Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v2.djvu/299

Emancipation 283 And I mmd me of more than they, Of the youthful, steadfast ones. That have shown them worthy sons Of the Seamen passed away — (Tyson conned our helm, that day, Watson stood by his guns.) Lord of mercy and frown, Ruling o'er sea and shore, Send us such scene once more! All in Line of Battle Where the black ships bear down On tyrant fort and town, 'Mid cannon cloud and rattle — And the great guns once more Thunder back the roar Of the traitor walls ashore. And the traitor flags come down! It was in New England that Emancipation was most eagerly acclaimed. Emerson's Boston Hymn, written in honour of Lincoln's Proclamation, can hardly be matched for pungency and pregnancy of matter by any other American poem for an occasion. Whittier, who had already hailed Fremont's action in freeing the slaves of secessionists in Missouri in the poem To John C. Fremont, and the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia in his hopeful Astraea at the Capital, hailed the actual Proclamation with passion, and, later, the passage of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery with the rapt exultation of Laus Deo. Stedman's Treason's Last Device glowed with anger at a proposal made, as late as 1863, to bar New England from the Union because of an opposi- tion to slavery that made that section very obnoxious to the South. Boker in the spring of 1863 greeted the news of the Federal advance with his Hooker's Across; and Chancellorsville, which called forth so many Confederate poems ' on the death of Stone- wall Jackson, led George Parsons Lathrop to write his dashing ballad, Keenan's Charge. Perhaps it was again because poets ' See also Book III, Chap. m.