{
 "id": "frances-ellen-watkins-harper/to-the-union-savers-of-cleveland",
 "title": "To the Union Savers of Cleveland",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Frances Ellen Watkins Harper",
 "poet_slug": "frances-ellen-watkins-harper",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poetry",
 "book_slug": null,
 "book_kind": "compilation",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1872,
  "venue": "William Still, The Underground Rail Road (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1872), page 764",
  "note": "Located in the scan on disk, printed in Still’s chapter on Harper under the headnote “On the return from Cleveland, Ohio, of a poor ill-fated slave girl under the Fugitive Slave Law.” and introduced as a sample of her work. First located printing, and it is certainly a reprint: the headnote places the poem’s occasion under the Fugitive Slave Law and therefore before 1865, more than seven years before this book. The original printing has not been located.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/undergroundrailr00stil"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/frances-ellen-watkins-harper_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/frances-ew-harper-poems-on-miscellaneous-subjects-1857",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsonmiscellan00harp",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/frances-ew-harper-poems-1871",
   "https://archive.org/details/poems01harp",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69249",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007491600",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69248",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100774124",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/frances-ew-harper-poems-full-text-1895",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100488369",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/frances-ew-harper-idylls-of-the-bible-1901",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100319488",
   "https://archive.org/details/historyofafrican00payn",
   "https://archive.org/details/WeeklyAngloAfricanI",
   "https://archive.org/details/sim_liberator_1858-05-14_28_20",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000500702",
   "https://archive.org/details/undergroundrailr00stil",
   "https://archive.org/details/frances-ellen-watkins-harper_sketches-of-southern-life-1872",
   "https://archive.org/details/25th-annual-report-of-the-board-of-managers-of-the-home-etc",
   "https://archive.org/details/frances-ellen-watkins-harper_light-beyond-the-darkness",
   "https://archive.org/details/ame-church-review-1900-04"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 44,
  "n_stanzas": 11,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 40,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Men of Cleveland, had a vulture",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sought a timid dove for prey,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Would you not, with human pity,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Drive the gory bird away?",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Had you seen a feeble lambkin,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shrinking from a wolf so bold,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Would ye not to shield the trembler,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In your arms have made its fold?",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But when she, a hunted sister,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stretched her hands that ye might save,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Colder far than Zembla’s regions",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was the answer that ye gave.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "On the Union’s bloody altar,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was your hapless victim laid;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Mercy, truth and justice shuddered,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But your hands would give no aid.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And ye sent her back to torture,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Robbed of freedom and of right.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Thrust the wretched, captive stranger.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Back to slavery’s gloomy night.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Back where brutal men may trample,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On her honor and her fame;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And unto her lips so dusky,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Press the cup of woe and shame.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There is blood upon your city,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dark and dismal is the stain;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And your hands would fail to cleanse it,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though Lake Erie ye should drain.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There’s a curse upon your Union,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fearful sounds are in the air;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "As if thunderbolts were framing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Answers to the bondsman’s prayer.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ye may offer human victims,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like the heathen priests of old;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And may barter manly honor",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For the Union and for gold.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But ye can not stay the whirlwind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When the storm begins to break;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And our God doth rise in judgment,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For the poor and needy’s sake.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And, your sin-cursed, guilty Union,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall be shaken to its base,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Till ye learn that simple justice,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is the right of every race.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}