And ye sent her back to torture,
    Robbed of freedom and of right. 
  Thrust the wretched, captive stranger. 
    Back to slavery’s gloomy night.

  Back where brutal men may trample,
    On her honor and her fame;
  And unto her lips so dusky,
    Press the cup of woe and shame.

  There is blood upon your city,
    Dark and dismal is the stain;
  And your hands would fail to cleanse it,
    Though Lake Erie ye should drain.

  There’s a curse upon your Union,
    Fearful sounds are in the air;
  As if thunderbolts were framing,
    Answers to the bondsman’s prayer.

  Ye may offer human victims,
    Like the heathen priests of old;
  And may barter manly honor
    For the Union and for gold.

  But ye can not stay the whirlwind,
    When the storm begins to break;
  And our God doth rise in judgment,
    For the poor and needy’s sake.

  And, your sin-cursed, guilty Union,
    Shall be shaken to its base,
  Till ye learn that simple justice,
    Is the right of every race.

Mrs. Harper took the deepest interest in the war, and looked with extreme anxiety for the results; and she never lost an opportunity to write, speak, or serve the cause in any way that she thought would best promote the freedom of the slave.  On the proclamation of General Fremont, the passages from her pen are worthy to be long remembered: 

“Well, what think you of the war?  To me one of the most interesting features is Fremont’s Proclamation freeing the slaves of the rebels.  Is there no ray of hope in that?  I should not wonder if Edward M. Davis breathed that into his ear.  His proclamation looks like real earnestness; no mincing the matter with the rebels.  Death to the traitors and confiscation of their slaves is no child’s play.  I hope that the boldness of his stand will inspire others to look the real cause of the war in the face and inspire the government with uncompromising earnestness to remove the festering curse.  And yet I am not uneasy about the result of this war.  We may look upon it as God’s controversy with the nation; His arising to plead by fire and blood the cause of His poor and needy people.  Some time since Breckinridge, in writing to Sumner, asks, if I rightly remember, What is the fate of a few negroes to me or mine?  Bound up in one great bundle of humanity our fates seem linked together, our destiny entwined with theirs, and our rights are interwoven together.”

Finally when the long-looked-for Emancipation Proclamation came, although Mrs. Harper was not at that time very well, she accepted an invitation to address a public meeting in Columbus, Ohio, an allusion to which we find in a letter dated at Grove City, O., which we copy with the feeling that many who may read this volume will sympathize with every word uttered relative to the Proclamation: