Musician Chase Holfelder is known on YouTube for taking songs originally set in major keys and performing them in minor keys. The results can be rather haunting.

In the video below, Holfelder takes the classic American anthem, “My Country ‘Tis Of Thee” and sings a lesser-known lyric of the song known as, the Abolitionist Version.

For its time, the antislavery movement was quite sophisticated in its use of the available media to spread its message. In fact, the skillfulness of antislavery “propaganda” was one of the reasons the movement was so feared and disliked. Abolitionist writers took familiar tunes and provided them with new lyrics that were scathing attacks on slavery and its defenders. Changing the words to the patriotic tune “America,” for example, would have been quite controversial in most communities.

Below, Holfelder tells a bit more about the Abolitionist version before he begins his amazing self-harmonizing performance of the song.

x YouTube Video

Here is a transcript of the lyrics.

Additional Abolitionist verses by A. G. Duncan, 1843: My country, 'tis of thee, Stronghold of slavery, of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died, Where men man’s rights deride, From every mountainside thy deeds shall ring! My native country, thee, Where all men are born free, if white’s their skin;

I love thy hills and dales,

Thy mounts and pleasant vales;

But hate thy negro sales, as foulest sin.



Let wailing swell the breeze,

And ring from all the trees the black man’s wrong;

Let every tongue awake;

Let bond and free partake;

Let rocks their silence break, the sound prolong.



Our father’s God! to thee,

Author of Liberty, to thee we sing;

Soon may our land be bright,

With holy freedom’s right,

Protect us by thy might, Great God, our King.



It comes, the joyful day,

When tyranny’s proud sway, stern as the grave,

Shall to the ground be hurl’d, And freedom’s flag, unfurl’d, Shall wave throughout the world, O’er every slave. Trump of glad jubilee! Echo o’er land and sea freedom for all. Let the glad tidings fly, And every tribe reply, “Glory to God on high,” at Slavery’s fall.

Cheers to Chase Holfelder for bringing awareness to the Abolitionist version of this well-known anthem, and more importantly, for bringing awareness to an important movement during our nation’s darkest period.