Fanny Jackson Coppin

Poem written and read by Fanny Jackson Coppin for her 1865 graduating class commencement ceremony, reproduced in a 1964 Oberlin Observer.

      Coppin attended Oberlin during the four years that the American Civil War took place. She read her poem “From the Anglo-African to the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Volunteers” to the Union army’s second African American infantry unit months after the Emancipation Proclamation. Coppin also read “The Grandeur of Our Triumph” at her Oberlin class commencement as class poet in 1865, the year the Civil War ended. These two poems, which have not received attention in the archives, underscore Coppin’s sentiments on the time in which she lived. Likewise, they reflect Coppin’s interest in poetry, a creative medium that had been first really popularized by the proclaimed African American poet Phillis Wheatley, as well as the medium’s growing prominence in the 19th century. As a highly educated African American woman, Coppin used poetry as a political maneuver during a politically unstable historical moment to make claims about America. Coppin’s poems reveal—through her use of poetic structure, rhetoric, and language—her feelings about the involvement of African Americans in infantry positions during the Civil War, her sentiments toward education opportunities in America, and America as a nation, specifically a post-Emancipation Proclamation nation.

      In the 19th century, African American women turned to creative writing and other creative endeavors as a means to create community and spread culture. At this time, opportunities for African American women were narrow and few. Faced with both sexist and racist expectations, African American women “reacted to the pervasive exclusionary policies of the broader white society by promoting an ideology and strategy of self-help while also responding creatively to the stifling gender conventions within black communities.”[v] African American women who did not have platforms from institutions like colleges often turned to creative non-fiction to express their experiences.[vi] Often, these took the form of friendship albums. Friendship albums were handmade books that African American women compiled by passing the book off to friends and acquaintances, who would contribute to the book in some way.[vii] They mostly contained poems, illustrations, and antislavery writings.[viii] These albums were emblems of relative prestige and intellect, and the women who partook in these activities “recognized that this genre of writing reflected their commitments to respectability, education, and social uplift.”[ix] Those part of friendship album culture sought to “develop their moral, spiritual, intellectual, and artistic selves.”[x] The albums were not overtly political in content, but their existence reflects the concept of self-making, which was inherently political for the African American women who made their creative voices known. Whether or not Coppin herself was part of the friendship album community, the poems she wrote reflect the significance of that mode of creative writing at the time.

      Coppin’s recitation of this first poem in 1863 to the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Volunteers highlights her awareness of the historic moment as well as her desire to uplift African Americans. In her 1863 poem, Coppin demonstrates her philosophy regarding opportunities for African Americans that is reflected in her later work. The infantry volunteer unit to whom she orated her poem was the second of its type in the Civil War. Though many abolitionists like Frederick Douglass had advocated for the inclusion of African Americans in Civil War troops, before the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans had been barred from serving in the U.S. army because some feared a slave rebellion. This unit of infantrymen was established the same year Coppin wrote this poem, the same year—a month after—the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. African Americans’ inclusion in the army signified a shift in American society as opportunities began to open up for newly emancipated African Americans. These volunteers’ participation in the war underscores a hypocrisy that Coppin makes sure to emphasize in her poem: these infantrymen were people whose bodies up until a few months prior had been seen as inhuman objects to brutalize. The Second Confiscation and Militia Act (1862) allowed President Lincoln to “employ as many persons of African descent as he may deem necessary and proper for the suppression of rebellion… in such a manner as he may judge best for the public welfare,” and thus utilized these peoples’ bodies to fight for a cause that their oppressors had created in the first place.[xi] The parallels between the experiences of Coppin’s audience and her personal philosophies regarding equal opportunities for African Americans point to Coppin’s ideologies. That she used her experiences in higher education as a way to motivate this regiment underscores her role as a Race Woman. Coppin understood the importance of the historical moment in which she lived and used her position as an educated black woman to write a creative piece that would inspire those fighting for a cause to which she was closely related.

Poem written and read by Fanny Jackson Coppin for the 54th Mass. Infantry Volunteers, published in the Lorain County News, 1863.

      While the Christian language Coppin uses in her 1863 poem reflects American sentiments about “divine retribution” in war, Coppin also makes a point to highlight the hypocrisy of American society and politics. Coppin writes “God’s ways are just,” and stresses that faith in God will get them through what is to come.[xii] She aims to energize the troop, and praises them for offering their bodies to fight for a country that so very recently denied them any liberties at all. She thus highlights the historical significance of this regiment. She condemns the hypocrisy of white Americans who used African Americans as “‘chattles’” and now enlist them to fight in a war that began because of an institution white Americans started.[xiii] She tells the troop to “Fling out to the free winds your banner of Right,” emphasizing the historical context: this regiment of black soldiers signified black men’s newly-granted rights as declared by the Emancipation Proclamation.[xiv] She ends the poem with religious fervor: “Tho’ millions assail ye, ye fear not their might;/… For God will go with ye--His word has been spoken,/ His gleaming blade never in battle was broken./ With him as your leader, your cause will fail never,/ ‘Sic itur ad astra’--your watchword forever!”[xv] She focuses on religion and piety as the main source of power behind success in battle. The Latin phrase “‘Sic itur ad astra’” means “thus one journeys to the stars.”[xvi] Coppin’s use of this phrase not only highlights the classical education she got at Oberlin, but also underscores her imperative as a Race Woman to pave new paths for and advise other African Americans to attain greatness. 

      In “The Grandeur of Our Triumph,” Coppin uplifts Oberlin’s class of 1865 and questions the history and legacy of America. In the very first line Coppin questions what America’s “triumph” really is: she highlights the irony of this self-proclaimed grand nation when she says “Is the grandeur of our triumph / The Republic’s preservation, / That her name is not a byword / In the mouth of every nation?”[xvii] Coppin admonishes America for its “preservation” of its Republic despite the brutal institution it had utilized for hundreds of years. She asks if the “grandeur of our triumph” is America’s ability to, through the Emancipation Proclamation, virtually erase the history of African American enslavement.[xviii] “Surely not,” Coppin writes.[xix] In this poem she acknowledges the triumph of the nation as being the bodies of the soldiers who volunteered their lives to fight against slavery. In her acknowledgement of the significance of the bodies that fought, Coppin also praises the African American soldiers who risked their lives to fight for a better future. Coppin highlights two Confederate victory battles when she mentions Bull Run and Richmond, “o’er outnumbered slain we wept,” but then works to uplift again when she says that in the trenches where the sain lay, “greener grows the turf, and sweeter / Bloom the wild flowers there today.”[xx] Here she takes a brutal image and creates a newer, beautiful and poetic one where the bodies of those who sacrificed their lives literally enrich the land they fought for. This is a prime example of Coppin’s work to uplift a situation out of terror and into beauty. When Coppin says, “Then came the days of fasting, / When our country bowed her head, / While in sackcloth and in ashes / She sat and mourned her dead. / For her dead and not her sins,” she underscores the fact that the Civil War and its casualties, while aimed to end slavery, actually distracted from the “sins” of America’s past.[xxi] This poem aims to highlight the proximity of slavery to this seeming “triumph” of a American military feat. While the Union’s success was triumphant, Coppin makes sure to underscore the fact that this war shouldn’t be labeled solely as such because the history surrounding it is so rife with hypocrisies and blatant inhumanity.[xxii] She describes enslavement as a “stubborn sin which kept us / Under heaven’s avenging rod,” which refers to the Christian links Americans often made when justifying slavery.[xxiii] Coppin then seems to claim that with the end of the Civil War came a sort of revival of religious sentiments. This is a continuation of the concept of divine retribution that Coppin referred to in her poem to the 54th infantry unit. She ties in images of the river Jordan and effectively paints America as a nation “Baptized anew in freedom’s name.”[xxiv] She says that the Lord’s arrival made the “foeman” flee “like leaves before the whirlwind,” and concludes that “...the grandeur of our triumph, / Is the glory of the Lord,” thus giving ultimate power to God.[xxv] 

      Coppin’s focus on the Lord’s glory and the power religion had over the outcome of the Civil War reflects a common sentiment from the time: that divine retribution and God’s “glory” would prevail and help the right-side win. It is interesting that Coppin did not so overtly condemn America for its history, but poetically and artfully called in to question the salience of American glory or patriotism. Coppin demonstrates her awareness of the political and social climate of the time in both of her poems, as she simultaneously rings the praises of the people who sacrificed their bodies for the War and condemns the nation as one that put Americans in this situation in the first place. The parallel between her graduating class’ time at Oberlin and the occurrence of the Civil War is also significant to note. Coppin wrote and recited poems at the start of the Civil War and at its end. Her poems showcase her extraordinary intellectual involvement during a historically significant time; they reflect a popular medium of expression and raise issues with current events from the time. These poems, which bookend Coppin’s time as an Oberlin student, underscore the outcome of what happens when a driven woman, given the opportunity to educate herself, uses her education to better the lives and intellects of other African Americans. As a woman active during a significant moment of racial politics in American history, Fanny Jackson Coppin certainly made her creative and intellectual voice heard through her poetry.

[i] Stephanie Y. Evans, Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2008): 80.

[ii] Evans, Black Women, 78.

[iii] Linda M. Perkins, "Heed Life's Demands: The Educational Philosophy of Fanny Jackson Coppin." The Journal of Negro Education 51, no. 3 (Summer 1982): 182.

[iv] Evans, Black Women, 79. 

[v]  Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, "Black Women Historians from the Late 19th Century to the Dawning of the Civil Rights Movement," The Journal of African American History 89, no. 3 (Summer 2004): 242.

[vi] Dagbovie, "Black Women Historians,” 243.

[vii] Jasmine Nichole Cobb, "'Forget Me Not': Free Black Women and Sentimentality," MELUS 40, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 28.

[viii] Cobb, "'Forget Me Not,'” 29. 

[ix] Ibid.

[x] Cobb, “‘Forget Me Not,’” 30.

[xi] Sanford B. Hunt, "The Negro as a Soldier," The Anthropological Review 7, no. 24 (January 1869): 41.

[xii]  Fanny Jackson Coppin. “From the Anglo-African to the 54th Mass. Volunteers,” Lorain County News, June 10, 1863.

[xiii] Ibid.

[xiv] Ibid.

[xv] Ibid.

[xvi] Ibid.

[xvii]  Fanny Jackson Coppin. “The Grandeur of Our Triumph,” 1865.

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Ibid.

[xxi] Ibid.

[xxii] Ibid.

[xxiii] Ibid.

[xxiv] Ibid.

[xxv] Ibid.