Ring Shouts (Reconstruction)

Topic: Origins - Ring Shout
Things changed very rapidly with the end of the Civil War. Missionaries swarmed south to convert and civilize freedmen. Few were as tolerant of ring shouts as William Francis Allen, who published a collection of their songs. [1] More were like the sister of his co-editor, Harriet Ware who, the more she understood them, the more she was repulsed by the rituals. [2] Protestant evangelists, including African-American preachers like Daniel Payne, [3] transferred these values to converts, especially those born in this country, who were anxious to leave behind reminders of slavery.

In May of 1867, Thomas Ruggles [4] wrote Charles Pickard Ware that music had changed on Saint Helena island.

"I don’t suppose we shall be able to make any new additions to your collection of negro songs. They sing but very little nowadays to what they used to. Do you remember those good old days when the Methodists used to sing up in that cotton-house at Fuller’s? Wasn’t it good? They never sing any of them at the church, and very few in their praise-meeting." [5]

Harriet Beecher Stowe met difficulties finding a congregation that had not been tamed when she visited Jacksonville, Florida, in 1867. She was able to observe one shout that occurred after a sermon and prayers.

"The other style of singing, which they practice when they are by themselves, and which they do because they feel like it, is evidently a traditional descent from that which Mungo Park describes as heard in Africa years ago. It is a sort of union of singing and rhythmic movement, of a solemn and serious character and conducted with a perfect time. The brethren formed a ring outside the altar, the sisters began to form into line, while one voice struck up a wild, peculiar air, and the first sister in the female procession shook hands with the first brother, singing the chorus and concluding with a short courtesy, and then passing on to the next repeated the same. Soon there was seen a double-file of these men and women moving and singing, and shaking hands and courtesying, all in the most exact time and with the most solemn gravity. The airs were wild and full of spiri’, the words simple and often repeated"

After providing examples of the lyrics, Stowe continued:

"Very soon there was a rhythmical column extending up one aisle, down the other, and slowly moving out of the house at one end. The singing and motion was kept up till every member of the congregation had taken their turn and so passed out.

"When the fervor was at its height, the wild commingling of voices, the rhythmical movement of turbaned heads, the sense of time and tune that seemed to pervade the whole procession, was quite wonderful. All this while the two old preachers sat back in the shadows of the pulpit, black and unmoved as the marble statutes of Memmon, in Egyptian museums. It was really a most curious sight." [6]

Fredrika Bremer found shouts survived within a different context in Methodists churches. In New Orleans before the war, one had adapted John Wesley’s class meetings as a vehicle for perpetuating older forms of religious instruction.

He introduced such weekly sessions in 1739 when he took over a congregation led by George Whitefield. [7] So many people claimed an interest in Christ, Wesley wasn’t able to give each the attention needed to complete his or her conversion. He experimented with small group meetings, based on bunds he had seen at the Moravian colony of Herrnhut in Saxony where individuals met to confess, monitor, and encourage each other. [8]

Bremer had visited an African-American class meeting in Washington, DC, where church members elected "their own leaders and exhorters. These exhorters go around at the class meeting to such of the members of their class as they deem to stand in need of consolation or encouragement, talk to them, aloud or in an under voice, receive their confessions, impart advice to them, and so on." [9]

In New Orleans in 1852, the class meeting was held after the service. [10] She watched the exhorters go around and, "they talked for a minute before the person addressed came into a state of exaltation, and began to speak and perorate more loudly and more vehemently than the exhorter himself." [11]

She observed that, as the exhorters continued to talk to congregants,

"By degrees the noise increased in the church and became a storm of voices and cries. The words were heard, ‘Yes, come, Lord Jesus! come, oh come, oh glory!’ and they who thus cried aloud began to leap—leaped aloft with a motion as of a cork flying out of a bottle, while they waved their arms and handkerchiefs in the air, as if they were endeavoring to bring something down, and all the while crying aloud, ‘Come, oh come!’" [12]

much like Keith Jackson had repeated "come on" at the end of his version of "Come by Here" described in the post for 23 September 2018.

Bremer’s description continued for several pages. As mentioned in the post for 18 September 2018, she was a published novelist like Stowe. While neither were discerning about movement, both noticed details in events and were able to record them as narrative scenes. Further, they were comfortable writing paragraphs and pages, rather than sentences. A reader could deduce the farewell formalities in Florida merged with secular dances, while one became aware of the logistics of a shout in Louisiana.

End Notes
I have not done research in this area and am grateful to the individuals mentioned below. I have read the original sources cited by them.

1. The Slave Songs of the United States. Edited by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison. New York: A. Simpson and Company, 1867. Allen was discussed in post on 25 September 2018.

2. Harriet Ware was quoted in the post for 20 September 2018.

3. Payne’s description of a shout and his reaction to it were quoted in the post for 9 August 2017.

4. Thomas Edwin Ruggles was at Corner Farm plantation on Saint Helena Island. Only his initials appeared when his letter was published. He was identified by James Robert Hester who edited A Yankee Scholar in Coastal South Carolina: William Francis Allen’s Civil War Journals. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2015. No page numbers in on-line version; footnote 21.

5. T. E. R. Letter to C. P. W. 21 May 1867. In Letters from Port Royal Written at the Time of the Civil War. Edited by Elizabeth Ware Pearson. Boston: W. B. Clarke Company, 1906. No page numbers in on-line version.

6. Harriet Beecher Stowe. "A Negro Prayer Meeting—Letter from Florida." Christian Watchman and Reflector. Part 1, 18 April 1867. Reprinted by Sacramento Daily Union, 22 May 1867. Errors corrected that were made in digitization. Quoted by Slave Songs. xx. Park published a journal of his travels in Africa under several titles. I could not locate Stowe’s reference. Perhaps she was referring to a news article, lecture, or interview.

7. Wikipedia. "John Wesley."

8. Tom Kiser. "John Wesley’s Accountability Discipleship Groups." Go Forth Alliance website.

9. Fredrika Bremer. Letter. About 27 January 1851. In America of the Fifties: Letters of Fredrika Bremer. Edited by Adolph B. Benson. New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1924. 275. Sterling Stuckey brought this to my attention. Slave Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013 edition. 60.

10. Bremer did not specify the church she visited, but only said it was African and Methodist. It most likely was Saint James AME church founded in 1844. Like most antebellum Black churches, its membership was limited to freedmen by laws or other restraints. ("A Brief History of Historic St. James AME Church." Its website.)

11. Bremer. 275.
12. Bremer. 276.