Religious Life of Enslaved African Americans

Slave Songs of the United States (1867)

Enslaved African Americans left few written records like diaries or letters, so the attempt by historians to re-create their spiritual and intellectual world is fraught with difficulties. Spirituals, however, provide tantalizing clues to their interior lives, and historians can analyze these songs for evidence of their worldview. Masters sometimes encouraged Christian conversion among slaves, underscoring passages defending slavery as the punishment for sin, but slaves adapted Protestant Christianity to their own purposes. They rejected the interpretation to obey one’s master, which whites emphasized, for a gospel of deliverance and communal salvation as seen in this spiritual, “Michael Row the Boat Ashore.” Michael likely referred to the Archangel Michael, who, in the New Testament, leads God’s people to victory over Satan.

Michael Row the Boat Ashore

Michael row de boat ashore, Hallelujah!

Michael boat a gospel boat, Hallelujah!

I wonder where my mudder deh [there].

See my mudder on de rock gwine home.

On de rock gwine home in Jesus’ name.

Michael boat a music boat.

Gabriel blow de trumpet horn.

O you mind your boastin’ talk.

Boastin’ talk will sink your soul.

Brudder, lend a helpin’ hand.

Sister, help for trim dat boat.

Jordan stream is wide and deep.

Jesus stand on t’oder side.

I wonder if my maussa deh.

My fader gone to unknown land.

O de Lord he plant his garden deh.

He raise de fruit for you to eat.

He dat eat shall neber die.

When de riber overflow.

O poor sinner, how you land?

Riber run and darkness comin’.

Sinner row to save your soul.

William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, Slave Songs of the United States (New York: A. Simpson & Co., 1867), 23–24.

READING AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS