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Original Anti-Slavery Songs: The Slaveholder's Rest

Original Anti-Slavery Songs
The Slaveholder's Rest
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table of contents
  1. Title Page
  2. Preface
  3. Freedom's Cause
  4. The African Girl
  5. All Things Speak
  6. Freedom's Call
  7. The Fugitive in Montreal
  8. The First of August in Jamaica
  9. The Slaveholder's Rest
  10. Queen Victoria Conversing with Her Slave Children
  11. Away to Canada
  12. Old Liberia is Not the Place for Me
  13. Celebration Adieu
  14. Emancipation Car
  15. The Little Maid On Her Way
  16. Final image

THE SLAVEHOLDER'S REST.

A Song, illustrative of the true feelings of the Slave, when a tyrant master dies, sung by the body-servant, and his field brethren, in a retired Negro quarter.


TUNE--Uncle Ned.

Servant.
Come all my brethren, let ustake a rest,
     While the moon shines so brightly and clear;
Old master has died and left us all at last,
     And has gone at the bar to appear.
Old master is dead, and lying in his grave;
     And our blood will awhile cease to flow.
He will no more trample on the neck of the slave,
     For he's gone where the slaveholder's go.
Brethren--
           Hang up the shovel and the hoe;
           Take down the fiddle and the bow,
     Old master has gone to the slaveholder's rest,
     He has gone where they all ought to go.

Servant--
I heard the old doctor say the other night,
     As he pass'd by the dining room door.
"Prehaps the old gentleman may live through the
            night,
 But I think that he will die about four."
Then old mistress sent me at the peril of my life,
     For the parson to come down to pray;
"For," said she, "your old master is now about to die,"
     And said I, "God speed him on his way!"
Brethren--
           Hang up the shovel and the hoe;
           Take down the fiddle and the bow, &c.

Servant--
At four o'clock this morning, the family was
            called
     Around the old man's dying bed,
And I tell you now I laughed to myself, when
            I was told
     That the old man's spirit had fled.
The children all grieved, and so I did pretend;
     The old mistress very near went mad;
And the old Parson's groans, did the heavens
            fairly rend;
     But I tell you now I felt mighty glad.
Brethren--
           Hang up the shovel and the hoe;
           Take down the fiddle and the bow, &c.

All Join Together.
We will no more be roused by the blowing of
            his horn,
     Our backs no longer he will score;
He will no more feed us on cotton seeds and corn,
     For his reign of oppression nos is o'er;
He will no more hang our children on the tree,
     To be eaten by the carion crow;
He will no more sell our wives to Tennessee,
     For he's gone where the slaveholders go.
           Hang up the shovel and the hoe;
           Take down the fiddle and the bow, &c.

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Queen Victoria Conversing with Her Slave Children
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