Rhiannon Giddens’s Song Offers Dialogue Between Slave Owner and Freedwoman at Moment of Emancipation

Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops has a new solo album out called Freedom Highway. The song “Julie” presents a dialogue between a slave and slave owner as Union soldiers arrive:

From the NPR website:

Singer-songwriter Rhiannon Giddens is the first to admit that she’s big into history, and in particular the history of the South and the Civil War.

In the video above she performs “Julie,” which she wrote after reading “The Slaves’ War,” by Andrew Ward, a book that draws on hundreds of primary and secondary sources to recount the Civil War from the perspective of a the slaves. Included is a story of conversation between a mistress and her slave as the Union Army was set to liberate her plantation.

“And it struck me really forcibly hard — that idea of the complicated relationship between the owners and what they thought of as their property, but were actually in so many ways their family,” Giddens said. “It just really struck me how in the institution of slavery … no matter how it seems like one group of people wins, everybody loses.”

Lyrics:

Julie, oh Julie
Won’t you run?
‘Cause I see down yonder, the soldiers have come
Julie, oh Julie
Can’t you see?
Them devils have come to take you far from me

Mistress, oh mistress
I won’t run
‘Cause I see down yonder, the soldiers have come
Mistress, oh mistress
I do see
And I’ll stay right here ’til they come for me

Julie, oh Julie
You won’t go
Leave this house and all you know
Julie, oh Julie
Don’t leave here
Leave us, who love you, and all you hold dear

Mistress, oh mistress
I will go
Leave this house and all I know
Mistress, oh mistress
I will leave here
With what family I’ve got left, they’re all I hold dear