Explore "The Branded Hand" by John Greenleaf Whittier on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Captain Jonathan Walker, of Harwich, Mass., was solicited by several fugitive slaves at Pensacola, Florida, to carry them in his vessel to the British West Indies. Although well aware of the great hazard of the enterprise he attempted to comply with the request, but was seized at sea by an American vessel, consigned to the authorities at Key West, and thence sent back to Pensacola, where, after a long and rigorous confinement in prison, he was tried and sentenced to be branded on his right hand with the letters "S. S. " (slave-stealer) and amerced in a heavy fine.
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.