Description

Music was one of the most powerful weapons of the abolitionists. In 1848, William Wells Brown, abolitionist and former slave, published The Anti-Slavery Harp, “a collection of songs for anti-slavery meetings,” which contains songs and occasional poems. The Anti-Slavery Harp is in the format of a “songster”–giving the lyrics and indicating the tunes to which they are to be sung, but with no music. The book is open to the pages containing lyrics to the tune of the “Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, which to 19th-century Americans symbolized the determination to bring about freedom, by force if necessary. (loc.gov)