New England migrants wrote songs celebrating their efforts to save Kansas for freedom. John Greenleaf Whittier was an important nineteenth-century poet and fervent abolitionist. He wrote the words for this song, which was often performed as emigrant parties left New England for the territory. You can listen to the song here.
THE KANSAS EMIGRANT SONG.
BY J. G. WHITTIER.
Tune. . . . . . . . . Auld Lang Syne.
We cross the prairie as of old,
The pilgrims crossed the sea,
To make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free.
Chorus—
The homestead of the free, my boys,
The homestead of the free,
To make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free.
We go to rear a wall of men
On Freedom’s Southern line,
And plant beside the cotton tree,
The rugged Northern pine!
Chorus.
We’re flowing from our native hills
As our free rivers flow;
The blessing of our motherland
Is on us as we go.
Chorus.
We go to plant her common schools
On distant prairie swells,
And give the Sabbaths of the wild
The music of her bells.
Chorus.
Upbearing, like the ark of old,
The Bible in our van,
We go to test the truth of God
Against the fraud of man.
Chorus.
No pause, nor rest, save where the streams
That feed the Kansas run,
Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon
Shall flout the setting sun!
Chorus.
We’ll sweep the prairie as of old
Our fathers swept the sea,
And make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!
Chorus.
Source: Territorial Kansas Online: 1854–1861, last modified September 12, 2013, www.territorialkansasonline.org.
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