Published in the February 23, 1861 Anti-Slavery Bugle and then reprinted in the March 8, 1861 Liberator, Frances Harper's “To the Cleveland Union-Savers” has much to teach us about the content, approaches, and reception (then and now) of nineteenth-century American women's poetry of slavery and abolition. The poem, whose final stanza opens this essay, only began to garner scholarly attention following its inclusion in a handful of anthologies at the end of the twentieth century. Its neglect probably came partly from many twentieth-century critics’ use of modernist and/or post-modernist aesthetics as the sole measures of poetic quality. If they knew of the poem's existence, such critics would likely have dismissed Harper's pronounced metrics and sometimes-expected rhymes – as well as her Protestant, sentimental, reform-centered ethos, images, and arguments – even though many of her nineteenth-century readers and listeners valued exactly these features. Its neglect may also be partly attributed to a hierarchy of genres: “To the Cleveland Union-Savers” works within traditions of occasional and podium poetry – both dismissed by many twentieth-century critics. This poem about the rendition of “hunted sister” Sara Lucy Bagby is also, of course, clearly political and topical – modes many twentieth-century critics assumed were opposed, in simple binary, to artistic creation. Even those who valued select political or topical poetry might have dismissed women poets – and especially women poets of color. Further, the poem was “newspaper verse”: it was never published in a “major” periodical venue in the nineteenth century, did not appear in book form until after the Civil War, and even then appeared in a work of history (William Still's 1872 The Underground Rail Road) rather than a collection of poetry, making it a likely candidate for being labeled as of “historical interest” only – a New Critical kiss of death. If they knew of the poem, many modern critics might simply have ignored it because of the supposed ephemerality of its original publication venue; of course, many may never have seen the poem simply because they failed to look at such venues.