Antislavery Songs

In the June 24, 1842, issue of The Liberator, a seminary student suggested taking August 1—the anniversary of emancipation in Britain—as a date for abolitionists to celebrate annually. The celebration should be in the form of picnics, which would begin with "declamations, dialogues, songs, and hymns in meetinghouse or hall." A pastor seconded the idea in the same issue, calling for "songs and anthems and shouts of gladness. It does the heart of man good to huzza for freedom … We must have music—joyful noises, shouts, and long and loud huzzas" (Studley 1943, p. 567).

The August 1 picnics were to be a special affair, but the idea of opening up antislavery gatherings with song was by no means new. This was already an established practice by the 1840s, in both formal and informal gatherings. While traditional hymns may have been used in the beginning, eventually special topical songs were composed for the occasion. Pamphlets such as Antislavery Hymns (1834), The Antislavery Harp (1848), and others were popular among antislavery activists. In almost all cases, such hymns were written by white authors—sometimes assuming a black narrative voice, thus producing a vision of slavery as envisioned by (often elite) northern whites. Sheet music was very popular at that time, much of it in the same vein of white writers assuming a black persona, although usually to romanticize slavery; sometimes, though, it condemned slavery and romanticized the slave. At any rate, as historian Caroline Moseley notes, "No genteel home was complete without music." She points out, however, that the average antislavery hymn, "being rhetorical and didactic, is simply not very singable" (Moseley 1984, p. 4). She argues that such songs were meant more for the public meeting than the private parlor. Whether that assertion is true or not, there is no denying that the pathos invoked in many of the songs were designed to tug mightily at the heartstrings—those of the mostly white believers in the cause, as well as potential white converts to it. One song, for example—found in The Antislavery Harp collection—tells the story of a blind slave boy. "Come back to me, Mother!" the little boy plaintively wails, for his cruel master, not wanting to be burdened with an unprofitable piece of property, has sold the child away for one dollar. Other examples, these from William Lloyd Garrison's (1805–1879) 1834 collection, include the following excerpts:

                       Hymn 2  
     Hark to the clank! What means that sound?
     'Tis slavery shakes its chains!
     Man driving man in fetters bound,—
     And this where freedom reigns!

                       Hymn 7  
   Christians—boast not the name you bear,
     While you that sacred name deprave;
     Oh! Hear a suppliant brother's prayer—
     In mercy spare the kneeling slave!—
     Dare not to mock your Saviour's name,
     By actions with which misery blends;
     What you profess by works proclaim,
    And be the Negro's guiding friends;
     Nor them from home and kindred tear,
     And with a lawless curse pursue;
     In pity hear, in mercy spare,
     Lest heaven its mercy turn from you.

Garrison himself admitted in his preface to the Antislavery Hymns collection that some of the songs were lengthy, wordy, and difficult to sing. He recommended, in such cases, to read them aloud instead. Their message was the important thing. Garrison (1834) presented them as "a judicious selection of Hymns, descriptive of the wrongs and sufferings of our slave population, and calculated to impress upon the minds of those who read them, or commit them to memory, or hear them sung, a deep sense of their obligations to assist in undoing every burden, breaking every yoke, and setting every captive free."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown, William Wells, ed. The Antislavery Harp: A Collection of Songs for Antislavery Meetings. Boston: B. Marsh, 1848.

Garrison, William Lloyd, ed. Antislavery Hymns, for the Use of Friends of Emancipation. Boston: Garrison and Knapp, 1834.

Moseley, Caroline. "'When Will Dis Cruel War be Ober?': Attitudes toward Blacks in Popular Songs of the Civil War." American Music 2, no. 3 (Autumn 1984): 1-26.

Studley, Marian H. "An 'August First' in 1844." The New England Quarterly 16, no. 4 (December 1943): 567-577.

                                         Troy D. Smith