Harper: among earth's humblest graves

In the 1850s, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (born free in Maryland in 1825) became an active voice in the anti-slavery movement. She was successful as a public speaker, her book of poems was popular, including its several anti-slavery poems. She was also involved with the Underground Railroad. It was in this period that Harper published her most famous poem. Published in the Ohio-based Anti-Slavery Bugle on November 20, 1858, "Bury Me in a Free Land" was a powerful call for the end of enslavement:

Make me a grave where'er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth's humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not rest, if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.

I could not sleep if I heard the tread
Of a coffle-gang to the shambles led,
And the mother's shriek of wild despair
Rise, like a curse, on the trembling air.

I could not rest, if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.

I'd shudder and start, if I heard the bay
Of bloodhounds seizing their human prey;
And I heard the captive plead in vain,
As they bound, afresh, his galling chain.

If I saw young girls from their mother's arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-pale cheek grow red with shame.

I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated Might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.

I ask no monument, proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is — Bury me not in a land of slaves!

"Bury Me in a Free Land" was republished two months later in a January issue of The Liberator. Harper also sent a copy of the poem to one of John Brown's men awaiting execution after the raid Harper's Ferry.

Birth of Watkins Harper: to stir like a battle-cry

Frances Ellen Watkins was born on September 24, 1825, in Baltimore, Maryland. Like her parents, she was born free but of African descent. Her parents died when she was still a child and she was raised with the help of her uncle, a minister and educator who ensured his niece attended an academy for "Colored Youth." Her formal schooling ended when she was 13 but she continued teaching herself. She was eventually hired as a teacher herself, first in Ohio and then in Pennsylvania.

Watkins started publishing poetry as a teenager. It was as a public figure that she would make her long career. In her nearly 86 years, she became a published poet, novelist, essayist, a public speaker, an abolitionist, a civil rights and women's rights advocate, particularly under her married name Frances Watkins Harper. Often, Watkins Harper used popular forms of poetry to spread her beliefs in equality, temperance, and piety. Her poetry in particular was meant to inspire an emotional response to ally others in her causes using a simple, almost conversational style. Among her most moving works is her 1895 poem "Songs for the People" (which sums up her life and work quite well):

Let me make the songs for the people,
Songs for the old and young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry
Wherever they are sung.

Not for the clashing of sabres,
For carnage nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of men
With more abundant life.

Let me make the songs for the weary,
Amid life's fever and fret,
Till hearts shall relax their tension,
And careworn brows forget.

Let me sing for little children,
Before their footsteps stray,
Sweet anthems of love and duty,
To float o'er life's highway.

I would sing for the poor and aged,
When shadows dim their sight;
Of the bright and restful mansions,
Where there shall be no night.

Our world, so worn and weary,
Needs music, pure and strong,
To hush the jangle and discords
Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Music to soothe all its sorrow,
Till war and crime shall cease;
And the hearts of men grown tender
Girdle the world with peace.

Death of Harper: I ask no monument

Born free in Maryland in 1825, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a public speaker, a poet, and a novelist who spent her life fighting for the rights of black people and women. By the time of her death in Philadelphia at the age of 85 on February 22, 1911, she had earned the praise of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Fredrick Douglass and many others. Despite all her work and all her writing, she remains most known for one poem, "Bury Me in a Free Land." She sent a copy of this poem, as well as her poems "The Slave Mother" and "The Slave Auction," to one of the condemned men involved with John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. Harper herself moved in with Brown's widow for a time.

Make me a grave where'er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth's humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.

I could not rest if I heard the tread
Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother's shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.

I could not sleep if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.

I'd shudder and start if I heard the bay
Of bloodhounds seizing their human prey,
And I heard the captive plead in vain
As they bound afresh his galling chain.

If I saw young girls from their mother's arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.

I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.

I ask no monument, proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is — Bury me not in a land of slaves!

Harper is buried in Pennsylvania, slightly southwest of Philadelphia.

Harper: did the angels greet thee?

When it was first published, the poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was titled "To a Babe Smiling in Her Sleep," implying the babe in question was a generic one. When republished in the Weekly Anglo-African on February 15, 1862, it was given the more personal title "To My Daughter." Though the text of her poem was always in the first-person and references "my child," the new title clearly shows that this is the voice of a mother:

Tell me, did the angels greet thee?
    Greet my darling when she smiled?
Did they whisper, softly, gently,
    Pleasant thoughts unto my child?

Did they whisper, 'mid thy dreaming,
    Thoughts that made thy spirit glad?
Of the joy-lighted city,
    Where the heart is never sad?

Did they tell thee of the fountains,
    Clear as crystal, fair as light,
And the glory-brightened country,
    Never shaded by a night?

Of life's pure, pellucid river,
    And the tree whose leaves do yield
Healing for the wounded nations -
    Nations smitted, bruised and peeled?

Of the city, ruby-founded,
    Built on gems of flashing light,
Paling all earth's lustrous jewels,
    And the gates of pearly white?

Darling, when life's shadows deepen
    Round thy prison-house of clay,
May the footsteps of God's angels
    Ever linger round thy way.

By invoking such idyllic imagery of this paradisaical land, Harper begs a contrast with reality. By forming the poem using a serious of questions, she also pushes the reader to consider the ideal versus the real. She begins to break away at the reality by referring to a place "where the heart is never said" (implying that we do not already have that place). The idealism is finally shattered by more caustic references to "wounded nations" which are "smitten, bruised and peeled." The final stanza is not a question but a declaration: despite being in a "prison-house," remember the promises of paradise.

A dull and heavy weight

On September 22, 1854, Frederick Douglass' Papers published a poem by Frances Ellen Watkins (later Mrs. Harper). Though she was born free, as were her parents, as a black woman she recognized the plight of enslaved members of her race. Her poem, "The Slave Auction," dramatically shows the life-altering aspects of families broken up for sale, similar to scenes in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin from two years earlier. Unlike Stowe, however, who sought empathy in her readers, Watkins insists nothing else can relate to this experience. She starts the poem just as the sale is beginning, and pushes the poem forward with a series of stanzas starting with "and" — the result is a building feeling of discomfort right up to its conclusion:

The sale began — young girls were there,
   Defenceless in their wretchedness,
Whose stifled sobs of deep despair
   Revealed their anguish and distress.

And mothers stood with streaming eyes,
   And saw their dearest children sold;
Unheeded rose their bitter cries,
   While tyrants bartered them for gold.

And woman, with her love and mirth —
   For these in sable forms may dwell —
Gaz'd on the husband of her youth,
   With anguish none may paint or tell.

And men, whose sole crime was their hue,
   The impress of their Maker's hand,
And frail and shrinking children, too,
   Were gathered in that mournful band.

Ye who have laid your love to rest,
   And wept above their lifeless clay,
Know not the anguish of that breast,
   Whose lov'd are rudely torn away.

Ye may not know how desolate
   Are bosoms rudely forced to part,
And how a dull and heavy weight
   Will press the life-drops of the heart.

*Recommended reading: A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader (1993), edited by Frances Smith Foster.

Harper: freedom cost too much

It is generally agreed that the Civil War officially started when shots were fired at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina on April 12, 1861. Years later, black poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper referenced the battle in her long poem "The Deliverance." The poem follows a Southern family: Master, his wife, and their son Thomas — told in the voice of an enslaved person on their farm. Harper, who earlier that year had published a poem inspiring men of Ohio to enlist, wrote about the Civil War about 12 years after the shots at Fort Sumter. Thomas predicts "We're bound to have a fight" but promises to "whip the Yankees" when he hears the news:

"They are firing on Fort Sumpter; [sic]
   Oh! I wish that I was there! —
Why, dear mother! what's the matter?
   You're the picture of despair."

"I was thinking, dearest Thomas,
   'Twould break my very heart
If a fierce and dreadful battle
   Should tear our lives apart."

Thomas assures his mother that only "cowards" would avoid the fighting and, soon enough, he volunteers.

His uniform was real handsome;
   He looked so brave and strong;
But somehow I couldn't help thinking
   His fighting must be wrong.

While Thomas's mother prayed that the Secessionists would win, the enslaved people "were praying in the cabins / Wanting freedom to begin." The narrator knows the progress of the war based on the Master's face: the sadder he looks, the closer they are to emancipation.

The poem continues through Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation as well as his assassination, then criticizes his successor Andrew Johnson. Harper then goes on to show support for Ulysses S. Grant, the General-turned-President, and discusses blacks' right to vote. Opposition suggested that blacks were too unintelligent, too uniformed, or too willing to sell their vote. Harper concludes:

Who know their freedom cost too much
   Of blood and pain and treasure,
For them to fool away their votes
   For profit or for pleasure.

150 years ago: Timrod and Harper

 The Daily Courier in Charleston, South Carolina published "Ethnogenesis" in its February 23, 1861 issue. The poem, written by Henry Timrod, was immediately republished and celebrated throughout the South. Also known as "Ode on Occasion of the Meeting of the Southern Congress," asks that the date signifying the birth of the new Confederate States of America be marked in Heaven. At their first meeting of Congress, held in Montgomery, Alabama, Timrod was inspired to write his poem then and there. "At last, we are a nation among nations," he writes. Amid his rejoicing, however, Timrod considers the possibility of a violent response from the North:

What if, both mad and blinded in their rage,
Our foes should fling us down their mortal gage,
And with a hostile step profane our sod!
We shall not shrink, my brothers, but go forth
To meet them...

That same day, the Anti-Slavery Bugle published "To the Cleveland Union-Savers," a poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Subtitled "An Appeal from One of the Fugitive's Own Race," the poet notes that Union men who believed in freedom had yet to act strongly on behalf of enslaved people:

Men of Cleveland, had a vulture
   Clutched a timid dove for prey,
Would ye not, with human pity,
   Drive the gory bird away?

...On your Union's bloody altar
   Was your helpless victim laid;
Mercy, truth, and justice shuddered,
   But your hands would give no aid.

And ye sent her back to torture,
   Stripped of freedom, robbed of right, —
Thrust the wretched, captive stranger
   Back to Slavery's gloomy night!

Sent her back where men may trample
   On her honor and her fame
And upon her lips so dusky
   Press the cup of woe and shame.

There is blood upon your city, —
   Dark and dismal is the stain;
And your hands would fail to cleanse it,
   Though you should Lake Erie drain.

There's a curse upon your Union!
   Fearful sounds are in the air;
As if thunderbolts were forging
   Answers to the bondman's prayer...

But ye cannot stay the whirlwind,
   When the storm begins to break;
And our God doth rise in judgment
   For the poor and needy's sake.

And your guilty, sin-cursed Union
   Shall be shaken to its base,
Till ye learn that simple justice
   Is the right of every race.

Harper: Are there no wrongs to be righted?

In May 1866, featured speakers addressed the annual National Women's Rights Convention, including Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Harper, a well-known poet and civil rights activist, was well-respected and a frequent public speaker. Nevertheless, she began her speech that day: "I feel I am something of a novice upon this platform." She went on:

Born of a race whose inheritance has been outrage and wrong, most of my life had been spent in battling against those wrongs. But I did not feel as keenly as others, that I had these rights, in common with other women, which are now demanded.

Harper emphasized that if white women were considered unequal, as a black woman, she was worse off. Nevertheless, all people are "bound up together," she said, and "society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members." Equating the fight for women's civil rights with that of blacks, she hoped for a nation not with privileged classes, but a population of only privileged people, "whose privilege will be to produce the loftiest manhood and womanhood that humanity can attain." Though she admits merely allowing women to vote will not solve everything, she goes on:

You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs... Are there no wrongs to be righted? ...Talk of giving women the ballot-box? Go on. It is a normal school, and the white women of this country need it. While there exists this brutal element in society which tramples upon the feeble and treads down the weak, I tell you that if there is any class of people who need to be lifted out of their airy nothings and selfishness, it is the white women of America. 

Elsewhere, in her poem "An Appeal to My Countrywomen," Harper wrote:

Men may tread down the poor and lowly,
May crush them in anger and hate,
But surely the mills of God's justice
Will grind out the grist of their fate.

On February 3, 1870, Congress passed the 15th Amendment, allowing black men the right to vote. The 19th Amendment, which extended voting rights to women, would not pass for another 50 years.