WILLIAM W. BROWN,

A fugitive slave.

1848.

PREFACE.

The demand of the public for a cheap Anti-Slavery Song-Book, containing Songs of a more recent composition, has induced me to collect together, and present to the public, the songs contained in this book.

In making this collection, however, I am indebted to the authors of the “Liberty Minstrel,” and “the Anti-Slavery Melodies,” But the larger portion of these songs has never before been published; some have never been in print.

To all true friends of the Slave, the Anti-Slavery Harp is respectfully dedicated,

W. W. Brown.

Boston, June, 1848.

SONGS.

HAVE WE NOT ALL ONE FATHER?

AM I NOT A MAN AND BROTHER?

Air—­Bride’s Farewell.

Am I not a man and brother? 
  Ought I not, then, to be free? 
Sell me not one to another,
  Take not thus my liberty. 
Christ our Saviour, Christ our Saviour,
  Died for me as well as thee.

Am I not a man and brother? 
  Have I not a soul to save? 
Oh, do not my spirit smother,
  Making me a wretched slave;
God of mercy, God of mercy,
  Let me fill a freeman’s grave!

Yes, thou art a man and brother,
  Though thou long hast groaned a slave,
Bound with cruel cords and tether
  From the cradle to the grave! 
Yet the Saviour, yet the Saviour,
  Bled and died all souls to save.

Yes, thou art a man and brother,
  Though we long have told thee nay;
And are bound to aid each other,
  All along our pilgrim way. 
Come and welcome, come and welcome,
  Join with us to praise and pray!

O, PITY THE SLAVE MOTHER.

Air—­Araby’s Daughter.

I pity the slave mother, careworn and weary,
  Who sighs as she presses her babe to her breast;
I lament her sad fate, all so hopeless and dreary,
  I lament for her woes, and her wrongs unredressed. 
O who can imagine her heart’s deep emotion,
  As she thinks of her children about to be sold;
You may picture the bounds of the rock-girdled ocean,
  But the grief of that mother can never be known.

The mildew of slavery has blighted each blossom,
  That ever has bloomed in her path-way below;
It has froze every fountain that gushed in her bosom,
  And chilled her heart’s verdure with pitiless woe;
Her parents, her kindred, all crushed by oppression;
  Her husband still doomed in its desert to stay;
No arm to protect from the tyrant’s aggression—­
  She must weep as she treads on her desolate way.