1855
Larcom Wins Prize
In 1855, Lucy Larcom won a fifty-dollar gold piece as a first prize from the New England Emigrant Aid Society for her abolitionist song, Call to Kansas. Set to the tune of Stephen Foster’s Nelly Bly, the song encouraged abolitionist emigrants to move to Kansas. The song was printed on broadsides and cotton handkerchiefs and handed out at Free Soiler rallies.
Wheaton students held a “Kansas Meeting” on July 4th and passed a resolution favoring the abolition of slavery.
Read the lyrics to Larcom’s song below:
A Call To Kansas!
Tune: Nelly Bly
Nature’s honest men;
We will make the wilderness
Bud and bloom again.
Bring the sickle, speed the plow,
Turn the ready soil!
Freedom is the noblest pay
For the true man’s toil.
Ho, brothers! come, brothers!
Hasten all with me;
We’ll sing upon the Kansas plains
A song of liberty.
Father, haste! O’er the waste
Lies a pleasant land.
There your fireside’s altar-stones,
Fixed in truth, shall stand.
There your sons, brave and good,
Shall to freemen grow,
Clad in triple mail of right,
Wrong to overthrow.
Ho, brothers! come, brothers!
Hasten all with me;
We’ll sing upon the Kansas plains
A song of liberty!
Brother, come! Here’s a home
In the waiting West;
Bring the seeds of love and peace,
You who sow them best.