Coercion! Lines suggested on seeing the first number of "The Non-Slaveholder" (Poem)

Coercion! Lines suggested on seeing the first number of "The Non-Slaveholder" (Poem)

Fresh help! fresh champions in the field
Of moral bravery,
Truth's panoply to wear and wield
'Gainst Slavery!
To stand in virtuous freedom bold,
The banner with firm hand to hold,
A life-time warfare to proclaim,
In freedom's name,
Against a system foul, inhuman,
And to a bloodless battle summon!

But hark! as from a bleating flock,
Who fear the moral battle shock,
I hear the timid cry arise,
Of those who mark, with mournful eyes,
Truth nailed against the cross by Hate,
And, with vague fear of unseen bait,
Afriad where ghosts are none,
Or seeking worldly loss to shun.
Follow afar, with conscience stricken,
That Truth, believed, and yet forsaken.
Truth's lovers, struck with pallid terror,
Join the Ephesian shout of Error,
And cry "COERCION!"
Evil is odious in their sight,
And yet they dread the moral fight, 
Some spectre rises to affright
And check exertion.
Backward they look with reverent gaze
On a conquests won in former days,
Past triumphs win their ready praise,
As "MORAL SUASION!"
Their valiant fathers battled well --
Proudly their sons their virtues tell
On each occasion.
And, oh, had Satan kindly lain,
Prostrate and slain,
When those good fathers struck the blow
As ye strike now,
Who could have blamed the fatal thrust,
Coercing him to lie in dust,
Or feared, (their faith excused from trial,
Temptation having taken wing,)
To use luxurious self-denial
Separate from the unclean thing.

Yet list ye to that chorus cry!
With ready ear its meaning try!
Subject the word to test discreet,
As with the mouth ye taste of meat!
It stands you much in stead to ken
The temper of the assilants' blade,
The one they ever brandish, when 
Fresh movements for the truth are made!
To me, I ween, that cry has grown
And old familiar tedious tone,
Still ringing, dinging in my ears,
Since first I grew to manhood's years,
I've known it raised, with craven terror,
At every new attack of Error--
And not without this deafening roar,
Was gained one inch in righteous war.

When chaste and lovely Temperance, first
Her "few and feeble" champioins mustered.
The sages, at the bottle nursed,
Struck with dismay, were sadly flustered, 
To the pure love of Truth a stranger,
Each saw his gainful craft in danger,
And, lacking argument for Evil,
Yet bent at moral Truth to cavil,
In hope of gain - in pure perversion,
They raised this bug-bear shout, "COERCION!"
And silly Echo caught the cry,
Nor suffers yet the sound to die,
Filling with the re-echoing sound,
Craniums where brains not much abound, 
And hollow hearts where sordid pelf,
Or that corroding canker, Self,
Upon the vital fluid preys,
And every generous impulse stays.

Since then I've marked, on each occasion,
That called for fearless Moral Suasion,
In every stage of every fight
Where Error was assailed by Right,
COERCION was the favorite shout
Employed to put the Truth to rout,
And lingering sometimes on the tongue
Of truthful ones who loathed the wrong,
Good men and true in pure mistake
As argument the word would speak.
And Truth would always kindly bear
The attacked which most obstruc [?]
When hearts mistaken, yet sincere,
The many join in blind applause,
Of plausible insidious Error,
And view her forim with honest terror!
A.

A.

The Non-Slaveholder, reprinted from the American Citizen


2:12, pp. 287-8

12.1847