Read "To the Union Savers of Cleveland" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Men of Cleveland, had a vulture / Sought a timid dove for prey, / Would you not, with human pity, / Drive the gory bird away?
Had you seen a feeble lambkin, / Shrinking from a wolf so bold, / Would ye not to shield the trembler, / In your arms have made its fold?
But when she, a hunted sister, / Stretched her hands that ye might save, / Colder far than Zembla's regions / Was the answer that ye gave.
On the Union's bloody altar, / Was your hapless victim laid; / Mercy, truth and justice shuddered, / But your hands would give no aid.
And ye sent her back to torture, / Robbed of freedom and of right.
Thrust the wretched, captive stranger.
Back to slavery's gloomy night.
Back where brutal men may trample, / On her honor and her fame; / And unto 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 Lake Erie ye should drain.
There's a curse upon your Union, / Fearful sounds are in the air; / As if thunderbolts were framing, / Answers to the bondsman's prayer.
Ye may offer human victims, / Like the heathen priests of old; / And may barter manly honor / For the Union and for gold.
But ye can not 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 sin-cursed, guilty Union, / Shall be shaken to its base, / Till ye learn that simple justice, / Is the right of every race.