Slave Spirituals and the Southern Environment

by Damon Parker

As the Union army made headway in Confederate states a curious phenomenon occurred. Slaves would find their way to the army, seeking freedom and refuge. Around these army encampments, hundreds of slave refugee camps sprang up. These camps eventually drew abolitionists, relief agencies, and Christian missionaries from the north, brought to the South by a desire to help, educate and Christianize the now free slaves.[1] One such camp appeared in the region of Port Royal, South Carolina after the Union army captured the Port Royal sound and occupied the surrounding area. James Miller McKim, a minister, abolitionist, and president of the Port Royal Relief Society, travelled to the camp along with his daughter Lucy. She spent much of her time listening to the singing of freed slaves and attempted to write down these sons.[2] Lucy McKim, who soon would marry the son of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, eventually combined her efforts with those made by Frances Allen and Charles Ware, producing Slave Songs of the United States which was published in 1867. The book, which contains 136 songs, is the oldest and most complete record of slave spirituals.

Slave Songs of the United States is a window into the spiritual practices of slaves in the 1860’s. While primary sources that deal with enslaved people in America are fraught with difficulties, Slave Songs presents a unique opportunity to “hear” directly from slaves. However, what follows is not an attempt to simply review these songs. Rather, using the lens of environmental history combined with Biblical and Theological studies, I will plumb the depth of these songs to surface the interplay of circumstance, spirituality, and environment that created a unique religiosity.

Upon arrival in the United States, African slaves encountered not only the horrific realities of chattel slavery, but a whole new culture. They served masters who spoke English and toiled with slaves who spoke a variety of languages. They brought their own religious beliefs, but encountered a culture dominated by Christianity. On rice, tobacco and cotton plantations, African slaves blended African rituals with American Christianity to forge unique religious communities that brought comfort to daily life and held out hope for freedom.[3] What role did the environment of the Southern United States play in the formation of enslaved Africans’ religious thought and practice in the antebellum American South?

Unfortunately, extensive work on the intersection of environment and slave religiosity does not exist. While there is a definitive rise in placing the slave narrative front and center when studying the antebellum era, this has not resulted in significant scholarship on the topic at hand. Work is being done on plantation and environment, primarily in the field of black ecology. Katherine McKittrick summarizes much of this work and points toward potential future directions. However, the emphasis is on the role of plantation economy in contributing to the present climate and ecological crisis, and the need to view slave ecological resistance as part of any future solutions.[4] This is good and important work yet does not inform our subject significantly. There are also efforts to use archaeological recoveries of slave areas on plantations to further our understanding of slave life. Public history has benefited from this work. But there is extraordinarily little that combines plantations and their surrounding environment with the centrality of spirituality, faith, and religious expression among slaves.

Part of the problem may be the inability or unwillingness to parse the nuanced differences between slave theology and white American theology. Historians recognize the drastic circumstantial distinctions between the life of a slave and a slave owner or even just a free white person. Along with that, work has been done on the development of slave religiosity drawing on African pan-theistic roots combined with American Christianity.[5] Yet there is still a need to delve into the fine particulars of slave religiosity that made it a vibrant and necessary part of enslaved African communities in America. The environment around plantations, which appears over and over as part of black spirituals, gives one such opportunity to see these distinctions.

Slave spirituals themselves grew out of African spirituality and musicality combining with American white Christianity. However, this was all melded together in the furnace of chattel slavery. In his study of slave communities in the All-Saints Parish of South Carolina, Charles Joyner describes this “remarkable cultural transformation: from a diversity of African beliefs and multiplicity of African rites and practices to a distinctive Afro-Christianity that voiced the slaves’ deepest ancestral values as they responded to a new and constricting environment.”[6] We see this in the spirituals as they are a work of community intended to inspire unity and commonality. This was distinctly different from the world of white American Christianity with its various denominations and theological controversies.

The spirituals were not written by a theologian sitting in a library or minister in a church vestibule. They grew out of community and were group compositions, slowly changing and morphing as time and place required. Ware, McKim, and Garrison rued their inability to find the “poet” of any of these songs.^[7] What underlies this is the authors’ myopia; they could not see beyond how white people create music and theology. They were looking for a singular poet. These songs did not belong to a lone writer, but rather to an extremely specific community. White Christians did not need their church hymnody to create a community as they had the commonality of family, country, state, and town, but slaves thrown together from various parts of Africa, bereft of many or all familial ties, required it.

Perhaps no one shed more light on the development of a distinct slave religiosity than W.E.B. Dubois. Tracing the transformation of nature-worship in Africa into Black American Christianity, Dubois takes special notice of spirituals as emblematic of the whole enterprise.  

“The Music of Negro religion is that plaintive rhythmic melody, with its touching minor cadences, which, despite caricature and defilement, still remains the most original and beautiful expression of human life and longing yet born on American soil. Sprung from the African forests, where its counterpart can still be heard, it was adapted, changed, and intensified by the tragic soul-life of the slave, until, under the stress of law and whip, it became the one true expression of a people's sorrow, despair, and hope.”[8]

The role of spirituals was to build a community of solace and mutual empathy amid unimaginable hardships, but the setting of the spirituals was distinctly the plantation of the American southern states and the woods and wilderness that surrounded them. It is this environment that provides a window into the function of the spirituals.

This setting plays a prominent role in the lyrics of numerous songs. The spiritual “Go in the Wilderness,” places the activity of the worshipper or singer outside the boundaries of the plantation. The song reminds the listener that,

If you want to find Jesus,
Go in the wilderness
Go in the wilderness,
Go in de wilderness,
Mournin’ brudder,
Go in de wilderness,
I wait upon de Lord.[9]

For thirteen verses the composer implores the listener that to do almost anything Christian requires going in the wilderness. “The central message of "Go in the Wilderness"— that the Lord can be found in the wilderness (rather than in a church)—places the song squarely within the tradition of spirituals that link religious worship and conversion with the forests, rivers, swamps, and hidden valleys common throughout the rural south.”[10] Yet this connection between religious worship and wilderness stands in stark contrast to much of the Biblical view of wilderness.

In the Bible, the wilderness may be a place of spiritual activity, but it is typically portrayed as a region of danger or even punishment. In the Old Testament God leads the Israelites through the wilderness for forty years, but the goal is to reach the promised land, not remain in the wilderness. For the unfaithful who refuse to enter the promised land for fear of the people who live there, to die in the wilderness is their punishment. Over and over the Bible reminds the reader that the wilderness was not a suitable place for the people of God.

They did not say, ‘Where is the Lord
Who brought us up out of the land of Egypt,
Who led us through the wilderness,
Through a land of deserts and of pits,
Through a land of drought and of deep darkness,
Through a land that no one crossed
And where no man dwelt?’[11]

Wilderness is not simply an area of sand and scrub brush, “rather, it is the marginal geographical area that does not provide sufficient resources to sustain long-term community existence.”[12] The Hebrew root word for wilderness denotes devastation or desolation. Wilderness was “a dangerous place for Israel, a place of dread. Numbers 14, a chapter in which wilderness terms occur more than any other in the Pentateuch, is a picture of rebellion and defeat.”[13]

In the New Testament, Jesus is led into the wilderness for forty days to be tempted by the devil.[14] While this is the beginning of his spiritual journey, and a necessary moment of growth, it is marked by danger and the possibility of horrific failure. When the time of temptation is over, Jesus leaves the wilderness to fulfill his mission.[15]

The Biblical wilderness is a place of trial, of difficult spiritual journeys, not a place of refuge. This is demonstrably not the view of forests as a place of refreshment pictured in “Go in The Wilderness.” This contrast is even sharper when “Go in The Wilderness” is juxtaposed with the hymn “Ain’t I Glad I Got Out of the Wilderness” which appeared in Methodist and Baptist Hymnals decades later and is clearly based on “Go in the Wilderness.”[16]

O, ain't I glad I've got out the wilderness,
Got out the wilderness, got out the wilderness,
Ain't I glad I've got out the wilderness,
Leaning on the Lord.

O, come along, mourner, run out the wilderness,
Run out the wilderness, run out the wilderness,
Come along, mourner, run out the wilderness,
Leaning on the Lord.

O, come along, mourner, run out the wilderness,
Run out the wilderness, run out the wilderness,
Come along, mourner, run out the wilderness,
Leaning on the Lord. [Refrain]

O, you're long-time mourner, coming out the wilderness,
Coming out the wilderness, coming out the wilderness,
Long time mourner, coming out the wilderness,
Leaning on the Lord.

O, ain't I glad I've got out the wilderness,
Got out the wilderness, got out the wilderness,
Ain't I glad I've got out the wilderness,
Leaning on the Lord.

Here the wilderness is something to flee. Hardship and mourning happen in the figurative wilderness, and by leaving that place a Christian finds joy and the Lord, the exact opposite course of “Go in The Wilderness.” In discussing how Europeans were shaped into a new people by coming to America, Oscar Handlin notes that “Order was the immediate and continuing need…at the edge of the wilderness.” As white Americans moved inland “the anxious men and women who struggled for survival quickly learned that they would fend off the dangers from the enemies of the forest…only if they could labor together in some organized way.”[17] For white Americans the wilderness was a place of danger or an obstacle to be overcome. The wilderness was cleared to make way for civilization. For slaves, the place of refuge and salvation was the wilderness. It was the place you longed for, hoped for, and desperately needed to visit.

While the word valley is not necessarily synonymous with wilderness, it in many ways appears to serve the same function in slave spirituals. In the song “The Lonesome Valley” we find an eerily similar pleading to “Go in The Wilderness.”

My brudder, want to get religion?
Go down in de lonesome valley,
Go down in de lonesome valley,
Go down in de lonesome valley,
To meet my Jesus dere.[18]

This again stood in contrast to the Bible where the valley was a place of enemies and foreign gods.

Then a man of God came near and spoke to the king of Israel and said, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Because the Arameans have said, “The Lord is a god of the mountains, but He is not a god of the valleys,” therefore I will give all this great multitude into your hand, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’”[19]

The god of Israel was to be found on mountains (Sinai, Zion), and the Israelites were to abhor the people of the valleys and especially their deities. Even the most famous parable of Jesus, “The Good Samaritan,” begins with an unfortunate traveler “going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers.”[20] It was in the valley between Jericho and Jerusalem that robbers lay in wait. Valleys were a place of danger, a place of foreign gods, and a place away from the true God.

The Bible is anti-valley and has a similarly low view of wilderness. Wilderness may be a place to meet God or be transformed, but it is transitional, menacing and savage. Wilderness, deserts, and valleys are a danger to both the physical and spiritual body. God was found on the mountain, and the valley was the place of peril. In Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, even the names of the chapters portray this motif; “The Valley of Humiliation,” “The Valley of the Shadow of Death,” and “The Delectable Mountains.”[21] Yet composers of slave spirituals consistently transformed these notions, claiming wilderness and valleys as places of comfort, refuge, rest, and spiritual renewal. Why? The answer is the environment created by carving a plantation out of the wild forest.

Charles Thompson, a preacher and slave who ran away multiple times, writes consistently in his biography of himself and others fleeing “to the woods.” Similarly, “the usual expression used by the blacks when a runaway returned to his master was that he "had come out of the woods;" that is, he had left his hiding place in the woods and returned to the plantation to work.”[22] Fleeing to the woods was thus an act that might include attempting to permanently escape, but also might be a temporary action of seeking refuge away from the harsh realities of the plantation. The daily life of a slave was often spent in a field, under the harsh sun, watched over constantly. The woods defined the edge of the plantation and the edge of the master’s authority. Slaves used the woods as a means of finding respite from the harsh world of plantation slavery.

The woods or wilderness were also a place of regular worship for many Black churches. Former slave Laura Smalley spoke of this common situation in a WPA interview:

Smalley: “Well, I, I well I don't know about the church when it first started up, no more than the, you know, ah, when I was a child, you know, they used to didn't have no church, you know, in no house, you know, they always had it in the trees.”

Unidentified Woman Interviewer: “In the trees?”

Mrs. Laura Smalley: “Under trees. Under trees. Yes, ma'am. Under trees.”

John Henry Faulk: “Brush arbors?”

Mrs. Laura Smalley: “Yes, sir. Some, if they didn't have no brush arbors, they just had it under the tree. You see. Just had it under a tree. And I don't know, you know, the because of churches, you know, when you started. But I know when mama and them used to go to church it be under the trees, you know. Out and under, under the trees. And, and didn't have no church houses much then. Just like, you know, you get a big old tree but and clear all out from under it, and make a, dry stalk down, you know, and make benches on it, you know.[23]

Both Raboteau and Nielson point to numerous examples of slaves using the forest as their place of worship. The spiritual “I’m Going Home” picks up this idea by proclaiming not only that the composer “sought my Lord in de wilderness” but that “My father preaches in the wilderness.”[24] The forest had clearly become the place for church and spiritual awakening.

The wilderness was also used as a place for church gatherings because it allowed for the possibility of secrecy. Not all masters allowed slaves to have their own church meetings. “Slaves faced sever punishment if caught attending secret prayer meetings. Moses Grandy reported that his brother-in-law Isaac, a slave preacher, “was flogged, and his back pickled” for preaching at a clandestine service in the woods.”[25] So the woods became a place to surreptitiously practice the Christianity of slaves rather than white people’s religion. Ex-slave Hannah Lowery declared, “Meetings back there meant more than they do now. Then everybody’s heart was in tune, and when they called on God they made heaven ring. It was more than just Sunday meeting and then no godliness for a week. They would steal off to the fields and in the thickets and there…they called on God out of heavy hearts.”[26] The difficult circumstances of life were poured out through community worship in the hiding place provided by the wilderness.

Forests were not only a place of spiritual renewal in the form of a religious service, but also served as a place to renew the spirit through fun. Mrs. M. E. Abrams of South Carolina talked about using the environment as a place of recreation. “Marse Glenn had 64 slaves. On Sat’day night, de darkies would have a little fun on de side. A way off from de big house, down in de pastur’ dar wuz about de bigges’ gully what I is ebber seed. Dat wuz de place what us collected mos’ ev’ry Sa’day night fer our lil’ mite o’ fun frum de with folks hearin’.”[27] Notice the use of a gully (which is nothing if not a small valley) to hide from the prying eyes and ears of white people.

Silvia King, a former slave, spoke of a similar event, but one that combined recreation and religion. "De black folks gits off down in de bottom and shouts and sings and prays. Dey gits in de ring and dance.”[28] The “down in de bottom” is clearly a reference to a gully, valley, ravine, or some other low place away from the overseers of the plantation.

It should be plain that the woods, filled with trees and ravines, was viewed by Black slaves as a place of profound spiritual import. It represented the goodness of God by being the opposite of a plantation field. The wilderness hid slaves from whites, allowing them to worship and recreate freely, and shielded them from the hot sun of the open field. In addition, the wilderness represented the possibility of freedom. This is uniquely seen in how the fruit of the woods might represent ultimate freedom and salvation.

The basis for the spiritual “Bound to Go” is the parable of the wise and foolish builders which is the conclusion to the sermon on the mount given by Jesus.^[29] The songs tells how the singer will “build my house upon de rock,” and “I am not like de foolish man, He build his house upon de sand.”^[30] This would be familiar biblical language to both blacks and whites. Yet suddenly in the fourth verse the scene shifts to a story of picking berries.

One mornin’ as I was a walkin’ along,
I saw de berries a-hanging down.
I pick de berries and I suck de juice,
He sweeter dan de honeycomb.
I tuk dem brudder, two by two,
I tuk dem sister, tree by tree.

This story of picking berries has no biblical precedent, but clearly speaks to the situation of the composer. “Turn, Sinner, Turn O!”, a song taking up the familiar Christian call for repentance also contains the sudden breaking in of “walkin’ down, I saw de berry a-hinging down, I pick de berry, an’ I suck de juice.”^[31] Even one of the most well-known spirituals, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Had” while beginning with the familiar refrain “Nobody knows de trouble I see”, quickly moves to walking and picking berries.^[32]

The references to berries in the Bible are few, and they are clearly and consistently negative. “In that day, in every place where there were a thousand vines worth a thousand silver shekels, there will be only briers and thorns.”^[33] Briers are the bushes where berries grow and they are viewed as a curse, symbolic of God’s disapproval. This was because cultivated land required the continuing removal of these “weeds.” Yet the above songs depict walking along and finding a brier patch with some berries as liberating and joyous.

Blackberries in the south grew wild so they were not a part of the cultivated plantation. They often grew along fence lines, in the neutral zone between the field and the road or forest. Split-rail fences, common in the South beginning in the early 1700’s, provided a simple enclosure which was easy to build and movable. “These advantages, though, came at a cost: since the rails had to come together at an angle, each fence created a space approximately ten feet wide where cultivation was impossible, an environmental haven for weeds, groundhogs, birds, and other undesirables.”^[34]

Intriguingly, blackberries were often picked by those least needed for labor on the plantation, meaning women or children.^[35] Yet these songs do not specify that those picking and enjoying the berries are a child or woman, and easily can be read as a man performing the act of picking. What is pictured is not a slave outing to pick blackberries under the watchful eye of an overseer. Rather, it is a lone person, walking down a road or path through the woods or beside the fields, grabbing berries and eating them while they continue to walk.

To be free enough to walk along, obviously away from the confines of the plantation, discover a patch of wild berries and partake, was a symbolic representation of salvation, both spiritual and corporal. The wild blackberries do not belong to the plantation environment, and do not require slave work to produce. They are free, as is the person picking them, at least for that moment.

In the years following the Civil War, many places in the United States, including the South, enacted new restrictions on commons rights, which eventually included blackberries. Many of these regulations were enacted to limit the access of ex-slaves to foodstuffs that because they were easy to procure would limit the willingness of Black people to be dependent on local economies. “Blackberries were a common treasure, appearing on the dinner tables of whites and blacks across the South, but when picking them had the potential of interfering even a little with commercial agriculture, the blackberry became black. Picking blackberries came to be one of the symbols associated with the figure of the lazy African American in the postbellum South.”[36] Even whites began to recognize the connection between blackberries and black freedom.

The woods or wilderness was a place of refuge for slaves. It was also a means of escape, both as a temporary respite and permanent chance at freedom. Forests also provided the setting for both community worship and individual spiritual enlightenment. Often valleys, gullies, and ravines provided shelter from the eyes and ears of masters, overseers, and other white people. In these places slaves could shout, sing, play, dance, pray and find rest. All these ideas permeate slave spirituals.

The typical Western/American vision of church involves a building, whether that be the majestic Cathedrals Notre Dame and Chartres, the small white clapboard churches of New England, or even modern megachurches that look like a mall or coffeeshop. These function as a gathering place away from the elements, shielding the worshipper from wind, rain, cold and heat. Yet the vision of church provided by slaves was one at home in the elements. The forest functioned as walls and a ravine an echo chamber for singing. In these wilderness places, the spirituals created by slaves could be sung as a means of teaching other slaves where to find that solace, or even where to go if you wanted to attempt escape. The songs could also function as a reminder of the good of this world and where it could be found, despite spending most days toiling away in the hot sun of an open field. The woods, where you could be hidden by gullies and ravines and find sustenance through wild growing berries, became a standard in the slave hymnody. And the songs became a means of carrying the wilderness wherever the singer might be forced to go.

[1] For an excellent look at the phenomenon of slave refugee camps see Amy Murrell Taylor, Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps (Chapel Hill: University Of North Carolina Press, 2018).

[2] William Frances Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, Slave Songs of the United States. (Dover Publications, 1867).

[3] Charles Joyner gives an in-depth view of slave life and developing community in South Carolina. Focusing on All Saints Parish, and specifically the rice plantations along the Waccamaw River, Joyner uses local records, census data, oral histories and WPA interviews to weave together some idea of the “folk-life” that developed among African slaves. While much of his emphasis is upon the development of a common language among the slaves, Joyner delves into the common aspects of ordinary life including storytelling and religiosity. Charles W Joyner, Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (Urbana: Univ. Of Illinois Press, 2009).

[4] Katherine McKittrick, “Plantation Futures,” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 17, no. 3 (November 1, 2013): 1–15, https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-2378892.

[5] Albert J Raboteau, Slave Religion. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

[6] Joyner, Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community, 141.

[7] Allen, Slave Songs of the United States, xvii.

[8] W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903; repr., New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005), 191.

[9] Allen, Slave Songs of the United States, 14.

[10] Erick Nielson, “Go in de Wilderness: Evading the ‘Eyes of Others’ in the Slave Songs,” Western Journal of Black Studies 35, no. 2 (2011): 112.

[11] Holy Bible: NIV: New International Version, Jeremiah 2:6.

[12] D. W. Baker “Wilderness, Desert.” Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch. Edited by T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 893.

[13] Baker, “Wilderness, Desert”, 896-897.

[14] Holy Bible: NIV: New International Version, Luke 4:1-13.

[15] Patrick Schreiner, The Body of Jesus a Spatial Analysis of the Kingdom in Matthew (London Bloomsbury T&T Clark Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016).

[16] Various, National Jubilee Melodies (McMaster Press, 2000), 137.

[17] Oscar Handlin, The American People: A New History (London: Huchinson, 1963), 55.

[18] Allen, Slave Songs of the United States, 7.

[19] Holy Bible: NIV: New International Version, 1 Kings 20:23.

[20] Holy Bible: NIV: New International Version, Luke 10:30.

[21] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come : Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream, Wherein Is Discovered the Manner of His Setting Out, His Dangerous Journey, and Safe Arrival at the Desired Country (Greenville, S.C. ; Belfast, Northern Ireland: Media Book, 1999).

[22] Charles Thompson, Biography of a Slave Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson (Tradition Classics, 2011).

[23] Interview with Mrs. Laura Smalley, Hempstead, Texas, 1941 http://www.loc.gov/item/afc1941016_000150

[24] Allen, Slave Songs of the United States, 84.

[25] Raboteau, Slave Religion, 214.

[26] Raboteau, Slave Religion, 217.

[27] Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 14, South Carolina, Part 1, Abrams-Durant, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mesn.141/?sp=4

[28] Interview with Silvia King, Merlin, Texas, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mesn.162/?q=silvia+king&sp=299

[29] Holy Bible: NIV: New International Version. (Durbanville: Christian Media Bibles, 1973), Matthew 7:24-27.

[30] Allen, Slave Songs of the United States, 22-23.

[31] Allen, Slave Songs of the United States, 36-37.

[32] Allen, Slave Songs of the United States, 55.

[33] Holy Bible: NIV: New International Version. (Durbanville: Christian Media Bibles, 1973), Isaiah 7:23.

[34] Bruce Baker, “‘A Recourse That Could Be Depended Upon’: Picking Blackberries and Getting by after the Civil War,” Southern Cultures 16, no. 4 (2010): 24.

[35] Baker, “A Recourse That Could Be Depended Upon”, 26.

[36] Baker, “A Recourse That Could Be Depended Upon”, 33.