Delaware Republican. (Wilmington, Del.) 1843-1874, 1866-07-09
MONDAY MORNING, JULY 9, 1866.
THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.

o thou great Wrong, that, through the slow
paced years,
Didst hold thy millions fettered, and dds
WELD
The scourge that drove the laborer to tn,
field,
And look with stony eye on human tears,
Thy cruel reign is DER;
Thy bondmen crouch no more
10 terror at the menace OF thine eye;
For He that makes the bounds of guilty
power,
Long suffering hath heard the captive's cry
And touched his shackles at the appoin ted
And 10 / they fall, and he whose limbs they
CALLED
Stands in his native manhood, disinthralled
shout of joy from the redeemed is sent;
Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn Of
thanks;
Our rivers roll exulting. and their banks
Send up hosannas to the armament.
Fields, where the bondsman's toll
No more shall trench the soil,
Seem now to bask in a serener day;
The meadow birds sing sweeter, and the airs
Or Heaven with more caressing softness play,
welcoming man to liberty like theirs.
glory clothes the land from sea to sea,
For the great land and all its coasts are free.
Within that land thou vert enthralled oflate,
And they by whom the nations laws were
made,
And they who filed the Judgment sea to
obeyed
Thy mandate, rigid as the will of fate
Fierce men at thy right hand,
With gesture OF command,
Gave forth the word that none might dare
gainsay;
And grave and reverand anea who Ioved
thee not,
Sbrank from thy presence, and in black dis
may,
ChoAed down, unuttered, the rebellious
thought;
While meaner towards, mingled with the train
Proved, from. the book of God thy right to
reign.
Great as thou vert, aud feared from shore to
shore,
The wrath of God o'ertsok thee in thy
pride;
Thou sits ghastly shadow; by thy side
Thy once strong arms hang nerveless ever
more.
And they who quailed but now
Before thy lowering brow,
Devote thy memory to scorn and shame,
And scott at the pale, poweress thing thou
art,
And they who ruled in thine imperial name
Subdued and standing sullenly apart,
Scowl at the hands that overthrew thy reign,
Aud shattered at blow the prisoners chain.
Well was thy doom deserved thou didst no t
spare
Llfes tenderest ties, but cruelty ddst part
Husband and wife, and from the mothers
heart
Didst wrest her children, deaf to shrek and
prayer;
Thy inner lair became
The haunt of guilty shame;
Thy Lash dropped blood; the murderer, at thy
side,
Showed his red hands, nor feared the yea.
Reance due.
Thou didst SOW earth W ith crimes, and, far and
wide,
harvest of uucounted miseries grew,
Until the measure of thy sin at last
Was full, and then the avengiDg bolt was cast.
Go then, accursed of God, and take thy place
With baleful memories OF the elder time,
With many wasting pest and nsmeless crime,
And bloody war that thinned the human race;
With the Black Death, whose way
Through wailing cities lay,
Worship of Moloch, tyranies that built
The Pyramids, and cruel creeds that taught
To avenge fancied guilt by deeper guilt
Death at the stake to those who held them
not.
Lo, the foul phantoms, silent in the gloom
of the flown ages, part to yield thee room.
see the better years that hasten by,
Garry thee back into the shadowy past,
Where ia the dusty spaces, void and vast,
The graves of those whom thou hast murdered
lie.
The slave pen, through whose door
Thy victims pass no more,
Is there and there shall the grim block remain
AT which the slave was sold; while at thy
feet
Scourges and engines of restraint and pain
Molder and rust by thine eternal seat,
There, mid the symbols that proc lain thy
crimes,
DIV ell thou, a warning to The coming times.
Atlantic for July.