The Hasheesh, 1854

The Hasheesh

Leading up to the civil war, another war was brewing… The war between cannabis and cotton…

In this poem before the war in 1854, you can feel the war brewing…

The Hasheesh

Of all the orient lands can vaunt
Of marvels, with our own competing,
The strangest is the Hasheesh plant,
And what will follow on its eating.

What visions to the taster rise,
Of Dervish or of Almeh dances,
Of Eblis, or of Paradise,
Set all aglow with Houri glances.

The Mollah and the Christian dog
Clap the same pipe beneath their noses;
The Muezzin climbs the synagogue,
The Rabbi shakes his head at Moses.

The Arab by his desert well,
Sits choosing from some Caliph’s daughters,
And hears his single camel’s bell
Sound welcome to his legal quarters.

The Koran-reader makes complaint,
Of Shitan dancing on and off it;
The robber offers alms; the saint
Drinks tokay and blasphemes the prophet.

Such scenes that Eastern plant awakes,
But we have one ordained to beat it-
The Hasheesh of the West, that makes
Or fools, or knaves, of all who eat it.

It makes the merchant class with ware,
And other stock in trade, his fellow sinners;
And factory lords, with equal care,
Regard their spindles and their spinners.

The preacher eats, and straight appears
The Bible in a new translation;
Its angels, negro overseers,
And Heaven itself a snug plantation.

For seraph songs he takes the bark
A bay of blood-hounds northward setting;
The planter for a patriarch,
With servants of his own begetting.

The noisest Democrat, with ease,
It turns to Slavery’s parish beadle;
The shrewdest statesman eats, and sees
Due southward point the polar needle.

The man of peace, about whose dreams
The sweet millennial angels cluster,
Tastes the mad weed, and plots and schemes
A noisy Cuban filibuster.

The Judge partakes, and sits ere long
Upon his bench a railing blackguard;
Declares, off hand, that right is wrong,
And reads the ten commandments backward.

Oh, potent plant! So rare a taste
Has never Turk or Genteo gotten;
The hempen Hasheesh of the East,
Is powerless to our Western Cotton.

By John O. Whitmer

Green-Mountain freeman, June 08, 1854