Text by David Mulei

1Get Off the Track

after Jesse Hutchinson, Jr.’s “Get Off the Track! A Song for Emancipation,” Boston: Published by the Author, 1844.

2A Voice O'er the Wide Blue Sea

after Almira Seymour’s “Hymn for the 1st of August,” written for the August 2, 1844 West India Emancipation celebration at Tranquility Grove. Published in the Hingham Patriot, August 16, 1844.

3John the Baptist in the Wild

after John Quincy Adams’s letter (Quincy, Massachusetts, July 29, 1844) to Anna Quincy Thaxter, read aloud by William Lloyd Garrison at the Tranquility Grove celebration on August 2, 1844.

4Dearest and Holiest Rights

after Charles Lenox Remond’s speech “For the Dissolution of the Union,” delivered at the New England Anti-Slavery Society convention in Boston on May 7, 1844.

5Conscience Can Not Sleep

after Ralph Waldo Emerson’s address “Emancipation in the British West Indies” (1844), first delivered in Concord, Massachusetts on August 1, 1844.

6Make Peace Where Now There is No Peace

after Abby Kelley’s speech “What Has the North to Do With Slavery?” delivered in Little Falls, New York, 1843. Published in the Voice of Freedom (Brandon, Vermont), September 14, 1843.

7Life and Times

after Frederick Douglass’ autobiographies Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881).

8Over the River

after “Over the River” by Nancy Amelia Woodbury Priest, originally published anonymously in the Springfield Republican, 1857. Later set to music by Asa B. Hutchinson and published by Henry Tolman & Co. (Boston) in 1860.