Go Down, Moses

“Go Down, Moses” features an urgent message constructed by enslaved people determined to affirm hope by using the religious writings of the very people who had enslaved them. Originating in the 1830s, “Go Down, Moses” fused Christian theology and current events to produce a spiritual that links the suffering of the biblical Israelites to that of enslaved people in the 19th-century US. The song reassures its hearers that God, who has allowed slavery to persist, is a present and powerful agency, and his intervention will be felt soon.

While the lyric closes celebrating the “beautiful morning” (Line 25) when the enslaved will break free of the chains, this message of hope and expectation is unusual. Spirituals often feature comforting visions of joy in the glorious afterlife, when listeners will finally escape slavery, lay their burdens down, and dance joyously into heaven. However, “Go Down, Moses” is far more practical. Its closing two stanzas reflect the reality of their own time, when a war between pro- and anti-slavery states seemed inevitable. The vision that closes the poem offers the radical (and dangerous) certainty that liberty is within reach—that enslaved people need not wait until death nor must they find virtue in enduring the conditions of enslavement.