THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

the poem can only make the briefest replies to her child’s disbelief. In the final stanza,
the mother confirms her child’s conclusions and completes the child’s socialization into
American political culture. 65
In “Looking at the Soldiers,” Chandler created a counter-history of the founding
of the United States. In the opening stanzas, the child describes the pageantry of the
Fourth of July parade. The drums, the trumpets, the soldiers, and the horses are, for the
child, a lesson in the history of events that “saw our country set free.” But the mother
reminds the child that liberty and revolution were “made in man’s blood.” More than
bloodshed, however, the mother is distressed at the hypocrisy of the American
Revolution:
Our country, my boy, as you tell me, is free,
But even that thought brings a sadness to me;
For less guilt would be hers, were her own fetter’d hand
Unable to loosen her slaves from their band.
Chandler rejected the mother who uncritically accepted patriotism; instead, she exposed
the contradiction of celebrating American independence while holding millions of slaves
in chains. Moreover, the abolitionist mother-historian in “Looking at the Soldiers” urged
her child to consider the different interpretations of revolution. The American colonists
revolted against Great Britain and their success was celebrated by subsequent
generations. If American slaves revolted, however, it would be considered rebellion and
lead to a much bloodier conclusion:
65 [Elizabeth Margaret Chandler], “What is a Slave, Mother?” in Juvenile Poems for the Use of
Free American Children of Every Complexion, ed. William Lloyd Garrison (Boston: Garrison and Knapp,
1835), 13-14. “What is a Slave, Mother?” was also printed in Lundy, Poetical Works, 70-71. See also De
Rosa, Domestic Abolitionism and Juvenile Literature, 96.
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