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The address "ye cowards" raises questions about audiences imagined and actual. Are the imagined addressees a number of formerly enslaved African Americans, like the "humble-minded few" enjoined to sing in line 5, or does the writer from the Northern free state of New Jersey brand all freed people "cowards hitherto?" If the latter is the case, "H. M." ignores the historical realities of self-emancipation, resistance, and revolution—moments before citing a Revolutionary precedent (see note to "For death or liberty" below). "Hitherto" (until this time, up to now) is also problematic; when is the poem's "now?" The
The juxtaposition of the address "ye cowards hitherto" and the quotation "For death or liberty" implies that (male) slaves came into the possession of their Revolutionary heritage as free men and soldiers. The poem celebrates militant resistance to racial oppression as an agent of transformation; at the same time, it seems to draw on contemporary racial stereotypes that led many Northern commentators to debate whether African American men would or could stand fire.