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The Anti-slavery Harp: A Collection of Songs for Anti-slavery Meetings cover

The Anti-slavery Harp: A Collection of Songs for Anti-slavery Meetings

Chapter 26: THE FUGITIVE SLAVE TO THE CHRISTIAN.
By William Wells Brown
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About This Book

A compilation of abolitionist songs and lyric pamphlets intended for anti-slavery gatherings, offering moral appeals, narratives of suffering, and calls to collective action. Poems dramatize the anguish of enslaved mothers, the fate of separated families, and the experiences of fugitives guided by the North Star, while urging political and religious solidarity against slavery. Several pieces adapt their words to familiar popular airs to facilitate communal singing, and the collection blends emotional testimony, exhortation, and patriotic imagery to mobilize audiences for emancipation.

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE TO THE CHRISTIAN.

The fetters galled my weary soul—
A soul that seemed but thrown away;
I spurned the tyrant’s base control,
Resolved at last the man to play:—
The hounds are baying on my track;
O Christian! will you send me back?
I felt the stripes, the lash I saw,
Red, dripping with a father’s gore;
And worst of all their lawless law,
The insults that my mother bore!
The hounds are baying on my track,
O Christian! will you send me back?
Where human law o’errules Divine,
Beneath the sheriff’s hammer fell
My wife and babes,—I call them mine,—
And where they suffer, who can tell?
The hounds are baying on my track,
O Christian! will you send me back?
I seek a home where man is man,
If such there be upon this earth,
To draw my kindred, if I can,
Around its free, though humble hearth.
The hounds are baying on my track,
O Christian! will you send me back?