90

Sacred Land Regained:

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and
"The Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth," A Lost Poem
Donald Yacovone
The Massachusetts HistoricalSociety
Courtesy Library of Congress

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

t
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91 -

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911), writer, abolitionist, and femi-

nist, was the most widely read African-American poet before the advent of the
Harlem Renaissance.1 Although best remembered for her powerful antislavery poem
"Bury Me in a Free Land" (1858)2 and Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (1892), a
provocative novel about slavery and race in the old South, Harper wrote seven
volumes of poetry and prose from the 1840s to 1901. Her Poems on Miscellaneous
Subjects (1854) sold 10,000 copies in three years and the combined sales of her first
four books totaled at least 50,000.3 Blacks and whites avidly bought her books and
flocked to her public readings. Mary Ann Shadd Cary, the talented black abolition-
ist editor of Toronto Canada's ProvincialFreeman, marveled at Harper's popularity.
The public, she declared, is "just crazy with excitement about her." 4
Watkins, who lived with the William and Letitia Still family above the offices
of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia, first became known as an
abolitionist poet and speaker. In 1853, she published "Eliza Harris"-inspired by
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin-in the Liberator and in Frederick
Douglass'Paper.The Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society soon hired her as their offi-
cial lecturer and agent for eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Then in 1858, she
began speaking throughout the mid-west. Harper's lectures left her audiences amazed
at her eloquence and many observers compared Harper to some of the antislavery
movement's most articulate women. She returned to Philadelphia after the Civil
War where she fought to end the city's segregated street car system and began her
second career as a women's rights advocate. Harper's success as a lecturer kept her
constantly on the move, but Philadelphia remained her home.'
Though scholars once dismissed Harper's writing as "tearful sentimentality
[that] wearies us" and scarcely "deserving of preservation," 6 she is now recognized
as a "central figure" in the African-American women's literary tradition. 7 Thus, it is
astonishing, if not scandalous, that such an important and celebrated African-
American writer would go so long without attracting a modern full-scale biogra-
phy. Published studies of Harper have dwelled on her literary career and are largely
confined to scrutinizing her novel Iola Leroy.8 This biographical deficit restricts our
understanding of African-American history and perpetuates misinformation about
Harper. Equally important, the dearth of biographical work on Harper has left an
untold amount of her writing in obscurity. If the newly discovered work discussed
in this essay is any measure, there is still important and well-crafted Harper poetry
yet to find. 9

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Harper's writings resonate with religious faith, compassion, and defiance. At

their best, her poems are a powerful evocation of the African-American response to
slavery and racial oppression. "The Massachusetts Fifty-fourth," (1863)10 which
appeared in the New York Weekly Anglo-African, the most important black paper of
the Civil War era, isone of Harper's most commanding poetic works. It honors the
first regular Civil War army unit of free Northern blacks and also places Harper's
more famous work, "Bury Me in a Free Land," in a new light. When read together,
the poems document the struggle against slavery and immortalize the black role in
national regeneration, a force so potent that to Harper it appeared to transform
and sanctify the land. The poems form a literary diptych, revealing the African-
American response to the evil of slavery and asserting the crucial part blacks played
in restoring the Union and securing emancipation.
Although the outline of Harper's life is well known, there remains disagree-
ment over basic facts. Nearly every reference work and secondary source cites 9
September 1825 as her birthdate. At least one author, however, citing Harper's
death certificate, places her birth in 1824." A free black from Baltimore, Mary-
land, Harper was orphaned at age three, may have boarded with some unknown
family members, and was eventually taken in by her aunt and uncle, Henrietta and
William Watkins.' 2 She attended the Watkins Academy, a school for free blacks
founded in 1820 by her uncle William at the age of nineteen. William Watkins-
often confused with his son, William J. Watkins-was trained by the black evan-
gelical Daniel Coker at the Sharp Street Church and assumed responsibility for
many of his students after Coker's departure for Africa. Watkins quickly rose to
become the city/s influential black leader and the black community's most outspo-
ken abolitionist."3 Harper's later career as an abolitionist and writer may owe much
to the Watkins's influence. At about age thirteen, after assisting her uncle with
operation of the school, Harper began work as a domestic servant in the home of a
white Baltimore bookseller and remained there for seven years. She built on the
education received from her uncle by reading the volumes in her employer's library
and began publishing poetry in local newspapers. At age sixteen she wrote Forest
Leaves, her first book of poetry. Unfortunately, no copy of this work survives.
Those who have written about Harper rely heavily on William Still's brief
account of her life in his history of the Underground Railroad. Although Still, the
Philadelphia black abolitionist leader and head of the city's important Underground

Pennsylvania History
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Railroad station, knew Harper better than anyone, his sketch is ambiguous and
disappointingly incomplete. For example, he reported that Harper did not leave
Baltimore until "about the year 1851" for Ohio. But Harper stated that she had
taught school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1850.14 Sometime in 1851, Harper
did join the faculty of Union Seminary near Columbus, Ohio, an African Method-
ist Episcopal manual labor school founded in 1847, where she taught sewing and
embroidery. In 1852, she moved to York, Pennsylvania, where she taught at the
Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church's Smallwood School."5
Harper's stay in York proved a painful ordeal. She doubted her abilities as a
teacher and, as Still wrote, the "fifty-three untrained little urchins" she instructed
there "overtaxed her naturally delicate physical powers." Uncertainty and indeci-
sion left her depressed and she contacted a friend for advice. "What would you do
if you were in my place?" she asked. "Would you give up and go back and work at
your trade [dress-making]? There are no people that need all the benefits resulting
from a well-directed education more than we do. The condition of our people, the
wants of our children, and the welfare of our race demand the aid of every helping
hand, the God-speed of every Christian heart." 16
Harper's own doubts and personal crisis developed at precisely the same time
as the nation plunged into a bitter crisis over the institution of slavery. The 1850
Fugitive Slave Law, adopted by Congress as part of compromise legislation to pre-
vent the dissolution of the Union, threatened all Northern blacks and sent zhou-
sands of African Americans fleeing to Canada. Kidnapping rings, which operated
throughout the early nineteenth century in Philadelphia and in all other major
Northern cities, now acted more brazenly. Black Pennsylvanians organized to meet
the challenge. Harper met many African-American activists in the York, Colum-
bia, and Lancaster region who told her of the Northern black struggle against sla-
very and introduced her to William Still and his circle of Underground Railroad
workers. Moved by the tragic stories of runaway slaves, Harper abandoned teach-
ing and joined the black abolitionist movement.'7
A personal confrontation with slavery frequently drew Northern African
Americans into abolitionism. Sarah M. Douglass, a prominent member of
Philadelphia's black elite, for example, joined the movement in her twenties after
the Pennsylvania legislature considered measures during the early 1830s to restrict
free black rights and strengthen fugitive slave laws. "I had formed a little world of

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my own, and cared not to move beyond its precincts," she declared to the Female
Literary Society of Philadelphia. "But how was the scene changed when I beheld
the oppressor lurking on the border of my own peaceful home! I saw his iron hand
stretched forth to seize me as his prey, and the cause of the slave became my own." 18
For Harper, the moment of decision came in 1853 when she learned about
the tragic case of a free black who unwittingly violated a Maryland law prohibiting
free African Americans from settling in the state, and was sold away as a slave to
Georgia. Maryland maintained the country's most aggressive state colonization
society and remained committed to reducing its free black population. The fugi-
tive eluded his enslavers until just before his arrival in the North when slave catch-
ers discovered him and returned the man to Georgia where he soon died as a result
of his ordeal. This incident, which reminded Harper that she could no longer re-
turn to her native state, personalized the injustice of slavery, transformed Harper,
and redirected her life. "Upon that grave," she declared, "I pledged myself to the
anti-Slavery cause." It now seemed to her that "God himself has written upon both
my heart and brain a commission to use time, talent and energy in the cause of
freedom." 19
Harper quickly enlisted her literary talents in the antislavery cause. Probably
with the assistance of Boston's great abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison,
who wrote a preface for her book, Harper published Poems on Various Subjects
(1854). Her poetry also appeared in the antislavery press and was sung as hymns at
abolitionist meetings and conventions. The following antislavery hymn, "Freedom's
Battle," a-version of "Be Active" (1856), has never been reprinted and is not dis-
cussed in the growing body of Harper scholarship. 20 The poem's strength rests on
its appeal to conscience and the Christian imagery that would have spoken with
equal force to blacks and whites.

Onward, 0 ye Sons of Freedom,

In the great and glorious strife;
You've a high and holy mission
On the battle-fields of life.

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See Oppression's heel of iron

Grinds a brother to the ground,
And from bleeding heart and bosom
Gapeth many a fearful wound.

On my blighted people's bosom

Mountain loads of sorrow lay;
Stop not, then, to ask the question,
Who shall roll the stone away?

O be faithful, 0 be valiant,
Trusting not in human might,
Know that in the darkest conflict
God is on the side of right.21

Harper, like other black abolitionists, came to identify with the slaves and
saw that their bondage threatened all black freedom: a "blow has been struck at my
freedom, in every hunted and down-trodden slave in the South." 22 Her commit-
ment to the slave and the cause of freedom and democracy defined her life and
became her calling. Although many abolitionists rejected the "Free Produce" move-
ment as ineffective, Harper believed in the duty of all blacks to avoid any complic-
ity with the institution of slavery, even if they had to pay more for goods produced
without slave labor. "I can thank God," she wrote, "that upon its warp and woof I
see no stain of blood and tears; that to produce a little finer muslin for my limbs no
crushed and broken heart went out in sighs." 23

Harper, although never a slave, did not have to endure bondage to know its
terrors. Nor did she have to leave Baltimore to know the effects of racism. Slavery
was an unavoidable fact during the years Harper spent in Baltimore. Even as late as
1850, about seven thousand Baltimore County blacks remained in servitude. Equally
important, as Frederick Douglass discovered during his stay in the city, the "sla-
very" of racial prejudice in Baltimore was palpable. 24 The phrase "Damn Niggers"
or "they ought to be killed" tumbled from the lips of white men threatened by the
mere presence of African Americans. 2 5

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Northern life, as Harper soon discovered, offered no refuge from the racism
found in Maryland. She quickly learned what other Northern black leaders always
had known, that "we are treated worse than aliens among a people whose language
we speak, whose religion we profess, and whose blood flows and mingles in our
veins." 26 Riots against urban black communities punctuated the antebellum years
and degrading images of blacks poured from the popular presses. In Pennsylvania,
African Americans had lost the franchise in 1838, the same year that rioters burned
Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Hall, a meeting place for integrated abolitionist meet-
ings.27 Whites excluded blacks from the city's public meetings and cultural activi-
ties; blacks would no more be welcomed at a white library society "than a donkey
or a rattlesnake." 28 Philadelphia's "Jim Crow" laws also proscribed black atten-
dance at schools and restricted their use of public conveyances, where, regardless of
the weather, they were permitted to ride only on the exterior steps of the cars.
Failure to observe this rule would result in a swift ejection, arrest, or personal in-
jury. Despite many protests and several petitions to abolish the "Jim Crow" trans-
portation system, even by some of the city's leading white citizens,29 blacks re-
mained excluded from the cars until after the Civil War. Harper's move to Philadel-
phia, probably in 1853, exposed her to the stifling effects of Northern racial ha-
tred. She was harassed on the city's street cars and threatened on the state roads.
Harper later wrote that "I have been in every New England state, in New York,
Canada and Ohio, but of all these places, this [Pennsylvania] isabout the meanest
of all, as far as the treatment of colored people isconcerned." 30
Harper, because she lived over the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society's offices
in Philadelphia, saw countless fugitives on their way to Canada or resettlement in
safe Northern communities. Through them she could gain a more intimate knowl-
edge of the wickedness and cruelty that fugitive slaves sought to escape. Harper's
"The Slave Auction" (1854) spoke with the authority of a witness.

The sale began - young girls were there,

Defenseless in their wretchedness,
Whose stifled sobs of deep despair
Revealed their anguish and distress.

Pennsylvania History
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And mothers stood with streaming eyes,

And saw their dearest children sold;
Unheeded rose their bitter cries,
While tyrants bartered them for gold. 31

Although Harper lived in a hub of black antislavery activism, at first she

failed to become involved. William Still believed that a combination of her uncer-
tainty and modesty, and other black leaders' assumptions that her youth and inex-
perience offered nothing to the movement, prevented her from taking a more ac-
tive role. In short, she did not ask to become more involved and they did not offer.
That may well explain why, at first, Harper's immense talents as a lecturer remained
undiscovered. Some degree of sexism may also have been at work. Later, when
Harper was earning an income from her various publications, Still advised her to
save her money and not give so much to the antislavery cause. Such condescension
did not sit well with her. "Let me explain a few matters to you," she told Still. "In
the first place, I am able to give something. In the second place, I am willing to do
so. v

In the summer of 1854, Harper went to New Bedford, Massachusetts, a cen-

ter of black abolitionism, with her cousin William J. Watkins. There she delivered
her first public address, "The Elevation and Education of Our People." The public
response to her speech launched one of the most successful speaking careers by an
African-American woman. The Maine Anti-Slavery society hired her as a lecturer
and brought her before scores of white audiences throughout the state. Harper had
become so popular, she reported, that "I took breakfast with the then Governor of
Maine." 33 From 5 September to 20 October 1854, Harper delivered 33 lectures in
21 New England towns. In 1856, she visited fugitive slave and free black expatriate
settlements in Canada. From October 1857 to May 1858 she lectured for the Penn-
sylvania Anti-Slavery Society and spoke throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and
New York. She then traveled west, lecturing in Michigan and in Ohio where she
helped found the Ohio State Anti-Slavery Society, an independent black organiza-
tion. The experience transformed her life and increased her self-confidence. "My
life reminds me of a beautiful dream," she wrote. "What a difference between this
and York!" 34

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One cannot overestimate the appeal and power Harper displayed from the
antislavery podium. William C. Nell, Boston's black Garrisonian abolitionist leader,
characterized one of her addresses as "eloquent indignation." 35 According to the
popular author Grace Greenwood (pen name of Sara J. Lippincott), Harper pre-
sented herself with great dignity and spoke from the rostrum without notes and
with few gestures. "Her manner ismarked by dignity and composure," Greenwood
wrote. "She is never assuming, never theatrical." Still, the "woe of two hundred
years sighed through her tones." 36 After the Civil War, when Harper toured the
South in what must have been one of the most courageous and dangerous lecture
tours in American history, she even charmed crusty old Confederates. One gray
veteran found Harper's voice "remarkable-as sweet as any woman's voice we have
ever heard." Harper was a singular phenomenon who, as William J. Scheick noted,
possessed the ability to dissolve "the boundary between stories and lives." 37
Harper's marriage in 1860 and its relationship to her professional career is
also clouded with misconceptions. During her lecture tour of Ohio in the late
1850s, Frances Watkins met Fenton Harper, a widower with three children. They
married on 22 November 1860 and with funds supplied by Watkins, purchased a
farm in Grove City near Columbus, Ohio. The Harpers had one child, Mary, who
never married and remained with her mother for the rest of her life. Fenton Harper
died in 1864, leaving his wife and family in debt. Creditors sold everything from
livestock and washtubs to a featherbed.
Most accounts of Harper's life in this period assume that during her marriage
Harper "retired" from the antislavery movement. She was "content to stay at home,"
as one historian phrased it, and did not return to the lecture circuit until after her
husband's death. 38 Yet another scholar went on to speculate that the white woman
in Harper's short story "The Two Offers" (1859) who gave up a marriage to be-
come an abolitionist represented "perhaps a fantasy Harper herself entertained." 39
The facts confound such assumptions and speculations. With responsibility-shared
or otherwise-for four children, Harper could not continue her former demand-
ing lecture schedule. She did, however, continue to write correspondence and po-
etry for the reform press and lecture in Ohio, but among African Americans. The
racial prejudice of white abolitionists may have led them to discount her labors in
the black communities and thus not report it. Our knowledge of her activities may
also be hampered by the lack of African-American newspapers in the Midwest to

Pennsylvania History
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record her work. Still, as she made clear in a letter to the white Ohio abolitionist
Jane Hitchcock Jones just before her marriage, Harper had no plans to abandon
her career. "I am going to spend part of this fall visiting and lecturing among the
colored people. We need some earnest and elevating influence among ourselves,
and possibly some of the very best anti-slavery work I can do is to labor earnestly
and faithfully among those with whom I am identified by complexion, race and
blood." 40

As errors and misconceptions limit our knowledge of Harper's life, similar

lapses plague our understanding of her writings. Critical assessments of her work
too often have centered on the relationship between what she wrote and what she
spoke. Hazel Carby, for instance, has attempted to defend the quality and value of
Harper's writing by showing close parallels between her post-war speeches and, her
novel Iola Leroy.4" To make her relevant to contemporary readers, historians and
literary critics have downplayed the sentimental element of Harper's writings and
asserted that her work grew out of her life experience, displaying little or no differ-
ence between the written and spoken word.
Some of Harper's poems, like much nineteenth-century poetry, do not wear
well today. Their sentimentality and heavy reliance upon simple rhyme and meter
strike modern tastes as irritating and simple minded. But conceding that Harper's
poetry employed contemporary styles and methods by no means diminishes those
poems that display genuine power and, like "The Slave Auction," remain deeply
moving. The question of the relationship between texts and speeches is quite be-
side the point. Harper wrote for the nineteenth century in idioms and in a style
intended to reach Americans of all classes. When she wrote poetry she adopted a
style heavy with sentimentality and religious appeal; when addressing an audience
she relied upon an appeal to conscience and its sense of justice; and when writing
essays or letters intended for the reform press, she wrote with authority and few
flourishes.
Harper's writing demonstrated flexibility, adaptability, wit, and energy. It uti-
lized a style appropriate for the task at hand. She was no mere sentimentalist. When
considering President Abraham Lincoln's plans for renewing the hated colonizationist

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scheme during the Civil War, Harper was clear and to the point. "The president's
dabbling with colonization just now suggests to my mind the idea of a man almost
dying with a loathsome cancer and busying himself about having his hair trimmed
according to the latest fashion." 42 Considering the amount of "sentiment" that
gushed from the popular press in response to Lincoln's assassination, Harper's view
of the incident epitomizes clarity and foresight.

Well, it may be in the providence of God this blow was needed to intensify the
nations hatred of slavery, to show the utter fallacy of basing national reconstruc-
tion upon the votes of returned rebels, and rejecting loyal black men, making ...
a return to the old idea that a white rebel is better or of more account in the body
politic than a loyal black man.... God has seen fit to summon for the new era
another man.43

Harper's analysis of the postwar South found widespread agreement among

other black leaders. It might cause some modern historians to blush with envy for
its brevity and succinctness, and others to rage. Harper divided the South into
three classes: the "scum of society, the dregs of society, and the colored man." 4
Rather than dismissing Harper for her sentimentality or making exaggerated claims
for her modernity, we should read Harper in the context of her times and appreci-
ate the ways she could meet the requirements of the various mediums she worked
in and the audiences she addressed.
"The Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth" is further indication of Harper's continued
labors during the years of her marriage. It is also, by any measure, one of her most
arresting poems. The piece commemorates the Civil War's best-known African-
American regiment and its heroic charge against Battery Wagner, South Carolina,
on 18 July 1863. Organized by Massachusetts Gov. John A. Andrew and com-
manded by Col. Robert Gould Shaw, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts embodied the
black abolitionist struggle against slavery and racism. On its shoulders rested the
hopes and aspirations of Northern blacks. "[E]very black man and woman feels
special interest in the success of this regiment," New Yorkes Weekly Anglo-African
declared. "The eyes of the whole world are upon you, civilized man everywhere
waits to see if you will prove yourselves." "4
Although the assault failed to take the Confederate fortification, the regiment
more than proved its valor at Battery Wagner. Of the original 600 men of the Fifty-

Pennsylvania History
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fourth Massachusetts who participated in the attack, 272 were either killed,
wounded, or captured. Nevertheless, the unit's heroism dispelled racist allegations
that blacks could not or would not be soldiers. As the Philadelphia Pressannounced
shortly after the assault, the "employment of colored troops has ceased to be an
experiment.... We shall welcome the day when one hundred thousand of them
are fighting for our flag." 46 Fifty-fourth's action at Battery Wagner paved the
way for the recruitment of nearly 180,000 African-American troops-about ten
per cent of all Union forces-and a Union victory. 47 Harper's poem, written in the
weeks after the regiment's famed charge, fits into the one hundred and thirty year
tradition of memorializing the regiment by both black and white authors, artists,
and, recently, filmmakers. 4 8 Without question the figure of Robert Gould Shaw
looms over this commemorative literature and art.
Anna Waterston's "Together" typifies concern for the "pure" image of Shaw as
martyr and Christ figure that preoccupied most nineteenth-century authors who
wrote about the Fifty-fourth:

Oh, fair-haired Northern Hero,

With thy guard of dusky hue,
Up from the field of battle
Rise to the last review! 49

Thomas Bailey Aldrich's "An Ode," that commemorated the unveiling of

Augustus Saint Gauden's famous 1897 sculpture of Shaw and the Fifty-fourth on
Boston Common, is more audacious in its effort to immortalize Shaw and dimin-
ish the memory of the African Americans he commanded.

O soul of loyal valor and white truth,

Here, by this iron gate,
Thy serried ranks about thee as of yore,
Stand thou for evermore
In thy undying youth!
The tender heart, the eagle eye!
Oh, unto him belong
The homages of Song;

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Our praises and the praise

of coming days
To him belong-
To him, to him, the dead that shall not die! 50

As a heroic figure, Robert Gould Shaw possesses undeniable appeal. African-

American artists, like the sculptor Edmonia Lewis and the painter Edward M.
Bannister, honored Shaw's sacrifice and memory with their art. 5' But African Ameri-
cans also revered the rank-and-file of the regiment as an expression of black capa-
bility and as undeniable evidence of their worth, their right to full citizenship, and
of the injustice of slavery." For Harper, the sacrifices of the Fifty-fourth Massachu-
setts Regiment redeemed a blighted land, sanctifying it with the blood of true
Christian martyrs.
Reading Harper's well-known poem "Bury Me in a Free Land" together with
the newly discovered "The Massachusetts Fifty-fourth" establishes a moral symme-
try, following in the Christian tradition of death and rebirth. The new poem allows
us to appreciate better the artistry of her more famous piece; equally important, it
reveals how vital images of "the land" were to Harper. In "Bury Me in a Free Land"
slavery polluted the American earth, rendering it unfit to die in. Burial in "lowly
vale or a lofty hill" or "among earth's humblest graves" was preferable to "a land
where men are slaves." In "The Massachusetts Fifty-fourth," the sacrifices of Afri-
can-American men had redeemed the land, hallowed it, and made it flourish.
"And from the soil drenched with their blood/ The fairest flowers of peace shall
bloom/ And history cull rich laurels there/ To deck each martyr hero's tomb."
In "Bury Me in A Free Land," a "mother's shriek of wild despair" rang in
Harper's ears. As long as slavery blighted the soil, America was a cursed nation.
There could be no rest, no repose, no final concession to the land that absorbed the
blood and tears of the oppressed slave. "I could not sleep if around my grave/ I
heard the steps of a trembling slave/ His shadow above my silent tomb/ Would
make it a place of fearful gloom." To Harper, the gallantry of the Fifty-fourth
Massachusetts Regiment at Battery Wagner had transformed and transfigured the
land into a sacred resting place. "And ages yet uncrossed with life/ As sacred urns,
do hold each mound/ Where sleep the loyal, true, and brave/ In freedom's conse-
crated ground."

Pennsylvania History
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103 -

Where the land once symbolized death and despair, African Americans re-
stored it. "Each dying heart poured out a balm/ To heal the wounded nation's life."
In 1858, when Harper published "Bury Me in a Free Land," blacks had witnessed
decades of buoyant growth for the institution of slavery. One year earlier they suf-
fered the effects of the Dred Scott case that officially enshrined in constitutional
law what always had been the experience of most African Americans: blacks had no
rights that white men were bound to respect.5" "Bury Me in a Free Land" reflected
the remorse and sadness that blacks felt, but also expressed their defiant stand not
to accept slavery and racism as fixed features of American life. "Bury Me in a Free
Land" was not a poem of hopelessness and despair, but of tragedy and resistance.
This nation, the very ground itself was poisoned by the institution of slavery and
blacks would have none of it. Not even in death would Harper submit to the
injustice of slavery and racial oppression. The heroism of the Fifty-fourth Massa-
chusetts Regiment had redeemed and altered the landscape. These "Bearers of a
high commission," "onward pressed through shot and shell," "To break each brother's
chain" and make America "freedom's consecrated ground."

"I remember the first time I ever saw free land," Harper once declared. No, it
was not when she had visited Virginia. The "air of Virginia was heavy with Ameri-
can slavery." She recalled her move to Pennsylvania with its "memories of William
Penn, the reminiscences of the Revolution, and Independence; but there was no
free soil." Not in New Jersey or New York, she declared, and not even in Massachu-
setts. There, the fugitive slaves Thomas Sims "had been hurled again to bondage;
[and] Anthony Burns had been thrust back to chattel slavery." To Harper, the laws
of New England ultimately were of no account to "prove whether I have a right to
be a free woman or am rightfully the chattel of another." S She could not forget the
moment when she had gazed across Lake Ontario to Canada and for the first time
saw "Free Land!" "And would you believe it, tears sprang to my eyes, and I wept."
There, she knew that in an instant a slave's fetters were broken and his shackles
loosened. There, "he becomes 'a man and a brother."' 55
During the last years of the war, in the glow of the heroism of the Fifty-fourth
Massachusetts, before the failures of Reconstruction and the harrowing cries of
lynch mobs, for Harper, America had become, however briefly, sacred land.

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104

BURY ME IN A FREE LAND

You may make my grave wherever you will,

In a lowly vale or a lofty hill;
You may make it among earth's humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not sleep if around my grave

I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.

I could not rest if I heard the tread

Of a coffle-gang to the shambles led
And the mother's shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.

I could not rest if I heard the lash

Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.

I'd shudder and start, if I heard the bay

Of the bloodhounds seizing their human prey;
If I heard the captive plead in vain
As they tightened afresh his galling chain.

If I saw young girls, from their mother's arms

Bartered and sold for their youthful charms
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.

Pennsylvania History
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I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might

Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave,
Where none calls his brother a slave.

I ask no monument proud and high

To arrest the gaze of passers by;
All that my spirit yearning craves,
Is-bury me not in the land of slaves.56

THE MASSACHUSETTS FIFTY-FOURTH

Where storms of death were sweeping,

Wildly through the darkened sky,
Stood the bold but fated column,
Brave to do, to dare, and die.

With cheeks that knew no blanching,

And brows that would not pale;
Where the bloody rain fell thickest,
Mingled with the fiery hail.

Bearers of a high commission

To break each brother's chain;
With hearts aglow for freedom,
They bore the toil and pain.

And onward pressed though shot and shell

Swept fiercely round their path;
While batteries hissed with tongues of flame,
And bayonets flashed with wrath.

Volume 62, Number I X Winter 1995

 106

Oh! not in vain those heros fell,

Amid those hours of fearful strife;
Each dying heart poured out a balm
To heal the wounded nation's life.

And from the soil drenched with their blood,

The fairest flowers of peace shall bloom;
And history cull rich laurels there,
To deck each martyr hero's tomb.

And ages yet uncrossed with life,

As sacred urns, do hold each mound
Where sleep the loyal, true, and brave
In freedom's consecrated ground. 57

Pennsylvania History
 107 - -

Notes
*1 want to thank Dr. David Gordon, Professor 6. Jean Wagner, Black Poetsofthe UnitedStates, From
Dennis Downey of Millersville University, and PaulLaurence Dunbarto Langston Hughes (Urbana,
Brenda Lawson, Associate Librarian of the IL: University of Illinois Press, 1973), p. 23.
Massachusetts Historical Society, for reading earlier 7. Bacon, "'One Great Bundle of Humanity'," 25;
versions of this article and offering valuable Mary Helen Washington, "'The Darkened Eye
criticism. Restored: Notes Toward a Literary Histoty of Black
1. Blyden Jackson, A History of Afro-American Women," in Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., Reading
Literature vol. 1 The Long Beginning, 1746-1895 Black, ReadingFeminist:A CriticalAnthology (New
(Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, York, NY: Penguin, 1990), pp. 34-35; New York
1989), pp. 265-266. Times, 23 September 1990, pp. 38-39.
2. The chronological list of Harper's poetry in 8. The best biographical studies of Harper are
Marycmma Graham, ed., Complete Poems ofFrances Bacon, "'One Great Bundle of Humanity'," pp. 21-
E. W Harper (New York, NY: Oxford University 43 and Foster, A Brighter Coming Day. All studies
Press, 1988), p. 220, erroneously states that "Bury of Harper rely on William Still's Underground
Me in a Free Land" "originally' appeared in the Railroad, pp. 783-811. For critical studies of
Liberatorin 1864. The first known publication of Harper's work see: Elizabeth Ammons, "Legacy
this piece was in the Anti-Slavery Bugle, 20 Profile: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-
November 1858. C. Peter Ripley et al., eds., The 1911)," Legacy: A Journalof Nineteenth-Century
Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 4, The United States, American Women Writers 2 (Fall 1985):61-66;
1847-1858 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Roseann P.Bell, Bettye J. Parker, and Beverly Guy-
Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 403-406 (hereafter BAP). Sheftall, eds., Black Bridges: Visions ofBlack Women
3. Frances Smith Foster, A Brighter Coming Day: A in Literature(Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday,
Frances Ellen Watkins Reader (New York, NY: 1979); Hazel V.Carby, ReconstructingWomanhood:
Feminist Press at City University of New York, The Emergency oftheAfro-American Woman Novelist
1990), p. 14; William Still, UndergroundRailroad (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987);
(1871; reprint, Chicago, IL: Johnson Publishing John Ernest, "From Mysteries to Histories: Cultural
Company, 1970), p. 811. For a very useful Pedagogy in Frances E. W. Harper's Iola Leroy,"
bibliography of Harper's work see: Jean Fagan Yellin American Literature64 (September 1992):497-518;
and Cynthia D. Bond, comps., The Pen is Ours: A Gabrielle P. Foreman, "Looking Back from Zora,
Listing of Writings by and about African-American or Talking Out Both Sides my Mouth for those who
Women before 1910 with Secondary Bibliography to have Two Ears," Black American Literature Forum
the Present(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 24 (Winter 1990):649-666; Jackson, History ofAfro-
1991). American Literature; Paul Lauter, "Is Francis Ellen
4. BAIP vol. 2, Canada, 1830-1865 (Chapel Hill, Watkins Good Enough to Teach?" Legacy:A Journal
NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), p. of Nineteenth Century American Women 5 (Spring
192; Dorothy Sterling, ed., WeAre Your Sisters:Black 1988):27-32; Vashti Lewis, "The Near-White
Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York, NY: Female in Frances Ellen Harper's Iola Leroy," Phylon
W W Norton & Co., 1984), p. 174 quoted. 45 (1984):314-22; William J. Scheick, "Strategic
5. Margaret Hope Bacon, "'One Great Bundle of Ellipsis in Harper's Two Offers," The Southern
Humanity': Frances Ellen Watkins (1825-1911)," LiteraryJournal 23 (Spring 1991):14-18; Joan R.
PennsylvaniaMagazine ofHistoryandBiography 113 Sherman, Invisible Poets: Afro-Americans of the
(January 1989): 21-38, Nineteenth Century (Urbana, IL: University of

Volume 62, Number I * Winter 1995

 108

Illinois Press, 1979); Ann Allen Shockley, Afro- colonize blacks in Africa. For a fuller biography, see
American Women Writers, 1746-1933:An Anthology BA]? 3:96-97n.6 and Bettye J. Gardner, "William
and CriticalGuide (Boston, MA: G. K. Hall, 1988); Watkins: Antebellum BlackTeacher and Antislavery
and Elizabeth Young, "Warring Fictions: Iola Leroy Writer," Negro History Bulletin 37 (September-
and the Color of Gender," American Literature64 October 1976):623-525.
(June 1992): 273-297. 14. Still, UndergroundRailroad, p. 785; Gardner,
9. Frances Smith Foster, a Harper scholar, recently "William Watkins," p. 623; Bacon, "'One Great
uncovered three additional Harper novels. See Bundle of Humanity,"' pp. 22-23; Graham,
Foster, ed., Minnie's Sacrifice, Sowing and Reaping, Complete Poems, pp. mXiv-Xxxv, liiin.4; Frances Ellen
Trial and Triumph: Three Rediscovered Novels Watkins [Harper] to Editor, 15 April 1859 inAnti-
(Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994). Slavery Bugle, 23 April 1859, Black Abolitionist
10. WeeklyAnglo-African, 10 October 1863. PapersMicrofilm Edition, ed. George Carter and C.
11. Edward T. James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul Peter Ripley, Ann Arbor, MI: Microfilming
S. Boyer, eds., Notable American Women 3 vols. Corporation ofrAmerica, 1974, reel 11, frame 0698
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard [hereafter BAP Microfilm reel:frame].
University Press, 1971), 2:137-39 cite the 15. Foster, A Brighter Coming Day p. 9; Sherman,
traditionally accepted dates. But Sherman's Invisible Invisible Poets, pp. 62-63; Union Seminary later
Poets, pp. 62-63 makes the claim for a year earlier. relocated to Xenia, Ohio, and became part of
The most relied-upon sources for Harper Wilberforce University, Ammons, "Frances Ellen
biographical information appear to be Still's Watkins Profile," p. 61; Still, UndergroundRailroad,
Underground Railroadand Theodora Williams p. 784. Still-and those who rely on his work-
Daniel, "The Poems of Frances E. W Harper, Edited referred to "Little York," Pennsylvania, a nickname
with a Biographical and Critical Introduction and for the city commonly used from the 1790s to the
Bibliography," Master's Thesis, Howard University, Civil War. Information kindly provided by Lila
1937. Such inconsistencies and shaky scholarship Fourhman-Shaull, assistant librarian, Historical
point up the need for a modern scholarly biography. Society of York County. Prof. Leroy Hopkins,
12. Neither Still's book nor other secondary Millersville University, informed me of Harper's
literature is clear as to whether Harper immediately work at the Smallwood School.
went to the WVatkins home upon her mother's death 16. Still, UndergroundRailroad,pp. 785-786.
or went to another, unspecified, aunt first. Foster, 17. Bacon, "'One Great Bundle of Humanity,"' pp.
A Brighter Coming Day, pp. 5-6 states that there 24-25; Julie Winch, "Philadelphia and the Other
was another aunt; William Still's account is Underground Railroad," PennsylvaniaMagazine of
ambiguous, UndergroundRailroad,p. 784. All other History and Biography 111 (January 1987):3-35;
accounts skirt the issue by jumping from the death BAP, 3:37-40; Still, The UndergroundRailroad, pp.
of Harper's mother-almost nothing is mentioned 783-785.
of her father-to her enrollment at the Watkins 18. "Speech by Sarah M. Douglass Delivered before
Academy in Baltimore. the Female Literary Society of Philadelphia Uune
13. William Watkins (1801-1858) led Baltimore's 1832]," inBAP, 3:116-117.
black community from the late 1820s to the 1840s. 19. Penelope Campbell, Maryland in Africa: The
He ministered to several black churches in the city Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857
and practiced medicine, but earned his most (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1971); Still,
enduring reputation by his early and persistent UndergroundRailroad, pp. 785-786.
opposition to slavery and American attempts to 20. Weekly Anglo-African, 30 July 1859, BAP

Pennsylvania History
 109

Microfilm 11:0883; Benjamin Quarles, Black 31 quoted; Ammons, "Lagacy Profile," p. 62;
Abolitionists (New York, NY: Oxford University Sherman, Invisible Poets, p. 64; Jackson, Long
Press, 1969), pp. 179, 233. Beginning, p. 267, went a step further and declared
21. The hand-written copy of "Freedom's Battle" I that from 1860 to 1864 Harper was "something of
read is undated and reads "By Miss Watkins." a recluse." Frances Smith Foster, perhaps Harper's
Banneker Institute Papers, Leon Gardiner best biographer, at first rejected the "retirement"
Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. theme but later characterized her marriage as
Reproduced with permission. "semiretirement from political life." Foster, A
22. Sherman, Invisible Poets, p. 64 quoted. Brighter Coming Day, p. 18 and "Frances E. W.
23. Ibid., p. 62; Quarles, BlackAbolitionists, pp. 75- Harper," in Afiican American Writers, ed., Valerie
76; Still, UndergroundRailroad, p. 788 quoted. Smith, Lea Baechler, A. Walton Litz (New York,
24. William S. McFeeley, Frederick Douglass (New NY: Scribner's 1991), p. 166.
York, NY: W W. Norton & Co., 1991), pp. 60-67. 39. Cheryl Walker, The NightingalesBurden: Women
25. McFeeley, Frederick Douglass, pp. 60-61. Poets and American Culture Before 1900
26. Still, UndergroundRailroad, p. 785 quoted. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982),
27. Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in p. 78.
the Free States, 1790-1860 (Chicago, IL: University 40. Frances Ellen Watkins [Harper] to Jane E.
of Chicago Press, 1961); Winch, Philadephia Black HitchcockJones, 21 September 1860, inBAP, 5:81-
Elite, pp. 86-87, 128, 138-139, 144-148, 150-15 1, 82.
208n.53. 41. Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood, pp. 86-87.
28. Frank J. Webb, The Garies and their Friends 42. Christian Recorder, 27 September 1862, BAP
(London, Eng., 1857, reprint, NewYork, NY: Arno Microfilm, 14:0511.
Press, 1969), p. 48. 43. Still, UndergroundRailroad, p. 796 quoted.
29. The Press, 30 April 1863. 44. Liberator, 11 August 1865, BAP Microfilm,
30. Bacon, "'One Great Bundle of Humanity'," 28; 16:0042.
Ammons, "Legacy Profile," p. 65 quoted. On the 45. For the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts see: Luis F.
effort to end Philadelphia's "Jim Crow" Emilio, A BraveBlack Regiment: History ofthe Fifty-
transportation system see: Philip S. Foner, Essays in FourthRegiment ofMassachusetts Volunteer Infantry,
Afro-American History (Philadelphia, PA: Temple 1863-1865(Boston: Boston Book Company, 1894,
University Press, 1978), pp. 19-76. reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Co., 1968);
31. Graham, Complete Poems, p. 10. Peter Burchard, One Gallant Rush: Robert Gould
32. Still, UndergroundRailroad, pp. 786-787; Foster, Shaw and His Brave Black Regiment (New York: St.
A BrighterComing Day p. 16 quoted. Martin's Press, 1965); Virginia M. Adams, ed., On
33. Still, UndergroundRailroad, pp. 786-787; the Altar of Freedom: A Black Soldier's Civil War
Bacon, "'One Great Bundle of Humanity'," p. 27. Lettersfrom the Front(Amherst, MA.: University of
.34. Bacon, "'One Great Bundle of Humanity'," p. Massachusetts Press, 1991); Russell Duncan, ed.,
29; Sherman, Invisible Poets, pp. 62-63; BAP, Blue Eyed Child ofFortune: The Civil War Letters of
4
:282n. 1; Foster, A Brighter Coming Day, pp. 10- ColonelRobert Gould Shaw (Athens, GA: University
11, 13, 44 quoted. of Georgia Press, 1992); Donald Yacovone, 'MVoice
35. Foster, A Brighter Coming Day, p. 17 quoted. of Thunder"' The Civil War Writings of George E.
36. Ammons, "Legacy Profile," p. 62 quoted. Stephens (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press,
37. Ibid.; Scheick, "Strategic Ellipsis," pp. 14-18. forthcoming); BAP 3:59 quoted.
38. Bacon, "'One Great Bundle of Humanity'," p. 46. The Press, 31 July 1863.

Volume 62, Number I *Winter 1995

 110 -

47. Ira Berlin, Joseph P Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland, Ladies Sanitary Commission Fair also in Boston.
eds., Freedom: A Documentary History of Liberator, 21 October, 9 December 1864.
Emancipation, 1861-1867: series 2 The Black 52. James Monroe Trotter, a member of the Fifty-
Military Experience (Cambridge, Eng. and New fifth Massachusetts Regiment, wrote "The Fifty-
York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. fourth at Wagner"-another unrecognized African-
14; Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War American poem-and barely mentioned Shaw. His
(Boston, MA., 1953, reprint, New York, NY: Da concern was the meaning of the regiment and its
Capo, 1989), pp. 20-21. charge at Battery Wagner for blacks. In part it reads:
48. See Stephen T. Riley, "AMonument to Colonel
Robert Gould Shaw," Proceedingsofthe Massachusetts Ay, noble men, dead and living, 0 "famous 54,"
HistoricalSociety 75 (1963): 27-38; Stephen J. In charge through deadly field, o'er fiery
Whitfield, "'Sacredin History andin Art: The Shaw ramparts then you bore
Memorial," New England Quarterly 60 (March A race's honor, its friends' deep hopes, a state's
1987): 3-27; Gary Scharnhorst, "From Soldier to free banner-
Saint: Robert Gould Shaw and the Rhetoric of These, in thy keeping, were not lost, but saved
Racial Justice," Civil War History 34 (December in glorious manner!
1988):308-322; New York Times, 17 December Boston Commonwealth, 8 December 1883.
1989. 53. See Don E. Fehrenbacher, The DredScott Case:
49. Boston Commonwealth, 30 October 1863. Its Significance in American Law andPolitics (New
50. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Poems 2 vols. (Boston, York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1978); BAP
MA and New York, NY: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 4:362-365.
1904), 2:205-208. 54. "Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting of the American
51. Lewis executed a bust ofShaw that was exhibited Anti-Slavery Society," in National Anti-Slavery
on 12 November 1864 at the Boston Sailor's Fair. Standard, 22 May 1858, BAPMicrofilm, 11:0231.
Bannister [many nineteenth-century sources 55. Foster, A Brighter ComingDao p. 45 quoted.
mistakenly refer to him as Edwin Bannister] painted 56. Anti-Slavery Bugle, 20 November 1858.
a portrait of Shaw, at the time valued at $200, which 57. WeeklyAnglo-African, 10 October 1863.
was displayed at the 18 October 1864 Colored