IV
INTRODUCTION.
ody which had been popular among the religious
negroes of the South during the period of their en-
slavement, should be gathered up and published in a
form and style Avhich would insure their preservation
and give them the widest circulation.
The desire thus created still exists. It is not based
on curiosity, but on the knoAvledge that these songs
and their musical accompaniments haA'e a unique char¬
acter and a remarkable history, which are likely to give
them an enduring interest among all the civilized peo¬
ples of the earth. The songs and their music, in most
instances, are not only felt to be Avonderfully adapted
to each other, but to be the tAVO parts of one Avhole—
as if the one bad inspired the other, or as if both
were the simultaneous products of the same event,
experience, or sentiment. As the creation of the pe¬
culiar experiences of an enshwed people; as a faithful
Avitness to their abject bondage, to their mental dark¬
ness, to their yearnings for deliverance, to their relig¬
ious aspirations as the solace for earthly and bodily
woes, to their scanty joys mingled with many sorrows,
and to their touching and almost incredible patience
and hope under all forms and degrees of deprivation,
neglect, and outrage, they speak Avith an almost in¬
finite pathos to the heart of humanity, and become an
important, though fragmentary, contribution to the
history of mankind. Here are indelibly fixed those
phases of thought and character which exhibit at once
the characteristics of the colored people and their ex¬
periences during their period of bondage. These Avill
appeal to sensitive natures in the generations to
come as they now do in ours. On these pages, as in
formal history, we have presented to us a remarkable
phenomenon—an exhibition of the best qualities that
have ennobled any race of men. We see a people
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