• Freedom’s first champion in our fettered land!
    Nor politician nor base citizen
    Could gibbet thee, nor silence, nor withstand.
    Thy trenchant and emancipating pen
    The patriot Lincoln snatched with steady hand,
    Writing his name and thine on parchment white,
    ’Midst war’s resistless and ensanguined flood;
    Then held that proclamation high in...

  •    “Some time afterward, it was reported to me by the city officers that they had ferreted out the paper and its editor; that his office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a few very insignificant persons of all colors.”
    —Letter of H. G. OTIS.    

    IN a small chamber, friendless and unseen,
      Toiled o’er his types one poor,...