David Nelson, 1793-1844
A hymn written by a preacher while hiding from pursuing slave-holders whose anger and violence were aroused by Nelson’s aggressive anti-slavery views.
David Nelson, a surgeon in the U. S. Army during the war of 1812, left his profession to become a minister, meanwhile owning and operating a plantation in Missouri. After listening to an address on slavery, he declared himself in favor of freeing the slaves and advocated the plan of colonizing them in Africa. This so enraged some of the slave-holders that they drove Nelson from his home. To avoid mob violence, he escaped, reaching, after three days and nights of wandering, the Mississippi River opposite Quincy, Illinois. Hiding there in the bushes, with his pursuers near but unable to find him, the river gliding swiftly before him, he wrote this hymn on the back of old letters he had in his pocket. He was finally rescued by members of the Quincy Congregational Church who, having learned of his plight, took him on a fishing canoe and rowed him across the river, still pursued, to safety and friends, on the hospitable shore of a free state.
MUSIC. SHINING SHORE, one of the composer’s most popular tunes, has been given various arrangements for voice and instruments. Root has written concerning the origin of the tune:
One day, I remember, as I was working at a set of graded part-songs for singing classes, mother passed through the room and laid a slip from one of the religious newspapers before me, saying, “George, I think that would be good for music.” I looked at the poem which began, “My days are gliding swiftly by,” and a simple melody sang itself in my mind as I read. I jotted it down and went on with my work. That was the origin of the music of “The Shining Shore.” Later, when I took up the melody to harmonize it, it seemed so very simple and commonplace, that I hesitated about setting the other parts to it. I finally decided that it might be useful to somebody, and I completed it, though it was not printed until some months afterward. In after years I examined it in an endeavor to account for its great popularity—but in vain. To the musician there is not one reason in melody or harmony scientifically regarded, for such a fact. To him hundreds of others, now forgotten, were better.
For comments on George F. Root, 1820-95, see [Hymn 418].
504. There’s a land that is fairer than day
S. F. Bennett, 1836-98
“It’ll be all right by and by.” This trivial remark by Webster, when one morning, seemingly depressed, he was asked by his partner, Bennett, what was wrong with him, was the occasion for the writing of this hymn. The author and composer were friends and partners in the music publishing business in the village of Elkhorn, Wis. Webster, the musician of the firm, was inclined to be nervous and subject to periods of depression. His partner understood this and often effected a cure, as on this occasion, by putting him to work on a new song. Upon Bennett’s suggestion, the two agreed that morning to make a hymn out of the idea, “The sweet by and by.” Bennett penned the words and handed them to Webster, who promptly wrote the music. Words and music were thus produced in the incredibly short time of about thirty minutes. The song was published soon afterward in a Sunday school song book, The Signet Ring, which the two men were compiling. From there it found its way into numerous collections of songs until today “it is translated into various foreign languages and sung in every land under the sun.”
Sanford Filmore Bennett was a native of the West. He settled in Elkhorn, Wis., in 1861, to devote himself to music but later studied medicine and practiced in Richmond, Ill.