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Ah, Moses! hard it is to scan
These crooked providences,
Deducing from the wisest plan
The saddest consequences!
Strange that, in trampling as was meet
The nigger-men’s petition,
We sprang a mine beneath our feet
Which opened up perdition.

How goodly, Moses, was the game
In which we’ve long been actors,
Supplying freedom with the name
And slavery with the practice
Our smooth words fed the people’s mouth,
Their ears our party rattle;
We kept them headed to the South,
As drovers do their cattle.

But now our game of politics
The world at large is learning;
And men grown gray in all our tricks
State’s evidence are turning.
Votes and preambles subtly spun
They cram with meanings louder,
And load the Democratic gun
With abolition powder.

The ides of June! Woe worth the day
When, turning all things over,
The traitor Hale shall make his hay
From Democratic clover!
Who then shall take him in the law,
Who punish crime so flagrant?
Whose hand shall serve, whose pen shall draw,
A writ against that “vagrant”?

Alas! no hope is left us here,
And one can only pine for
The envied place of overseer
Of slaves in Carolina!
Pray, Moses, give Calhoun the wink,
And see what pay he’s giving!
We’ve practised long enough, we think,
To know the art of driving.

And for the faithful rank and file,
Who know their proper stations,
Perhaps it may be worth their while
To try the rice plantations.
Let Hale exult, let Wilson scoff,
To see us southward scamper;
The slaves, we know, are “better off
Than laborers in New Hampshire!”

Note 1. The book-establishment of the Free-Will Baptists in
Dover was refused the act of incorporation by the New Hampshire
Legislature, for the reason that the newspaper organ of that sect and
its leading preachers favored abolition.

Note 2. The senatorial editor of the Belknap Gazette all along
manifested a peculiar horror of “niggers” and “nigger parties.”

Note 3. The justice before whom Elder Storrs was brought for
preaching abolition on a writ drawn by Hon. M. N., Jr., of Pittsfield.
The sheriff served the writ while the elder was praying.

Note 4. “Papers and memorials touching the subject of slavery
shall be laid on the table without reading, debate, or reference.” So
read the gag-law, as it was called, introduced in the House by Mr.
Atherton.

Note 5. The Female Anti-Slavery Society, at its first meeting
in Concord, was assailed with stones and brickbats.