William Cullen Bryant, the longtime editor of the New York Evening Post and the first American poet to attain international prominence, was a staunch abolitionist. “Wherever our flag floats,” he wrote after the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, “it is the flag of slavery.” He was also an influential Lincoln supporter. (Bryant, in fact, introduced Lincoln to New Yorkers at his famous Cooper Union speech.) After the war, Bryant hailed the demise of slavery’s “cruel reign” in this poem.
—Sage Stossel
O THOU great Wrong, that, through the slow-paced years,
Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst wield
The scourge that drove the laborer to the field,
And look with stony eye on human tears,
Thy cruel reign is o'er;
Thy bondmen crouch no more
In terror at the menace of thine eye;
For He who marks the bounds of guilty power,
Long-suffering, hath heard the captive's cry,
And touched his shackles at the appointed hour,
And lo! they fall, and he whose limbs they galled
Stands in his native manhood, disenthralled.
A shout of joy from the redeemed is sent;
Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn of thanks;
Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks
Send up hosannas to the firmament.
Fields, where the bondman's toil
No more shall trench the soil,
Seem now to bask in a serener day;
The meadow-birds sing sweeter, and the airs
Of heaven with more caressing softness play,
Welcoming man to liberty like theirs.
A glory clothes the land from sea to sea,
For the great land and all its coasts are free.