The lyrics use biblical imagery expressing the desire for a release from bondage. “Go Down, Moses” is also said to have been sung by abolitionists to signal escape or rebellion. It was a popular slave song and was sung throughout the South by slaves while they worked and during their occasional times of rest and prayer. An early reference to it places it in Maryland in the late eighteenth century. As a folk song, it is thought of as having been created by a community rather than an individual, in this case the community of African-American slaves who lived in the South prior to the Civil War. “Go Down, Moses” is an African-American spiritual, a type of lyric that is also referred to as a Negro folk song.
