While on their way, the slaves selected to go to the1
great House farm would make the dense old woods, for miles
around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the
highest joy and the deepest sadness. (…) They would sing, as4
a chorus, to words which to many would seem unmeaning
jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to
themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of7
those songs would do more to impress some minds with the
horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole
volumes of philosophy on the subject could do.10
I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning
of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself
within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those13
without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was
then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were
tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and16
complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish.
Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to
God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild19
notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable
sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing
them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts22
me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling
has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I
trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing25
character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception.
Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery,
and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any28
one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of
slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, and, on
allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there31
let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through
the chambers of his soul, and if he is not thus impressed, it will
only be because “there is no flesh in his obdurate heart.”34
Frederick Douglass. Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American
slave. Charleston (SC): Forgotten Books, 2008, p. 26-7 (adapted).