The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1878-05-25
THE BRANDED HAND.

THE BRANDED HAND.
The announcement in our dispatches O
the death of Capt. Jonathan Walker, a
Black Lake, in Michigan, recalls wildly ont
of the most startling incidents of the Anti
Slavery agitation of thirty and thirty-fivt
years ago-for Capt. Walker was the Mar
with the Branded Hand" celebrated by Whit
tier in one of his poems against slavery. He
Wasi born near Harwich, Cape Cod March %
1919, and at an early age became a seaman
In 1885 he went to Mexico to assist Benjamin
Lundy, one of the earliest Anti-Slavery work
ers, in colonizing fugitives from slavery. The
scheme failed, as all colonization schemes fol-
slaves have failed and Walker returned to his
avOcation as a sea-Captain. In 1874 he was
solicited by several fugitive slaves at Pensaco-
la, Fla, TO carry them in his vessel to the Brit
ish West Indies. Although well aware of the
hazard of the enterprise, he attempted to
comply with their request. He was seized by
an American vessel and taken back to Florida,
where he was loaded with irons and kept in
solitary confinement for one year When he
was finally brought to trial he was convicted
of assisting slaves to obtain theft freedom,
and sentenced to the piliOry, to be branded
with the letters Z" S. 81 (slave-stealer) with
hot irons on the right hand, and to pay fine
of 5000 and costs. After his liberation he be-
came a very effective Anti-Slavery lecturer
from 1915 to 1910. In 1863 he went to Michi-
gan, and settled at Black Lake, Muskegon
County. He has lately been in reduced cir
cumstances, infirm and old.
The following is thepoem of Whittier
Welcome home again, brave seaman with thy
thoughtful brow and gray,
And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better
day
With that front of calm endurance on whose
steady nerve in vain
Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery
shafts of pain.
Is the tyrant's brand upon thee? Did the brutal
To make Gods truth thy falsehood, his hottest
work thy shame?
When, all blood-quenched from the torture, the
How laughed their evil angels the baffied fools
to scorn!
They change to wrong the duty which God hath
written out
On the great heart of humanity, too legible for
doubt
They, the loathsome moral lepers blotched from
~ to0ts0le up TO crown,
Give to shame what God hath given unto honor
and renown.
Why, that brand is highest honor.-than its
traces never vet
Upon old armorial Indictments was a prouder
blazon set;
And thy unborn generations, as they tread our
rocky strand
Shall tell with pride the story of their fathers
branded mana!
As the Templar home was welcome, bearing back
from Syrian wars,
The scars of Arab lances and of Paynim scimi-
tars,
The pallor of the prison. and the shackles Grim
span
So we meet thee, so we greet three, truest friend
OF God and man.
He suffered for the ransom of the dear Redeem
er's grave,
Thou, for his living presence in the bound and
He for a soil no longer by the feet of angels trod
Thou for the true Sheiinah, the present home of
GOdl
For while the jurist, sitting with the slave-whip
oer him swung,
From the tortured truths of freedom the lie of
slavery wrung.
And the solemn priest to Moloch on each God
deserted shrine
Broke the bondman's heart for bread, poured
the bondman's blood for wine
While the multitude in blindness to far-off
Savior knet,
And spurned the while the temple where pres
ent Savior dwelt,
Thou beheld'st him in the task-ield, in the pris-
on shadows dim,
And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy
unto him.
In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above
and wave below.
Thou did st learn higher wisdom than the bah
bling sChOOl-men know:
Gods stars and silence taught thee, His angels
only can,
That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope
of heaven is Mani
That he who treads profanely on the scrolls of
law and creed.
In the depth of Gods great goodness may find
mercy in His need:
But woe to him who brushes the soul with chain
and rod
And herds with lower natures the awful form of
God.
Then lift that manly right hand, bold plowman
of the wave!
Its branded palm shall prophesy Salvation to
the Slaver'
Hold up its tre-wrought language, that whose
reads may feel
His heart swell strong within him, his sinews
change to steel.
Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our
Northern air
Hol men of Massachusetts, for the love of God,
look there
Take it henceforth for your standard, like the
Bruces heart of wore
In the dark strife closing round ye let that Hand
be seen before.
And the tyrants of the slave-land shall tremble
at that sign,
When it points ito finger southwark along the
Puritan line;
Woe to the State-gorged leeches and the Churchs
locust band,
When they look from slavery's ramparts on the
coming of that Handl