Go Down, Moses

One of the sorrow spirituals, “Go Down, Moses,” was first sung during the Civil War. Later, it was sung by The Jubilee Singers for President Ulysses S. Grant.
The President turned aside from pressing public duties to give them audience at the White House, assure them of his interest in their work, and hear them sing “Go down, Moses.” –(The Story of the Jubilee Singers by J.B.T. Marsh, 1880.). Fisk College is in Nashville, Tn. The Singers became famous Worldwide and toured the World. Of interest, they never returned to Fisk as students. Their director was named Mr. White, a black man. Black men assembled in “rejoicing meetings” all over the land on the last night of December 1862, waiting for the stroke of midnight to bring freedom to those states in the secessionist states. At the contaband camp [for runaway slaves] in Washington., D.C., the assembled blacks sang over and over again: “Go down, Moses…Let my people go.”