This document summarizes a lecture on increasing conflicts over slavery in the mid-19th century United States. It discusses how music and religion influenced enslaved African Americans' lives. It describes major rebellions and court cases challenging slavery. The Underground Railroad helped around 100,000 slaves escape to freedom using secret routes and stations operated by free African Americans and white abolitionists. Enslaved people found empowerment and community through religious worship and music, using spirituals to cope with hardship and secretly signal the Underground Railroad. Religion and music were tools for physical and metaphorical escape from slave conditions.

1. US History – CHEE
Lecture 11iii – Increasing
Conflicts Over Slavery: The
Underground Railroad
How do music and religion
influence the lives of African
American slaves in the mid-
nineteenth century?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUvBGZnL9rE&index=34&list=PLA8CC511DE0CB8715

2. Question to Consider:
Why might music be important to
historians?

3. End of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (1808)
Spurs the Growth of the Domestic Internal Slave Trade
North – Gradual Abolition
South – Consolidation & Expansion of the Slave Trade

4. African American Resistance to Slavery:
Major Rebellions
1800 – Gabriel & 25 others
hung for insurrection in
Richmond, Virginia
1822 - Denmark Vesey led
9000 slaves in Charleston
1831 - African American
Baptist minister kills 60

5. African American Resistance :
Courtcases, Abolitionist Appeals
1829, David Walker.
Appeal to the Coloured
Citizens of the World.
One of the first and boldest
appeals for abolition

6. African American
Resistance:
Escape
OR
oFeigning illness
oDestroying tools
oInjuring livestock
oPetty theft
oArson
oRunning away

7. The Role of Religion and Slavery:
Douglass Asks is Religion a Tie That Binds?
frustrated by the “many good,
religious colored people who
were under the delusion that
God required them to submit to
slavery and to wear their chains
in meekness and humility.”
Frederick Douglass. Narrative of the Life
of Frederick Douglass, an American
Slave. 1845.
Abolitionist Author, Editor, and VP
Candidate

8. Singalong: “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”
Coming for to carry me home?
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Coming for to carry me home
I looked over Jordan, and what did I see
Coming for to carry me home?
A band of angels coming after me,
Coming for to carry me home

9. Slave Songs “reveal…
… at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would
compose and sing as they went along, consulting neither time
nor tune…I did not, when a slave, understand the deep
meanings of those rude, and apparently incoherent songs…They
told a tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble
comprehension;
Frederick Douglas, 1845, …
…there were tones loud, long and
deep, breathing the prayer and
complaint of souls boiling over with
the bitterest anguish. Every tone was
testimony against slavery, and a
prayer to God for deliverance from
chains.” “The Music for the Dance”
drawing by A.B. Frost,
Harper’s Weekly 1891

10. Singalong: “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”
Sometimes I'm up, and sometimes I'm down,
Coming for to carry me home
But still my soul feels heavenly bound.
Coming for to carry me home
If you get there before I do,
Coming for to carry me home
Just tell my friends I'm coming too.

11. Religion: Tie that Binds?
“…Almost Patriarchal Simplicity…”
Family Worship in a South Carolina Plantation
Frank Vizetelly, Illustrated London News, 1863.

12. Does Religion Empower?
Blacks Embrace Religion: Plantation Burials
a Cultural Space for Slaves to Gather
John Antrobus, 1860.

13. Slave Music: Call & Response
o Plantations
o Churches:
minister &
congregation

14. Underground Railroad Routes:
Runners Escape to Freedom
With secret underground
“roads,” “stations,” &
“conductors”:
A network of thousands of free Blacks
and white sympathizers assisted 100K
slave runaways from the south to the
safety of the free north, including
Canada, or others who sent South or
West to join Native American groups

15. A Song to Signify the Coming of the
“Conductor” Harriet Tubman
Her special song to disclose her presence
“Conductor” Harriet Tubman
(1820?-1913),
slave escapee from Maryland in 1849, liberated
over 300, 20 trips back South.
Dark and thorny is de pathway
Where de pilgrim makes his ways;
But beyond dis vale of sorrow
Lie de fields of endless days.

16. Singalong: “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”
If you get there before I do,
Coming for to carry me home
Just tell my friends I'm coming too.
Coming for to carry me home
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Coming for to carry me home

17. Growth of African American Churches
Methodist Episcopal Church
o Space for African
American Leadership”
o African American Forms
of Worship with Music
o Unofficial “post offices”
for the underground
railroad

18. Freedom or Death?
Kentucky Slave & Fugitive Margaret Garner
Killed Her Child to Avoid Re-Enslavery
Thomas S. Noble. Freedom or Death. 1867
Toni Morrison’s
Beloved based on
her life.

19. Music as a Celebration of Life,
Despite the Slave Condition
“…whenever Platt [Northrup] was seen
passing through the town with his fiddle…
“Where are you going now Platt?”
“What is coming off tonight Platt?” …from
every door and window, and …when there
was no special hurry…Platt would draw his
bow, and …discourse musically to a crowd
of delighted children, gathered around
him...”
Solomon Northrup. Twelve Years A Slave. 1853
Free Black Violinist kidnapped and captured.

20. Religion & Music:
tools to physically as
well as metaphorically
escape slave conditions!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI_Vcx49IvY&list=PLA8CC511DE0CB8715&index=34

21. Grace Chee Copyright 4.2015
Message to Students:
Professor Chee does not endorse other slide
share presentations and recommends that you
read primary sources, text, and other
readings/videos as assigned