Worship Weblog
Friday, June 20, 2008
Christian History on Spirituals
From Christian History (as featured in a recent newsletter)
Militant abolitionist Thomas W. Higginson was the commander of the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first Union regiment made up of freed slaves. In his camps, his soldiers would break out into song, which Higginson wrote down and published in the Atlantic Monthly.
“These quaint religious songs were to the men more than a source of relaxation, they were a stimulus to courage and a tie to heaven,” he wrote.
“By these they could sing themselves, as had their fathers before them, out of the contemplation of their own low estate, into the sublime scenery of the Apocalypse. I remember that this minor-keyed pathos used to seem to me almost too sad to dwell upon, while slavery seemed destined to last for generations; but now that their patience has had its perfect work, history cannot afford to lose this portion of its record.”
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