To the States

by Walt Whitman

To the States was published in Whitman's landmark collection, Leaves of Grass (1855).

An illustration for the story To the States by the author Walt Whitman — Frederic Edwin Church, After Attack on Fort Sumter, 1860

To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist
      much, obey little,
  Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
  Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever
      afterward resumes its liberty.

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