The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier/The Kansas Emigrants

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28990The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier — The Kansas EmigrantsJohn Greenleaf Whittier

THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS

This poem and the three following were called out by the popular movement of Free State men to occupy the territory of Kansas, and by the use of the great democratic weapon—an overpowering majority—to settle the conflict on that ground between Freedom and Slavery. The opponents of the movement used another kind of weapon. [This song was sent to the first company of emigrants by the poet. “It is one of those prophecies,” says E. E. Hale, “for which poets are born, uttered before the event and not after. In absolute hard fact, the song was sung by parties of emigrants, sung when they started, sung as they rode, and sung in the new home.”]

We cross the prairie as of old
The pilgrims crossed the sea,
To make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!

We go to rear a wall of men
On Freedom’s southern line,
And plant beside the cotton-tree
The rugged Northern pine!

We ’re flowing from our native hills
As our free rivers flow:
The blessing of our Mother-land
Is on us as we go.

We go to plant her common schools
On distant prairie swells,
And give the Sabbaths of the wild
The music of her bells.

Upbearing, like the Ark of old,
The Bible in our van,
We go to test the truth of God
Against the fraud of man.

No pause, nor rest, save where the streams
That feed the Kansas run,
Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon
Shall flout the setting sun!

We ’ll tread the prairie as of old
Our fathers sailed the sea,
And make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!