Snapshot 1866 – Slavery: A Wound on the Soul of a Nation…

Few institutions in human history have inflicted more suffering or revealed deeper moral failings than slavery. Its cruelty was evident to many, even in its own time, and voices of conscience spoke out with clarity and passion against it.

Frederick Douglass exposed the hypocrisy of those who justified such inhumanity in the name of religion:

“The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus.”

Abraham Lincoln, never one to shy away from blunt truths, offered this biting reflection:

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

William Lloyd Garrison cut to the heart of the injustice:

“The slave is doomed to toil, that others may reap the fruits.”

And Harriet Tubman, who risked everything to lead others to freedom, distilled its evil to its core:

“Slavery is theft — theft of a life, theft of work, theft of any opportunity to shape one’s own destiny.”

While President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1, 1863, marked a turning point, the road to slavery’s demise was long, brutal, and soaked in the blood of those who fought to end it. The institution did not go quietly—it clung on with all its bitter force until finally it was defeated, leaving behind a scar but also a renewed hope for the American promise.

This complex and painful chapter was not lost on poet William Cullen Bryant. In 1866, just a year after the Civil War’s end, he shared his reflections in a powerful poem published in the July issue of The Atlantic Monthly ^[1]. That poem, in its entirety, is presented below—a poignant reminder of what was endured, and what was overcome.