flight To purer regions of celestial light; Enlarg’d he sees unnumber’d systems roll, Beneath him sees the universal whole, Planets on planets run their destin’d round, And circling wonders fill the vast profound. Th’ ethereal now, and now th’ empyreal skies With growing splendors strike his wond’ring eyes: The angels view him with delight unknown, Press his soft hand, and seat him on his throne; Then smilling thus: “To this divine abode, “The seat of saints, of seraphs, and of God, “Thrice welcome thou.” The raptur’d babe replies, “Thanks to my God, who snatch’d me to the skies, “E’er vice triumphant had possess’d my heart, “E’er yet the tempter had beguil d my heart, “E’er yet on sin’s base actions I was bent, “E’er yet I knew temptation’s dire intent; “E’er yet the lash for horrid crimes I felt, “E’er vanity had led my way to guilt, “But, soon arriv’d at my celestial goal, “Full glories rush on my expanding soul.” Joyful he spoke: exulting cherubs round Clapt their glad wings, the heav’nly vaults resound. Say, parents, why this unavailing moan? Why heave your pensive bosoms with the groan? To Charles, the happy subject of my song, A brighter world, and nobler strains belong. Say would you tear him from the realms above By thoughtless wishes, and prepost’rous love? Doth his felicity increase your pain? Or could you welcome to this world again The heir of bliss? with a superior air Methinks he answers with a smile severe, “Thrones and dominions cannot tempt me there.” But still you cry, “Can we the sigh forbear, “And still and still must we not pour the tear? “Our only hope, more dear than vital breath, “Twelve moons revolv’d, becomes the prey of death; “Delightful infant, nightly visions give “Thee to our arms, and we with joy receive, “We fain would clasp the Phantom to our breast, “The Phantom flies, and leaves the soul unblest.” To yon bright regions let your faith ascend, Prepare to join your dearest infant friend In pleasures without measure, without end. TO CAPTAIN H———D, OF THE 65TH REGIMENT. SAY, muse divine, can hostile scenes delight The warrior’s bosom in the fields of fight? Lo! here the christian and the hero join With mutual grace to form the man divine. In H——-D see with pleasure and surprise, Where valour kindles, and where virtue lies: Go, hero brave, still grace the post of fame, And add new glories to thine honour’d name, Still to the field, and still to virtue true: Britannia glories in no son like you. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM, EARL OF DARTMOUTH His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for North-America, &c. HAIL, happy day, when, smiling like the morn, Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn: The northern clime beneath her genial ray, Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway: Elate with hope her race no longer mourns, Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns, While in thine hand with pleasure we behold The silken reins, and Freedom’s charms unfold. Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies She shines supreme, while hated faction dies: Soon as appear’d the Goddess long desir’d, Sick at the view, she languish’d and expir’d; Thus from the splendors of the morning light The owl in sadness seeks the caves of night. No more, America, in mournful strain Of wrongs, and grievance unredress’d complain, No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain, Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand Had made, and with it meant t’ enslave the land. Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song, Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung, Whence flow these wishes for the common good, By feeling hearts alone best understood, I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat: What pangs excruciating must molest, What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast? Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d: Such, such my case. And can I then but pray Others may never feel tyrannic sway? For favours past, great Sir, our thanks are due, And thee we ask thy favours to renew, Since in thy pow’r, as in thy will before, To sooth the griefs, which thou did’st once deplore. May heav’nly grace the sacred sanction give To all thy works, and thou for ever live Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame, Though praise immortal crowns the patriot’s name, But to conduct to heav’ns refulgent fane, May fiery coursers sweep th’ ethereal plain, And bear thee upwards to that blest abode, Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God. O D E T O N E P T U N E. On Mrs. W———‘s Voyage to England. I. WHILE raging tempests shake the shore, While AElus’ thunders round us roar, And sweep impetuous o’er the plain Be still, O tyrant of the main; Nor let thy brow contracted frowns betray, While my Susanna skims the wat’ry way. II. The Pow’r propitious hears the lay, The blue-ey’d daughters of the sea With sweeter cadence glide along, And Thames responsive joins the song. Pleas’d with their notes Sol sheds benign his ray, And double radiance decks the face of day. III. To court thee to Britannia’s arms Serene the climes and mild the sky, Her region boasts unnumber’d charms, Thy welcome smiles in ev’ry eye. Thy promise, Neptune keep, record my pray’r, Not give my wishes to the empty air. Boston, October 12, 1772. TO A LADY ON HER COMING TO NORTH-AMERICA WITH HER SON, FOR THE RECOVERY OF HER HEALTH. INDULGENT muse! my grov’ling mind inspire, And fill my bosom with celestial fire. See from Jamaica’s fervid shore she moves, Like the fair mother of the blooming loves, When from above the Goddess with her hand Fans the soft breeze, and lights upon the land; Thus she on Neptune’s wat’ry realm reclin’d Appear’d, and thus invites the ling’ring wind. “Arise, ye winds, America explore, “Waft me, ye gales, from this malignant shore; “The Northern milder climes I long to greet, “There hope that health will my arrival meet.” Soon as she spoke in my ideal view The winds assented, and the vessel flew. Madam, your spouse bereft of wife and son, In the grove’s dark recesses pours his moan; Each branch, wide-spreading to the ambient sky, Forgets its verdure, and submits to die. From thence I turn, and leave the sultry plain, And swift pursue thy passage o’er the main: The ship arrives before the fav’ring wind, And makes the Philadelphian port assign’d, Thence I attend you to Bostonia’s arms, Where gen’rous friendship ev’ry bosom warms: Thrice welcome here! may health revive again, Bloom on thy cheek, and bound in ev’ry vein! Then back return to gladden ev’ry heart, And give your spouse his soul’s far dearer part, Receiv’d again with what a sweet surprise, The tear in transport starting from his eyes! While his attendant son with blooming grace Springs to his father’s ever dear embrace. With shouts of joy Jamaica’s rocks resound, With shouts of joy the country rings around. TO A LADY ON HER REMARKABLE PRESERVATION IN AN HURRICANE IN NORTH-CAROLINA. THOUGH thou did’st hear the tempest from afar, And felt’st the horrors of the wat’ry war, To me unknown, yet on this peaceful shore Methinks I hear the storm tumultuous roar, And how stern Boreas with impetuous hand Compell’d the Nereids to usurp the land. Reluctant rose the daughters of the main, And slow ascending glided o’er the plain, Till AEolus in his rapid chariot drove In gloomy grandeur from the vault above: Furious he comes. His winged sons obey Their frantic sire, and madden all the sea. The billows rave, the wind’s fierce tyrant roars, And with his thund’ring terrors shakes the shores: Broken by waves the vessel’s frame is rent, And strows with planks the wat’ry element. But thee, Maria, a kind Nereid’s shield Preserv’d from sinking, and thy form upheld: And sure some heav’nly oracle design’d At that dread crisis to instruct thy mind Things of eternal consequence to weigh, And to thine heart just feelings to convey Of things above, and of the future doom, And what the births of the dread world to come. From tossing seas I welcome thee to land. “Resign her, Nereid,” ’twas thy God’s command. Thy spouse late buried, as thy fears conceiv’d, Again returns, thy fears are all reliev’d: Thy daughter blooming with superior grace Again thou see’st, again thine arms embrace; O come, and joyful show thy spouse his heir, And what the blessings of maternal care! TO A LADY AND HER CHILDREN, ON THE DEATH OF HER SON AND THEIR BROTHER. O’ERWHELMING sorrow now demands my song: From death the overwhelming sorrow sprung. What flowing tears? What hearts with grief opprest? What sighs on sighs heave the fond parent’s breast? The brother weeps, the hapless sisters join Th’ increasing woe, and swell the crystal brine; The poor, who once his gen’rous bounty fed, Droop, and bewail their benefactor dead. In death the friend, the kind companion lies, And in one death what various comfort dies! Th’ unhappy mother sees the sanguine rill Forget to flow, and nature’s wheels stand still, But see from earth his spirit far remov’d, And know no grief recals your best-belov’d: He, upon pinions swifter than the wind, Has left mortality’s sad scenes behind For joys to this terrestial state unknown, And glories richer than the monarch’s crown. Of virtue’s steady course the prize behold! What blissful wonders to his mind unfold! But of celestial joys I sing in vain: Attempt not, muse, the too advent’rous strain. No more in briny show’rs, ye friends around, Or bathe his clay, or waste them on the ground: Still do you weep, still wish for his return? How cruel thus to wish, and thus to mourn? No more for him the streams of sorrow pour, But haste to join him on the heav’nly shore, On harps of gold to tune immortal lays, And to your God immortal anthems raise. TO A GENTLEMAN AND LADY ON THE DEATH OF THE LADY’S BROTHER AND SISTER, AND A CHILD OF THE NAME OF AVIS, AGED ONE YEAR. ON Death’s domain intent I fix my eyes, Where human nature in vast ruin lies: With pensive mind I search the drear abode, Where the great conqu’ror has his spoils bestow’d; There where the offspring of six thousand years In endless numbers to my view appears: Whole kingdoms in his gloomy den are thrust, And nations mix with their primeval dust: Insatiate still he gluts the ample tomb; His is the present, his the age to come. See here a brother, here a sister spread, And a sweet daughter mingled with the dead. But, Madam, let your grief be laid aside, And let the fountain of your tears be dry’d, In vain they flow to wet the dusty plain, Your sighs are wafted to the skies in vain, Your pains they witness, but they can no more, While Death reigns tyrant o’er this mortal shore. The glowing stars and silver queen of light At last must perish in the gloom of night: Resign thy friends to that Almighty hand, Which gave them life, and bow to his command; Thine Avis give without a murm’ring heart, Though half thy soul be fated to depart. To shining guards consign thine infant care To waft triumphant through the seas of air: Her soul enlarg’d to heav’nly pleasure springs, She feeds on truth and uncreated things. Methinks I hear her in the realms above, And leaning forward with a filial love, Invite you there to share immortal bliss Unknown, untasted in a state like this. With tow’ring hopes, and growing grace arise, And seek beatitude beyond the skies. ON THE DEATH OF DR. SAMUEL MARSHALL. 1771. THROUGH thickest glooms look back, immortal shade, On that confusion which thy death has made: Or from Olympus’ height look down, and see A Town involv’d in grief bereft of thee. Thy Lucy sees thee mingle with the dead, And rends the graceful tresses from her head, Wild in her woe, with grief unknown opprest Sigh follows sigh deep heaving from her breast. Too quickly fled, ah! whither art thou gone? Ah! lost for ever to thy wife and son! The hapless child, thine only hope and heir, Clings round his mother’s neck, and weeps his sorrows there. The loss of thee on Tyler’s soul returns, And Boston for her dear physician mourns. When sickness call’d for Marshall’s healing hand, With what compassion did his soul expand? In him we found the father and the friend: In life how lov’d! how honour’d in his end! And must not then our AEsculapius stay To bring his ling’ring infant into day? The babe unborn in the dark womb is tost, And seems in anguish for its father lost. Gone is Apollo from his house of earth, But leaves the sweet memorials of his worth: The common parent, whom we all deplore, From yonder world unseen must come no more, Yet ‘midst our woes immortal hopes attend The spouse, the sire, the universal friend. TO A GENTLEMAN ON HIS VOYAGE TO GREAT-BRITAIN FOR THE RECOVERY OF HIS HEALTH. WHILE others chant of gay Elysian scenes, Of balmy zephyrs, and of flow’ry plains, My song more happy speaks a greater name, Feels higher motives and a nobler flame. For thee, O R——-, the muse attunes her strings, And mounts sublime above inferior things. I sing not now of green embow’ring woods, I sing not now the daughters of the floods, I sing not of the storms o’er ocean driv’n, And how they howl’d along the waste of heav’n. But I to R——- would paint the British shore, And vast Atlantic, not untry’d before: Thy life impair’d commands thee to arise, Leave these bleak regions and inclement skies, Where chilling winds return the winter past, And nature shudders at the furious blast. O thou stupendous, earth-enclosing main Exert thy wonders to the world again! If ere thy pow’r prolong’d the fleeting breath, Turn’d back the shafts, and mock’d the gates of death, If ere thine air dispens’d an healing pow’r, Or snatch’d the victim from the fatal hour, This equal case demands thine equal care, And equal wonders may this patient share. But unavailing, frantic is the dream To hope thine aid without the aid of him Who gave thee birth and taught thee where to flow, And in thy waves his various blessings show. May R——- return to view his native shore Replete with vigour not his own before, Then shall we see with pleasure and surprise, And own thy work, great Ruler of the skies! TO THE REV. DR. THOMAS AMORY, ON READING HIS SERMONS ON DAILY DEVOTION, IN WHICH THAT DUTY IS RECOMMENDED AND ASSISTED. TO cultivate in ev’ry noble mind Habitual grace, and sentiments refin’d, Thus while you strive to mend the human heart, Thus while the heav’nly precepts you impart, O may each bosom catch the sacred fire, And youthful minds to Virtue’s throne aspire! When God’s eternal ways you set in sight, And Virtue shines in all her native light, In vain would Vice her works in night conceal, For Wisdom’s eye pervades the sable veil. Artists may paint the sun’s effulgent rays, But Amory’s pen the brighter God displays: While his great works in Amory’s pages shine, And while he proves his essence all divine, The Atheist sure no more can boast aloud Of chance, or nature, and exclude the God; As if the clay without the potter’s aid Should rise in various forms, and shapes self-made, Or worlds above with orb o’er orb profound Self-mov’d could run the everlasting round. It cannot be—unerring Wisdom guides With eye propitious, and o’er all presides. Still prosper, Amory! still may’st thou receive The warmest blessings which a muse can give, And when this transitory state is o’er, When kingdoms fall, and fleeting Fame’s no more, May Amory triumph in immortal fame, A nobler title, and superior name! ON THE DEATH OF J. C. AN INFANT. NO more the flow’ry scenes of pleasure rife, Nor charming prospects greet the mental eyes, No more with joy we view that lovely face Smiling, disportive, flush’d with ev’ry grace. The tear of sorrow flows from ev’ry eye, Groans answer groans, and sighs to sighs reply; What sudden pangs shot thro’ each aching heart, When, Death, thy messenger dispatch’d his dart? Thy dread attendants, all-destroying Pow’r, Hurried the infant to his mortal hour. Could’st thou unpitying close those radiant eyes? Or fail’d his artless beauties to surprise? Could not his innocence thy stroke controul, Thy purpose shake, and soften all thy soul? The blooming babe, with shades of Death o’er-spread, No more shall smile, no more shall raise its head, But, like a branch that from the tree is torn, Falls prostrate, wither’d, languid, and forlorn. “Where flies my James?” ’tis thus I seem to hear The parent ask, “Some angel tell me where “He wings his passage thro’ the yielding air?” Methinks a cherub bending from the skies Observes the question, and serene replies, “In heav’ns high palaces your babe appears: “Prepare to meet him, and dismiss your tears.” Shall not th’ intelligence your grief restrain, And turn the mournful to the cheerful strain? Cease your complaints, suspend each rising sigh, Cease to accuse the Ruler of the sky. Parents, no more indulge the falling tear: Let Faith to heav’n’s refulgent domes repair, There see your infant, like a seraph glow: What charms celestial in his numbers flow Melodious, while the foul-enchanting strain Dwells on his tongue, and fills th’ ethereal plain? Enough—for ever cease your murm’ring breath; Not as a foe, but friend converse with Death, Since to the port of happiness unknown He brought that treasure which you call your own. The gift of heav’n intrusted to your hand Cheerful resign at the divine command: Not at your bar must sov’reign Wisdom stand. AN H Y M N TO H U M A N I T Y. TO S. P. G. ESQ; I. LO! for this dark terrestrial ball Forsakes his azure-paved hall A prince of heav’nly birth! Divine Humanity behold, What wonders rise, what charms unfold At his descent to earth! II. The bosoms of the great and good With wonder and delight he view’d, And fix’d his empire there: Him, close compressing to his breast, The sire of gods and men address’d, “My son, my heav’nly fair! III. “Descend to earth, there place thy throne; “To succour man’s afflicted son “Each human heart inspire: “To act in bounties unconfin’d “Enlarge the close contracted mind, “And fill it with thy fire.” IV. Quick as the word, with swift career He wings his course from star to star, And leaves the bright abode. The Virtue did his charms impart; Their G——-! then thy raptur’d heart Perceiv’d the rushing God: V. For when thy pitying eye did see The languid muse in low degree, Then, then at thy desire Descended the celestial nine; O’er me methought they deign’d to shine, And deign’d to string my lyre. VI. Can Afric’s muse forgetful prove? Or can such friendship fail to move A tender human heart? Immortal Friendship laurel-crown’d The smiling Graces all surround With ev’ry heav’nly Art. TO THE HONOURABLE T. H. ESQ; ON THE DEATH OF HIS DAUGHTER. WHILE deep you mourn beneath the cypress-shade The hand of Death, and your dear daughter laid In dust, whose absence gives your tears to flow, And racks your bosom with incessant woe, Let Recollection take a tender part, Assuage the raging tortures of your heart, Still the wild tempest of tumultuous grief, And pour the heav’nly nectar of relief: Suspend the sigh, dear Sir, and check the groan, Divinely bright your daughter’s Virtues shone: How free from scornful pride her gentle mind, Which ne’er its aid to indigence declin’d! Expanding free, it sought the means to prove Unfailing charity, unbounded love! She unreluctant flies to see no more Her dear-lov’d parents on earth’s dusky shore: Impatient heav’n’s resplendent goal to gain, She with swift progress cuts the azure plain, Where grief subsides, where changes are no more, And life’s tumultuous billows cease to roar; She leaves her earthly mansion for the skies, Where new creations feast her wond’ring eyes. To heav’n’s high mandate cheerfully resign’d She mounts, and leaves the rolling globe behind; She, who late wish’d that Leonard might return, Has ceas’d to languish, and forgot to mourn; To the same high empyreal mansions come, She joins her spouse, and smiles upon the tomb: And thus I hear her from the realms above: “Lo! this the kingdom of celestial love! “Could ye, fond parents, see our present bliss, “How soon would you each sigh, each fear dismiss? “Amidst unutter’d pleasures whilst I play “In the fair sunshine of celestial day, “As far as grief affects an happy soul “So far doth grief my better mind controul, “To see on earth my aged parents mourn, “And secret wish for T——-! to return: “Let brighter scenes your ev’ning-hours employ: “Converse with heav’n, and taste the promis’d joy” NIOBE IN DISTRESS FOR HER CHILDREN SLAIN BY APOLLO, FROM OVID’S METAMORPHOSES, BOOK VI. AND FROM A VIEW OF THE PAINTING OF MR. RICHARD WILSON. APOLLO’s wrath to man the dreadful spring Of ills innum’rous, tuneful goddess, sing! Thou who did’st first th’ ideal pencil give, And taught’st the painter in his works to live, Inspire with glowing energy of thought, What Wilson painted, and what Ovid wrote. Muse! lend thy aid, nor let me sue in vain, Tho’ last and meanest of the rhyming train! O guide my pen in lofty strains to show The Phrygian queen, all beautiful in woe. ’Twas where Maeonia spreads her wide domain Niobe dwelt, and held her potent reign: See in her hand the regal sceptre shine, The wealthy heir of Tantalus divine, He most distinguish’d by Dodonean Jove, To approach the tables of the gods above: Her grandsire Atlas, who with mighty pains Th’ ethereal axis on his neck sustains: Her other grandsire on the throne on high Rolls the loud-pealing thunder thro’ the sky. Her spouse, Amphion, who from Jove too springs, Divinely taught to sweep the sounding strings. Seven sprightly sons the royal bed adorn, Seven daughters beauteous as the op’ning morn, As when Aurora fills the ravish’d sight, And decks the orient realms with rosy light From their bright eyes the living splendors play, Nor can beholders bear the flashing ray. Wherever, Niobe, thou turn’st thine eyes, New beauties kindle, and new joys arise! But thou had’st far the happier mother prov’d, If this fair offspring had been less belov’d: What if their charms exceed Aurora’s teint. No words could tell them, and no pencil paint, Thy love too vehement hastens to destroy Each blooming maid, and each celestial boy. Now Manto comes, endu’d with mighty skill, The past to explore, the future to reveal. Thro’ Thebes’ wide streets Tiresia’s daughter came, Divine Latona’s mandate to proclaim: The Theban maids to hear the orders ran, When thus Maeonia’s prophetess began: “Go, Thebans! great Latona’s will obey, “And pious tribute at her altars pay: “With rights divine, the goddess be implor’d, “Nor be her sacred offspring unador’d.” Thus Manto spoke. The Theban maids obey, And pious tribute to the goddess pay. The rich perfumes ascend in waving spires, And altars blaze with consecrated fires; The fair assembly moves with graceful air, And leaves of laurel bind the flowing hair. Niobe comes with all her royal race, With charms unnumber’d, and superior grace: Her Phrygian garments of delightful hue, Inwove with gold, refulgent to the view, Beyond description beautiful she moves Like heav’nly Venus, ‘midst her smiles and loves: She views around the supplicating train, And shakes her graceful head with stern disdain, Proudly she turns around her lofty eyes, And thus reviles celestial deities: “What madness drives the Theban ladies fair “To give their incense to surrounding air? “Say why this new sprung deity preferr’d? “Why vainly fancy your petitions heard? “Or say why Caeus offspring is obey’d, “While to my goddesship no tribute’s paid? “For me no altars blaze with living fires, “No bullock bleeds, no frankincense transpires, “Tho’ Cadmus’ palace, not unknown to fame, “And Phrygian nations all revere my name. “Where’er I turn my eyes vast wealth I find, “Lo! here an empress with a goddess join’d. “What, shall a Titaness be deify’d, “To whom the spacious earth a couch deny’d! “Nor heav’n, nor earth, nor sea receiv’d your queen, “Till pitying Delos took the wand’rer in. “Round me what a large progeny is spread! “No frowns of fortune has my soul to dread. “What if indignant she decrease my train “More than Latona’s number will remain; “Then hence, ye Theban dames, hence haste away, “Nor longer off’rings to Latona pay; “Regard the orders of Amphion’s spouse, “And take the leaves of laurel from your brows.” Niobe spoke. The Theban maids obey’d, Their brows unbound, and left the rights unpaid. The angry goddess heard, then silence broke On Cynthus’ summit, and indignant spoke; “Phoebus! behold, thy mother in disgrace, “Who to no goddess yields the prior place “Except to Juno’s self, who reigns above, “The spouse and sister of the thund’ring Jove. “Niobe, sprung from Tantalus, inspires “Each Theban bosom with rebellious fires; “No reason her imperious temper quells, “But all her father in her tongue rebels; “Wrap her own sons for her blaspheming breath, “Apollo! wrap them in the shades of death.” Latona ceas’d, and ardent thus replies The God, whose glory decks th’ expanded skies. “Cease thy complaints, mine be the task assign’d “To punish pride, and scourge the rebel mind.” This Phoebe join’d.—They wing their instant flight; Thebes trembled as th’ immortal pow’rs alight. With clouds incompass’d glorious Phoebus stands; The feather’d vengeance quiv’ring in his hands. Near Cadmus’ walls a plain extended lay, Where Thebes’ young princes pass’d in sport the day: There the bold coursers bounded o’er the plains, While their great masters held the golden reins. Ismenus first the racing pastime led, And rul’d the fury of his flying steed. “Ah me,” he sudden cries, with shrieking breath, While in his breast he feels the shaft of death; He drops the bridle on his courser’s mane, Before his eyes in shadows swims the plain, He, the first-born of great Amphion’s bed, Was struck the first, first mingled with the dead. Then didst thou, Sipylus, the language hear Of fate portentous whistling in the air: As when th’ impending storm the sailor sees He spreads his canvas to the fav’ring breeze, So to thine horse thou gav’st the golden reins, Gav’st him to rush impetuous o’er the plains: But ah! a fatal shaft from Phoebus’ hand Smites thro’ thy neck, and sinks thee on the sand. Two other brothers were at wrestling found, And in their pastime claspt each other round: A shaft that instant from Apollo’s hand Transfixt them both, and stretcht them on the sand: Together they their cruel fate bemoan’d, Together languish’d, and together groan’d: Together too th’ unbodied spirits fled, And sought the gloomy mansions of the dead. Alphenor saw, and trembling at the view, Beat his torn breast, that chang’d its snowy hue. He flies to raise them in a kind embrace; A brother’s fondness triumphs in his face: Alphenor fails in this fraternal deed, A dart dispatch’d him (so the fates decreed:) Soon as the arrow left the deadly wound, His issuing entrails smoak’d upon the ground. What woes on blooming Damasichon wait! His sighs portend his near impending fate. Just where the well-made leg begins to be, And the soft sinews form the supple knee, The youth sore wounded by the Delian god Attempts t’ extract the crime-avenging rod, But, whilst he strives the will of fate t’ avert, Divine Apollo sends a second dart; Swift thro’ his throat the feather’d mischief flies, Bereft of sense, he drops his head, and dies. Young Ilioneus, the last, directs his pray’r, And cries, “My life, ye gods celestial! spare.” Apollo heard, and pity touch’d his heart, But ah! too late, for he had sent the dart: Thou too, O Ilioneus, art doom’d to fall, The fates refuse that arrow to recal. On the swift wings of ever flying Fame To Cadmus’ palace soon the tidings came: Niobe heard, and with indignant eyes She thus express’d her anger and surprise: “Why is such privilege to them allow’d? “Why thus insulted by the Delian god? “Dwells there such mischief in the pow’rs above? “Why sleeps the vengeance of immortal Jove?” For now Amphion too, with grief oppress’d, Had plung’d the deadly dagger in his breast. Niobe now, less haughty than before, With lofty head directs her steps no more She, who late told her pedigree divine, And drove the Thebans from Latona’s shrine, How strangely chang’d!—yet beautiful in woe, She weeps, nor weeps unpity’d by the foe. On each pale corse the wretched mother spread Lay overwhelm’d with grief, and kiss’d her dead, Then rais’d her arms, and thus, in accents slow, “Be sated cruel Goddess! with my woe; “If I’ve offended, let these streaming eyes, “And let this sev’nfold funeral suffice: “Ah! take this wretched life you deign’d to save, “With them I too am carried to the grave. “Rejoice triumphant, my victorious foe, “But show the cause from whence your triumphs flow? “Tho’ I unhappy mourn these children slain, “Yet greater numbers to my lot remain.” She ceas’d, the bow string twang’d with awful sound, Which struck with terror all th’ assembly round, Except the queen, who stood unmov’d alone, By her distresses more presumptuous grown. Near the pale corses stood their sisters fair In sable vestures and dishevell’d hair; One, while she draws the fatal shaft away, Faints, falls, and sickens at the light of day. To sooth her mother, lo! another flies, And blames the fury of inclement skies, And, while her words a filial pity show, Struck dumb—indignant seeks the shades below. Now from the fatal place another flies, Falls in her flight, and languishes, and dies. Another on her sister drops in death; A fifth in trembling terrors yields her breath; While the sixth seeks some gloomy cave in vain, Struck with the rest, and mingled with the slain. One only daughter lives, and she the least; The queen close clasp’d the daughter to her breast: “Ye heav’nly pow’rs, ah spare me one,” she cry’d, “Ah! spare me one,” the vocal hills reply’d: In vain she begs, the Fates her suit deny, In her embrace she sees her daughter die. * “The queen of all her family bereft, “Without or husband, son, or daughter left, “Grew stupid at the shock. The passing air “Made no impression on her stiff’ning hair. * This Verse To The End Is The Work Of Another Hand. “The blood forsook her face: amidst the flood “Pour’d from her cheeks, quite fix’d her eye-balls “stood. “Her tongue, her palate both obdurate grew, “Her curdled veins no longer motion knew; “The use of neck, and arms, and feet was gone, “And ev’n her bowels hard’ned into stone: “A marble statue now the queen appears, “But from the marble steal the silent tears.” TO S. M. A YOUNG AFRICAN PAINTER, ON SEEING HIS WORKS. TO show the lab’ring bosom’s deep intent, And thought in living characters to paint, When first thy pencil did those beauties give, And breathing figures learnt from thee to live, How did those prospects give my soul delight, A new creation rushing on my sight? Still, wond’rous youth! each noble path pursue, On deathless glories fix thine ardent view: Still may the painter’s and the poet’s fire To aid thy pencil, and thy verse conspire! And may the charms of each seraphic theme Conduct thy footsteps to immortal fame! High to the blissful wonders of the skies Elate thy soul, and raise thy wishful eyes. Thrice happy, when exalted to survey That splendid city, crown’d with endless day, Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring: Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring. Calm and serene thy moments glide along, And may the muse inspire each future song! Still, with the sweets of contemplation bless’d, May peace with balmy wings your soul invest! But when these shades of time are chas’d away, And darkness ends in everlasting day, On what seraphic pinions shall we move, And view the landscapes in the realms above? There shall thy tongue in heav’nly murmurs flow, And there my muse with heav’nly transport glow: No more to tell of Damon’s tender sighs, Or rising radiance of Aurora’s eyes, For nobler themes demand a nobler strain, And purer language on th’ ethereal plain. Cease, gentle muse! the solemn gloom of night Now seals the fair creation from my sight. TO HIS HONOUR THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR, ON THE DEATH OF HIS LADY. MARCH 24, 1773. ALL-Conquering Death! by thy resistless pow’r, Hope’s tow’ring plumage falls to rise no more! Of scenes terrestrial how the glories fly, Forget their splendors, and submit to die! Who ere escap’d thee, but the saint * of old Beyond the flood in sacred annals told, And the great sage, + whom fiery coursers drew To heav’n’s bright portals from Elisha’s view; Wond’ring he gaz’d at the refulgent car, Then snatch’d the mantle floating on the air. From Death these only could exemption boast, And without dying gain’d th’ immortal coast. Not falling millions sate the tyrant’s mind, Nor can the victor’s progress be confin’d. But cease thy strife with Death, fond Nature, cease: He leads the virtuous to the realms of peace; * Enoch. + Elijah. His to conduct to the immortal plains, Where heav’n’s Supreme in bliss and glory reigns. There sits, illustrious Sir, thy beauteous spouse; A gem-blaz’d circle beaming on her brows. Hail’d with acclaim among the heav’nly choirs, Her soul new-kindling with seraphic fires, To notes divine she tunes the vocal strings, While heav’n’s high concave with the music rings. Virtue’s rewards can mortal pencil paint? No—all descriptive arts, and eloquence are faint; Nor canst thou, Oliver, assent refuse To heav’nly tidings from the Afric muse. As soon may change thy laws, eternal fate, As the saint miss the glories I relate; Or her Benevolence forgotten lie, Which wip’d the trick’ling tear from Misry’s eye. Whene’er the adverse winds were known to blow, When loss to loss * ensu’d, and woe to woe, Calm and serene beneath her father’s hand She sat resign’d to the divine command. No longer then, great Sir, her death deplore, And let us hear the mournful sigh no more, Restrain the sorrow streaming from thine eye, Be all thy future moments crown’d with joy! Nor let thy wishes be to earth confin’d, But soaring high pursue th’ unbodied mind. Forgive the muse, forgive th’ advent’rous lays, That fain thy soul to heav’nly scenes would raise. A FAREWEL TO AMERICA. TO MRS. S. W. I. ADIEU, New-England’s smiling meads, Adieu, the flow’ry plain: I leave thine op’ning charms, O spring, And tempt the roaring main. II. In vain for me the flow’rets rise, And boast their gaudy pride, While here beneath the northern skies I mourn for health deny’d. III. Celestial maid of rosy hue, O let me feel thy reign! I languish till thy face I view, Thy vanish’d joys regain. IV. Susanna mourns, nor can I bear To see the crystal show’r, Or mark the tender falling tear At sad departure’s hour; V. Not unregarding can I see Her soul with grief opprest: But let no sighs, no groans for me, Steal from her pensive breast. VI. In vain the feather’d warblers sing, In vain the garden blooms, And on the bosom of the spring Breathes out her sweet perfumes. VII. While for Britannia’s distant shore We sweep the liquid plain, And with astonish’d eyes explore The wide-extended main. VIII. Lo! Health appears! celestial dame! Complacent and serene, With Hebe’s mantle o’er her Frame, With soul-delighting mein. IX. To mark the vale where London lies With misty vapours crown’d, Which cloud Aurora’s thousand dyes, And veil her charms around. X. Why, Phoebus, moves thy car so slow? So slow thy rising ray? Give us the famous town to view, Thou glorious king of day! XI. For thee, Britannia, I resign New-England’s smiling fields; To view again her charms divine, What joy the prospect yields! XII. But thou! Temptation hence away, With all thy fatal train, Nor once seduce my soul away, By thine enchanting strain. XIII. Thrice happy they, whose heav’nly shield Secures their souls from harms, And fell Temptation on the field Of all its pow’r disarms! Boston, May 7, 1773. A REBUS, BY I. B. I. A BIRD delicious to the taste, On which an army once did feast, Sent by an hand unseen; A creature of the horned race, Which Britain’s royal standards grace; A gem of vivid green; II. A town of gaiety and sport, Where beaux and beauteous nymphs resort, And gallantry doth reign; A Dardan hero fam’d of old For youth and beauty, as we’re told, And by a monarch slain; III. A peer of popular applause, Who doth our violated laws, And grievances proclaim. Th’ initials show a vanquish’d town, That adds fresh glory and renown To old Britannia’s fame. AN ANSWER TO THE REBUS, BY THE AUTHOR OF THESE POEMS. THE poet asks, and Phillis can’t refuse To show th’ obedience of the Infant muse. She knows the Quail of most inviting taste Fed Israel’s army in the dreary waste; And what’s on Britain’s royal standard borne, But the tall, graceful, rampant Unicorn? The Emerald with a vivid verdure glows Among the gems which regal crowns compose; Boston’s a town, polite and debonair, To which the beaux and beauteous nymphs repair, Each Helen strikes the mind with sweet surprise, While living lightning flashes from her eyes, See young Euphorbus of the Dardan line By Manelaus’ hand to death resign: The well known peer of popular applause Is C——m zealous to support our laws. Quebec now vanquish’d must obey, She too much annual tribute pay To Britain of immortal fame. And add new glory to her name. F I N I S. 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"Bars Fight" is a ballad poem written by Lucy Terry about an attack upon two white families by Native Americans on August 21, 1746. The incident occurred in an area of Deerfield, Massachusetts, called "The Bars," which was a colonial term for a meadow. The poem was preserved orally and not published until the November 20, 1854, issue of The Springfield Daily Republican, as an excerpt from the book History of Western Massachusetts published the following year (1855) by Republican associate editor Josiah Gilbert Holland. [ https://archive.org/details/historyofwestern02holluoft/page/360/mode/2up?q=bars] "Bars Fight" is believed to be the oldest known work of literature by an African American and is the only known work by Lucy Terry. After the word "slay", an alternate oral transmission of the poem offers an accurate location and body count: "Twas nigh unto Sam Dickson's mill / The Indians there five men did kill." [ https://www.jstor.org/stable/44176226] TEXT https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/348-bars-fight-from-lucy-terry/ OR August 'twas the twenty-fifth, Seventeen hundred forty-six; The Indians did in ambush lay, Some very valient men to slay, The names of whom I'll not leave out. Samuel Allen like a hero fout, And though he was so brave and bold, His face no more shall we behold. Eleazer Hawks was killed outright, Before he had time to fight,— Before he did the Indians see, Was shot and killed immediately. Oliver Amsden he was slain, Which caused his friends much grief and pain. Simeon Amsden they found dead, Not many rods distant from his head. Adonijah Gillett we do hear Did lose his life which was so dear. John Sadler fled across the water, And thus escaped the dreadful slaughter. Eunice Allen see the Indians coming, And hopes to save herself by running, And had not her petticoats stopped her, The awful creatures had not catched her, Nor tommy hawked her on her head, And left her on the ground for dead. Young Samuel Allen, Oh lack-a-day! Was taken and carried to Canada. "Bars Fight" as published in The Springfield Daily Republican, November 20, 1854