Bury Me in a Free Land

By Frances Ellen Watkins

Annotations by celia Hawley/JB

Childe Hassam. *Colonial Graveyard at Lexington*. Pastel drawing, 1891, Smithsonian American
Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.

You may make my grave wherever you will,
   In a lowly vale or a lofty hill;
You may make it among the earth's humblest graves,
   But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not sleep if around my grave
   I hear the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
   Would make it a place of fearful gloom.

I could not rest if I heard the tread
   Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother's shriek of wild despair
   Rise like a curse on the trembling air.

I could not rest if I heard the lash
   Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast
   Like trembling doves from their parent nest.

Artist unknown. *A Slave Auction in Virginia.* Print, 1861, New York Public Library Digital Collections.

I'd shudder and start if I heard the bay
   Of the bloodhounds seizing their human prey;
If I heard the captive plead in vain
   As they tightened afresh his galling chain.

If I saw young girls, from their mothers' arms
   Bartered and sold for their youthful charms
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
   My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.

I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
   Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave.
    Where none calls his brother a slave.

I ask no monument proud and high
   To arrest the gaze of passers by;
All that my spirit yearning craves,
   Is—bury me not in the land of slaves.—

Charles Nicolas Ransonnette. *A Cemetery in a Village*. Graphite, brush and wash, pen and ink on tissue
paper, c. 1840-1870, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY.

**Watkins, Frances Ellen. “Bury me in a free land.” The Anti-Slavery Bugle 14, no. 13 (November 1858): 3.**

Contexts

The burial of slaves and formerly enslaved people is another area of large-scale erasure and invisibility and is a concern for historians, researchers, and descendants. There are efforts in many locations to restore cemeteries and burial places, in Mount Vernon, near Clemson University, and Rhode Island, to mention just a few.

The Guardian’s poem of the week article from February 2017 breaks down the poem and touches on Harper’s background. The Archives of Maryland has a more extensive biography and additional resources.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

coffle: A train of people or animals fastened together; spec. a gang of slaves chained and driven along together.

shambles: 2. In Old English, a table or counter for exposing goods for sale, counting money, etc. A table or stall for the sale of meat. 3. A place where meat is sold, a flesh- or meat-market. 4. The place where animals are killed for meat; a slaughterhouse. 5. A place of carnage or wholesale slaughter; a scene of blood. In more general use, a scene of disorder or devastation; a ruin; a mess.

Resources for Further Study

A biography of Harper from a House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College
The text of Harper’s 1893 speech in Chicago before The World’s Congress of Representative Women, titled “Women’s Political Future.”
Smithsonian American Art Museum‘s biography of Child Hassam with related book resources

Contemporary Connections

An excerpt from Harper’s poem is inscribed on a wall of the Contemplative Court, a space for reflection in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. The excerpt reads: “I ask no monument, proud and high to arrest the gaze of the passers-by; all that my yearning spirit craves is bury me not in a land of slaves.”