Go Down Moses

The story

"Go Down Moses" is an African American spiritual drawn from the Book of Exodus, chapter 5, verse 1, where God sends Moses to Pharaoh to demand the release of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. For the enslaved people of the United States the story was not only scripture. They saw their own enslavement in that of the Israelites, and the promise that God would come to the aid of the persecuted spoke to them directly. The song's freedom was at once the Israelites' and that of people running from slavery, and because of that double message many enslavers outlawed it. Its mention of the Jordan, a river often linked in spirituals with reaching freedom, matched the crossings of rivers that escape often required. In the Bible, Egypt lies "down" from Jerusalem; in American slavery "down" also meant being sold down the Mississippi, where conditions were notoriously worse.

The earliest written record of the song comes from the Civil War. Enslaved people who had escaped to the Union lines, known as Contrabands, sang it as a rallying anthem at Fort Monroe in Virginia before July 1862. Their chaplain, the Reverend Lewis Lockwood, heard it there in 1861, wrote down what he heard and published it in the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Sheet music soon followed, "Oh! Let My People Go: The Song of the Contrabands", arranged by Horace Waters, the first spiritual known to have been published as sheet music. Lockwood stated that the song came from Virginia and dated from about 1853. White writers who reported it assumed the Contrabands had composed it. The version the enslaved sang almost certainly sounded very different from Lockwood's transcription by ear, and more so after an arrangement by someone who had never heard it sung.

Other accounts take the song further back. Sarah Bradford's authorised biography of Harriet Tubman, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (1869), quotes Tubman as saying she used "Go Down Moses" as one of two code songs to communicate with people escaping slavery from Maryland. Tubman did this work from 1850 until the Civil War, so her use may predate the origin Lockwood gave. Some have suggested that Tubman wrote the song herself; others claim that Nat Turner, leader of one of the best-known slave revolts, wrote it or inspired it. None of these claims is settled. Though the song was prominent among enslaved people, it was left out of the collection Slave Songs of the United States.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers published a version in 1872. The Tuskegee Institute Singers recorded it for Victor in 1914, and Paul Robeson recorded it in the 1940s. The Golden Gate Quartet recorded it in 1957, Louis Armstrong for the album Louis and the Good Book in 1958, and the Robert Shaw Chorale in 1964, with liner notes by Langston Hughes.

What it says

A spiritual in which God sends Moses to tell Pharaoh to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Sung by enslaved people, the Bible story also spoke of their own longing for freedom. Later verses compare the Israelites' release with the freedom Christians believe Christ won for humanity. The mood is solemn and insistent.

The words