Frances Harper: Antislavery Poetry, Politics, and Rhetoric

Literary Analysis of "The Slave Mother" (1854). This poem, appearing in Harper's collection Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (first published in 1854, with revised editions in 1857 and 1874), solidified Harper's reputation as a poet. It was immensely popular, and she was regularly called upon to recite it. The poem takes up themes close to Harper's heart: motherhood, the ties between mother and child, and the horrors of slavery.

Metrical Structure and Narrative Tempo. Harper eschews the popular meter of iambic pentameter in favor of alternating lines of verse written in iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. The first two lines of the opening stanza are written in iambic trimeter, and thus they are read quickly: "Hear you that shriek? It rose / So wildly on the air." The reader is by this means plunged into the poem's narrative suspense, and emphasis is placed on these lines as conveying the central action around which the poem revolves.

Thematic Impact of Rhythm. As we continue to engage lines of alternating meter, we are carried along by the relatively quick tempo of the poem, our eyes falling down the page until we reach the final stanza, which concludes the narrative thus: "No marvel, then, these bitter shrieks / Disturb the listening air: / She is a mother, and her heart / Is breaking in despair." By moving us along so quickly, yet never relenting in the intensity of her message, Harper's use of meter works effectively with the meaning. For while we are briefly uplifted by the poem's imagery in the seventh stanza ("His love has been a joyous light / That o'er her pathway smiled, / A fountain gushing ever new, / Amid life's desert wild"), we are swiftly carried along the stream of the slave mother's despair.

Critical Discussions and Writing Prompts on "The Slave Mother". The following prompts facilitate deeper engagement with the text.
1. Critics such as J. Saunders Redding have argued that Harper's poems evince "errors of metrical construction which, missed when the poems are spoken, show up painfully on the printed page" (44). Considering the first two lines of the poem, which are written in a different alternating meter than the poem's remainder, write a paragraph defending Harper's use of meter in "The Slave Mother".

2. Though Harper's use of meter draws the reader's eye swiftly down the page, her metrical feet progress slowly enough to resemble natural speech patterns. Given Harper's use of this poem in her antislavery lectures, how might the speech rhythms of the poem have contributed to its power?

3. Consider the ways in which Harper's poem "The Slave Mother" may be compared to the characters Eliza Harris and Cassy in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Pay particular attention to chapters 7 and 34 in the Stowe novel.

Historical and Political Context of Harper's 1857 Address. This essay is a valuable statement of Harper's politics near the middle of the 19th century. It is not widely anthologized, nor widely read, yet it occurs at a crucial moment in the history of African Americans. In 1857 the United States found itself in the throes of financial panic, thereby placing utmost importance on the institution of slavery as an economic engine. Slavery formed the backbone of the nation's burgeoning industrial revolution, and any attempt to abolish it was seen as a great threat. This was, in addition to the fear of race mixing and racial equality, a matter that motivated slaveholders to block all attempts at emancipating the slaves.

Legal and Legislative Milestones. The position of slaveholders seemed to be supported by the 1857 ruling in the now-infamous Dred Scott case. The Compromise of 1850 had sought to assuage the sentiments of Southern slaveholding states, establishing a balance of power between North and South through the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. However, the compromise proved an insufficient temporary measure; it set the slaveholding South in a mode of great vigilance and political posturing, just as it encouraged Northern abolitionists to battle more diligently for the eradication of slavery. The Dred Scott decision, which occurred shortly before Harper gave this essay as a speech, added fuel to the sectional tensions, and it may rightly be said, furthered the nation along the path to civil war.

The Dred Scott Decision and Its Aftermath. Dred Scott, a slave who had been taken by his master from the slave state of Missouri to the free state of Illinois and then again to Missouri, sued for his freedom in a Missouri court. He based his case upon the fact of his temporary residence in a free territory; because he had lived on free soil, he asserted that he had a right to liberty. The case slowly made its way from the Missouri court system to the United States Supreme Court. It was there that in a decision rendered with the support of seven Supreme Court justices (two of the jurists dissented), Chief Justice Roger B. Taney declared that African Americans were not citizens and thus had no legal recourse to the justice system. At the same time the justices nullified the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had forbidden slavery in that part of the Louisiana Purchase north of the latitude 36°30', except in Missouri. It is this infamous decision of the nation's highest court that Harper references when she quotes Taney, writing, "You are a negro [sic]; you have no rights which white men are bound to respect."

Economic Critique and Abolitionist Alliances. This essay is as remarkable for its emphasis upon the failing economy of the 1850s as for its critique of the North. Harper's economic analysis of slavery is of a piece with that put forward by the abolitionist orator Frederick Douglass. His masterpiece of oration "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" (1852) foreshadows Harper's words. Moreover, her critique of the North seems to have been conditioned by the thought that it might be morally profitable for the North to separate itself, politically, from the South; in essence, Harper called for the "disunion" of North and South. During summer 1857 Harper, along with her friend the 19th-century African-American autobiographer, novelist, playwright, and abolitionist William Wells Brown, would present her ideas on "disunion" before a convention assembled to debate the point.

Comparative and Historical Writing Prompts. The following prompts encourage critical analysis of Harper's 1857 address.
1. Read Douglass's essay "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Compare this essay, which Douglass read before the Ladies Antislavery Society of Rochester, New York, in 1852, to Harper's essay. Comment on the historical period and the audiences to whom the essays were delivered. Give some attention to rhetorical devices and effectiveness.

2. Research the Dred Scott decision, and write an essay that analyzes Harper's speech through the prism of this historical judicial proceeding.