Frances Ellen Watkins Harper paints a picture both disturbing and illuminating in her poem, Bury Me in a Free Land, where even in death she opposes the tyranny of the American style of slavery. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper uses vivid imagery that bombards all the senses in her pleas to be buried in a land where slavery is no longer an issue and where all men and women are equally free. In the third and fourth stanzas, Harper describes in very few words the anguish, horror, pain and desperation of being forced to endure the extreme agony of living under a cruel taskmaster, namely the nineteenth-century American slaveholder before the war. of the Northern Aggression, how many Southerners viewed the war between the states of the union. Harper's depictions and descriptions throughout the poem reach a cumulative climax in the third and fourth stanzas, forcing the reader to see through tears the inhumane treatment of "coffle-gang" work crews and the agony of a mother as her children are torn away. her breasts (Harper 10). The rattling, scraping, groaning and shuffling could be heard along the road as the "coffle gang" made their way to the project in question to work under the scorching southern sun baking the tilled soil beneath their tired and worn feet (Harper 9-10). The visualization and assault on the auditory senses tugs and strains the reader's heartstrings forcing them to see and hear what is happening to those poor black souls whose pain and suffering linger until the grave. Oh, to be buried in a land free from slavery and hardship. Can you hear the cries of a mother who has lost her child? Terrible heartbreak afflicts the reader: “And the mother's cries of wild desperation / Arise… in the middle of the paper… their kin, however, their skin is a shade darker than theirs. Harper throughout the poem bombards the readers' senses and does more than tug at the heartstrings; plays a full orchestra to trap the reader's humanity; surely only Lucifer himself would be immune to the plea that resonates from one stanza to the next. Slavery is horrible and cruel, find deep within your heart the humanity and love of your fellow man to liberate the oppressed and allow all to live in a land of the free. Mrs. Harper saw her dream come true with the emancipation of slaves and the Fourteenth Amendment during her lifetime. Works Cited by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. “Bury me in a free land.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume A. Eds. Nina Baym and Robert S. Levine. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. 1649-1650. Press.