Part I

Messengers from the North

Drunkard, alas! I dread thy fate:

Thou art indeed a slave;

Thyself thou cannot save

From the sad bondage of thy state—

A bondage fraught with deeper wo

Than that ’neath which poor negroes bow.

—A. B. (untitled poem, 1835)

An essential condition of permanent prosperity and success for Republican Government in America, on the part of both its colored and white constituents, is sobriety as well as freedom.

—National Temperance Advocate (January 1873)