Reflection- Swing Low Sweet Chariot

The song Swing Low Sweet Chariot is a very sad song that was sung in the cotton fields by the slaves before the late eighteenth century.  This song is about the chariot of God and the heavens coming down and saving the slaves from their horrible lives on the plantations.  The slaves sang many songs in their times on the plantations for many reasons.  First of all, the songs told the stories of what the slaves were going through and all of their hopes and dreams to one day escape and live in a happier place.  Because they did not have much access to writing tools or any sort of printing and/or publishing, they past down their stories through the songs to the coming generations.  "The brightest that I can say, coming for to carry me home, when Jesus washed my sins away, coming for to carry me home" (NetHymnal).  In all honesty, there are not many ways I can link the song Sweet Low Sweet Chariot to the writings and philosophies of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, but I think that there is one key connection.  Both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau did not like the idea of slavery at all.  Neither of them liked their government in general and were very opinionated about it, but slavery and taxes were the main thing that these men strongly disliked.  The statement I am about to make may be the most obvious, ignorant thing I could ever possibly say in a blog post...The slaves obviously did not want to be slaves and wanted to be freed and emancipated.  The link between the ideas of the slaves and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau is quite clearly the dislike for anything that has to do with the enslavement of African Americans, or any human for that matter since not all of them were African American.  I am starting to like Emerson and Thoreau because they did not like slavery, which is something I oppose strongly.
 NetHymnal. Web. 09 Feb. 2012.